DAILY IMAGES OF GOD-- LENT 2022
DAY 24
March 25
THE ONE WHO WAITS FOR US
Annunciation. -- Denise Levertov
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.
____________________
Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
____________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–
but who was God.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
____________________
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
Denise Levertov, daughter of an Anglican priest who had been raised a Hassidic Jew, was a poet and professor of English, anti-war and feminist political activist, and editor who before she died in 1997 had published 24 volumes of poetry and about 25 volumes of prose, translations, and anthologies. She said that “poetry is a form of prayer.” In 1984 Levertov converted to Christianity at the age of sixty. After moving to Seattle in 1989, she was received as a Roman Catholic. Her most remembered image for God is as a mountain, sometimes covered with clouds but all the same there, immense and immoveable. In her poem on the Annunciation, Levertov says that God sends messengers to us, but always waits for us to decide how to respond. Today, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation, nine months before Christmas Day.
Image: The Annunciation, Jan Van Eyck
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