Ash Wednesday

    

"Yes--deep within and deeper yet
The rankling shaft of conscience hide,
Quick let the swelling eye forget
The tears that in the heart abide.
Calm be the voice, the aspect bold,
No shuddering pass o'er lip or brow,
For why should Innocence be told
The pangs that guilty spirits bow?

"The loving eye that watches thine
Close as the air that wraps thee round -
Why in thy sorrow should it pine,
Since never of thy sin it found?
And wherefore should the heathen see
What chains of darkness thee enslave,
And mocking say, 'Lo, this is he
Who owned a God that could not save'?"

Thus oft the mourner's wayward heart
Tempts him to hide his grief and die,
Too feeble for Confession's smart,
Too proud to bear a pitying eye;
How sweet, in that dark hour, to fall
On bosoms waiting to receive
Our sighs, and gently whisper all!
They love us--will not God forgive?

Else let us keep our fast within,
Till Heaven and we are quite alone,
Then let the grief, the shame, the sin,
Before the mercy-seat be thrown.
Between the porch and altar weep,
Unworthy of the holiest place,
Yet hoping near the shrine to keep
One lowly cell in sight of grace.

Nor fear lest sympathy should fail -
Hast thou not seen, in night hours drear,
When racking thoughts the heart assail,
The glimmering stars by turns appear,
And from the eternal house above
With silent news of mercy steal?
So Angels pause on tasks of love,
To look where sorrowing sinners kneel.

Or if no Angel pass that way,
He who in secret sees, perchance
May bid His own heart-warming ray
Toward thee stream with kindlier glance,
As when upon His drooping head
His Father's light was poured from Heaven,
What time, unsheltered and unfed,
Far in the wild His steps were driven.

High thoughts were with Him in that hour,
Untold, unspeakable on earth -
And who can stay the soaring power
Of spirits weaned from worldly mirth,
While far beyond the sound of praise
With upward eye they float serene,
And learn to bear their Saviour's blaze
When Judgment shall undraw the screen?


-- John Keble (1792-1866), Anglican priest, poet, and one of the leaders of the Oxford movement.

His Litany to the Holy Spirit

In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drowned in sleep;
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the passing-bell doth toll,
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the priest his last hath prayed,

And I nod to what is said, 

Because my speech is now decayed,

   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When, God knows, I am tossed about,

Either with despair, or doubt;

Yes, before the glass be out,

   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursuit

With the sins of all my youth,

And half damns me with untruth,

   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the flames and hellish cries

Fright mine ears and fright mine eyes,

And all terrors me surprise,

   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the Judgement is revealed,

And that opened which was sealed;

When to Thee I have appealed,

   Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

-- Robert Herrick (1591-1674), English poet and Anglican priest

Image: Stained glass window of the anointing of the sick from St. Timothy Catholic parish, Miami, FL

The Calm

Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth ‘suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir’d church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen’s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth’s hollownesses, which the world’s lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes’ jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil’d wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag’d, the shepherds’ scoff,
Or like slack-sinew’d Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th’ emperor’s lov’d snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov’d and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push’d me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, ‘gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

-- John Donne (1572-1631), Anglican priest, preacher, essayist, and metaphysical poet, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral

Scripture reference: Matthew 14:22-33, Proper 14A

Image: The Stormy Sea, by Alma Thomas

July 5, 1940

Nought that I would give today
Would half compare
With the long-treasured riches that somewhere
In the deep heart are stored.
Cloud and the moon and mist and the whole
Hoard of frail, white-bubbling stars,
And the cool blessing,
Like moth or wind caressing,
Of the fair, fresh rain-dipped flowers;
And all the spells of the sea, and the new green
Of moss and fern and bracken
Before their youth is stricken;
The thoughts of the trees at eventide, the hush
In the dark corn at morning,
And the wish
In your own heart still but dawning –
All of these,
A soft weight on your hands,
I would give now;
And lastly myself made clean
And white as the wave-washed sand,
If I knew how.


