Hymn of the Universe: III. Hymn To Matter (Live)

Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock:

you who yield only to violence,

you who force us to work if we would eat.

Blessed be you, perilous matter,

violent sea, untameable person:

you who unless we fetter you will devour us.

Blessed be you, mighty matter,

irresistible march of evolution, reality ever born-new

you who force us to go ever further and further

in pursuit of the truth.

Blessed be you, universal matter,

immeasurable time, boundless ether.

Triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations:

overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards of measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.

Blessed be you, impenetrable matter:

interposed between our minds and the world,

Blessed be you, mortal matter:

you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists.

You who batter us and then dress our wounds,

you who resist us and yield to us,

you who wreck and build,

you who shackle and liberate,

The sap of our souls, the hands of God:

it is you, matter, that I bless.

I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power,

as the ocean stirred by the Spirit,

as the clay molded and infused with life of the incarnate Word.

Raise me up then, matter, to those heights,

through struggle and separation and death

Raise me up until, at long last,

It becomes possible for me

To embrace the universe.