Anima Mundi: “Deep-Easter” and the Soul of the World

I had a bit of time today to sit, read, listen, and write. Of course, I was supposed to work on sermons for Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but then life happened. I thought it might be helpful to pay attention to life if I hoped to write a sermon about life. 

If you're not familiar with it, there is an ancient term/image called Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. In so many ways, it is the deep truth that we have become unmoored from, the reality that all of life is connected. There is a pulse within life that we can feel. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. Hildegard coined the term veriditas to put some shape to what she experienced. There are countless terms to this force of life.

This truth is what I call "deep-Easter," the life force that is underneath all the sparkle that catches our eye around Easter Sunday. It is that deep wisdom that flows in our hearts, which each of the services of Holy Week highlights in particular ways. 

We have always needed this deep truth, but good Lord do we need it now. I'll keep listening. Let me know what you're hearing as well, and we can compare notes.

(If you're reading this on your phone, the line spacing of the poem may be a bit off, but go for it.)

Anima Mundi

Sitting on my patio within the shade
of a blood-red Japanese maple
who whispers its name,
which I cannot pronounce,

I watch it dance with the light
and the shadow, the graceful bend.
If I sit still long enough
can I hear the music it feels?

A strong wind blew a wren’s nest
out of its safe nook and into the yard,
tossing three frail hatchlings into the grass
where I found them, all mouths.

I held each of them in turn
and gently placed them back in their pot,
braced with brick to guard as best I can
while I wait for the parents’ return.

How can life be so frail and strong
at the same time, held in these small bodies
with the earliest tufts of feathers
like crowns upon their heads?

There is a language our hearts know
but our mouths cannot speak,
words and truths our lips cannot form,
of a desire and longing for life

which has an edge as sharp
as any knife, cutting through
the distractions we call ourselves,
and on this edge, hope finds footing.