By DONALD DeMARCO
I wrote the following poem for our thirteenth grandchild who turns one year old on July 26, 2022. Poetry says more than prose, though its message is far more subtle. The reader must be sensitive to what it intimates. The unconscious has something to reveal that prose does not quite capture.
Reading poetry is, indeed, a spiritual activity. I invite the reader to recite the poem aloud and then consider my follow-up commentary.
Three hundred and sixty-five rotations
And one revolution,
And planet earth returns to the very location
It occupied exactly one year ago;
A cosmic redundancy bereft of apparent meaning,
Yet, making it possible for an earthly inhabitant
To create a solar system of her own
With mom and dad, relatives and friends
Circling around her on planetary orbits of their own
In admiration and amazement
That a tiny spot in an endless sea of space
Can redeem all celestial motion
With a captive smile and a colorful ribbon that tells the world,
“I am one year old today.”
Max Ehrmann, in his Desiderata (things desired), which was immensely popular during the 1950s and 1960s, included the words, “You are a child of the universe.” My poem is inferring that the whole universe stands in celebration of life, not only for the one-year-old, but for all human life. Vast as the universe is, its ultimate purpose is to set the stage for life.
The disproportion between the size of a one-year-old child and the immense size of the universe, is counterbalanced by what I shall call the “metaphysical density” of the child. A writer may discard a dozen sheets of paper before he produces the one page that is worthy of going to print. The finished copy more than compensates for the time and effort it required. It took Johannes Brahms more than ten years to complete his first symphony.
The universe, spacious as it is, is needed to permit a living person, limited as it is, to come into being and flourish. The universe provides time and motion without which there cannot be life. The universe, in all its grandeur, subserves life. It is difficult for us to grasp the lavishness of life. We look at a person and simply see a person, not thinking that it is a child of the universe and represents far more than the eye can visualize.
Without the universe, there is no human life, but without God, there is no universe. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar remarks in his book, bearing the single word title, Prayer, that “Man is the being who bears in his heart a mystery greater than himself. He is like a tabernacle erected round a sacred mystery.”
A prominent chain of banks in Canada carries the slogan, “You are richer than you think.” Their slogan, however, is far more meaningful on a theological level. Man has an ontological richness than is beyond compare. He is, as von Balthasar goes on to say, “the being created as hearer of the Word, and only in responding to the word rises to his full dignity.”
How does one come into being? The role of the parents is crucial, but behind them is that long ancestry that goes all the way back to their primal parents. Adding to the picture is the force of the entire universe. And first, and foremost, is the Hand of God. A birthday occasions a far-reaching celebration. It is a gift from God working through the cosmos and through countless generations of mothers and fathers. Life is to be celebrated, honored, praised, and recognized for the unfathomable mystery that it is.
The one-year-old child is wrapped in a mystery that she will, as time goes on, better understand in terms of the exalted dignity of her being. She is a child of the universe. But more than that, she is a child of Love.
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