All posts tagged Peter Ilstead

  • O To Be Open

    The-Open-Door

    O To Be Open
    Blindman at the Gate

    O to be open
    It’s what the wise ones seek
    It’s what the great souls attain

    What’s a saint?
    An Open One
    Saint Francis and Mother Teresa were
    Open
    Open to God, open to Creation, open to the Other

    We’re all born open — wide-eyed and wide open
    What’s an infant?
    An Open One
    Wonder, learning, and love come easy to a
    Child

    But then we suffer the blows
    And begin to
    Close

    By the time we’re a teen
    We’re mostly tight shut
    Happy or sad
    A clam inside a shell

    Now the task begins
    The task of a lifetime
    The task of becoming
    Open

    O to be open
    An old one open again
    Open to wonder, learning, and love
    To grow open is to grow young

    Much is against openness
    Vested interests stake much on keeping us
    Tight shut
    The talking heads of the tight shut tell us of
    Right and Wrong, Black and White, Us and Them
    Who is In and who is Out
    Their words are a slamming door
    BAM!
    Tight shut!

    To live in the world of the tight shut is called
    Certainty and security, clarity and conformity
    It’s also death
    To live there is to shrivel your soul
    To die there is—
    Well, I don’t know

    I do know that to save my soul
    I must become open
    Open to God’s all-encompassing love
    I cannot afford to slam the door
    To shut the door on “them”
    Is to lock myself in hell’s closet

    O to be open

    Where does the first crack of openness come from?
    It could come from anywhere
    A poem, a heartbreak, a sunset really seen
    A song, a sermon, a mercy freely received
    A birth, a death, a person fully loved
    Let openness get its foot in the door
    And it’ll begin to shovel in the grace

    Open to the openness
    The openness of God
    The openness of light
    The openness of love

    Life is open
    (Ever unfolding)
    Death is closed
    (A sealed tomb)

    Heaven is open
    (Its gates will never be shut)
    Hell is closed
    (Abandon all hope ye who enter)

    Jesus is the Usher of Openness
    He holds the keys of Hell and Death
    To set its prisoners free
    May he loose us and lead us into
    The Great Openness of God

    O to be open
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