IN
We are all in.
God has called us home,
from the fields, the hunting grounds.
Each fishing boat moored,
each gatherer returned
with baskets stored.
We are all in.
Now there is no-one
but ourselves,
no-one but our own souls,
in which to dwell in deepest
communion.
Even in our homes,
with the sounds
of children stirring,
and another’s arms enfolding,
we have not been more aware
of our inner cells –
our cloistered beings –
the place in which we hear
but an echo of the other,
and the memory of what was
fades out,
the residue of dreams.
Only the now existing,
the very air,
with currents strange, alive,
in this time of imagining.
and the drawing down
of heaven.
Yes, we are all in.
But not only to rest,
and discover new ways of being.
But to hold the world sorrows,
as the elements
of all our possibilities.
Each of us apart,
cloistered in our quarters,
but with equal measures gifted,
and concoctions each
intrinsic
to the healing of the nations,
integral to a world restored in Christ.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2020
“How great is the joy and prophecy proclaimed to the world by the silence of the cloister!”
— POPE FRANCIS, “VULTUM DEI QUAERERE”
