Shape-Shifting: The Metamorphic Rocks

Thin sheets of sediment,

amorphous phyllo,                  

acres in extent, are

buried under flows

of gravel, mud or lava;

each horizontal layer

descends beneath the

weight of new deposits

and in the process

sheds its water and its air.

As pressure forces grains

together, coats them

with a fine cement of

minerals emerging

slick from their dense solutions,

new rock begins to grow

like baklava, placed

down in sheets of phyllo,

honey, butter, nuts

in shallow pans of salten sea,

and even as the rock

is formed, the sea with

its encompassing land

moves gently forward

to converging boundaries,

where continents collide

with oceans, islands

form and disappear, where

sheets of rock slide down

to fiery depths, are shaken,

torn, and softened so the

sheeted layers of rock

can now be pushed and pinched

and pleated into

vast accordions of stone.

There, too, in infinite,

slow, furious, tumult,

the very substance of

the rock is changed, its

molecules and atoms shift,

bonds break, decay, re-form

on microscopic

dancing floors where atoms

waltzing, reeling, twirl

new substance into being.

Limestones turn to marble

then, and shales to slate

and schist; new rocks emerge,

new stones are born as

matter glides to sleeker form.

Immensities of rock

are sunken, twisted,

cooked, like crumpled sheets of

baklava, which baked

in subterranean stoves, will

someday rise and rising

shake the very earth

which they create and then

in geologic

time, dissolve and start anew.

Shape-shifting stone that slides

into fresh form and

essence new, as heat and

depth and time supply B

this is metamorphic rock!

Sr. Sue Elwyn, SSJD

St-Lambert, QC 2005

Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō Eruption 1983 . USGS

Emiliania Huxleyi

Emiliania Huxleyi –

a tiny one-celled alga so small

it takes five thousand lined into a

row to fill a single inch of space  –

contain within each single cell a

mitochondrion, Golgi body, 

nucleus and chloroplast, all that

it needs to feed and reproduce

and at the last to die – essential

elements of life as we know it;

infinitesimal perfection,

pulling nourishment from watery light.

And more – a coccolithophore, it

builds within itself exquisite shields,

fretworks of calcium and carbon

known as coccoliths, astounding shapes

produced inside a tiny globe by

means half-understood, for reasons

quite unknown, these oval wheels with spokes

and rims and two-tiered delicacy,

extruded whole and lovely from the

cell, garnish their maker, sitting rim

to rim or overlapping, twenty or

more around the sphere’s circumference.

Emiliania Huxleyi

are insignificant alone, but

in their billions stain water milky-

white in blooms a hundred miles across.

Thus their life; and when they die, they sink

for weeks through ocean depths to come to

rest at last on the abyssal plain,

sit softly on limey sediment.

Then over countless spans of time, the

slimy mass grows thick with age, sly

cementation fills pores between each

microscopic block, and in the end

it turns to limestone, dolomite or

chalk; a million years may pass as one-

celled algae live and reproduce and

die and in their deaths build depths of stone.

Then sheets of sedimentary rock are

carried on the tides of earth and rise

by gentle increment to make the

underlying crust of continents,

or galvanized by cataclysmic

force build mountain ranges standing tall –

wondrous, one-celled, earth-shaping algae,

Emiliana Huxleyi!

                                               

                                                

Sr. Sue Elwyn, SSJD

Toronto, March, 2006

A Poem for Eastertide

Did you see him in the garden there, beside the empty tomb?
Did you meet him by the Galilean lake?
When he suddenly appeared that day within the upper room,
Did you worship and adore him?  Did you say:
Jesus Christ, my Lord, Messiah, you are here and everywhere,
Jesus Christ, my Risen Saviour, you are all.

Do you see him in the faces of the people you despise?
Do you feel him in the hearts of those you love?
Do you know him ever-present, ever-loving, ever wise?
Do you worship and adore him?  Do you say:
Jesus Christ, my Lord, Messiah, you are here and everywhere,
Jesus Christ, my Risen Saviour, you are all.

