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