Anthony de Mello's workshop on prayer - poem

Cross Currents, Winter, 1998 by Irene Zimmerman

Sculptor of words, he hammered and chiseled a solid block of content, quickly, deftly, precisely disclosing the shape of his teaching.

We hearers, awed by its power and beauty even as it stood in the rough, thought we understood, more or less, and waited for further embellishments - the decorative figures, twists, curves we'd come to expect of an artist.

But he, having seen perfection as God's apprentice, knew it lay not in more, but in less. So he hammered and chiseled, with humor and conviction, lightly, relentlessly, till the marble heart of the message appeared - smooth, solid, one-worded: "Awareness."

It was too simple for us to comprehend. We asked for further explanation. Obligingly, he smiled, repeated: "Awareness. Awareness. Awareness."

Poets in this issue: Deborah DeNicola's book Where Divinity Begins was published by Alice James Press in 1994. Recipient of a 1997 Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, she teaches creative writing and literature at the Massachusetts College of Art. Nancy Westerfield, Nebraska's first National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, was named Humanitarian of the Year, 1998, for community service in the Central Nebraska area. Irene Zimmerman's forthcoming book, Woman Un-Bent, is published by St. Mary's Press, Winona. Two of her poems have won awards from the Catholic Press Association. She is a school sister of St. Francis, Milwaukee.