Everness

Inspired by Psalm 23.

When healing oil was needed
   for the wounds within my soul,
When battered raw and bleeding,
   I needed to be whole.
When enemies surrounded me,
   and all I knew was fear,
My Shepherd came and found me,
   and whispered, “I am here.”

He lifts me on His shoulders
   and laughs in fear's face,
He carries me through danger,
   and all I know is Grace.
Then gently puts me down again
   though enemies abound,
He tells me I am dear to Him,
   for I'm the sheep He found!

He leads me to green pastures
   and rests me by cool streams,
He lays a table for me
   within my darkest dreams.
The nourishment is such
   that when it's time to follow on,
I gladly face tomorrow,
   for all my fears are gone.

So when I cannot thank Him
   for all that's comes to pass,
I'll feast within the wilderness
   and wait for greener grass.
When I can't praise for what's been done,
   I'll lift my voice out loud
And praise my Lord for who He is
   “in” what He has allowed!

Praise who He is, my Shepherd dear,
   who gave His life for me,
Who's led and fed and raised the dead
   to live in Victory!
Whose rod and staff have saved me,
   from all my sinfulness,
He'll wipe the tear, be ever near,
   in Glory's Everness.

--Jill Briscoe, from Telling the Truth website, 2017.

I Saw Him Standing

Under the dark trees, there he stands,
there he stands; shall he not draw my eyes?
I thought I knew a little
how he compels, beyond all things, but now
he stands there in the shadows. It will be
Oh, such a daybreak, such bright morning,
when I shall wake to see him
as he is.

He is called Rose of Sharon, for his skin
is clear, his skin is flushed with blood,
his body lovely and exact; how he compels
beyond ten thousand rivals. There he stands,
my friend, the friend of guilt and helplessness,
to steer my hollow body
over the sea.

The earth is full of masks and fetishes,
what is there here for me? are these like him?
Keep company with him and you will know:
no kin, no likeness to those empty eyes.
he is a stranger to them all, great Jesus.
What is there here for me? I know
what I have longed for. Him to hold me always.



--Ann Griffiths (1776-1805), Welsh Methodist, farmer’s daughter and wife in mid North Wales, considered to be one of the greatest Welsh religious poets and hymnist who died in childbirth at age 29. Translated from Welsh by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Emmaus

We never come to know
completely
never for sure

It appears
but it doesn't

The heart burned
but it grew chilly

Is it Him
He remains silent
Is it You
He disappears

There is just bread
hands and a gesture

The face always different
always a new face

The evening is drawing near
and the day bows
It's the time of rest
water wine bread

Why didn't you ask directly
didn't seize h

His legs
didn't hold His hands
didn't tie shadow to bench

We stand thus
the disciples

who didn't get to Emmaus
our arms heavy
with amazement

Was it Him
It was
For sure
Where

The night swept away the traces
Let us evermore quickly
carry to the others
the certainty of doubt




-- Anna Kamienska (1920-1986), Polish Roman Catholic poet, children’s book author, translator and writer, from Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamiekanska, edited and translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon

Image: photo from Washington National Cathedral
Lectionary Scripture: Luke 24:13-35, Easter 3A

Easter Absolutes

Disaster lurks in Easter absolutes,
The sun is straining blood through time,
Heaven, is innocence so far away?
Hell, are you gaping in your fury?

To think, to feel, to see, to be 

Control confusion and force dispute 

Cringing before the cold, glad Easter
Where dwell the ruthless relatives. 

Heavens of contemplation, and first
Belief, that runs lamb-like here, 

Give me the order of the soul's sway

And harmony that teaches mastery. 

Christ now come from out the tomb, 

None other, and walk upon the ruined meadows, 

Dream-like vision, powerful beyond reality,

Where the spirit is jocund, where it would go.


--Richard Eberhart

Easter

Remembering his ancient heritage
Of broken flowers and winter's way with them,
The Wind moves with a sound of faint rage
Through leaf and lily stem.

Remembering the voices that are stilled,
The heads that shone like jonquils in the sun,
The eager hands that long with dust are filled,
We wake and know that the months of cold are done.

O Eucharist of promise unrevealed,
Hope yearly slain and hunger never fed!
Out of our hearts by the new sun unsealed,
Now troop the rising dead.

