Apokatastasis
Fire, fire,
All-consuming
fire,
A world made beautiful in fire.
We see beyond the curtain now,
Beyond the marrow and the haze,
Beyond mere substance
And
its shadows—
Into the dance at the heart of all things,
Into
the world where matter leaps for joy,
Twists
and whirls like a dervish;
Where the happy chaos of our realm
Learns
its ordered rules;
Where time itself dissolves
Into
bliss that cannot be measured
By
fragments of duration;
Where to opened eyes appear
Heavenly
armies next to us
And chariots of fire:
Fire, fire,
All-consuming
fire,
A
world made beautiful in fire.
Everything is illuminated by it:
Everything.
The universe seethes with light,
Is
suffused with light,
Shines
like a billion mirrors
Circling around the throne.
We look back, and see a world
Where
heaven was bound up
Silently,
right beside us.
We look back at history
And
find only part of the story,
A
broken prolegomena
To this one moment.
We look back at our pain
And
see the Crucifixion,
Only
the Crucifixion,
And we wonder…
How could
we have missed the fact
That the Cross is only understood
After
Resurrection?
So now we dance, we raise our hands,
Now
we fly,
Now
we rise, rise, rise
Rise to unending joy.
Like metal in the forge,
We
glow, we burn,
We
are filled up with fire:
Fire, fire,
All-consuming
fire,
A
world made beautiful in fire.
Eternity fills up the cosmos
Like
a surging tide:
We
wait, as he taught us,
We watch and pray.
One by one, they begin to turn—
The
last lonely ones,
Unsheltered,
alone,
In the fading rim of darkness:
The light sweeps over them;
Some
see and turn with wonder,
Some
fight and struggle,
Holding on to the vanishing horizon
Where the light is yet to touch.
But that horizon is fading fast,
Against
the speed of uncreated light
And slowly, caught up in a radiance
Beyond
their wildest dreams,
They
turn, they weep, they laugh,
They shine.
Even he, the loneliest one,
Clawing
at the flying edge of darkness
In
one last and desperate cry,
Finally lets go.
Borne up by clouds of long-forgotten friends,
He is
pulled back toward the Fire,
And
darkness melts off from him
In
effervescent waves.
There, in the center of all things,
He
pauses,
Sobs,
And bows down.
He shines, we shine,
Full
of uncreated energies not our own.
Around the throne we sing,
We
dance, we burn,
For
Christ is all in all.
Fire, fire,
All-consuming
fire,
Our
God is a consuming fire.