St. Joseph

 

"You are the woods of paradox. 

Though I may rock you like a child, 

Your curses ever come to pass

as dread on people's backs."*

Dear, beloved St. Joseph. I wonder at his fatherhood. What must it be to hold fresh scented eternity in arms? I pray hard to Joseph - in whose hands the dead staff blooms. He belongs to Springtime, the spring that comes after a long winter.

I think of the the tale from the desert fathers: The master gives to his novice a stick of dry wood. "Plant it." he tells the youth, "Water it daily until it bears fruit." All the branches outside my window are dead and dry, but above the altar Saint Joseph holds his lily-staff and waits, contented; the King of paradox in his arms.

"I am the father but the son is more, 

is everything the father was; and what 

he couldn't be, the son becomes as well;

the son is both the future and the past

source of rivulets and sea to which they turn."*

Blessed Feast!

 

*Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours