A poem written and read by friar Cristofer Fernández OFM Conv.
(Thank you to Fr. Tom Smith OFM Conv. for walking the labyrinth at Holy Cross Retreat Center in Mesilla Park, New Mexico.)
The Labyrinth in the Desert Garden out back
By Cristofer Fernández, OFM Conv.
Let’s use our imaginative cognition, let’s love using that sixth sense intuition,
that supernatural Edenic contuition_
Approach my path, which is yours, with the chivalry of the inner newborn,
with nakedness ha-adamah, your being selved on sacred ground_
Bring your fertile crescent arches to bare sole to soul
on this wild unicursal outback
with the grace of deer_
You’re journeying forth,
a pilgrim without staff,
into the midst, the mist, the missed_
The Mystery_
The Center_
Rationalize not;
Reason with heart or recede by ruse in riddle,
for more tortuous than anything else is the human heart,
naturally beyond remedy_
Implant prayer in every step; root yourself here and now
on this little portion Love offers you through sister mother, Earth now and then_
Never forget the beginning of your beginning,
the ex nihilo musical key the vast creational choir scales,
whose labors compose the cosmic chorus, the great noise of being_
Travail and moan if you must, the desert is no wasteland, watch with wonder,
for Love grows Love’s garden in Love’s Spirit on your barren soul_
Holey, Holy, Wholly are we labyrinthing together in this Story; but be warned,
the divine, mesic, circuitous score is taut by sacred tensions, its conduction demands your loss into that Good ancestral rhythm, demands you dance the chords with your nothingness,
live the questions, live yours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
