Threads

When this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about:
            Death is swallowed up in victory.
                        Where, O death, is your victory?
                        Where, O death, is your sting?
—I Corinthians 15:54-58

I will wear out like a garment,
growing tattered, getting torn.
Though, my God, you spun and carded,
wove my threads ere I was born,
yet your work shall come unravelled,
picked apart by careless hands,
stained by everywhere I've travelled
as I seek the promised land.

Take and wash me, smudged and spotted,
in your everflowing stream.
When you draw me from the water,
then at last I will be clean.
But you will not patch these tatters
when this cloak is all worn through,
piecing fullness where I'm ragged—
You will weave my threads anew.

I am meager; I am mortal,
quickly worn out in the strife.
Clothe me then in what's immortal,
and I'll enter into life.
Death is swallowed up in vict'ry,
in the shroud of Christ the Son.
I am sewn into your myst'ry,
in the seamless life you've spun.

Weaver, Nürnberg, c. 1425 By Anonymous – Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°, via http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13129819

Generous

As from your hand all graces flow,
pour down the rain and sun 
to make a goodly harvest grow
when sorrow's planting's done.

Pour down the health and strength, O God,
that let us work the ground,
for thistles choke the shallow sod
and thorns have held us bound.

We sink our hands into the soil
but do not work alone:
O, bless our longing and our toil
and all that shall be grown.

Give us the blade and then the ear,
the ear and then the grain,
that we may know, in spite of fear,
we labor not in vain.

Give us the long-lived sumer days
when green may ripen gold,
and keep us ever in your ways,
for soon the nights turn cold.

And when the harvest time has come,
be generous, O Lord,
that when the winter winds benumb
we'll feast on our reward.

Wheat field in Vampula, Finland. By kallerna – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123191323

You Could Have Walked the Jordan

You could have walked the Jordan
as once you walked the waves
like solid ground before you
above our countless graves,
and steadfast on the waters
you had no need to dive.
Though all before had faltered,
you could have stayed alive.

For since the days of Noah
we had been deep in flood;
since Eden, even older,
our ways have drowned in blood.
Yet Jordan's waters cleansed us
and freed us from our sin.
But death is still relentless:
We swim and sink again.

Though Jordan would have parted,
laid dry land at your feet,
you sank like Pharaoh's army
where Adam lies with Eve
and all their sons and daughters
since Satan fell from heav'n—
and up out of those waters
you bring them back again.

The Baptism of Christ, Aert de Gelder, c. 1710 – http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6893009

When Adam’s Sons Lay Drowning

After all the people had been baptized
and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,
heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him
in bodily form like a dove.
And a voice came from heaven,
“You are my beloved Son;
with you I am well pleased.”
—Luke 3:21-22

When Adam's sons lay drowning,
the rushing flood their grave,
came God's son deeper sounding
beneath the rising wave
to sink below Eve's daughters
all lost in storm and strife
and lift us from the waters,
to bring us back to life.

For we are dust and ashes
and cannot breast the tide.
So deep is his compassion
Christ jumps in at our side,
and plunging into Jordan
with nothing to repent,
accepts what lies before him
and plunges into death.

Come up, O sons of Adam,
come up out of your graves:
He reaches out his hand now
to bear you on the waves.
Come up, all you Eve's daughters;
stand with him on the foam,
for he has walked these waters
and he will bring you home.

Eastern Orthodox icon By Unknown author – http://www.svetigora.com/node/906, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3752815

I Cannot Keep Awake

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life,
and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
For that day will assault everyone
who lives on the face of the earth.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.”
—Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

My eyes will not stay open;
I cannot keep awake,
but trust what you have spoken
that swiftly comes the day

when you will come restoring,
come bringing exiles home.
I may not be here for it,
but I wait, even so.

The memories we carry,
old sorrows we still weep
like seeds the winter buried,
not dead but fast asleep,

with Jesse's stump forgotten
yet watered by the dew—
all that we lost shall blossom,
becoming something new.

The fruit we stole in Eden
and Cain's rejected sheaves,
their shoots will grow like weeds then
into your mercy's feast.

