Issue 38: “Autumn”
Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often wondrous and also difficult. Holding beauty, naming pain, and contending for hope is what we do at M25i.
Walter Brueggeman writes, "[A poem] thinks the unthinkable and utters the unutterable." In places of brokenness, where much feels unutterable and unimaginable, we encounter Jesus. Continue with us in reflection and prayer through this series, "For the Soul," as poetry offers us Spirit-soaked imaginations.
Before you begin...
What do we do with all the suffering, groaning, and futility of this life? How do we live embodied with bodies that are devolving, with longing, laboring, hoping? Hoping. Hoping. (Rom 8:18-25)
We wait. We wait for glory, for revealing, for freedom, for abundant harvests, for adoption and belonging, for redemption. We wait patiently for a reality that we cannot see.
The fall leaves, while briefly beautiful, signal death. In the words of this month's poem, "falling... falling... falling..."
But all the brokenness and dying in our world is caught, and must be caught, by the gentle hands of the God in whom we hope.
Eliot Hodgkin (1905-1987), Large Dead Leaf No. 2
Autumn
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The leaves fall, fall as from far,
Like distant gardens withered in the heavens;
They fall with slow and lingering descent.
And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude.
Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall
And lo! the other one:—it is the law.
But there is One who holds this falling
Infinitely softly in His hands.
Romans 8:18-25, ESV
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
As you read this, who comes to mind? Forward this email to your friends who care about the vulnerable. We hope that they would be encouraged to see other Anglicans who care too. We are not alone in this work. Would you speak a "yes" to this work with a gift? It would really bless us.
