A Telescope

(Excerpt from a Journal/Camino St Francis #1/September 2019)

Telescope

When I was a child,
I looked out through a telescope
gazing at stars…dancing fireflies.
I tried to catch one…
didn’t work—I
tried again and again.
Trust, look at my knees.
I tumbled, fell and 
I laughed.
The stars seemed to shine more brightly
the more I looked upon them.
I still know the meaning of being ‘star’ struck.
Light beams meandering upon a velvet sea of sheer blackness.
Sometimes I imagine I’m swimming in that pool of darkness.
I pause here because something has
changed or maybe it’s the same.
I have been HERE and I AM asking who am I, and Who are YOU…

You no longer have a name and yet you are in ALL things.
What is MOST real in THIS moment is YOU
looking through the telescope at me.

Do you know who I am?  In my simple understanding, you do know who I am.
I’m setting out on a walk…AGAIN.
Silver wings will fly me across the sea and I’ll traverse a landscape where 
the Lover of creation, the poor man Francis of Assisi LIVED, until Sister Death brought him into the eternal landscape of stars—his friends.

Francis asked the same question I ask.
Did he EVER discover WHO he was?
You called him to BUILD your church.

Within, I believe it NOT a church of brick & mortar.
I trust it was a church, the church where Spirit dwells…
in that HID-DEN cave inside each of us!

While writing, I feel a star
or a slew of stars moving in me.
They are shining…yes, yes—
You see them as You LOOK through the lens.

A silence hovers over me.

What is happening, what has begun?
I am writing this page at the END of my journal because I strongly hold 
where we END we BEGIN.

So, WHO am I?
WHO are You?
What if I find out?

When I return to this side of the pond in three weeks,

Perhaps…
Maybe…

I’ll have to buy you a TELESCOPE.

No—NOT to look out of, but
to allow the One inside of you to look
and look 
and see
YOU!