Our Risen Lord is with us, when we love and when we fear;
Our Risen Lord is with us in the dark.
Our Risen Lord is with us when the Light of Easter’s near,
As we worship and adore him, as we say:
Jesus Christ, my Lord, Messiah, you are here and everywhere,
Jesus Christ, my Risen Saviour, you are all.

May you know the love of our Risen Saviour this day 
and always. 
Happy Easter!

Rabboni By C. Russell Elliott

Easter 2018

Easter mornings were once filled with joyful greetings such as, “Alleluia, the Lord is Risen”, with the joyful response, “He is Risen indeed, Alleluia”, a word that had not been heard throughout the sombre days of Lent. In my private prayer and devotions through Easter my heart spends hours with the faithful beside the empty tomb, and I hear or feel the almost-breathless, almost-unspoken, loud whispered “Rabboni” of Mary Magdalene, a dear friend of our Lord. Some have suggested, or wanted, something sexual in that word, but there is far too much profound depth of love that touches one’s soul to imply anything less. How very much I pray that my Saviour may look upon me, call me by name—then I may know that all is well between us once more.

Many years ago I heard a soloist sing, in Handel’s Messiah, the aria ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’—my soul was lost in awe and wonder by her voice. Every Easter since then, in my meditation and devotions around Easter morning, I stand at the empty tomb with the faithful that includes Mary. I hear her whispered Rabboni that touches my soul; and in that precious moment Mary and the soloist become one voice pressing upon my heart and soul: I know that my Redeemer liveth. Rabboni, My Master!

My Easter is rich in glory. May Christianity’s triumphant Easter Alleluia bring its glory into every soul.

Canon C. Russell Elliott  is a long time SSJD Associate 

Reflection for Good Friday Evening and Holy Saturday

The pain is ended now.

The sharp anguish of each strangled breath,
the nails that stab like knives through mangled flesh
as he shifts, now up to breathe, now down
to ease the torment of his poor, pierced feet,
and up again to slake the burning
in his hands, and all the while his back,
torn flesh aflame from recent flogging,
rubs along coarse wood, each grate and splinter
but a minor hurt within the greater,
yet each contributing its little share
to an all-encompassing agony
which fills his senses, fills the world – 

all these are ended now
in death – 
in gentle, kindly, peaceful death.


The pain is ended now.

The bitter loss of friend turned hateward
betraying with malicious kiss;
betrayal too by loving men who,
weak in body, sleep, unwitting of a
brutal fight:  to keep the faith brings painful
death; to turn and run is death in life;
more bitter still to heart that’s breaking,
after bloodshed, panicked flight;
those who boasted love undying
turn to deny him in the night,
the wounds of treachery unintended, that
sting no less than those of measured wrong –

all these are ended now
in death – 
in gentle, kindly, faithful death


The pain is ended now.

Gashes sliced into a spirit come
to bring good news of freshened faith,
by righteous folk who blind their eyes
and deafen ears, blockade their hearts and
minds and souls against the Word of God
out-poured from loving lips; a soul
new-minted, shining in the light, is bruised
and cut and wounded near to death by
fickle crowds who once cried out “Hosanna!”
but now shout “Death!  Death!  Crucify him!”
The jeers, the taunting mockery that bite
into his soul as if a crown of thorns –

all these are ended now
in death – 
in gentle, kindly, loving death.


The pain is ended now.

The first to go, the cuts and scrapes of
stubborn words from hardened hearts,
subsumed within the bone-deep bruises
of love gone wrong, of trust betrayed;
and piercing sharp to break his heart,
sword-strike of purpose seeming unfulfilled;
yet even these are lost within his body’s
pain – the soldiers’ lash, the nails struck true,
the stabbing pain of tortured breath, until –
the deepest hurt of all – he calls aloud
“Why, God, have you forsaken me?” but
following swiftly then, that saving grace –

all these are ended now
in death – 
in gentle, kindly, Godly death.

Sr. Sue Elwyn, SSJD

Guelph, ON

June, 2006