They reach their pleading hands to the shining crowd,
And years of sleep blow like a mist around them.
Pale and humble are they who were happy and proud,
They are gone in a mist, they are lost before we have found them.

--Jessica Nelson North (1891-1988), poet, novelist, children's book author, and editor.

Easter

The first forsythia;
daffodils;
gorse or whins or furze
on hills,

in hedges.
Late winter aconite;
dandelions; primroses
challenging the light

of Easter morning.
The lesser Celandine;
a yellow fertilizer
bag define

spring in our steps.
I love my children
and my wife.
Rise all again and again.

--Peter Fallon (1951- ), Irish poet and editor

Easter Week

See the land, her Easter keeping, 

Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
While the wild birds build and sing.

You, to whom your Maker granted
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
Each his Easter tribute bring-
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
Like the birds who build and sing.


-- Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), English priest and poet

Easter in the Field

                              I

The staggering cross and grief united us
When Pilate washed his irritated palms; 

Embracing in scarlet garments then, we came 

In the expansion of our tears to this 

Revision of the way: with lofty hands 

To tend the stitch of scars, to go abroad 

In the wet shine of morning under God
With protocol and sword to win these lands.

                              II

Came trotting through the Roman countryside 

A horse with feathers like a cockatoo, 

When horse and rider, both neurotic, threw
Themselves upon the blazing scrub and cried;
For high in evening's undiminished west 

A sensual heart, depending on the earth,
Towards that dark creature and St. Paul came forth;
And when they rode from there, the heart rode first.

                              III

Where they are riding now is ever lost; 

But when the charcoal cross sinks in the year
And fields that wear old leaves and thorny gear 

Are swept like a proscenium of dust, 

In renovations of some glad disguise
Children and dandelions suddenly
Will lease the rooms of summer from the sky
And everywhere the lost unblessed will rise. 

                              IV

Though coming forth were death we would arise,
Since resurrection is our signature; 

Though coming forth, disputing and unsure, 

But starts old wheels and old futilities, 

We ride the season carelessly, still glad 

To dance with blushing Christ and make a rope
Of daisies for his black top-hat and cape,
To preach his legends while we dress our dead.

-- John Malcolm Brinnin

Resurrection

What became of the many others like us
That first Easter morning
Who stared out the back windows of their houses
With blank cups of coffee in their hands
And saw nothing but overcast skies and leafless trees
And weeping weather that mourned for Spring
And did not hear a knock at the door
Or receive a telephone call
From a recently deceased loved one
Or pass Him along the road to an ancient city
Or see the sun rise up from a hole in the earth
Like Hosanna


—Stephen Rybicki (1941-2022), poet and librarian.

Image: Jose Luis Castrillo, "Et Resurrecit II"

Easter Eggs

As I hold one steady for my three-year-old while he

slaps it with garish red, yellow, black, changing my hand
and his to bright apparitions around that perfectly
ordinary whiteness, I wonder what strange need
began this, drove us to add these brittle
ornaments to spring's own: the pastel flowers
of bulbs already open, the sky's deepening blue,
the enfolding green incipient everywhere. But he
sees differently, chooses these fall colors
to wonder at--then, suddenly, wonders most of all
at my hand and how he's transformed it, laughing
as he paints it again and again, until the egg
takes color from my mere touch, and I understand
these eggs are not for spring, not newness: they belong
to that oldest world we've carried always within us, ablaze
with magnificent birds that could only hatch from such brilliance,
ourselves savagely radiant in our own colors.

--Mark Anderson

Pieta

Always the same hills

Crowd the horizon,
Remote witness
Of the still scene.

And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is the back in the cradle
Of a maid's arms

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw, ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)- poet, English supporter of the Oxford movement, convert to Catholicism, Jesuit priest

Bidding Prayer for Holy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

The Priest introduces the prayers:
Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you. To show our love for all God's creation, let us pray now for the Church and for the world.


Reader:
On the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ washed his disciples' feet. We commit ourselves to follow the example of love and service.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he prayed for his disciples to be one.
We pray for the unity of the Church.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he prayed for those who were to believe through their message. We pray for the mission of the Church.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he gave us the Eucharist.
We pray for our Eucharistic Ministers, and those preparing to receive his body and blood.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he commanded them to love, but suffered rejection himself. We pray for the rejected and unloved.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he reminded them that if the world hated them it hated him first. We pray for those who are persecuted for their faith.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

On this night, he laid down his life for us. We pray for the holy souls, that they may take up the new life of his resurrection.
Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

We pray with Mary, Mother of the Church. Hail Mary....

