I offer today a poem that I’ve been reading much since the earthquake in Haiti…It’s guiding my thoughts and helping me know how to support and defend and give with my thoughts and whole being.
Mother’s Evening Prayer…
by Mary Baker Eddy
O Gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour,
Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.
Love is our refuge; only with mine eye
Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall:
His habitation high is here, and nigh,
His arm encircles me, and mine, and all.
O make me glad for every scalding tear,
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!
Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear
No ill, — since God is good, and loss is gain.
Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing;
In that sweet secret of the narrow way,
Seeking and finding, with the angels sing:
“Lo, I am with you alway,” — watch and pray.
No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain;
No night drops down upon the troubled breast,
When heaven’s aftersmile earth’s tear-drops gain,
And mother finds her home and heav’nly rest.
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Mary Baker Eddy penned this poem on the eve before her then husband (second marriage) sold her only son (her first husband passed on when she was pregnant).
Women then didn’t have legal rights to forbid this kind of thing. Her second husband loathed children, found Eddy to be too ill to mother him, and gave him up as well as told his new parents to convince the son she’d passed on.
She wouldn’t reunite with her son until many years later when he was well into adulthood.
The fact that she knew her son would be taken from her, was still able to pen these words gives anyone a glimpse of her then great sense of that universal love caring for each one of us.
She would later pen in her main work, Science and Health, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”
This is the basis of my work and support for Haiti right now…that ever practical need, no matter how small or great, is being made known, is being addressed and supplied and supported and that no human laws or systems can block the natural flow of support, help, relief and whatever else this population deserves.
I have a hunch we are carving out a new humanity with the ways so many are responding to assist the Haitian people.
Hope the words of this poem comfort your heart the way they have mine.
Surely I must trust that all are feeling the support and care of this universal Divine Love….
Would love to know how you are thinking, praying, what you are doing in response…..
Hugs to all…..