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My love was not pure
But it was intense for you; I loved what I saw, Aware there’s far more unseen; I gained from heaven a friend. Farewell, old faithful, Thank you for your open heart That became a home To this passing wanderer On his journey beyond death.” |
In memory of a friendship
Explanatory Note: Recently I composed the following poem to honor a special friendship I had in the past, and will cherish until I die. The poem was written in the present tense, as I re-lived in memory the love we had known, which may confuse the reader. But real love is ever present, and deathless.
In reality, the experience of spiritual friendship (open hearts, open minds) yielded to personal withdraw, as doors of the heart were closed. Many of us have known this experience in friendships, and sometimes in marriages. The closing off of parts of the soul is a heart-wrenching experience for those who love, which by nature desires union with the beloved: union of flesh, or spiritual union of heart and mind, or both (as in a good marriage). As one who has known some 60 “permanent residences” in my life, in the friend about whom I wrote this poem I felt at “home,” and so my love was perhaps overly intense. This intensity may have proven more of a burden than my dear friend could bare, a response with which I am more sympathetic in hindsight.
As the poem shows, even this spiritual friendship I held in the face of death, an ever-present reality to me since age five, when a little girl was killed in a tragic accident, in which I share some responsibility. Awareness of death’s proximity only increased my intensity: to love truly and well before death takes away one then the other.
What I seek to honor is this past but, through memory, still enriching friendship. I especially honor the experience of personal open-hearted love without sex, for it was genuinely moving and therapeutic while it lasted—a quality of love all-too-unusual in a culture drunk on sexual activities of one sort or another.
Love and death are most powerful forces, and more intimately related than we often realize.
Love meets love in you,
Well-chosen dear friend for me:
Good, chaste, merciful
To a beggar at your door,
To one long estranged from love.
Sex would add nothing
Because your love penetrates
My heart’s inner room
Where I am truly myself:
My heart open wide to you.
We’ve shared the essence
Of uniting love’s efforts
To bring together
Two independent beings,
One only in divine love.
Deep my present joy
Marred in part by fear of loss--
Fear of losing you
Not by betrayal, but death;
And yet, can mere death end love?
Love is killed by death
Not in body, but in soul:
Death through selfishness,
Death through deceiving spirits,
Death through abandoning God.
You’ll not leave your Lord,
Nor will you betray your spouse.
Your goodness grounds you,
Your virtues assure your troth
To the beloved of your youth.
And so my love grows
Strong for your fidelity,
And for your earned trust--
We persevered through real trials,
Time-tested these many years.
I am awed by you,
Love penetrating in me,
Reaching deep inside,
More deeply than flesh could do,
More wonderful than I’ve known.
You’ve never asked me
To change, be what I can’t be;
You’ve accepted me,
“Warts and all,” just as I am.
So how could I not love you?
You are not the sun,
Not the divine source of light,
Not love’s origin;
You’re like the moon, reflecting
The sun’s engendering rays.
In loving you, I
Love not only you, but the One
Whose love you carry
From the divine spring to me,
A dry-thirsty wanderer.
You are beautiful,
Dear soul, with beauty beyond
Your own limited self,
The divine ocean-abyss--
Beauty beyond and within.
Do you understand
That in loving you, I know
That I’m loving God,
Both in you and beyond you,
Now and for eternity?
I’m in love, dear friend,
With you and with your true Lord;
In sharing our souls,
We share Christ intimately
In a Eucharistic feast.
You may not detect
How I receive Christ through you;
Disclosing your soul,
You give me the Lord enfleshed,
Christ for me in and through you.
I hope that you, too,
Receive Christ in and through me;
That you still overlook
My flaws and real weaknesses--
God loving you in my love.
In truth, Je t’adore,
I love you, I adore you,
Just as you are, friend;
And as much as I want love,
Still more I want your freedom--
To be who you are
As a unique God-bearer,
Free to be yourself
In union with the divine
Lover of all true lovers.
If ending friendship
Makes you truly happier,
Then freely depart,
Knowing that I am grateful,
For the moments we have shared.
I choose to love you
Now, and love you forever;
But much as I delight
In your company, you are free
Sharing only when you wish.
