The Ultimate Center

 
 

Luci Shaw is a poet and essayist born in London, England, in 1928 who now lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband. Her 2020 poetry collection The Generosity is a delightful glimpse of God's hand across our lives -- from the moss of Orcas Island to the secret sounds of a cloudy day. As we anticipate Holy Week next week, listen to the ponderings of Shaw's poem "The 'O' in Hope":

Hope has this lovely vowel at its throat.

Think how we cry "Oh!" as the sun's circle

clears the ridge above us on the hill.

O is the shape of a mouth singing, and of

a cherry as it lends its sweetness

to the tongue. "Oh!" say the open eyes at

unexpected beauty and then, "Wow!"

O is endless as a wedding ring, a round

pool, the shape of a drop's widening on

the water's surface. O is the center of love,

and O was in the invention of the wheel.

It multiplies in the zoo, doubles in a door

that opens, grows in the heart of a green wood,

in the moon, and in the endless looping

circuit of the planets. Mood carries it,

and books and holy fools, cotton, a useful tool

and knitting wool. I love the doubled O

in good and cosmos, and how O revolves,

solves, is in itself complete, unbroken,

a circle enclosing us, holding us all together,

every thing both in center and circumference

zeroing in on the Omega that finds

its ultimate center in the name of God.

Where do you find your ultimate center? Is it in the hope that God promises, which is splayed across the pink of a spring evening or in the purple crocuses that push through the March snow?

May your week be hope-filled,

Jennie