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My King

jmgkvanhecke

Updated: Dec 19, 2021

The way my brain generally works is in a patchwork; images and ideas drawn from multiple sources, usually stories, woven together with what is going on in my life and heart. So on this feast of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, I'm going to try to lay out some of the pieces, even if it (definitely) comes out extraordinarily jumbled and non-linear.


This is a poem that I wrote last year about this week and how we enter, liturgically, into the space between the end and the beginning. It's a strange place to be and generally rather a dark one as the grief and loss of endings has not yet been supplanted by the joy of new beginnings. A place of death and of the grave:


The darkness spins and chokes ash and dust lie thick in the few cramped corridors that all the grandeur of Giza can scarce obscure.


For the fire serpent reigns

and chaos is the air we breathe and the distant word of a distant King is a phantom star in the night.


There is a bird too that burns hidden in the seething swath but his song is hard and clear anthem of this rocky ground this space between the end and the beginning a cave in the blinding snow.


But it's a space we enter in the company of the King.


Watching scenes on YouTube this morning from The Return of the King reminded me of some of the layers of meaning to add to my experience of and prayer about death. The grim but epic beauty of the ride of Rohirrim and of a whole host riding against their enemy calling out "death". Gandalf reminding Pippin that "Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it. White shores and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."


This statue is in the ancient Church where I went to Mass this morning. It is in the side altar that contains a stone from the Holy Sepulcher.




"For the first time in all those years, she tasted the word King itself with all its linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy and power." (C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength)

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

There is a whole myriad of moments, images, ideas that I've adopted from The Lord of the Rings into my prayer. For some reason, today, this one was new. The scene that follows as an image for Christ going to the Cross and specifically that He goes to the Cross for each of us individually:


"To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for His God and Father, to Him be glory and power forever and ever," (Revelation, the 2nd Reading at Mass today)


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"evil labors with vast power and perpetual success - in vain; preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout it. so it is in general and so it is in our own lives.

//J.R.R. Tolkien

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