Pascal's Fire

Someone urged me to post this here, and, since Albion has just complained aboput too few posts, well, here goes.

January 2, 2008. I've read an article about Blaise Pascal that quotes the words that came to him on the fateful day of his conversion at Port Royal, words that he carried with him the rest of his life. A poem had to come, begun yesterday at the dawn of a new year, and finished tonight...

Pascal's Fire

Fire.
God of Abraham.
God of Isaac,
God of Jacob,
not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certainty,
certainty,
heartfelt joy,
peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
Joy,
joy,
joy,
oceans of joy!

---Blaise Pascal, at his conversion, Port Royal, 1654

Fire burning.
Fire blazing.
Fire shining bright,
shining, glowing, giving light,
blazing white with all might
from the height beyond our sight,
light.

Brightness burning, all else fading,
in the passion of those beams,
in the heat of blazing flaming,
of the fury of a Presence,
of such power naught can stand;
unseen against the glare,
unseeing in the glare,
as we peer, by glory blinded,
at a God we cannot see.

We cannot see,
nor by our mind can comprehend,
and logic of philosophers must fail,
and science cannot ever reach
beyond the things that it can see,
can see and touch and measure,
but the God we cannot see we know,
for we have seen His light.

Fire burning.
Fire blazing.
Fire shining bright,
shining, glowing, giving light,
blazing white with all might
from the height beyond our sight,
light.

Cannot see.
Cannot hear.
Cannot touch.
Cannot reason out,
but in the light,
blinding light,
beyond the power of sense,
to know.
To Know.
TO KNOW.
In waves of rending joy to know
a peace that seems beyond all sense,
that seems to tear the inmost heart
with pounding, burning, floods of joy
as blinding as the brilliant light
that comes from His eternal fire.

Fire burning.
Fire blazing.
Fire shining bright,
shining, glowing, giving light,
blazing white with all might
from the height beyond our sight,
light.

And in the peace beyond all peace,
and in the joy we cannot bear,
amidst the brightness of the holy light,
we drown
in Him
and life is ours.

--ed pacht