I Had a Vision

This morning, as I stood in surrender, I had a vision.

I have tried to describe what that vision was in feeble words, for the vision came again later in the day.

The vision was of death within life, of life within death.

How duped we have been, looking behind the curtains of the stage to discover its secrets, when all the time the passion and the drama, the hidden and the revealed are here in the auditorium, here with you and me.

In the vision it was so clear, this moment, the standing, kneeling, sitting, making love or cooking, so distinct in time, so separate from others, so apart from all else, I saw as the small mark on the painting that has its meaning – no its existence – out of all else in the landscape of its surroundings. And more than this, out of the substance and history of the canvas, and the substance of the earth from which it emerged.

If only I could show you that glimpse of all things standing together in the same moment; of the dead here as the other side of the same coin – of the unseen as present in all that is made real or done or said.

I live now, here, apparently alone, yet through the vision I saw every tiny step around my cottage, every moment of dressing or cleaning, as integral with an immensity of all that has been, and still is, in every action.

This is the wonder, that whatever common thing you care to give attention to, is at the same time exalted. It is here in this unique moment, yet indistinguishable from all that has been before it.

Look at me! Look at you! Flesh gradually turning to decay, moving inexorably to putrefaction. Yet here, somehow intimately part of what is rotting is love, is the exaltation of thought, the splendid cry of a voice rising in a pure note above all this decay.

The woman who bleeds out of the unclean hole she gives birth from, is yet the very mystery of life resurrecting itself – of love transcending its origins.

And in the midst of our nothingness there shines out of us something that can never be contained or held hostage to what passes away.

Copyright ©2007 Tony Crisp