“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” —Matthew 6:5-6
It would be easier, O Lord, to stand there on the corner, to shout my prayer, take my reward, let deeper things lie dormant.
But you’re not waiting on the street to see my prayers are frequent. It’s in an inner room we meet, in silence and in secret.
How long since I have been there, though? The air is stale, neglected. I am ashamed to let you know— how dreary, how dejected.
I have not made a place for you, yet you are here, regardless, inviting me, enkindling too a light within my darkness.
And by that light you look on me; you call me out of hiding. Though I’m ashamed to let you see, I’m drawn to your abiding.
Then I will sit here with you, Lord, and cast off fear and fetter. Your presence shall be my reward— I ask for nothing better.
The wind still rustles last year’s withered grasses, and new rain falls in this old pond to dredge the sediment, as one more winter passes. These eggs will hatch as hawks hunt last year’s fledge.
The days are warming, rising updrafts swelling to lift the vultures high on lazy wings: They will descend again, their flesh compelling, yet as they feast a mockingbird still sings.
Some seeds have sprouted; others decomposing are making rich the springtime’s luscious bed. New leaves are opening on winter’s closing; new lives come bursting out among the dead.
The hungry hawk cannot be always flying; he, too, will topple lifeless to the earth. The mightiest must face the day of dying; the smallest are yet ground for spring’s new birth.
A darkness briefly covers springing clover, a shadow intermingled with bright day where swift the hungry kestrel passes over before it, like the grass, shall pass away.
Illustration of Falco sparverius Linnaeus: American kestrel by Ann Lee painted between 1770 and 1800 – Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145545440 Released CC0 by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in collaboration with the GLAM-E Lab
Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” —Matthew 5:17-37
Wisdom from before the ages, precepts written still to bless, secrets hidden from the sages: How shall we know righteousness? These you lay before us, Father, jot and tittle all complete. Every son and every daughter chooses death or death’s defeat.
Nothing, then, could be more urgent than a thirst for righteousness. If we are, as you are, perfect, you, O Lord, will see and bless. Yet we are not perfect, Father— all our efforts incomplete. Feeble son and faulty daughter: Shall our death be our defeat?
You have taught us of the kingdom; teach us more of righteousness. Let that knowledge in us deepen, “yes” become a greater “yes.” Shall we enter in, O Father? May your mercy be complete. Spare your sons and spare your daughters: Let your life our deaths defeat.
Uncanny, how much bread dough feels like flesh, like dust inhabited by something else arising, softening from stone to life, made ready for the tearing and the knife. And yet we come back to the kneading trough as to the table: Needs we can’t shake off, to make, to break, to love each other still, confessing hungers we can never fill until the heart that drives them stops its beat. But we’re alive today. I made bread. Eat, and find a moment’s satisfaction here. It is enough, right now, that you are near, this bread, this meal between us as a vow: Though we will break (we know not when or how) we will believe the feast was worth the fall. We will hold on, though bound to lose it all until the day we meet on a far shore where feast is all and famine is no more. O God, come down and bless this breaking bread, and take us where true hungers all are fed.
And did you come to love them— you took this tithe of mud just to give it up then— your body and your blood?
But did you never treasure, in all your thirty years, the feasting with its pleasures; the great release of tears;
the ache of muscles wearied by good and honest work; day’s sweat with sunset nearing, and water after thirst;
the hands of those who love you on shoulders, arms, and face; and birdsong up above you in landscapes lit by grace?
O Lord, you gave your body— the heart with all its strife, the breath escaping softly— when you gave up your life;
then bless the ones you gave us all formed of Eden’s mud, and soul and body save us, for you have called us “good.” Amen.
Pietà (1498–1499), by Michaelangelo. St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City By Stanislav Traykov – Edited version of (cloned object out of background) Image:Michelangelo’s Pieta 5450 cropncleaned.jpg), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3653602
You did the research, did the best you could, but still the end was nothing like you planned. You worked, and nothing worked out as it should. So much of life is holding your own hand,
but every now and then there’s someone else whose hand fits into yours, and it is grace to be no more alone in each day’s knells. But oftener it’s on our own we face
the little shames, and disappointment’s stings, the promise and the moment we default to selfishness, or else the thousand things that make us generous, and all that makes us halt.
But always there’s the cloak of heaven’s blue that sweeps down from her shoulders like a sky. Its shifting lights and folds have naught to do with what we did, or failed, or failed to try.
As when I stand regretting some small choice, some right turn in a left-hand labyrinth, and find—as if her homeward-calling voice— in my dead-end a breeze of hyacinth.