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

Better to Marry Than To Burn

Home, then, where the past was.
Then, where cold pastorals repeated
their entreaties, where a portrait of Christ
hung in every bedroom. Then was a different
country in a different climate in a time when
souls were won and lost in prairie tents. It was.
It was. Then it was a dream. I had no will there.
Then the new continent and the new wife
and the new language for no, for unsaved,
for communion on credit. Then the daughter
who should’ve been mine, and the hour a shadow
outgrew its body. She was all of my failures,
my sermon on the tender comforts of hatred
in the shape of a girl. Then the knowledge
of God like an apple in the mouth. I faced
my temptation. I touched its breasts with
as much restraint as my need allowed,
and I woke with its left hand traced again
and again on my chest like a cave wall
disfigured by right-handed gods who tried
to escape the stone. It was holy. It was fading.
My ring, then, on my finger like an ambush,
as alive as fire. Then the trees offered me a city
in the shape of a word followed by a word
followed by a blue madonna swinging from
the branches. A choir filed out of the jungle
singing hallelujah like a victory march and it was.

-- Traci Brimhall (1982- ), American poet, professor, Poet Laureate of Kansas 2023-2026, from Poetry Magazine, July/August 2014

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

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

No Answer

Speak, farmer, over the green sod
To us forsaken by the sham gods
In whom we trusted. Where has the spring gone?
Is it always autumn even in the fields’
Primitive quiet in which you work?

Speak, friend; does not the earth renew
Its broken pattern, building again
Its green citadels, razed by the winds
And gaunt frosts, quarrying the face
Of the grim heavens for the springs ore?
Born here and reared, have you no proof
Of the slow summers ultimate reign?

Silence, silence; only the eyes’
Inscrutable grayness turned to mine;
And the hand’s gesture, vague as a branch,
Rowing forever the wind’s stream.

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

A Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

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

Scripture references: Matthew 13:45-46; Exodus 3:1-17

Indifference

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree, 

They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

--The Rev. G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), Anglo-Irish Anglican priest and chaplain on the Western Front in World War I, known as "Woodbine Willie," from Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918)

The Coming

And God held in his hand

A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

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

In Church

Often I try

To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.


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

The Epiphany

O strangest thing that God doth now begin,
               In being which, he hath no godheads grace:
              O strangest Roome, this subject takes his place,
In want of room, for none was in his Inne.

O strangest color to be viewed in,
              For humane darknesse vailed hath his face.
              O strangest middle of respective space,
Where as a starre more than the sunne could win.

O strangest star that must reveale this sight
that by disorder from the rest gives light.

O strangest eyes that saw him by this starre,
Who when bystanders saw not, saw so farre.

And since such wonders were in seeing him
No wonder if my wondring thought grow dim.

--William Alabaster (1567-1640), English poet, playwright, convert to Catholicism and then back to Anglicanism, and priest

The Good Samaritan

How kind the good Samaritan
To him who fell among the thieves!
Thus Jesus pities fallen man,
And heals the wounds the soul receives.

O! I remember well the day,
When sorely wounded, nearly slain;
Like that poor man I bleeding lay,
And groaned for help, but groaned in vain.

Men saw me in this helpless case,
And passed without compassion by;
Each neighbor turned away his face,
Unmoved by my mournful cry.

But he whose name had been my scorn,
As Jews Samaritans despise
Came, when he saw me thus forlorn,
With love and pity in his eyes.

Gently he raised me from the ground,
Pressed me to lean upon his arm;
And into every gaping wound
He poured his own all-healing balm.

Unto his church my steps he led,
The house prepared for sinners lost;
Gave charge I should be clothed and fed;
And took upon him all the cost.

Thus saved from death, from want secured,
I wait till he again shall come,
When I shall be completely cured
And take me to his heav’nly home.

There through eternal boundless days,
When nature’s wheel no longer rolls,
How shall I love, adore, and praise,
This good Samaritan to souls!




--John Newton (1725-1807), former slave ship captain and investor in the slave trade who became an abolitionist and Anglican priest; he is best known as the author of the lyrics to the Hymn "Amazing Grace." The British abolished the slave trade just weeks before he died.

Scripture reference: Luke 10:25-37 (Proper 10C)

Ascension

How can you leave your flock,
O holy shepherd,
in this valley deep and dark,
while you break the pure
air, departing to regions immortal and secure?

