The Ledge of Light

Today’s Lenten poem from Education for Justice is by Jessica Powers.

The Ledge of LIght

I have climbed up out of a narrow darkness
on to a ledge of light.
I am of God; I was not made for night.

Here there is room to lift my arms and sing.
Oh, God is vast! With Him all space can come
to hole or corner or cubiculum.

Though once I prayed, “O closed Hand holding me…”
I know Love, not a vise. I see aright,
set free in morning on this ledge of light.

Yet not all truth I see. Since I am not
yet one of God’s partakers,
I visualize Him now: a thousand acres.

God is a thousand acres to me now
of high sweet-smelling April and the flow
of windy light across a wide plateau.

Ah, but when love grows unitive I know
joy will upsoar, my heart sing, far more free,
having come home to God’s infinity.

Source: “The Ledge of Light” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers,
edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO: Sheed &
Ward, 1989.