our hearts are burning

Super at Emmaus by Caravaggio

Something miraculous happens when we open up and speak from the heart in complete vulnerability. It’s combustible, a downright explosion of intimacy!

Recalling this encounter of hearts at the “Writing as Prayer” retreat last weekend, my new friend Pat Daniels (Professor of Acting at the University of Texas at Austin) described it perfectly as: 

“the Emmaus model. Christ is here. Our hearts are burning. We are loving each other.” 

This disarming honestly is nothing less than Eucharistic. It is the breaking of the bread —breaking ourselves open to nourish one another. 

My sincere thanks to Pat for allowing me to post her beautiful writing here! 

 PSALM 

by Patricia Daniels

I live restless, disconnected, lost.
The world though ordinary and blessed is upside down and turned around.
What is true is called false.
Doubt and shame are cataracts to light.
The bones of faith are filled with no living marrow.
The landscape outside the gates of Eden stretches barren, lifeless, pathless.
There is no comfortable history or protection of family.
The drug of my created world has vanished. 

Am I being born again, a babe in an older body,
Acquainting myself with what is now,
Letting go of what was then?
Oh God, is this my soul learning to walk?
Was what I thought growth, merely learning to stand?
Is this falling, failing, merely the initiation of a first step to you?
Can the air support me? 

Is your real name the Unknowable?
Is Your real face shadow as well as light?
Is my confusion, sorrow, Your embrace
                     Or
Is it the death of our communion?
Can I let go of longing and be empty? 

God, I find You so difficult to hold.
I fear to open my hand and lose You to nothingness.
And yet I cannot hold You to have You.
You Permeate All. 

Is all that is, only a fraction of all that is?
Oh God, You are too much for me. 

Can you make your home in my fearful, mortal, selfish heart?
Or is my heart already Your heart? 

Heal me. 

Give me strength to live and let go.
Falling let me find my foundation.
My Grace, My Breath, My Beloved,
Save me from death or if not
Be my new Life. 

 ©Patricia Daniels