For today’s feast of Corpus Christi, I started with an idea I liked, and thought that approximating the meter of the sequence, Lauda, Sion, would be appropriate. (“Approximating, because I dropped a syllable from most lines. I’ve been doing a lot with unstressed line endings lately, and those require a two-syllable rhyme, and I wanted a break from that.) That resulted in the following:
See the table Christ has spread:
Soul and body, come, be fed.
How our shepherd cares for us!
Jesus, risen from the dead,
hidden in the wine and bread,
feeds our spirits and our dust.
He who came to share our pain,
cut down as the stalks of grain,
torn as vintage from the vine,
comes our living to sustain,
comes to be with us again,
gives himself in bread and wine.
Still he tends us, grain and fruit,
growing sapling, climbing shoot,
soil and water, sun and air.
Creeping tendril, searching root,
speak of heaven, seeming mute:
Mercy for us everywhere.
Who gives life to fallen seeds,
who the world's great hunger feeds,
plate and chalice overflow:
He who is and e'er shall be
all creation shall redeem,
highest heaven bending low.
And that’s… okay? I think it’s competent, for a congregational hymn. A bit stuffy, but sometimes a doctrinal focus does that to poetry. I wasn’t satisfied with it: It’s correct, but it doesn’t do anything for me. So I tried again, with more of focus on wonder than doctrine:
Not only bread and wine, but green and growing;
not only in the vintage, but the vine,
is Christ the root of hope in seed and sowing.
He touches every shoot with life divine.
Not just the harvest, but the germination;
not humankind alone, but humus, too:
There Christ the seed, redeeming all creation,
is sprouting now and making all things new.
So grape and grain are good ere they are gathered
or we have turned them into wine and bread.
Now Christ the vine has shared them with his branches:
We taste and see his life beyond our death.
He breaks the bread that he has made his body;
he pours the cup he poured himself into.
Come, take the meal and mercy that he offers,
for Christ our life has come to dwell with you.
I thought I was done, until I read it again this morning before typing it out. I like it better than the previous attempt: There’s wonder, and the syllables seem to overflow in a way that matches the grace I’m trying to talk about. It’s not so stiff and formal–there’s the human feeling along with the doctrinal correctness, so see, it’s better! But when I read it again, it felt like it lacked a personal encounter with the subject. It really all comes down to description. Okay. So I grabbed my pen, turned to a fresh page, and started over:
When I have come to you in wild-eyed wonder
to make a holocaust of my own flesh
(I've tried to bear a yoke that I broke under,
and then I hoped to offer you my death),
I've turned away from joy, embracing hunger:
You come to me, O Christ, and give me bread.
And then I come before you weak and shoddy,
unfit, it seems, to kneel there and adore
the sacrificial Lamb, unstained, unspotted.
A spotted kid who can be nothing more,
I hate myself and I despise this body:
You come to me, O Christ, and offer yours.
And how can I receive what you would give me?
How can I ever make your goodness mine
unless you heal me, Lord, not just forgive me?
But only say the word, O Word divine,
and I can take the gift, can take the living:
your blood and body hid as bread and wine.
This is personal. Honestly, it’s probably too personal, and may not make any sense, unless you also have a history of scrupulosity and disordered eating (even a full-blown eating disorder). So for offering the world a hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi, this ain’t it. But in the end, it says more of what I really want to say. I’m finding this is happening more and more: It’s taking me more drafts–wildly divergent drafts, in some cases–to get at what I really mean. And what I really mean isn’t necessarily useful for congregational song, which is where this whole journey started. I don’t know what any of that means for what I’m doing, and what I hope to do, but it’s where I am right now.
The body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. By R. and K. Wood – The Catholic Picture Dictionary, 1948, Garden City Books, by Harold A. Pfeiffer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134736113
Kate Bluett 