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May the mother of our savior
wrap her starry cloak around you—
this mercy, oh, we pray for—
‘til Christ has come and found you.

May the hands that held his body
tend you now, your wounds and sickness,
‘til Christ—oh, praise and laud him!—
restores you. Lord, come quickly!

May the voice that magnified him
whisper to you of his mercy
‘til Christ, though shadows hide him,
speak clearly in your thirsting.

Now may she who stood there weeping
at the cross of Calvary’s sorrow
give you into his keeping,
for Christ holds your tomorrow.

And may she who saw him living
because death could not constrain him
pray Christ, good and forgiving,
bring you into his reign then.
Amen.

The Madonna del Rosario (c. 6th century or earlier), perhaps the oldest icon of Mary in Rome. Medieval tradition held that this icon was painted by Luke the Evangelist. Photo By Asia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61627017

Amen, I say to you,
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
—Matthew 18:15-20

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What I have bound and what set free,
that I shall make my earth to be.
Here in my hands you put the key—
O God, be merciful to me.

Then let my selfishness be bound,
sequestered from the world around,
my anger under lock and key—
O God, be merciful to me.

And bind my pride in iron chains
(oh, give me strength to bear those pains)
and let repentance turn the key—
O God, be merciful to me.

But let the humble spirit go
to bring me low and still more low
enough to pass without a key—
O God, be merciful to me.

And let my love be free to roam
and in the end to lead me home.
Let love itself be lock and key—
O God, be merciful to me.

Give me the wisdom here to see
what I have bound that should be free,
what I have loosed that bound should be.
Let mercy only turn the key—
O God, be merciful to me.

Gate of Locks, Lima, Peru, January 2025, Photo By Grandmaster Huon – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157494076

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We wither as the grass
beneath your burning sun.
The blossom of our day must pass
when day itself is done

unless you make us green
beneath the burning light
no mortal eye has ever seen—
we cannot bear the sight.

We fade within the hour;
we vanish as the dew
and leave no trace of fruit or flower
unless your power renew.

For you, O God, are green.
Pour greenness on the shoots
that here against your mercy lean:
Fill us down to the roots!

And when, like us, the night
forever’s passed away,
oh, make us green to bear the light
of your eternal day!

O living light, be rain
as well as brilliant sun,
and bring us back to green again
when all our days are done!

Scivias, Cod. Sal. X,16, p. 4 By Hildegard of Bingen – http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/touch/salX16/#page/4, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81326012

For it is written:
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the learning of the learned I will set aside.
Where is the wise one?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?
—1 Corinthians 1:17-25

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You pick my wisdom all to pieces,
unravel every thread I’d wound
and woven in a silken thesis—
oh, soft the shroud that had me bound!
This cloak was fraying at the creases;
now it is tatters on the ground.

So now I stand here naked, threadbare
as Adam shameless under sky
or as the woman that he met there
in Eden where we learned to lie.
And now you hold me in a dead stare:
I am uncovered to your eye.

And all my life unwinding spoolish
unravels everything I’ve known.
My stubborn stitches, hooped and mulish,
have ruined all that I had sewn.
Where I was wise, you’ve made me foolish:
My wisdom now is you alone.

Then take the distaff up, O Weaver,
the earth your spindle since the drop,
and twist new hope, O Undeceiver,
while here you spin me like a top,
to clothe me now as your believer.
My Tailor, make of me your fop.

Eve spinning, the spindle in her right hand: Hunterian Psalter, ca 1170 (Glasgow University Library) By Anonymous – http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/psalter/psalterindex.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2549773

When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
—Luke 4:16-30

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We bring you to the crowning of the hill,
here on the heights where prophets come to see
and men look down upon their enemy,
and mean to kill.

A place like this showed Moses the promised land,
showed Abraham a ram caught in the thorns
and bound there by the curve of its own horns,
and so we stand.

But, quiet as the ending of the dawn,
you slip our grasp.  We cannot see you pass.
We stand here with the wind, the sky, the grass,
but you are gone.

Come back, O Lord, if such a thing can be,
if mercy could induce us to repent,
if judgment could, as mercy does, relent,
and let us see.

Aerial view of mesas in Monument Valley, on the Colorado Plateau By J Brew – originally posted to Flickr as Over Monument Valley, Navajo Nation, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9709328

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.
–Jeremiah 20:7-9

Then Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me. 
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
—Matthew 16:21-27

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But we believed in you, that you would save
the innocent and holy from the grave,
that you would heal the worthy, lift the poor,
and lead us on through heaven’s open door.
Instead you turn to face Jerusalem
and turn your sheep—where are you leading them?

