The Tree of the Heavenly Way

When the time comes, when you hear the voice in your head,

when the light grows ever dim and the dark is at its darkest yet,

when the signs are there, the way will be lit, the path before you,  

Follow the furrow through the meadow, follow it to the very end,

till you come to the place where stands the tree of the celestial light.

Clasp its gnarled trunk and feel the communion of Earth with Heaven.

Let it lift you gently, let it raise you towards the light from above,

do not fear, do not fret, trust in its wondrous power of release.

It will bear you aloft, comfort and cradle you, lighten your soul,

embrace you in its mighty arms, caress you in its golden mane.

Up and up it will carry you, skyward towards the heavenly light,

you will be as the lightest of feathers, weightless and floating free.

Up and up, ever higher, till there's naught between you and the sky,

till the Heaven-sent spirit descends, flowing over you, body and soul

and wrests you from the gentle grasp of the tree of the celestial light,

to bear you still higher and higher, drawing you up to the firmament.

There you will pause, caught twixt Heaven and Earth, life and death

where the divine soul breaks free of its mortal prison and flutters

gliding through the invisible ether, on its last journey to the Eternal.

When the time comes, follow the furrow through the meadow,

until you come to the great golden tree of the heavenly way,

and there you will find the peace and the calm of abiding Grace

where Light banishes Darkness and where Heaven meets Earth. 

Son of Man, Son of God

And so that final gasp in dead of night

that brought the curtain down on hope;

that grinding fear of a cruel tomorrow

and the rising despair that death brings;

but this was no ordinary death of a man,

this was no passing of a common mortal;

though a man born of woman thou wast,

yet more than that wast thou, much more.


Thy time had been short and thy path
strewn with the sharp thorns cast
 by the cruel hands of cruel minds
impelled by even crueller hearts,
whose fear made sure thine end.

Thy life had been mapped since birth
and thy certain demise early foretold;
circumscribed by destiny's demands, 
by a heavenly mission forged for Earth,
by a purpose that marked out thy days,
by a Fate that held thee tight in her claw,
the march of days bore thee to thine end.


Son of God made God by the Father,
the Word made flesh by the Divine,
the instrument of Salvation and Rebirth
and the Grace of Redemption and Hope;
such a burden on such frail shoulders
and the Light of the World in one Man.


And so we mark thy coming and thy life
and the dark shadow of thy passing
and thy story is told and retold
stirring belief and stiffening faith
in the Son of Man, the Son of God!


Jesus was thy name, Christ thy title,
and the Messiah thy sacred calling.
Thou camest from God, wast born of woman
didst die and return to Heaven,
there to reign at God's side.

The Fork in the Road

Many years ago I read a poem by Robert Frost entitled "The Road Not Taken" which goes like this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.  

 

At the time I was fairly young and, though I liked the poem, it did not and could not have that deep significance it has taken on for me today, as it resonates over all the intervening years. In our life, we all take many decisions, choose between one path and another, one course of action as against another. Just after embarking upon our chosen path, it may still be possible to retrace our steps, regain the fork in the road and take the other path, but as we travel on the road we have opted to take, it becomes progressively harder to go back, until one day there is no going back, no second chance, no alternative course. For good or for bad, we must now continue along our chosen path.

This question of choosing our life's path puts me in mind of a movie I first saw a few years ago, called Cast Away and starring Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland. I won't go into the plot of the film, you have more than likely seen it yourself, but if not,  go to Cast Away and you'll see what it's about. Anyway, at the very end of the film, the protagonist arrives at a remote crossroads in open countryside where he alights from his car and looks around at the four roads that vanish into the distance. A woman passing by in a truck stops to inform him where each of these routes leads. After she drives away, he is left looking down each road, seemingly unable to decide which to take, since each represents an unknown future which may bring him happiness or misfortune. The camera focuses on his face and we sense the mental anguish that he must be going through as he struggles to come to a decision. And that's where we leave him.

The ending of the movie is very poignant and moving, as the theme music kicks in and we wonder what his choice will be. But it really doesn't matter, as none of us knows in which direction happiness lies. The point is that he is literally at the crossroad of his life and the choice he makes now may well decide the course of the rest of his life. In one way or another, this is a situation that faces all of us at different stages of our life. And just as Frost's traveller opts for one road, knowing in his heart of hearts that it is unlikely he will come that way again, so Chuck knows that the route he chooses to go down is likely to be final and decisive.