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Dear Ones of Christ Church,
There are certain books that have become like old friends to me over time. One of them is the poetry collection The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück. I re-read it each year, during Lent. This year The Wild Iris companioned me while I was on retreat. Each poem in the collection is in the voice of either a species of plant, a human being, or God. In the poems, the plants, the humans, and God try to speak to each other. They often, heartbreakingly, talk past one another, in misunderstanding. And yet, they are connected, through creation, grief, sorrow, attention, longing, resilience, loss, life, and love.
At our Palm Sunday services this weekend, we humans will bless, wave, and carry plants—palm branches. And we will pay attention to how God may be speaking to us through the telling of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, suffering, and death according to Luke. So it feels right to share a poem from The Wild Iris. Below is the first and titular poem from the collection. May its themes of seeking, suffering, persevering, dying, rising, and blooming accompany us as we follow Jesus into these holy days together.
Yours in Christ,
Melissa +
THE WILD IRIS
by Louise Glück
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
Source: The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück. Ecco HarperCollins, 1992.
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