A shepherd walking straight to the wolf’s jaws,
you let your lambs like gems adorn his claws.
Where is the sling to drive the wolf away?
Where are the rod and staff to shield his prey?
A cord to scourge the shepherd who has failed,
the crossbars where you let yourself be nailed.

I will not sing of you; I shut my mouth
‘til my bones burn like wildfire in a drouth
and I cannot endure my silence, Lord—
and yet your silence pierces like a sword.
With all the innocent you, too, are slain,
but why could mercy not have spared them pain?

I hold it in until I gasp for breath:
You did not come to save us from our death
but to transform it.  Though we try to flee,
the only world we have is Calvary.
The only earth spins on through gain and loss.
You came to share our pain and bear our cross.

Take up—but it already fills my hands—
and follow where the shepherd’s each step lands.
Accept the cross I fight against and find
a fountain for my burning heart and mind
wells up from barren wood and starts to pour.
Somehow the grave becomes the open door.

Glödbädd By Tobias Barkskog, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52965762

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I’m driving on a tire with a nail
between the treads and piercing through the belt.
It’s only just beginning now to fail,
the difference in its pressure barely felt.
The leak is slow and I can go for miles
before collapse’s catastrophic end,
and yet I’m low and sinking all the while,
the road a blind before me as it wends.
And still the journey’s nowhere near complete,
so I drive on, no word upon my lip,
no respite from the summer’s glare and heat
reflecting from the highway’s concrete strip.
How far there is to go, I could not say.
I grip the wheel, and in my heart I pray.

Still Life With Stone and Car, Sculpture by Jimmie Durham at Walsh Bay, Sydney, Photo By Whiteghost.ink – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48526040

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The grass has died and dried as tinder,
this heat a heavy weight as grief.
A spark could turn the world to cinder;
the stones cry out for some relief.

Long since, the garden flowers withered;
the hardened ground cracked to its depth.
All that was green has browned and blistered;
all that was hopeful bent and wept.

But tears and sap evaporated
or fled to refuge at the root.
How long they wait; how long we’ve waited
desiccated, destitute.

O Lord, come down and rend the heavens:
Let streams of storm-clouds be unfurled.
Defeat despair with startling weapons:
not wrath but mercy.  Flood the world.

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and
he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 
—Matthew 16:13-20

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The ever-here, though I would fly from you
as swift as shadow, brief as morning dew
on wings of eagles or the legs of hares
or comet’s flashing in the upper airs
or by the breaking of my mortal frame,
still you are with me, and you speak my name.

And yet remote, immovable you are,
as cold and constant as the compass star
that though I follow I will never touch;
divine and other, you are ever such.
I fly from you, but then toward me you yearn;
you freeze me out, but then for you I burn.

Between these poles, as far as north from south
you reach and fill, a gushing river’s mouth,
yet you remain as far as east from west
and leave the desert places bare, unblest.
You heal my wounds, but still I bleed and bleed;
I hunger for you even as I feed.

But there will come a moment at the end
when stars touch earth, when you will come to mend
all things, and then the desert lands will bloom
and light will fill my farthest reaches’ gloom.
Until then, near and ever, ever far
all that I know, O Lord, is that you are.

Polaris, its surrounding integrated flux nebula, and NGC188 By Kush.Chandaria – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108074228

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My son is singing as he packs for college,
and I am silent, listening.  The days
I sang to him, boxed up in all this haulage,
will go with him on his unfolding ways,
forgotten, mostly, in his quest for knowledge,
but buried where the homing instinct stays.

My son is singing songs of old I taught him,
the way a fledgling sings to see the sky
as summer rounds the back stretch into autumn,
so much of joy and freedom in the cry,
so eager to cast off the nest that caught him
and test his wings.  O God, may he fly high!

My son is singing, music ringing brightly
from songs I shared with him or those he found
on his reconnaissance.  The notes fall lightly
as nestling down in air.  These rooms resound
until he packs the car, and I pray nightly
they follow him to his new nesting ground.

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I even now would shield you from all harms;
how could I not, who carried you so long,
the weight of you forever in my arms,
my lips still lilting lullabies of song?

I cannot hold you now or hold you back;
my songs no longer echo in your ears,
although they sound in mine: A constant track
accompanies a world of newfound fears.

Now you are going where I cannot trail
and shouldn’t try.  Be careful, O my sons.
You go where you will fall, where you will fail,
and I can’t pick you up as I did once.

But still my arms are wrapped around the shades,
the memories I lift, caressing you
where you are not.  Though all else fades,
I feel that weight of you at one or two

before you got too big for me to lift.
When you are gone, I sit and hold you yet.
Greater than gold, the mass of you, the gift.
My mind may slip; my arms will not forget.