In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Saint Clare of Assisi entitled “The Mirror of Eternity.”  I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

Looking in the Mirror of Eternity

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity,

place your soul in the brightness of His glory,

place your heart in the image of the divine essence

and transform yourself by contemplation

            utterly into the image of His divinity,

that you too may feel what His friends feel as they taste

            the hidden sweetness that God himself has set aside

            from the beginning for those who love Him.

—Saint Clare of Assisi

When you place your mind before the mirror of eternity,

you see how small your worries are, your griefs, your losses,

you see how small your sins are, how minor your mistakes,

how little your life is, how short your years.

You see the unlimited and are dwarfed by it.

You see the limitless lives you have to get it right.

When you place your soul in the brightness of His glory,

you are cleansed from head to toe, you are purified,

you are made beautiful in his expansive love.

When you place your heart in the image of his divine essence,

you see that you are a wave in the ocean of oneness,

you see that you have never been apart from God,

that God has always been with you in every trial, in every loneliness,

that you have been held in God’s presence from the beginning of time,

that you will be held in God’s presence to the end of time,

that all is God and all is love and all is joy and all is one.

When you transform yourself by contemplation

utterly into the image of his divinity,

you experience perfect wonder, perfect awe.

You experience the glory of knowing God

and the glory of being known by God.

You experience the universe as one big, ecstatic yes.

O, that you too may feel what God’s friends feel,

for you are God’s dearest, most beloved friend.

O, that you may taste that hidden sweetness that God has set aside

from the beginning for those who love God.

It is God’s greatest desire that we may join God at the Lord’s table

and taste all the delights that God has prepared for us.

Our tongues were made to taste that sweetness.

Our souls were made to drink that sacred nectar.

Our minds were made to contemplate the infinite,

to look inside our hearts and see God in us,

to look out into the limitless universe and find ourselves whole in God.