“We’ll be at home again”

Posted byrevdrejt1832Posted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , ,

We often hear ourselves say to one another. – these are terrible times. Yet our “terrible times” fail to grasp just how terrible life has been and continues to be for so many. It is easy to be drawn down into the deep hole of despair and depression which casts so little light on the goodness of humanity as so many bring rays of hope out of the darkest places. In the book, Against Forgetting – Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness edited by Carolyn Forche, we discover poems that speak rays of hope amidst darkness. Vladimír Holan (1905-1980) was a Czechoslovak poet, famous for employing obscure language, dark topics and pessimistic views in his poems. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in the late 1960s. In his poem Resurrection I find a beautiful description of hope and holiness in a place and at the hands of one where we would most expect to find it – a mother’s hands making home holy. Today in war-torn Gaza many mothers are resurrecting home!

Resurrection
Is it true that after this life of ours we shall one day be awakened
by a terrifying clamour of trumpets?
Forgive me God, but I console myself
that the beginning and resurrection of all of us dead
will simply be announced by the crowing of a rooster…

After that we’ll remain lying down a while…
The first to get up
will be mother…We’ll hear her
quietly making the fire,
quietly putting the kettle on,
and cosily taking the teapot out of the cupboard.
We’ll be at home again. Vladimir Holan

Prayer
Lord of light and peace
come dwell amongst us.
May you,
O Light of the world,
dispel the darkness of our hearts
in these terrible times.
May you, O Lord of peace,
silence the noise of war in our streets,
in our nations, and in the homes of so many.
Bless all mothers who make
heaven
when all around them is
hell.
Bless all mothers who resurrect love and courage
as they bake bread and from so little
fill cups and hearts with hope and trust.
Come, O Lord,
and dwell with us in these
terrible times.
Be a ray of hope and save us from
despair. Amen.

3 thoughts on ““We’ll be at home again””

  2. I suppose most of us have experienced what we thought were terrible times. We recover from those moments with guilt as we remember those who truly suffer, or sometimes with humor, and sometimes with rational thought knowing that most terrible times could be worse. Some of those terrible times can be life’s best lessons.

    But these terrible times feel different, as if we’ve reached the point of no return. I dislike the feeling of such a dark horizon, of fighting for my own optimism, for the immense presence of impending harm to people, places and things about which I care so deeply.

    And even as a mother, I don’t know what to do.

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