Any crumbs you give me--
A kind word, a burden shared--
Begifts a beggar
Who has a living vision
Of our one God within you.
My flaws may blind you
To what you had seen in me,
When you heard me speak
And received the living word
From Christ Jesus to your heart.
That God would again
Open us to what we’ve seen:
A sudden vision
Of the Risen One in you
Of the same Lord in me.
How grateful my heart
To have you in my brief life
As I stand not far
From eternity’s grave face--
Grave only for the body.
May I be with you
As one of us departs earth--
Only God knows when--
Now living as best we can
Until death’s vain distancing.
If you should die first,
You will not be fully gone;
Absent in body,
You’ll be present within me:
Heart to heart and mind to mind.
I will not hear you,
Not hear your soulful sweet voice,
Nor see your body,
Nor hear your carefree laughter;
But death will not kill my love.
If death takes me first,
I can make you no promise
Now or tomorrow,
For who knows what we shall be;
That remains in God’s silence.
If I be conscious,
With or in God’s consciousness,
As I hope awaits,
Then I’ll will God’s will for you,
And love you more completely.
Can I surrender
All that I have and am now?
Can I release to death
My grip on you, our friendship--
Into sovereign Death’s embrace?
Accepting my death,
My hands release you at once.
Accepting your death,
All desire dies as truth dawns;
Only gratitude remains.
Accepting my death
Is a spiritual challenge;
If today I die--
Some grief, some tears, a lost dog,
But little would change on earth.
If you died today,
The world and I would endure:
Some grief, some warm tears
As the waters of death’s sea
Close over where you submerged.
***
I approach my death
Mindful of years idly spent,
Chastened for clinging
As you slip free from my grip,
And all I am disappears.
Death inundates me,
And the whole world has perished
For me, and I’m dead
To the heedless who forget:
Death draws ever nearer you.
Death and sheer silence:
Not a voice heard, no breath felt;
I who died am gone.
Prepare yourself: death’s forever;
No second chance, no return.
On the edge of death
I inscribed these words to you:
“For accepting me
As I was in life, thank you;
You lightened my burdened years.
My love was not pure
But it was intense for you;
I loved what I saw,
Aware there’s far more unseen;
I gained from heaven a friend.
Farewell, old faithful,
Thank you for your open heart
That became a home
To this passing wanderer
On his journey beyond death.”
—Wm. Paul McKane, OSB
21-24 January 2020
In reality, the experience of spiritual friendship (open hearts, open minds) yielded to personal withdraw, as doors of the heart were closed. Many of us have known this experience in friendships, and sometimes in marriages. The closing off of parts of the soul is a heart-wrenching experience for those who love, which by nature desires union with the beloved: union of flesh, or spiritual union of heart and mind, or both (as in a good marriage). As one who has known some 60 “permanent residences” in my life, in the friend about whom I wrote this poem I felt at “home,” and so my love was perhaps overly intense. This intensity may have proven more of a burden than my dear friend could bare, a response with which I am more sympathetic in hindsight.
As the poem shows, even this spiritual friendship I held in the face of death, an ever-present reality to me since age five, when a little girl was killed in a tragic accident, in which I share some responsibility. Awareness of death’s proximity only increased my intensity: to love truly and well before death takes away one then the other.
What I seek to honor is this past but, through memory, still enriching friendship. I especially honor the experience of personal open-hearted love without sex, for it was genuinely moving and therapeutic while it lasted—a quality of love all-too-unusual in a culture drunk on sexual activities of one sort or another.
Love and death are most powerful forces, and more intimately related than we often realize.
Love meets love in you,
Well-chosen dear friend for me:
Good, chaste, merciful
To a beggar at your door,
To one long estranged from love.
Sex would add nothing
Because your love penetrates
My heart’s inner room
Where I am truly myself:
My heart open wide to you.
We’ve shared the essence
Of uniting love’s efforts
To bring together
Two independent beings,
One only in divine love.
Deep my present joy
Marred in part by fear of loss--
Fear of losing you
Not by betrayal, but death;
And yet, can mere death end love?
Love is killed by death
Not in body, but in soul:
Death through selfishness,
Death through deceiving spirits,
Death through abandoning God.
You’ll not leave your Lord,
Nor will you betray your spouse.
