Advent at Eye Clinic-Jakarta (Klinik Mata)

Here in smog-choked Jakarta, alone in the back underside of the world
I’m still waiting for the eye doctor.
Across from me
a blind baby on his back stares up
as white Christmas lights in sparkling globes
dance their patterns across his face.
To him these, darkest days,
are just as dark all the rest;
his round, coffee eyes rove his black world
no giggle bubbles out
applauding the shimmering lights, for
his unlit orbs in sockets
look only inward.
His mama’s head kept bent over
his unseeing face, and there she hovers–as if alone in the room, in the city–
caressing him with her eyes,
she anoints his face with her proud, proud love.
Her son’s her sole mission, and her dear-heart:
And because of that, he doesn’t need sight to see her.
Their love is so electric it sparks,
and arcs in the span between us—
I shift to escape its reach
and fail, then it comes to me
It’s Advent:
the Time when the Father
of All brings forth His loving Expression
and His blind babies see Him.
–
I shift again working to close the gaping hole
of my well-woven cloak of theology
but it’s got no warmth—
pierced as it was at that moment
when I let all rays of my head and my heart conjoin,
and in their coming together
they formed one, pointed exclamation
which burns hotter than the tropical sun at noon,
and has followed me far, so far,
to this land of heat & spices.
Distance makes no matter, and can’t stop movement of His fullness:

          Desolation precedes Consolation.

The rush of His love pours through my veins, filling me with meaningfulness–
–and yet again,
this old, cold and blind babe’s fresh-captivated
in the warming draw of His Streaming Gaze.
A Charity Higgins Johnson 2015