Those once blessed,
now sad, afflicted,
those nourished at your breast
and now by you dispossessed,
where will they turn their faces?

Can their eyes,
having seen the beauty of your face,
see anything now that does not fret them?
And to ears that heard your sweetness,
is not all else clamor and dullness?

And that swollen sea,
who now shall calm it?
Who tame the burning wind?
With you in eclipse,
what star shall guide the ship to port?

O envious cloud,
do you grudge even our brief delight?
Where do you fly in such haste?
Your departure, so splendid and bright!
But how poor and blind you leave us!

--Fray Luis de Leon (1527-1591) Spanish Augustinian monk, mystic, and poet of Spain’s “Golden Age,” imprisoned for four years during the Spanish Inquisition due to charges from two Dominican professors.

Air and Angels

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee, 

Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
          Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
          But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
          More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
          And therefore what thou wert, and who,
                    I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
             Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
          For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
          Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
          So thy love may be my love's sphere;
                    Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

--John Donne (1572-1631), Anglican priest, poet, essayist, and founding member of the Metaphysical poets, whose feast day is today.

Gloria

The whole world is full of glory:

Here is the glory of created things,
the earth and the sky,
the sun and the moon,
the stars and the vast expanses:

Here is the fellowship
with all that was created,
the air and the wind,
cloud and rain,
sunshine and snow:

All life like the bubbling of a flowing river
and the dark currents of the depths of the sea
is full of glory.

The white waves of the breath of peace
on the mountains,
and the light striding
in the distances of the sea.

The explosion of the dawn wood-pigeons
and the fie of the sunset doves,
sheep and cattle at their grazing,
the joy of countless creeping things
as they blossom,
spider and ant
of nimble disposition
proclaim the riches of goodness.

The curse of life is to err.

The meadows and the yellow corn,
the slopes of the grape clusters,
the sweetness of the apple tree's fruit:

The provision on the tray
of the warm comely seasons
a part of each hard beginning:

The discretion that insists on respect
for all our partners —
all the creatures of our day
and our life in the world for ever.

Every land, every language,
became bread and wine:

Every labour,
railway stations,
bus stops
at the beginning of journeys,
every aviation:

Every art
under its own fig tree —
the vision of a man and a maid.
Lest treating
the misunderstanding between man
and his world, becomes
a giving way to meaninglessness:

And perchance we shall see the dancing
in the halls of the atoms
and the meddling with their temperament
as an art of the soul.

The coal in the bowels of the vale,
the clear water of the valleys
and the energy of machines' atmosphere:

The secret of fresh airs —
old meanings a cold well:

The delicate breeze
like the sun on the seagull's belly
awakening wings

All beneficiaries
(unless we spit the original terror of sin on it all)
resounded the Gloria of praise.

--Euros Bowen (1904-1988), Welsh poet and Anglican priest, translated from the Welsh by Cynthia and Saunders Davies.

First they came

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

-- Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984), German theologian and Lutheran pastor

The Baptism of Jesus (First Sunday after Epiphany)

Beginning here we glimpse the Three-in-one;
The river runs, the clouds are torn apart,
The Father speaks, the Sprit and the Son
Reveal to us the single loving heart
That beats behind the being of all things
And calls and keeps and kindles us to light.
The dove descends, the spirit soars and sings
‘You are belovèd, you are my delight!’

In that quick light and life, as water spills
And streams around the Man like quickening rain,
The voice that made the universe reveals
The God in Man who makes it new again.
He calls us too, to step into that river
To die and rise and live and love forever.

--The Rev. Malcolm Guite (1954- ), Anglican priest, poet, musician, and theologian, from his blog.

The Calm

Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,

A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth ‘suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir’d church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen’s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth’s hollownesses, which the world’s lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes’ jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil’d wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag’d, the shepherds’ scoff,
Or like slack-sinew’d Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th’ emperor’s lov’d snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov’d and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push’d me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, ‘gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

--John Donne (1572-1631), English priest, poet, and essayist

Scripture reference: Matthew 14:22-33, Proper 14A