Fr Hugh O’Donnell is a poet and ministers with the Salesian community in the parish of Sean McDermott Street in Dublin.
Fr Hugh shares the following reflection with us:
The new leaves of our prayer plant un-scroll. I follow their progress over days; six new leaves at first tightly packed now deep in the ballet of their unfolding.
I am a witness to a world beyond me. A light green leaf invites, ‘do you read me?’ but I am illiterate in leaf-time and back away from this living text, this inspired word. Of course, with the sophistication of electron microscopes we can now see into the tiniest cell and are aware in some partial way of what is going on.
Leaf is the connection between sunlight and the family of life; it is its ability to capture sunlight and use it to make food that is mind-blowing. But though gifted in our generation to ‘know’ how that chemistry works in the chloroplasts – a mesmerising process – we will always remain at a distance.
Perhaps we may go to the tree and expect it will be easier to grasp this larger body. But if we don’t appreciate the leaf will we appreciate the tree? And without the alphabet of wonder have we any hope of hearing the one who reaches out to us in this un-scrolling? ‘There is a presence whose language is not our language’, writes R. S. Thomas.
To read a leaf requires us to look humbly, serenely, attentively until the eyes of our heart open, the eyes of our eyes.