Love Shown in Absence

Over this last while as Lent has moved into Holy Week, God has continued to seem more absent than present to me, and an inner sense of flatness has persisted. So I was taken by surprise when the words of a poem by Mark Jarman jumped out at me, and they have been resonating with me ever since. Jarman’s poem, “Unholy Sonnet 4”, ends with the words,

This love shows
Itself in absence, which the stars adore.

It has been comforting to me that God’s love can show itself in absence, or in “loving emptiness” as Jarman’s poem says in an earlier stanza. It is also comforting that the timeless, countless stars which surround me in the night sky adore the love which shows itself in the absence, the blackness, the emptiness which surrounds them. If they can accept and adore such love, then maybe I can too. As you travel with Christ’s passion through Holy Week, may you also be aware and comforted by the love that “shows itself in absence”.


Brian Holliday
Anam Cara for the Guiding Committee  
Photo from OpenABC