I’ve never believed that God revealed Himself/Herself to us in the Bible and left it at that.
I’ve always believed that God’s revelation comes to us in many ways — in nature, for example. And in the arts and humanities.
God revealed himself through the Bible, of course, but God continues to reveal himself in a million ways a day, including great poetry. Pictured here is one of the greatest poets you probably never heard of, Luis Cernuda.
The Bible contains the words “Fear not” 365 times.
It has variations on those two words, of course, like “Have no fear” or “Why do you fear?” But they all boil down to the same point. A Christian who lives in hope and faith in this life, and faith in a life of perfect freedom from pain and fear in the hereafter, can take heart in the biblical command “have no fear.”
One of the great Spanish poets you never heard of, Luis Cernuda, wrote a perfectly beautiful poem about a Christian who, in a faith-filled way, mind you, looks forward to his or her own death.
In the poem titled “Where Oblivion Dwells,” this Christian imagines himself being only a memory in a place where he is oblivious to all the worries, fears, and anxieties that tear at every living human who lives and breaths.
It’s impossible for us to live without any fear whatsoever — to live a life of utter oblivion. And yet we take all the wonderful peace God avails to us in our prayers, communions and Bible reading and study. Still, the arts and humanities, like the Bible, avail us of so many other ways to know God.
I find peace in reading aloud the rhythmic words of beautiful poetry like Cernuda’s reflection on death I’m sharing today for Lent. I love his line about the Christian taking comfort in the knowledge that she’ll have freedom so perfect in eternity that she won’t even notice the freedom at all. That, to my way of thinking, is a definition of bliss that only a great poet can define.
God, thank you for the poets, the singers, the musicians, the painters and sculptors and all the creative people who open our hearts and minds to all that is divine.
Thank you for all the gifts and talents you’ve given the creative people of the world so that we can better see and find our way through our lives in the now and in the perfect life to come.
Grant us sweet freedom from the bondage of fear and anxiety in this life and that life to come. Amen.
WHERE OBLIVION DWELLS
By Luis Cernuda
Where oblivion dwells,
In the vast gardens without daybreak;
Where I will be only
The memory of a stone buried among nettles
Over which the wind flees from its sleeplessness.
Where my name will leave
The body it identifies in the arms of time,
Where desire does not exist.
In that vast region where love, that terrible angel,
Will not bury its wings
Like steel in my heart,
Smiling, full of airy grace, while the torment increases.
There, where will end this anxiety that demands a master in its own image,
Surrending its life to another life,
With no further horizon than other eyes face to face.
Where sorrow and happiness will be only names,
Native sky and earth around a memory;
Where at last I will be free, without noticing it,
Vanished into mist, into absence,
An absence as soft as a child’s skin.
There, far away;
Where oblivion dwells.
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