Rune Before Prayer (Ortha nan Gaidheal)

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who purchased me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
     In friendship and affection.

Through Thine own Anointed One, O God, 
Bestow upon us fullness in our need, 
     Love towards God, 
     The affection of God, 
     The smile of God, 
     The wisdom of God. 
     The grace of God, 
     The fear of God,
     And the will of God 
To do on the world of the Three,
As angels and saints
Do in heaven;
     Each shade and light,
     Each day and night,
     Each time in kindness,
     Give Thou us Thy Spirit.

--from the Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912) from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland

David

Your altar smelled of the slaughterhouse.
The innocent eyes of tender beasts
lost in confusion of laws and vows
were the high price paid to you for feasts.
They had to be men of iron, your priests.

And so did I, born but to sing,
to attend the lambs and not to kill.
Why, my Lord, did you have to bring
me down from the safety of my hill
into the danger of your will?

I learned to fight, I learned to sin,
I battled heathen, fought with lust;
when you were on my side I'd win.
My appetite I could not trust.
I only knew your wrath was just.

What I desired I went and stole.
I had to fight against my son.
You bound my wounds and made me whole
despite the wrong that I had done.
I turned from you and tried to run.

You took me, also, by the hair
and brought me back before your altar.
You terrified me with your care.
Against your rage I could but falter.
You changed me, but refused to alter.

So I grew old, but there remained
within me still the singing boy.
I stripped and sang. My wife complained. 
Yet all my ill did I destroy
dancing before you in our joy.

My God, my God, is it not meet
that I should sing and shout and roar,
leap to your ark with loving feet?
I praise thee, hallow, and adore,
and play before thee evermore.

-- Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007), Episcopal laywoman, author, and poet, from A Cry Like a Bell

Relevant scripture: 1 Samuel 16: 1-13

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

-- W. S. Merwin (1927- 2019), American poet, naturalist, and writer, US poet laureate (1999-2000 and 2010-2011), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who passed away one year ago today.

Prayer for People Critically Ill or Facing Great Uncertainty

God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart,
bring hope and courage to all
who wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make them the equal
of whatever lies ahead.
Bring them courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.

-- New Zealand Prayer Book, p. 765

The Samaritan Woman at the Well: Art for Lent 3A

Scripture Reference: John 4:5-42, Gospel for Lent 3A

Modern Latin American

late 19th century Orthodox icon

Modern Icon

Joseph Kleitsch (1885-1931), Woman at the Well

Japanese Print

Odilon Redon, Christ and Samaritan Woman at Well

The Night

John 3.2 

        Through that pure virgin shrine, 
That sacred veil drawn o’er Thy glorious noon,
That men might look and live, as glowworms shine, 
             And face the moon, 
    Wise Nicodemus saw such light 
    As made him know his God by night.

        Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
            When Thou didst rise!
    And, what can never more be done,
    Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

        O who will tell me where 
He found Thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
            So rare a flower,
    Within whose sacred leaves did lie
    The fulness of the Deity?

        No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,
But His own living works did my Lord hold
            And lodge alone;
    Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
    And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

        Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
            Which none disturb!
    Christ’s progress, and His prayer time;
    The hours to which high heaven doth chime;

        God’s silent, searching flight;
When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all 
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
            His still, soft call;
    His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,
    When spirits their fair kindred catch.

        Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel’s wing or voice
            Is seldom rent,
    Then I in heaven all the long year
    Would keep, and never wander here.

        But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
            To every mire,
    And by this world’s ill-guiding light,
    Err more than I can do by night. 

        There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
            See not all clear.
    O for that night! where I in Him
    Might live invisible and dim!

--Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Welsh poet, physician, and translator

Nicodemus

I 
I went under cover of night 
By back streets and alleyways, 
Not as one secret and ashamed 
But with a natural discretion. 
I passed by a boy and girl 
Embraced against the white wall 
In parts of shadow, parts of light, 
But though I turned my eyes away, my mind shook 
Whether with dryness or their driving blood; 
And the dog howled once in a stone corner.

II 
Rabbi, I said, 
How is a man born, being old? 
From the torn sea into the world 
A man may be forced only the one time 
To suffer the indignation of the child, 
His childish distempers and illnesses. 
I would not, if I could, be born again 
To suffer the miseries of the child, 
The perpetual nearness to tears, 
The book studied through burning eyes, 
The particular malady of being always ruled 
To ends he does not see or understand.

