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Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
By God-Musings.com | July 20, 2008
“Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?”
The above quote is taken from a poem by Sylvia Plath, titled “Mystic”. It is given below.
I honestly can’t say I understand the poem, nor appreciate it; I often find this brand of language very difficult to digest.
I’m also not sure if I’m taking the above line out of context.
But it does remind me of something which I had thought of several times before.
Wanting to see God
There was a phase in my life, a few years ago, where I prayed daily for God to show himself to me; to prove his existence to me.
Then was a another period, when I was going through a rough patch, where I scribbed on a piece of paper towel: “God, bring me to the path you have prepared for me. I am ready.”
On hindsight, I have come to realize that I was ready neither to see God, nor to embark on the road I asked for.
Honestly, I don’t think we ever are.
Many of us, myself included, at some point or the other, long for God to make things explicit to us. You know, appear in front of us, or speak to us from the sky, or drop us a note from the beyond, or show himself to us through a dream - the kind of dream where he hands you something and when you awake, presto, you are clutching that something in your hands, indisputable proof that he did appear!
But hold your horses.
Think again.
Reconsider.
And think deep.
Are you sure you want that to happen? Are you sure you really don’t want things to remain a little blurry and uncertain, with room for doubt, for clarification, for mistakes?
Because once you have seen him, in the explicit sense of the word, everything changes.
No more suspense, questioning, searching; no more feeling around in the dark. It would be time to knuckle down and get moving on what you are meant to do.
It would be time for giving up, for sacrifices, for dying to your human desires.
I’m quite sure I’m not ready.
……………….
Mystic
The air is a mill of hooks -
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.
I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up
Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun’s conflagrations, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?
The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower- nibblers, the ones
Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable -
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea
Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.
The heart has not stopped.
………………….
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