A nice poem

With a mild fall and myriad reasons to pray, I find myself driving more often to the country parish. In the car, often alone, I listen to NPR. Ironically, it is NPR that brings me the most gorgeous, religious laden Christmas music, surprising and delighting at every turn, filling the senses, complementing the heaven-bound thoughts and prayers.

A couple of days ago I also listened to a very nice poem by Glenn Shea entitled Chartres. Some quotes:

(...)

For gems, the painted glass, and for choirs
the figures carved in stone;
Chartres stood their sketch of Paradise,
the place where, as best it could on earth,
time stopped. It was to be,
as an arch gives stone the power of flight,
the place where faith would give
the clay of flesh its flight, a semblance
whose stones would tug the heart towards prayer,
build in it the desiring of heaven.

(...)

And when I knelt before the altar,
I prayed: abject as any man is
in the weight of his faults, scanted
of hope, but who had seen at least the image
of what he desired: another like himself,
whose flesh he might inscribe
with the water of blessing.

Enjoy the whole poem here.