Let us pray for a moment in silence.


The Priest concludes the prayers:
Lord God, your Son taught us that what we do for the least of our brethren we do also for him: give us the will to be the servant of others as he was the servant of all, and gave up his life and died for us for us, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

-- The Rev. Peter Weatherby, priest at St. Margaret's, Cannock, UK from this blog.

The Porch

Do you want to know his name?
It is forgotten. Would you learn
what he was like? He was like
anyone else, a man with ears
and eyes. Be it sufficient
that in a church porch on an evening
in winter, the moon rising, the frost
sharp, he was driven to his knees and for no reason
he knew. The cold came at him;
his breath was carved angularly
as the tombstones; an owl screamed.

He had no power to pray.
His back turned on the interior
he looked out on a universe
that was without knowledge
of him and kept his place
there for an hour on that lean
threshold, neither outside nor in.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Image: detail from a door from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

The Pulley (For All Clergy During Holy Week)

     When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
‘Let us’ (said he) ‘pour on him all we can;
‘Let the world's richest, which dispersed lie,
     Contract into a span.’

     So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
     Rest at the bottom lay.

     ‘For if I should (said he)
‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
     so both should losers be.

     ‘Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
     May toss him to my breast.’

--George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh-born Anglican priest, parson, preacher, and poet.

Image: Jesus Prays in Gethsemane, David Popiashvili, Georgian artist based in Tbilisi.

The Feet of Judas

CHRIST washed the feet of Judas!
The dark and evil passions of his soul,
His secret plot, and sordidness complete,
His hate, his purposing, Christ knew the whole,
And still in love he stooped and washed his feet.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
Yet all his lurking sin was bare to him,
His bargain with the priest, and more than this,
In Olivet, beneath the moonlight dim,
Aforehand knew and felt his treacherous kiss.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And so ineffable his love ’twas meet,
That pity fill his great forgiving heart,
And tenderly to wash the traitor’s feet,
Who in his Lord had basely sold his part.
Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And thus a girded servant, self-abased,
Taught that no wrong this side the gate of heaven
Was ever too great to wholly be effaced,
And though unasked, in spirit be forgiven.
And so if we have ever felt the wrong
Of Trampled rights, of caste, it matters not,
What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.

-- By George Marion McClellan (1860-1934) African American Congregationalist minister, teacher, novelist, principal, and poet

Scripture Reference: John 13:1-17, Maundy Thursday

Image: Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet, by Laura James. Go buy some of her artwork!!!

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone 

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears; 

Look right, look left, I dwell alone; 

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief 

No everlasting hills I see; 

My life is in the falling leaf: 

O Jesus, quicken me. 

 My life is like a faded leaf, 

My harvest dwindled to a husk: 

Truly my life is void and brief 

And tedious in the barren dusk; 

My life is like a frozen thing, 

No bud nor greenness can I see: 

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; 

O Jesus, rise in me. 

 My life is like a broken bowl, 

 A broken bowl that cannot hold 

One drop of water for my soul 

Or cordial in the searching cold; 

Cast in the fire the perished thing; 

Melt and remould it, till it be 

A royal cup for Him, my King: 

O Jesus, drink of me.

-- Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), English poet, sister of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, devout Anglican and supporter of the Oxford movement, from her book The Goblin Market and Other Poems. She is in the calendar of saints of the Anglican Church, with a feast day of April 27.

If It Be Your Will

If it be your will 

That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

--Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), genius American singer-songwriter, troubadour, and mystic.

Scripture Reference: Matthew 26:36-46, Garden of Gethsemane

Image: Gethsemane, by He Qi

A cover of this song by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and his daughter Romany playing the Irish harp:

The Last Supper

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed

round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

Here they are gathered, wondering and deranged,
Round Him, who wisely doth Himself inclose,
And who now takes Himself away, estranged,
From those who owned Him once, and past them flows.
He feels the ancient loneliness to-day
That taught Him all His deepest acts of love;
Now in the olive groves He soon will rove,
And these who love Him all will flee away.