Your goodness grounds you,
Your virtues assure your troth
To the beloved of your youth.
And so my love grows
Strong for your fidelity,
And for your earned trust--
We persevered through real trials,
Time-tested these many years.
I am awed by you,
Love penetrating in me,
Reaching deep inside,
More deeply than flesh could do,
More wonderful than I’ve known.
You’ve never asked me
To change, be what I can’t be;
You’ve accepted me,
“Warts and all,” just as I am.
So how could I not love you?
You are not the sun,
Not the divine source of light,
Not love’s origin;
You’re like the moon, reflecting
The sun’s engendering rays.
In loving you, I
Love not only you, but the One
Whose love you carry
From the divine spring to me,
A dry-thirsty wanderer.
You are beautiful,
Dear soul, with beauty beyond
Your own limited self,
The divine ocean-abyss--
Beauty beyond and within.
Do you understand
That in loving you, I know
That I’m loving God,
Both in you and beyond you,
Now and for eternity?
I’m in love, dear friend,
With you and with your true Lord;
In sharing our souls,
We share Christ intimately
In a Eucharistic feast.
You may not detect
How I receive Christ through you;
Disclosing your soul,
You give me the Lord enfleshed,
Christ for me in and through you.
I hope that you, too,
Receive Christ in and through me;
That you still overlook
My flaws and real weaknesses--
God loving you in my love.
In truth, Je t’adore,
I love you, I adore you,
Just as you are, friend;
And as much as I want love,
Still more I want your freedom--
To be who you are
As a unique God-bearer,
Free to be yourself
In union with the divine
Lover of all true lovers.
If ending friendship
Makes you truly happier,
Then freely depart,
Knowing that I am grateful,
For the moments we have shared.
I choose to love you
Now, and love you forever;
But much as I delight
In your company, you are free
Sharing only when you wish.
Any crumbs you give me--
A kind word, a burden shared--
Begifts a beggar
Who has a living vision
Of our one God within you.
My flaws may blind you
To what you had seen in me,
When you heard me speak
And received the living word
From Christ Jesus to your heart.
That God would again
Open us to what we’ve seen:
A sudden vision
Of the Risen One in you
Of the same Lord in me.
How grateful my heart
To have you in my brief life
As I stand not far
From eternity’s grave face--
Grave only for the body.
May I be with you
As one of us departs earth--
Only God knows when--
Now living as best we can
Until death’s vain distancing.
If you should die first,
You will not be fully gone;
Absent in body,
You’ll be present within me:
Heart to heart and mind to mind.
I will not hear you,
Not hear your soulful sweet voice,
Nor see your body,
Nor hear your carefree laughter;
But death will not kill my love.
If death takes me first,
I can make you no promise
Now or tomorrow,
For who knows what we shall be;
That remains in God’s silence.
If I be conscious,
With or in God’s consciousness,
As I hope awaits,
Then I’ll will God’s will for you,
And love you more completely.
Can I surrender
All that I have and am now?
Can I release to death
My grip on you, our friendship--
Into sovereign Death’s embrace?
Accepting my death,
My hands release you at once.
Accepting your death,
All desire dies as truth dawns;
Only gratitude remains.
Accepting my death
Is a spiritual challenge;
If today I die--
Some grief, some tears, a lost dog,
But little would change on earth.
If you died today,
The world and I would endure:
Some grief, some warm tears
As the waters of death’s sea
Close over where you submerged.
***
I approach my death
Mindful of years idly spent,
Chastened for clinging
As you slip free from my grip,
And all I am disappears.
Death inundates me,
And the whole world has perished
For me, and I’m dead
To the heedless who forget:
Death draws ever nearer you.
Death and sheer silence:
Not a voice heard, no breath felt;
I who died am gone.
Prepare yourself: death’s forever;
No second chance, no return.
On the edge of death
I inscribed these words to you:
“For accepting me
As I was in life, thank you;
You lightened my burdened years.
My love was not pure
But it was intense for you;
I loved what I saw,
Aware there’s far more unseen;
I gained from heaven a friend.
Farewell, old faithful,
Thank you for your open heart
That became a home
To this passing wanderer
On his journey beyond death.”
—Wm. Paul McKane, OSB
21-24 January 2020