Yesterday

I mentioned the quote Schmemann referenced. Pr. Mozolak [Slovak, so poetry runs in his blood] sent it to me today with the following:

Alexander Schmemann quotes from the poet Osip Mandelstam, have you seen it before?

The chalice was suspended in the air
Like the golden sun for a splendid moment.
Here only Greek should be heard:
To take the whole world in your hands, like a simple apple.


The triumphal zenith of the service,
Light in a round room under a cupola in July,
So outside of time we could fully sigh
About that meadow, where time doesn't fly.


The Eucharist drags on like an eternal noon --
Everyone takes the Sacrament, performs, and sings,
In view of everyone the sacred vessel
Pours out with inexhaustible rejoicing.

It also picks up the mythic view that there is no time but only eternity amassed during Mass. The last line could also be a Gaudete touchpoint.

So... here's my morning take:


new weight pressed into God's hands
Harvey S. Mozolak

lift up
hearts and world
too difficult
no impossible to do
because
one is within
and the other without
a hand that enters
the inner space between ribs
for the core inside a soul
cannot hold it high for long
before the beating ends
by battle sword or with a surgeon’s knife
none can lift but a handful
of earth to outer space
pull the rug from under heaven
the foothold on life
without a fall
the gravity of all
thus the apple on the ground
round and bitten
under the bruised and battered tree
cannot be re-hung
only in prayer lifted up
kyrie eleison