To the last supper table He hath led.
As birds are frightened from a garden-bed
By shots, so He their hands forth from the bread
Doth frighten by His word: to Him they flee;
Then flutter round the table in their fright
And seek a passage from the hall. But He
Is everywhere, like dusk at fall of night.


--Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Austrian poet and novelist

Image: The Last Supper, by Vladimir Zuzurin

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves

but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break out hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?


--Luci Shaw (1928- ), British born American poet, retreat leader, teacher, and Episcopalian

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms. 

-- James Wright (1927-1980), American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner for his Collected Poems.

Still Falls the Rain

(The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn)

Still falls the Rain –
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss –
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potters’ Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us –
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain –
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side
He bears in his Heart all wounds, – those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear, –
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh ... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain –
Then – O I'll leape up to my God: who pulles me doune –
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, – dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain –
“Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.”


~ Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) English poet


From my friend Caroline Carson, some explanation:

Sitwell compares the Nazi bombing of London to the Crucifixion. As befits the historical context, this is a bleak poem about the sinfulness of humanity. Each year since Christ’s birth become another nail that humanity has driven into his body on the cross (“nineteen hundred and forty nails”), and the poem alludes to famous betrayers, murderers, and sinners from the Bible and literature. But there is a turn in the final stanza, as Jesus continues to shed his blood willingly for sinful humanity. (Composer Benjamin Britten wrote a musical setting for this poem in 1955.)
~ Potter’s Field” – a burial ground for poor and unknown people. From Matthew, in which Judas’s thirty pieces of silver for betraying Jesus are used to buy a potter’s field for burying foreigners (Matthew 27:7-8).
--“Field of Blood” – the name given to the potter’s field in Matthew 27:7-8, because it is bought with Judas’s “blood money.”
--“Cain” – the Bible’s first murderer, who kills his brother Abel (Genesis 4).
--“Dives and Lazarus” – the rich man and the poor man in Jesus’s parable about judgment and the afterlife. Dives (Latin for “rich man”) ignores the suffering of Lazarus, a beggar at his gate; when both men die, Lazarus ascends to heaven while Dives is sent to hell (Luke 16:19-31). In the poem’s next line, “the sore” refers to Lazarus, who was afflicted with terrible sores while on earth, and “the gold” refers to Dives.

And in the next to last stanza there is a reference to Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe:
FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.
O, I’ll leap up to my God! – Who pulls me down? –
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ! –
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!

Benjamin Britten's setting of the poem from 1955:

The Green Shiver

The forest floor bleak, choked
with old leaves, winter wet. Against
the evidence, buds on the wild dogwoods
glisten, listen for a signal, lining up
for bloom-time—when to burst and who'll
be first? Every year, it's all according
to weather, the wait for the heat-throb,
wind fresh through the naked
birch trunks longing to get green.
The pressure's on, like listening for a
starter pistol, finger on the trigger.

Spring is wound tight enough to let go
any minute. Overarching the ravine,
the cedars start their annual scatter of yellow
sexual dust for the next generation.
The clematis resists her tedium of cold and brown,
cancels her winter sleep with a vertical thrust
up the trellis, like a slow shooting star.

How can we help but hope, sprouts
urged to fulfill a kind of promise—
a covenant with the world that in unfolding,
leaf tips flaring up and out, woody hearts pregnant
with bloom and blessing, we will drink rain, light,
heat for our emerald living. We face the sun
full on—its lavish encouragement for cold to lift,
shift, and move away. Holding on, ready for
that shiver, a sliver of thrill like a jade thread
through a labyrinth, when within us
something fresh and green explodes.

-- Luci Shaw (1928- ), acclaimed Anglo-American poet, retreat leader, and Episcopalian

He Bore Our Griefs

No, it was not the Jews who crucified,
Nor who betrayed You in judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into Your face,
Nor who with buffets struck You as You died.
No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win Your robe.
I am the one, O Lord, who brought You there,
I am the heavy cross You had to bear,
I am the rope that bound You to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns You had to wear:
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.


--Jacobus Revius (1586-1658) Dutch theologian and poet, translated ny Dr. Henrietta ten Harmsel

Image: Christ Before Pilate, Mihaly Munkhacsy, 1881