The Sunlight of the Lion
- Mar 13, 2018
- 3 min read
BE EARNESTLY ON YOUR GUARD NOT TO FORGET THE THINGS WHICH YOUR OWN EYES HAVE SEEN
This verse from Deuteronomy was part of the first reading on the last day of my Eight Day Ignatian Silent Retreat last year. At face value it probably would strike me as straightforward and boring, but our retreat director preached on the importance of intentionally remembering, holding in our hearts, and allowing what had happened on retreat to become more and more deeply a part of our identity. This retreat was more beautiful and transformative than I can possibly express and what I received, learned, and felt there still plays a daily role in my life and prayer.
Tomorrow marks a year since we began that retreat and I'll be spending this time to pray through what happened on retreat day by day. (Tomorrow, I'll pray with my prayer from the first night, I'll spend the next day on day 2 and so on). I'm so excited to re-enter the story that unfolded over the course of these eight days.
This is a little bit scary for me, but as part of this remembering, I'll be posting daily updates, reflections, and quotes from what happened: partly for my own sake, but also to offer a taste of the epicness of St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises to anyone who would like to join me.
So to kick things off, I'm sharing the poem that I wrote gradually over the course of the whole retreat which, to some extent, tells the big picture story: The Sunlight of the Lion.
He romps in the evening-jewels of grass and gold the music of His voice in the heavy beams of westering light He sings to me tales of beauty and high deeds crafting me, shaping me, creating me “there is a light and a beauty too strong for the shadows a hope and a King that will be never defeated.”
A voice is in the shadows too slippery to hear “you’ll be safe in the darkness, it’s where you belong come be resigned, come hide the Grand Canyon smother the aching of undeserved desire.”
“Come walk on the waters, come be who you are come whisper to My heart the desire of yours I have formed you in sunlight, rest here again.”
Cobwebs stir at familiar words “He’ll take all you love and leave you alone.”
“I am all you love, don’t be afraid” the strength of His gentleness makes me a child engulfed by the freedom from the yoke of my self free to carried, free to be freed free in Him to do the impossible free to romp and skip and sing
Freedom to see His creation is good the heaviness of gold in the knowing I am His “I have lit the fire of My compassion in your veins and placed My beauty in the palm of your soul it is not for nothing you are a child of the Spring child of eternal hope and child of first love be evangelist. be adventurer. be My beloved.”
Darkness whispers again and again but each attack draws him further out “His Love will leave you empty and alone” absurdity in the sunlight for my Father is King.
Deception vanquished, my Brother victorious
“I will make of the gold a garment that you may go forth with no fear needing no safety nets, no weak little props needing only the safety of the Shepherd you will walk secure on the heights for I was never a Tame Lion and the Beauty you seek was never safe.”
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