Prayer, from Hymn of the Universe, by Teilhard de Chardin
Glorious Lord Christ:
The divine influence secretly diffused and active
in the depths of matter,
And the dazzling center where all the innumerable fibres
of the manifold meet;
Power as implacable as the world and as warm as life;
You whose forehead is of snow,
Whose eyes are of fire,
and whose feet are brighter than molten gold;
You whose hands imprison the stars;
You who are the first and the last,
The living and the dead and the risen again;
You who gather into your exuberant unity every mode
of existence;
It is you to whom my being cries out with a desire
as vast as the universe:
In truth you are my Lord and my God.
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Interesting. Looking further into the etymology, I saw that the French “prison” comes from the Latin prehensiō, prehensiōnem (“seizing, apprehending, arresting, capturing”), with a slightly broader meaning.
I think the use of words like “imprison,” “implacable,” and “fire,” as well as “depth” and “vast,” suggest that the unity he is suggesting is beyond a limited human sense of the divine as being a binary version of good as in “good/evil” and possibly not even something very comfortable for our comprehension. And yet Teilhard still longs for this unity–an even greater testimony to his great desire.
But I also realize that this is probably a translation from original French, so without reading the original (and I can’t), we can’t for sure rely on our understandings of his use of these words.
I never noticed Teilhard’s use of the word “imprison”. To imprison is to, ” jail, incarcerate, detain, or intern”. Synonyms include such words as,”restrain, confine, restrict” . The word origin is Old French and Middle English from “emo ‘in’ + prison.
This is confusing! My understanding is that Teilhard found Light among all life. A Christ so expansive and energetic that life sprang into action and hasn’t stopped creating, exploring and evolving.
The language herein is frightening. I come away not feeling love but seeing the ” old Guy in the sky “.
I read this “imprisonment” only in the sense of “exuberant unity.”