Sacra Conversazione
For Rev. Julia Polter
"Sacred Conversation": Genre of Italian Renaissance painting depicting the Virgin and Child amidst a group of saints
In the pictures it’s only saints who do it,
dressed in fine robes, bearing their signs
of eyes and wheels and grids –
the attributes of holy pain.
What do they talk about, as they gather
beneath celestial vaults?
Do they say what it’s like to be burned at the stake,
or describe being pierced with arrows?
Or have they suffered enough to see
the patterns that lie beneath and within
the muffling veils of earth?
Do they marvel at the glory around them,
the gold that only starts to shine
in the bitter forge of death?
And do they sometimes cease their chatter
to stand in silence, mute with joy?
Is this perhaps their true conversation –
no words, but only listening hearts?
It’s like that when we sit together,
not with splendid surroundings, all gowns and gems,
but a candle, a window, an image of Christ.
First I just have to tell you how much life hurts,
how tired I am of being tossed to the lions
because no one wants my preaching.
Then some light starts to dawn, and I see a glimmer
of meaning that doesn’t all rest on me,
an expanse toward which my soreness is lifted,
made large enough to let another
come close to my narrow self.
And there we rest, letting him speak
his silent words of love.
How can I carry that sacred space
back to the hustle and mess of life?
How do I make sure it doesn’t collapse
from the weight of my crushing desires?
It helps to remember your humble grace,
how you listen, not only to me,
but to the wisdom that flows between
and surely sustains us both.
Standing apart, we speak together.
So might one star
cry to another
across the infinite illusion of space:
Don’t lose hope,
I am here,
and his light is all between us.
Lory Widmer Hess is an American currently living with her family in Switzerland, where she works with adults with developmental disabilities and recently completed a training in spiritual direction. Her writing has been published in journals including Parabola, Vita Poetica, Pensive, The Windhover, Anglican Theological Review, and Motherwell, and she is the author of When Fragments Make a Whole: A Personal Journey Through Healing Stories in the Bible (Floris Books). Find her online at enterenchanted.com
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