Interstices

I, a mere mortal, search for the truth
(which, Who is God)
only as I, a creature made by the Creator, can…

(Tho’, I, in my human hubris, as those afore me
who dabbled in building that Tower of Babel
with its pinnacle
approaching,
reaching,
breaching the heavens, would presume to strive to see more!)

…that is, through the interstices
(the cracks in the cosmos,
the Spaces in the Divine-Face)
that I believe I perceive
and that I, armed with my wealth of words,
as pointed, purposed arrows,
with fiercest intent,
aim and fire
seeking to fill,
thus, to make sense of Holy Mystery.

Yet, my efforts prove ever-nil,
for no amount of language’s reasoned employ
can pierce that wholly unfathomable immensity
of the Cloud of Unknowing.

Tho’ persist I do in this fruitless aim,
ev’ry time
(which is ev’ry time)
I fall short of knowing,
I remember (aye, I am forced to mind)
the sage Apostle’s word
that whether (no matter)
I look inly or outwardly,
I see dimly,
which is not to see at all clearly.

And then, blessedly, I recall
God’s Word about God’s Word:
“I will come to thee,
verily, so I hath done,
in a way that thou canst know Me
in thine own body
that I hath given thee.
Then see Me, dying on that tree,
My Blood of Everlasting Love
flowing from these Interstices
in My hands and feet,
My head and side, and all for thee.
Now, prithee, tell Me this: What more needest thou know?”

Endnotes:
(1) Tower of Babel story, Genesis 11.1-9
(2) “Cloud of Unknowing” is my reference to the manuscript, The Cloud of Unknowing, for generations, considered a classic of Western literature and spirituality. Originally written in the 14th century by an anonymous monk in which he contemplates what separates God from humanity, he writes: “If you are to experience Him or to see Him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud.”
(3) “the sage Apostle’s word” is my reference to Paul’s testimony of the human impossibility of seeing clearly either God or ourselves, coupled with the promise that, in the fullness of time, we will behold in the face of God our image: For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face (1 Corinthians 13.12).

Illustrations:
Tower of Babel (1605), Abel Grimmer (1570-1620)
The Crucifixion (c. 1640), Alonso Cano (1601-1667)