Searching into the Assumption of Mary
Could it be that
you were alone with John
when you died
or remained at the margin of death;
that, alone with him
near the pagan shrine of Diana[1]
at the little hamlet of Salçuk
in your dwelling,
both faithful to the joint commendation of your Son
to be to each other
Mother and Son?
Your cells did not corrupt
but in time suspended
took on a new and enduring life?
The lymph and the blood flowing to perfection,
exposed now to a spaceless, timeless ambit,
through which you passed from here-presence
to all-presence?
In the high place of heaven to which Mirjam was taken
there was no physical air to breathe
and dilate the lungs:
remembered indeed
but not actual.
John would have remembered the Lord, risen,
appearing in Galilee:
cooking fish and warming loaves near the gentle wave-edge:
oh to fall in that water, be kindled from that flame!
The nerves and sinews held firm his physical limits.
Now the bearer of post-resurrection food
with the appetite raw for fresh bread!
Mirjam was lit from within by non-transient power
and edged into glory;
now woken and fully alert,
Her mind reigning by scanning,
all things desiring her presence.
The crowd in conventional thematics
was too wooden,
the reality surpassed them.
John, discrete witness,
gave all his attention to her physical-spiritual state.
He witnessed by silence
as the unobtrusive patterns of glory
like smoke-borne incense-clouds -
came from her body
as seemingly still it went,
soul-extended,
and -expanded:
eyes and spirit were dominated through the inhering God.
Of all that she saw was she queen
like David from outside descent,
innerly lit in mind
so she passed not aging further.
Time and space united and stayed
as one thing, but reformed
as the accompaniment
to the passive, spaceless way
accepting her now timeless body.
So, un-space-timed,
her ambience continued;
now, angel-like,
not contained but containing
what had gone before,
surpassing before and behind
timelessly over what dures
and spacelessly accepts.
We cannot stand still as we must
to hold and be held.
She was new-dimensioned with substance
over all ĉonic possibilities.
So did the crowd going from the basilica
draw on this energy divine,
and utter a praise totally from each heart,
endlessly caught up and grasped,
that Θεοτοκος is angel-like, contains,
and the angels are caught in wonder
that what was once contained
now contains.
Space-time is now dominated into ordered containing;
the new consciousness follows.
Once she had exclaimed from her soul.
"My soul rises to the greatness of the Lord
to offer him the fullness of unlimited praise
rising through Him who is in me;
to this I give utterance" (Lk.1,46).
But at the end the praise burst through
the limits felt by Paul.
From the beginning the house within every cell of her
had been clothed from heaven.
No need to groan as a wayfarer at the tabernacle's burden;
her mortality was always swallowed up by life (2Cor.5,1-5).
Speedily she went to Elizabeth,
yet her passable heart-flesh was promised a sword-thrust:
theologians of La Salette think that her flesh
can in heaven suffer still at this world's
contained yet continuing woes.[2]
At her dying no purification but manifestation and ultimate exaltation
before her adopted and adopting son
who understood this divine inhabiting reaching unity.
He saw the conversion-transformation reached
without the weakness of ecstasy:
a transfiguration this-wards, without the weariness that words work,
with total openness there-wards.
The joint dimension of space-time dominated
by an unveiled presence:
so a total and glorious adjustment,
in the power of "full knowledge with total praise",
with ordered tasking in union with her Son.
He divine, and theandric through her γενοιτο (Lk.1,38),
Condominium.
Άναστασα from the beginning (Lk.1,39),
contemplated by Elisabeth.
Now like her Son διηστη απ: "she went from" (Lk 24,51)
(so described by Luke and sourced by John),
Though ανελημφθη - taken up (Acts 1,2) not gainsaying
a common understanding.
Both were present
as she was regally taken;
"went from" has the intimacy
of another Lord- and Son-ship theandricly disposed:
gloriously, yet suavely by mode.
Like Jonah from Leviathan's jaws
the faith discovers the secrets of its own mysteric depths
with joy and conviction.
So with the cry of overflowing enthusiasm and joy
the condemnation of Nestorius was received.[3]
The divine Person, the human Person and the Person of the union were all One: else not theandric.
Made so in the God- and Church-womb of Mirjam;
that to be perpetuated for the condominium
regally established for humanity.
Unveiled at his Bethlehem birth;
unveiled for her as assumed to
the full reality of immortalised flesh:
more quietly perhaps than we are disposed to think,
yet so powerfullest.
Stykkishólmur
8-10 August 2010