The Garden Sonnets For Elizaveta

I It is not a secret garden, although few people know it. The secrecy lies in their indifference. Some walk passed it everyday and never realize next to them, as they rush by, is a feast of color and scent. A few may derive a brief eye-pleasure, even fewer may walk through its flower-festooned threshold, stare for a moment of delight and then resume their unchanged lives. The truth of this garden remains hidden, except for you and me: we know its special charm, its enduring presence, its expectant silences... The charm casts its spell over us; we sense the presence someone kind and holy within the silence. II The architect of our garden is an Angel of little renown. No name for him appears in any of the holy Scriptures. Still like all Angels he lives in God's sight, so he cannot be a solitary being. Some day he will be commanded to soar into the immensity of the sky, cross the arc of the galaxy and descend to a planet that requires his vigilance. That will be his glorious future... Our garden he designed for our destiny. We sense he sensed our needs when he made the stand of birch trees, the two lakes and connecting stream, the corridor of lilac bushes, the field of sunflowers, the steep hillside from which dandelions fling their white-winged seeds into the warm air. III Can a memory be made from a future event? Can Time be bent so that memory can catch the tail of some future moment and attach it to the body of its present reckoning? Oh, yes! Be it so! For in our two minds joined, each to the other, we remember how we walk through the garden in all seasons, sheltered within its greenery, greeting birds, flowers and trees. It will be an experience of hushed joy, of frail happiness when it transpires. Our thought is the same throughout the flow of times: we rejoice in our friendship. That future day is so clear to me: your dress, your speech, your habit of pausing to bring the beauty of creation into your soul. The breeze carries pink petals which settle in your hair. IV DANIEL I am watchful through the night, hours of solitude so different from the solitary day. Bright day ignores me as he pursues his glory across the sky. Night is my dear companion. She nestles against me, smiles when I stroke her cheek. Sometimes she pretends to sleep, so that I can close my exhausted eyes and sink into her boundlessness. We will halve a dream... Oh, as the blue mantle of night lifts and the first light shines over the garden, I see you walking slowly along lanes of roses, resplendent in a white gown. Song birds lift their voices in gladness. V ELIZAVETA Roses claim the garden for their own glory. They are messengers of every season: Roses out of snowy fields, Roses out of yellow-green lawns, Roses out of hot sunlight, Roses out of the rust of Time. Roses row upon row celebrate their timeless appeal. Such is the lure of worldly glory in all of its disguises: seductive, persuasive, misleading. Many are its victims! I know another path, the Bhakti Path: it summons the soul to pursue the object of eternal love. It is the path to Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Perfect Beauty of the cosmos, the Eternal Truth of Life. Remember Elijah who ascended into heaven in a fiery chariot, entering a World of Perpetual Light. VI ANGEL I have lived through thousands of seasons. I knew the weight of Time, as this planet was spinning in vast space, a featureless globe, in the monotony of the everlasting. I was prideful in those eons! I waited without wonder across millions of yesteryears. Even my own being was a blank to me. I did not understand God's slow creation of BEAUTY. But then he created YOU: your humanity appeared, and the world received your beauty and itself became beautiful. I bowed deeply and forever bow to the Creator. And God commanded we angels bow to your distant ancestor. But the highest miracle, greater even than your excellence, is the GARDEN. It is the peak of creation, the very image of the Creator, the place of wonders, the first stage of heaven. VII DANIEL Already a decision has been made. I hear a heavy door of bronze or brass shutting. The echo of its closing is as terminal as a judge's final ruling on a vexed case; as definitive as the handshake of two honest merchants; as lasting as the treaty between factions that have abjured warfare evermore. A decision has been reached, as if a great journey has reached its long desired destination, and the destination itself shines with the joy of being discovered at last. Nothing hidden wants to remain occluded from the eyes of men and women gifted with true vision. Everything surrenders to love. I hear a rumbling at the edges of ther Garden. I know it will swell into a Hymn of Glory. VIII ELIZAVETA I already breathe a different air, and it nourishes a part of me just now being born. Is it a New Soul? No, it is my old soul made new! I no longer take steps to move forward. I touch the ground with the faintest pressure... Now I am floating just above the surface of things, but things themselves are no longer separated. Everything coheres. There are no more edges, all I behold is rolled into a spacious globe. I am dissolving into that awareness of GOD WITHIN the Eucharist brought. But now, Oh Holy Moment, it is infinitely extended! This is The World Without End I invoked so often in prayer. The Door is Wide Open! The Threshold Shines... Words are no longer necessary, except to say a fond farewell to you, my dear friend. Oh, follow after me! IX ANGEL So it is that another human life reaches its fulfillment. It is a circle of life and resurrection and life everlasting. Do not obsess over death and dying: they are a bridge. We angels delight in this first moment out of Time when you are raised to glory, still fully human, but a humanity exalted by your Ceremony of Transfiguration. Let me pause... Oh, how I love you, you creatures of the blessed Earth! You have been forever falling upward through Time and Space, your ignorance becoming knowledge, your knowledge imbued with grace becoming one with Eternal Truth, your doubts dissolving as you realize just one more mortal step and you will enter immortal being, Dwellers in Heaven, World Without End, in the presence of the Highest Beauty! A Hymn of Glory swirls through all of Gardens of Creation!