“Washing away all the lines”

If only we could enjoy the beauty of the earth, land and ocean, without borders. These manmade lines somehow demarcate what is home and what is foreign. I love Luci Shaw’s poem Cosmos which dreams of a seamless world and imagines the rain washing away all the lines we have drawn and redrawn over the centuries. Right in the middle of the poem she throws in for good measure Romeo and Juliet whose love for one another was made difficult because of lines or borders drawn by two powerful families, Montagues and Capulets – Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. This may inspire you to reread Shakespear’s wonderful play! I am most familiar with lines on maps which made no sense to the roads and fields it crossed between N. Ireland and Ireland and also the somewhat imaginary line running west to east across northern England separating the beautiful countryside of Northumberland and the “Borders” of southern Scotland. Today with great sorrow we look on at the devastation of life and land in Ukraine, Gaza, West Bank and Israel, Pakistan and India, to name only a few places that are each disputing lines on a map and trying to redraw new lines to their advantage . Oh, for a seamless world! Pause, ponder and pray.

Cosmos
“Oh now release
And let her out into the seamless world…”
– C.S. Lewis, “The Magician & the Dryad”

The crust is seamless. Though it shows
its scheme of cracks and geographic tracings, though
it trembles often from within or crumbles at its edges
as streams and oceans wear at it,
yet no man’s ruthless stitching of a border,
no careless change of politics can wall
this earth from that, save shallowly. Fences rust.
Surveyors die. Markings fade on the maps.
Montagu falls in love with Capulet. Rains
fall on us all alike in autumn and in spring,
washing away all the lines. The grass roots cross
and kiss under the hedgerows, telling us
we are kin.                         
                                    Luci Shaw from Sea Glass- New and Selected Poems

Prayer:
Lord God,
remind us that we are tenants
on this marveleous and fragile
earth. Forgive us for warring over
what we believe by some self-claimed right,
what is ours and not the others. Help us to see land
not as a
possession
but rather a place of
possibility.
We pray for this possibility not just on the large
scale of things but where we draw imaginary lines
between neighborhoods and families, forgive us.
Grant us
a vision beyond
measure
and a hope beyond
dimensions
so we can embrace a
love beyond
limits
which embraces you and me
and leaves
no one out. No matter the upheavel.
In your mercy, O Lord,
we live and pray, and
pray and live. Amen.