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Summer Ecstasy
by Fr. Eddie Doherty
I felt my love of you intensely, Lord, one day on a high mesa in Arizona, like a lonely child who has suddenly found his father. There have been few such moments in my life. Today in the Combermere countryside, that intense love came back.
A woodpecker high up on a telephone pole was telegraphing You. “Love, love, love.” I managed to translate his code.
“Love, love, love, love, love, love.”
Then, of course, there was the last word, “love.”
A small butterfly lay in the sandy loam. It had been downed by last night’s storm. Its blue wings still had a sheen but not the magic powder that comes off on a fellow’s fingers. Its blue was more glorious than the dragon fly’s or the sky’s.
Another bird claimed my attention. His breast was as yellow as the dandelion in the spring or the goldenrod in the fall. It lighted up my day.
The wild roses were enjoying a circus rehearsal. Pink-costumed acrobats were climbing up and down their vines, leaping from branch to branch, rolling on the shiny wet grass, high wire walking, dancing, clowning.
A few lifted their faces to You in fragrant song. What little rain was left on them shone like royal lace.
I filled myself with their aroma as I hope You fill Yourself with the perfume of our prayers.
Great black and yellow bumble bees wooed the roses. By proxy and by pollen. They had just come from some bachelor roses in the woods.
They were not interested in romance. They were interested in trade. It was business as usual with the bees. Pollen for honey. Traders first; matchmakers second.
A silken flight of black and yellow butterflies, Your children of light, skimmed gayly over bees and roses. Two combinations of gold and ebony! An exquisite contrast to the jumble of pink and green! A golden mosaic!
A long thin rope of ink rippled and wriggled across the road. Striped ink! Black and green and gold. A garter snake. Lord, who gave it that name; and why?
Shall we see it advertised someday—“Live elastic in fetching stripes for every woman of fashion”?
I looked down a sloping hillside and saw daubs and dabs and dots and dashes of waving colors.
Red and white and purple clover. Lacquered buttercups. Pale yellow spears of mullein. Threads of purple vetch. Clusters of creamy yarrow lace. Poppies and thistles that mimicked glowing coals.
Flickers of the devil’s paintbrush burning everywhere like the lighted ends of cigarettes in a darkened room. Red and yellow columbines. Touches of wild iris.
And milkweed flowers hanging from green stalks, in neat bunches of long-stemmed inkish-lavender stars, getting ready to be wrapped in stiff brown pods and pressed into gossamer astronauts by September.
Masses of tall grasses, timothy, and daisies. Beauty on the stem! Hay on the hoof! Hay bowing and prostrating itself before You. Hay rolling joyously down to the dark blue ribbon of the river. Hay, clean and scented as a woman’s hair. Hay waiting for the reaper and the barns.
Some beauty leaps. Some beauty flies. Some beauty creeps. Some beauty lives in Your winds. Some beauty sings in the mind. All beauty sings of You.
A grove of poplars stopped me. Quaking, shaking, shivering, quivering, shimmering, whispering, rustling, gossiping, giggling, restless trees.
They greeted me with continuous salaams. I watched the play of the leaves. Dark green or light green, depending on the movement of sunshine or shade. Like stained glass windows, except that it had life.
A green frog jumped into the yellow rivulet alongside the road, to avoid the hunting serpent.
A crazy butterfly, with big red polka-dotted sails zig-zagged low above the stream, pretending it was a convoy pursued by enemy submarines.
His wings flashed me a message: “God loves you.”
I sat down for a moment on Your crazy quilt of splendour. I remembered how once I had bitterly hated You. You stole into my unwilling and rebellious heart through my eyes, through my ears, through the nostrils of my nose, through my touch, through my thoughts.
You sang in my blood without my awareness. You took possession of me until my pulse caught the cadence of Your Son’s Name, and beat to it every second: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
All I have to give You, Lord, is me. All I have and all I am.
Hay on the hoof! That’s me! I’m Your hayfield! Reap me when You’re ready and I’m ripe.
How simple it would be if I were a spider! Then I would spin You a web of the finest silk, out of my body. I would hang it where You could see it the first thing in the morning. Your dew on every delicate thread! And Your sun’s rays hitting it just so!
But I can spin You only a web of words.
“Lord, have mercy on me a sinner”.
Adapted from Psalms of a Sinner, (1976), pp.8-10, out of print
