Maker of All Things,
including appetite,
including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us,sometime or other,
flee for the sake
of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow--
let me hold on
to the edge of your robe
as you determine
what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.
Mary Oliver, Maker of All Things, Even Healings
Majesty is a word seldom used these days and the power of its original meaning has slipped away from us. It is meant to imply the presence of something that by its very existence, is noble and elevated and beyond ordinary understanding. Early peoples ascribed this quality to special places they had discovered in the landscape around them where they felt humbled and in the presence of something that exuded natural power and dignity in a way that stirred their hearts and minds.
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The modern world is full of wonder makers but it does not have the template for majesty. It is meant to direct our gaze up and away from the smallness of our individual lives to contemplate our place in all of life. When we find ourselves captured by our fears, in despair over a solution to the travails of our world, remembering what we have felt in these wild and mysterious places help us experience our lives as being woven into a plan large enough to gather us all in. We are reminded that we do not have to have, nor are we meant, to have all the answers. All that is asked of us is an open heart and faith in what unfolds.
