Budding; A Poem

by Ana Lisa de Jong

I’m going to tell you a secret
as clear as the sunrise,
the one that shakes you awake each day.

I’m going to say –
like the flower bud that draws the bees –
that perhaps you were placed,
desired,
formed like a bud unfolding,
to be at the end of the stem,
the focus of God’s gaze.

Perhaps God made you
for no great purpose other
than to love you with
intimate attentiveness,
and perhaps the best gift God claims back
is the love you give yourself
in turn.

Within that,
purpose blossoming,
fruiting,
as the flowering shrub
in spring bloom.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
May 2020

At the same time, our Lord showed me, in a spiritual manner, how intimately he loves us. I saw that he is everything that is good and supports us. He clothes us in his love, envelops us and embraces us. He wraps us round in his tender love and he will never abandon us. As I understand it, he is everything that is good. He also showed me a tiny thing in the palm of my hand, the size of a hazelnut. I looked at this with the eye of my soul and thought: ‘What is this?’ And this is the answer that came to me:

‘It is all that is made.’

I was astonished that it managed to survive: it was so small that I thought that it might disintegrate. And in my mind I heard this answer:

‘It lives on and will live on forever because God loves it.’

So every single thing owes its existence to the love of God. I saw that this tiny thing had three properties that were essential to it. The first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; the third, that God preserves it. But I cannot say what this Creator, Preserver and Lover is. Until I am united with him in my essential being, there will be no true happiness for me – by that I mean that until I am linked to him so closely that there is absolutely nothing between God and me.

~Julian of Norwich, extract from Chapter 5 – The first revelation Divine Love

For more poems for Ana Lisa de Jong, check out the free downloads available in our store:

• Talking About the Sun – Poetry from Nature
• Medicine for the Soul – Poetry for a Pandemic
• Ashes – Poems for Loss
• The Gate of Heaven: Poems for Contemplation
• Broken Into Wholeness; Poems for Recovery

~Photo above by Christine Sine