#324 Words for a Father (Scott Cairns)

Scott Cairns es ortodoxo, y un gran poeta. Hay una entrevista en la que habla con gran inspiración sobre la vocación poética:

    Because you know, in order to see anything, you have to really look. You have to pore over the words. You have to pore over the landscape. You have to ‘attend’, as we’re often invited to do during the liturgy. So in my own vocation as a poet, I have to be a lover of language and a truster of language that through the Holy Spirit it will lead me into seeing something I hadn’t anticipated. A vocation is not so much something we’re called to do to serve God. We’re called into a vocation, and in that vocation, if we pursue it with due diligence, that’s where the Lord blesses us further. So it’s not something we do for him so much as it is what he gives us to do that’s worthwhile. And that’s what I understand a vocation to be. And so I don’t expect everyone to pursue poetry the way I have or even to love it the way I do. But there is something that everyone is called to love deeply and through which, and through the love of which, everyone has at least the opportunity to be opened up to something more than he or she or they expected. So that’s what I think a vocation is. Mine is working with words. Other people worked with wood or clay or you name it. Toil serving others is another worthwhile vocation.

    And what I do see though is that opportunity to help my brothers and sisters to see. That’s the greatest challenge I think of the moment. We’re so busy, we’re so distracted. We’re so quickly dismissive of the ‘other’, quickly dismissive of the earth, that we don’t see it. And you have to see it and then you have to devote your heart to it and love it in order to really see it. And then when you really see it, you find yourself just being pleased to be part of it and to do whatever little thing you can do to assist others in seeing. And so that’s why I think probably every artist’s vocation is somehow connected to this one gift we can give to those in our church, or our Body, to the other members of our body: eyes to see, maybe ears to hear.

(via)

WORDS FOR A FATHER

And this is the consolation:  

that the world doesn't end,  

that the world one day  

opens up into something better.  

And that we one day  

open up into something far better.  

Maybe like this:  

one morning you finally wake to a light  

you recognize as the light you've wanted  

every morning that has come before.  

And the air has some light thing in it  

that you've always hoped the air might have.  

And One is there to welcome you  

whose face you've looked for  

during all the best and worst times of your life.  

He takes you to himself and holds you close  

until you fully wake. And it seems you've  

only just awakened, but you turn and  

there we are, the rest of us,  

arriving just behind you.  

We'll go the rest of the way together.