The Heart’s Treasury

The Virgin of Sorrows at the Foot of the Cross, Philippe de Champaigne, 1657. 52 x 42.6 cm. Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Public Domain.

“Love and Suffering” from the soundtrack to the film A Hidden Life. Composed by James Newton Howard. Performed by Xander Rodzinski, James Ehnes, and Andrew Armstrong.

Poetry:

“Scale”
by Chelsea Wagenaar

I am soft sift
In an hourglass
—Hopkins

Against the darkening winterplum sky,
a lone contrail whitens—loose thread, untufted
cotton. A perfect inverse of me:
Lenten moon

of my belly taut, halved by a slurred gray line.
Linea nigra, the doctor says, my belly button’s
new ashen tail a ghostly likeness of the cut cord

that once bound me to my mother.
These days I am a solstice, a season begun
in your germinal dark. Measure me now

in months, in so many weeks, all the streams
of my body downrivering
into the estuary that is you.
That is you—

there, the tick of your limbs, a second hand,
a second hand, fingers whorled and filling
with bone, numbered one by one,

as are your days in that luminous book.
Nameless one, I know you in numbers.
Your parts, your gathering weeks, the 145

of your heart. The thrum of kicks
in an hour is as many as the sparrows
that flit in the bare snarl of vine and hedge,

as many as the houses that line our street,
my trips to the bathroom in the night.
I think, in those small, bleary hours,

of the hand that pens the book of our days,
turns the page. Nameless one, only once more
will you be numberless, when you begin again

at zero. Day you quicken toward, cold sear
of light, fugue of voices. You’ll be cut
like yarn from the skein, your skin unshined

of blood, your heels grasped and slapped.
Cry, numberless one—for now you are laid
upon the scale, the 0.0 you’ll shatter,

your life weighed against a feather,
already counted up.

THE HEART’S TREASURY

Our passages today come out of order. The annunciation of the incarnation read during Lent, a juxtaposition that allows us to consider life from birth to death. The two statements, filled with hopeful anticipation of the life that is to come, are set against artist Philippe de Champaigne’s depiction of Mary bearing witness to her son’s death. Her hands are folded in her lap, her feet comfortably crossed. The expression on her face is clearly one of sorrow as the title describes, and yet her posture does not appear anxious or fraught. It is as though she still holds in her heart the posture acknowledging, “Let it be unto me according to your word.”

I, who am afraid of roller coasters, used to read this as a muster of courage, the one momentary act of locking in for the ride, the rest will take care of itself. Now, I read these words and wonder how many times throughout her life Mary responded with, “Let it be unto me according to your word.” When Simeon said her son would cause her own soul to be pierced? At the trial? The agonizing hours of Jesus’s crucifixion? When she packed her belongings and moved into John’s house?

It is striking that Mary spends three decades watching Jesus grow up, herself aging alongside him. During those years, was her mind opened to understanding the Scriptures as would later happen to the disciples? Those years of hidden existence, living life out of the spotlight come to a close at Cana where Mary’s instructions to the servants of, “do whatever he tells you,” bear the echo of her initial words, “Let it be unto me according to your word.” She has pondered miracles in her heart, has been told of rises and falls, and encourages others toward the conclusion she has come to, that his word is trustworthy.

Today’s music, entitled “Love and Suffering,” comes from the filmA Hidden Life, which tells the story of one man’s refusal to fight in the Nazi army, and his resulting execution. His life is depicted as a continuous string of small moments, each one seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, though each entered into with a posture of, “may it be unto me.” His death went unnoticed to most of the world. His wife and children, however, bear witness to, and so become the evidence of, his life. The incarnation does not stop at birth but continues into the intimacy of life’s seen and unseen moments, and even into death itself.

Today’s poem, “Scale,” meditates on the weight of impact that one life has on another, reshaping it. I wonder about the way Mary’s soul, like her body, might have changed over the three decades of life as she became a silent presence to Jesus’s ministry; from a youthful teen mothering in place of little import, to a middle-aged woman somehow grappling with the familiarity she has with the Son of God. I wonder if in her later years, she could see Jesus in her adopted son, John, a ponderer perhaps like her, who took his time in writing down his life of testimony.

This is a stance that trusts God’s action as trustworthy, and so will allow it to fill us so greatly that our lives begin to bear witness to it even in the smallest acts of ordinaryliving.

Prayer:
Father, give me the posture of heart that is open to your word moment by moment, in those that are seen and in those that feel insignificant, unnoticed, or even futile. Allow me to be transformed and conformed by a life in communion with Jesus and may those transformations in me bear witness to others. Make me aware of that witness in those around me, becoming more attuned to your intimate presence in others.
“May it be unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Amen

Stacie Poston
Adjunct Instructor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University

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