First Meditation

(Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I: chapter 1-3)

"'No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on a stand, that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light." (1)


Privation

He rolls the stone of unbelief
Away at conversion's first light;
She slips inside like a grave thief,
But meets the emptiness of night.

Into dank darkness, she descends;
The stretch of silence is unstirred.
Utility of senses ends:
Her soul is stilled -- unseen; unheard.

Privation of perception clears
The soul's smudges that distort light;
The polished soul, like diamond mirrors
The nuances of heaven's light.

Descend into the inner room;
Privation is the empty tomb.

May the Angel of the Lord roll away the stone of unbelief in our hearts and prepare us to enter into the night of the senses.

1. Mark 7:20-23


(c) Paul Buis, 2003