…with healing in its wings
Mark Wallace
The Spirit comes with healing in its wings to a world that cries out for transformation and renewal. The Spirit comes to a world in need of refreshment as the breath of God and the water of life. The Spirit comes to a world fragmented by violence and suffering with the promise of health and wholeness for all creation.
Mark Wallace
Image: Tom Denny, Stained glass reconciliation window, St John’s, Tralee (detail)
One of the insights of recent theological reflection is to say that the human person has always been ‘otherwise engaged in the Spirit’. Before we have had any religious insights we have had to do with the fire inside us. And that fire, or hidden energy, or Spirit, is within the cosmos, continually working to transform and renew all forms of life – both human and non- human.
Image: Tom Denny, Stained glass reconciliation window, St John’s, Tralee (detail)
This primal relational energy of God is what John Taylor called the ‘Go- Between God’.
Look at your relationships.
Imagine this Spirit within them,
calling, dreaming, renewing.
This allows you even to be in touch with the painful, broken dimensions in your relationships –
not as inert or going nowhere, but as possibility and promise.
Image: Tom Denny, Stained glass reconciliation window, St John’s, Tralee (detail)
The images in this post are details of the reconciliation stained glass window designed by Tome Denny and installed in the Catholic church, St John’s in Tralee, Ireland. For the full story of the commissioning of this work and for more detailed images visit Ireland’s Newest Stained Glass Window
O, gather up the brokenness
Bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carried
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
Of cruelty or the grace
O, solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O, see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
O, troubledness concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above
And let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name
O, longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O, longing of the arteries
To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
O let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Songwriters: Leonard Cohen, Patrick Leonard.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
