"A cup of sweetness cannot spill one bitter drop, no matter how badly jarred."

[Amy Carmichael]

the heart-shackles are not, as you think,

death, illness, pain,

unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,

selfishness

---

When I first found you I was

filled with light, now the darkness grows

and it is filled with crooked things, bitter

and weak, each one bearing my name.

---

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

---

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

into the world of the invisible,

the inscrutable and the everlasting.

---

I had such a longing for virtue, for company.

I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear. ...

...I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something

useful and unpretentious...

Lord, let me be the flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.

Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone

brave and kind, whose name I will never know.

---

Help me to hear and to hold

in all dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.

---

God, once he is in your heart,

is everywhere--

---

Everywhere I go I am

treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and

am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given

the white lilies on the black water. My heart

sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey

half what it feels and means.

I always find my own soul looking up at me when I read Mary Oliver. I always leave with deep breathing and squared shoulders and eager eyes.

regret

(Oh, heart, I would not dangle you down into
the sorry places,
but there are things there as well,
to see, to imagine.)

[Mary Oliver]

...and to learn from...

mustard

On the Parable of the Mustard Seed

Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique—
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.
[Denise Levertov]

Mustard Seeds and Miracles

What human being can refuse to invest thoughtful consideration in a poem as carefully crafted as Denise Levertov’s On the Parable of the Mustard Seed? Fashioned around a borrowed simile, Levertov’s poem contains allusions to biblical narrative and teachings, demonstrating its author’s exposure to ancient literature, as well as her boldness in tackling a subject so controversial and cherished. Its musicality invites the reader to linger, relishing the artistry that produced alliterative phrases like “wayside weed,” “west wind,” “mistake the metaphor,” “wind brings,” and “wheatstems to glean.” The intellect delights in catching the clever verb structure in a story that includes a figure “who walked the field paths, / running His hand along wheatstems.” Levertov’s beautiful use of synecdoche freshens the paint on images that the reader might otherwise pass over. Branches and birds become “a treeful of shade and nest and song,” while a field of prosaic mustard instead manifests itself in “acres of yellow.” Birds coyly invite notice as the subtle stirring of “wings among yellow flowers.” All of these elements join around one central metaphor: the image of a magical tree in which roosts a “great concourse of birds.” Any message, so gloriously housed, invites sensitive contemplation.

Levertov’s theme, which ultimately expresses, through the person of Christ, an affirmation of a miraculous Truth surpassing the legality of the natural world, does not disappoint.

She opens her poem with a question. “Who ever saw the mustard-plant…grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree?” Assuming a Christian readership versed in the parables of Christ and their traditional interpretations, this question smacks the turf before them like a gauntlet. What then of Christ, who declares, “[The Kingdom of God] is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (ESV, Mark 4:31-32) Assuming a skeptical readership, it fans the fires of convicted suspicion in their hearts, and evokes a hearty assent. After all, any observer would verify her description of a mustard-seeded field: “Acres of yellow, / not a bird in sight.” But what observer can substantiate Christ’s description of a mustard tree, which more echoes the image Levertov debunks in her opening question: a “treeful of shade and nests and songs”?

Levertov answers the rhetorical opening question with the expected “no.” Yet in taking this stance she sides neither with the skeptic nor the “glib” believer that she will later berate. Rather, she asserts that this Christ, who “knew / the west wind brings / the rain, the south wind / thunder” was no simpleton. He, too, experienced the physical reality of a nature bound by laws, and personally “walked the field-paths / running His hand along wheatstems.” Aware of these laws, aware even that the wheatstems contained “intimate milky kernels, good / to break on the tongue” for gleaning, Christ could not have been deceived about the properties of lowly mustard. No, she says, her tone faintly condescending in the manner of one who gently states the obvious: No. This forward-looking Christ “was talking of miracle, the seed within us.”

The timbre of the discussion alters: Nature, emphatically affirmed, is then surpassed by Super-nature, by Christ Who is the Great Progressive, the Super-man. That “seed / within us, so small / we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust, / nothing” is not, as “glib generations” traditionally have asserted, an ordinary mustard seed with earthbound limits. It is miracle. Those who deny this phenomenon “mistake the metaphor” because they focus so intently on blindly believing Christ’s literal word that they deny the paradox it presents to a mind open to the real world. And so “mountains / remain unmoved.” The faith that Christ describes in Matthew 17:20 as being as little as “a grain of a mustard seed” moves mountains, not because of its size, but because it is itself a miracle. To deny its supernatural property is to deny its existence, and to deny the possibility of impossibility.

“Faith is rare, He must have been saying,” Levertov explains. Even more: it is “prodigious,” a word that connotes not only vastness of size but also wonderfulness, unnaturalness. It is “unique— / one infinitesimal grain divided / like loaves and fishes.” In this simile, Levertov alludes to one of Christ’s miracles of augmentation, wherein he fed a multitude from a paltry meal of loaves and fishes. That miraculous augmentation is faith: “as if from a mustard-seed / a great shade-tree grew. That rare, / that strange: the kingdom / a tree.” And Christ, in carrying it out, transcends ironclad nature.

But to what end? Assuming that Christ has indeed planted a minutely prodigious miracle in our hearts, assuming that the kingdom tree does, in fact, sprout from the lowly mustard seed, the audience must still question Christ’s purpose in upsetting nature so. Levertov concludes her poem with a breathtaking image of the result of Christ’s miraculous action: “The kingdom / a tree. The soul / a bird. A great concourse of birds / at home there, wings among yellow flowers.” The kingdom, sown in this earth, exceeds its possibilities and blossoms into a tree of yellow flowers, the habitation of souls. Thus Christ fashions a wonderful tree of life from the meager earthly plant. This is the kingdom: glorious beauty wrought of the unextraordinary.

Even as this vision delights our minds, Levertov alters her tone yet again, crafting within it the plaintive unresolved note of expectancy as she concludes with the words, “The waiting / kingdom of faith, the seed /waiting to be sown.” Sealing the poem, these phrases remind her readers that the kingdom has not yet arrived. It is waiting to be sown.

This poem, like the parable to which it alludes, speaks the Gospel. It affirms the natural world in all its order and legality, and the limitations that such laws entail. But into this order walks the character of Christ, bringing revolution, establishing a new order. For those who recognize that the seed within them is miracle, He has planted a dwelling of prodigious life: the kingdom tree awaits their coming. However, before they may roost, another call rests upon these seeded souls. As earthly birds are agents of seeding, so Levertov’s bird-souls are Christ’s agents, used to spread the seed that is waiting to be sown.

In crafting this poem, Levertov responds to this call and seeds the world with miraculous mustard. In barren meadows she sows Christ’s kernels, affirming the mystery of the Gospel. And as she sows, she no doubt anticipates the yellow embrace of “shade and nest and birdsong” that awaits her.