A man may be forced only the one time 
To the slow perception of what is meant 
That is neither final nor sufficient, 
To the slow establishment of a self 
Adequate to the ceremony and respect 
Of other men’s eyes; and to the last 
Knowledge that nothing has been done, 
The bitter bewilderment of his age, 
A master in Israel and still a child.

III
Rabbi, all things in the springtime 
Flower again, but a man may not 
Flower again. I regret 
The sweet smell of lilacs and the new grass 
And the shoots put forth of the cedar 
When we are done with the long winter. 

Rabbi, sorrow has mothered me 
And humiliation been my father, 
But neither the ways of the flesh 
Nor the pride of the spirit took me, 
And I am exalted in Israel 
For all that I know I do not know.

Now the end of my desire is death 
For my hour is almost come. 
I shall not say with Sarah 
That God hath made me to laugh, 
Nor the new word shall not be born 
Out of the dryness of my mouth.

Rabbi, let me go up from Egypt
With Moses to the wilderness of Sinai 
And to the country of the old Canaan 
Where, sweeter than honey, Sarah’s blood 
Darkens the cold cave in the field
And the wild seed of Abraham is cold.

--Howard Nemerov (1921-1991) US poet laureate 1963-1964 and 1988-1990, winner of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize, from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1977.

Related Scripture: John 3: 1-17, Lent 2A

Jesus and Nicodemus: Art for Lent 2A

Harold Copping, Nicodemus

James Tissot, Jesus and Nicodemus, from the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Jesuit House Iñigo, Bruges, Belgium, carving of  Jesus and  Nicodemus, 1880

Richard Hook, Jesus and Modern-day Nicodemus

Jesus and Nicodemus, Jesus Mafa

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, 1899

Henry Ossawa Tanner, study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, 1899

Henry Ossawa Tanner, another study for Nicodemus Visitn Jesus, 1899

The Call of Abraham

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country.’ ” --Genesis 12:1 

Talk about imperious. 
Without a by-your-leave, 
Or, may I presume? 
No previous contact, 
no letter of introduction, 
no greeting, 
just out of the blue 
this unknown God 
issues edicts. 

This is not a conversation. 
Am I a nobody 
to receive decrees 
from one whose name 
I do not know? 
And at our first encounter!

I have worshipped my own god. 
To you I have addressed no prayers, 
offered no sacrifices, 
asked no favors, 
but quick, 
like sudden fire in the desert, 
without the most elemental ritual, 
I hear “Go.”

At seventy-five, 
Am I supposed to scuttle my life, 
take that ancient wasteland, Sarai, 
place my thin arthritic bones 
upon the road 
to some mumbled nowhere?

Let me get this straight.
I will be brief. 
I summarize. 
In ten generations since the Flood 
you have spoken to no one.

You give commands: 
pull up my tent, 
desert my home, 
the graves of my ancestors, 
my friends next door, 
leave Haran 
for a country you do not name, 
there to be a stranger,
a sojourner.

God of the wilderness, 
from two desiccated lumps, 
from two parched prunes 
you promise to make a great nation. 
In me all peoples of the earth
will be blessed.

You come late, Lord, very late,
but my camels leave in the morning. 

-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB (1921- ), American monk, poet, and theologian at St. John's Abbey

Relevant Scripture: Genesis 12:1-4a, Lent 2A

Painting: Francesco Bassano, Abraham Leaves Haran, 1560-1592

Morning Hymn

Christ, whose glory fills the skies, 
Christ, the true, the only light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise, 
Triumph o’er the shades of night: 
Day-spring from on high, be near: 
Day-star, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn 
Unaccompanied by thee, 
Joyless is the day’s return, 
Till thy mercy’s beams I see; 
Till thy inward light impart, 
Glad my eyes, and warm my heart. 

Visit then this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin, and grief, 
Fill me, Radiancy Divine, 
Scatter all my unbelief, 
More and more thyself display, 
Shining to the perfect day.

- Charles Wesley (17907-1788), Anglican priest, poet, and musician, and one of the founders of Methodism

Related Scripture: Psalm 15, Epiphany 4A