So tenderly she mantles us about that hardly ever do we see her face, just points us onward, even through our doubt, and whispers closely, “There is always grace.”
If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. —Isaiah 58:7-10
O Lord, my light is darkened from what it once had been. Too long, I know, I’ve hearkened to desperation’s din. My heart is all too hardened, my hand too used to sin, but that I may be pardoned, come kindle me again.
Your bread is for the hungry, and I have eaten well; your wine pours out upon me, and I have drunk my fill. May I share your abundance with those who hunger still, and may I pour out comfort, and thus your mercies tell.
O Shepherd, come and find me; my weary heart renew and ever walk beside me. Show me the pathway true: To share my riches widely, your works of love to do, then shall the light shine brightly that is a glint of you.
光る海 (Hikaru umi, “the sparkling sea”). Full color woodblock print by Hiroshi Yoshida showing two sailboats under full sail, from the series: Setonaikai shū (瀬戸内海集) – A series of ocean views at Seto, 1926. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID jpd.02224.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11159964
For who can bear consuming fire, or who can stand the lasting flame? I prayed you would my heart inspire, but cringed away each time you came. Your light, O God, is my desire, but light and heat are one and same.
You ask of me no holocaust, and to your mercy I would turn, would count the wicked world well lost if it were all your flame would burn. You ask my heart, unfit and drossed; this gift alone you will not spurn.
To burn away impurities, burn off the chaff that you would sift: What am I left with after these are gone? No holy hands I lift. Will you destroy the heart you seize and burn to ashes this poor gift?
I pile up others in its place and offer all else to your flare to beg you for a colder grace. I say my office, make my prayer, and turn away, Lord, from your face, hold back the heart that does not dare.
I know, O God, I am a fool and burn already with the shame, for, fadeless light, you are not cruel. Your tongues of fire still call my name. Burn gently as the years unspool, ‘til I become not fuel but flame.
Sometimes the liturgical calendar and the books I’m reading line up—not always as expected. Yesterday was the feast of Candlemas, the Presentation in the Temple, or the Purification of the Virgin (same feast, different names). I’ve been reading Ovid, and yesterday was also the day I came across this passage, from the story of the rape of Prosperina:
Meanwhile Prosperpina’s mother anxiously searched for her daughter over the world, by land and by ocean, but all to no purpose. Neither the dewy dawn nor the evening star ever found her at rest. She lit two torches of pine in Etna’s volcano and bore them in either hand to illuminate her sleepless way through the darkness of frosty night. --Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 5, lines 438-443, tr. David Raeburn
I don’t remember seeing this detail before (though I had read the Metamorphoses ages ago), and I though it could be turned into something Christmas-y. But then I opened Jocobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, which I’m trying to read through approximately according to the liturgical year, and reading about yesterday’s feast. I cam across this gem, discussing the origin of the procession with lighted candles that is part of the Candlemas liturgy:
Pope Innocent observes that the Roman wives observed a feast of lights that had its origin in some poets’ fables, according to which Proserpina was so beautiful that the god Pluto, smitten with desire, abducted her and made her a goddess. Her kinsmen sought her for a long time through the forests and woodlands with torches and lanterns, and the Roman wives imitated this, going about with torches and candles. Since it is hard to relinquish such customs and the Christians, converted from paganism, had difficulty giving them up, Pope Sergius transmuted them, decreeing that the faithful should honor the holy mother of the Lord on this day by lighting up the whole world with lamps and candles. Thus the Roman celebration survived but with an altered meaning. –Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, “The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” tr. William Granger Ryan
So the idea moved from being just a Christmas idea to being a Candlemas idea, and here it is:
The earth is withered in the grip of winter since Ceres lost her daughter on the green, but she has searched the hither lands and hinter, yet no one knows, and nothing has been seen of her whom Death has made his marble queen, so all things weep, for all of us are injured.
Still Ceres walks; her grief is unabating. She cannot rest, not though deep midnight falls like Death itself, all mortal woes cessating— but she, divine, its stillness merely galls. Bright torches lit, as if to fill glad halls, she carries on her searching and her hating.
And so a light moves on across the darkness, and wise men weep to recognize its claim: That we shall not escape this mortal hardship ‘til life from Death’s own hold blows out the flame as Ceres stalks and calls her daughter’s name and tender heart takes on a mountain starkness.
Take up these lights and bear them to the altar: The seed will fall to earth; the grain grow ripe; stone hearts turn flesh and ice turn back to water; and all this grieving darkness be made bright; and Dis itself be filled with burning light that comes to free each captive son and daughter.
Kate Bluett 