And if I cannot see it,
if I am buried deep,
yet you will come, Redeemer,
to wake me from my sleep.

Detail of Jesse from the Stained Glass window of All Saints Church, Hove, Sussex. England, Photo By Malcolmlow, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64575403

Kings of Earth

Riffing on Psalm 33:

Kings of earth call up their armies;
warriors sharpen spear and sword.
God moves earth and sea, disarming;
empires fall before the Lord.

Let the heart still hold its secrets;
let the plotting mind still plan.
God who made them holds their seasons;
they shall not extend their span.

Human strength avails us nothing:
Chariots sink into the sea;
weapons crumble, scarred and rusted;
all our tow'rs shall toppled be.

What will last? The stars o'erreaching.
What goes on? The ocean waves.
What stands firm? The earth beneath us,
while our mortal dust decays.

Even these shall cease their turning,
falling into entropy,
yet shall God in endless mercy
make his children still to be.

Kings and princes plot their vengeance
sinking in oblivion.
Still in God our hope is endless:
Mercy flows forever on.

Discarded and Forgotten, in DüsseldorfBy marsupium photography – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hagdorned/9291943561/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57468833

Mantle

To those who stand on corners
or walk the highways out,
to those who sleep in doorways,
reach out your mantle now
and drape it as a shelter
across the unkind earth,
a tent of finest velvet
for those who sleep on dirt.

Reach out to them, O Mary
apparelled in the sun,
the hounded and the harried,
and hide them from the guns.
See those in need of rescue
and spread for them your cloak
to be a sky-blue refuge
that screens them from the foe.

O Mother, now behold them,
the weary and the poor,
and in your arms enfold them 
where once you held the Lord,
to shield them from the Herods—
O, bear them safe away
beyond the reach of terror
to live another day.

The Ravensburger Schutzmantelmadonna, c. 1480, attributed to Michel Erhart, painted limewood, Bode Museum, Berlin. Attributed to Michel Erhart – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2293730

Bone of Our Bones

So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man,
and while he was asleep,
he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib
that he had taken from the man.
When he brought her to the man, the man said:
   “This one, at last, is bone of my bones
       and flesh of my flesh;
   this one shall be called ‘woman, ‘
       for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother
and clings to his wife,
and the two of them become one flesh.
—Genesis 2:18-24

We come from the dust of the earth,
and back to the dust we shall go
as naked at death as at birth;
our hands shall be empty once more.

So Adam from Eden came forth
to live by the sweat of his brow,
to wrestle with thistle and thorn
until he was laid in the ground.

But, oh, not alone shall he lie,
nor Eve shall not lie there alone,
for sprung from them both came the Christ:
In him all their sorrows are known.

He came to be shaped of the dust
and born of his mother in blood,
to share all our striving with us
and go back again to the mud.

For he is the bone of our bones,
and he is the flesh of our flesh.
No more do we walk on unknown,
but he bears our life and our death

to open the eyes of our hearts
and raise us again to new life
as sinless as back at the start,
to make us forever his bride.

Adam and Eve depicted in a mural in Abreha wa Atsbeha Church, Ethiopia, Photo By Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27934949

The Dying and the Dead

O Son of Heaven, only lord of life,
I offer you the dying and the dead:
the man who turns from burying his wife
to hear his doctor say the cancer's spread,
the children falling silently to earth
in cracks and crevices of toppled stone,
the mother who will not survive the birth,
the young man once more eating all alone.
Take them, O Lord, in venerable hands—
the labor of our hands, the bent world's fruit—
take all the grief and death, O Sorrow's Man:
“This is my body given up for you.”
For we all bow our heads and feast on dust;
we all will drink the cup of bitter tears.
O, take this dented chalice and these crusts
and crawl into each crumb, each drop of fear,
each block of rubble burying the lost,
each cancer cell, each blade that rends the flesh,
each prison wall, each bullet, every cross,
and all the myriad doorways into death:
Imbue them with yourself, O God who bleeds;
take as your skin the many silent roads,
drawn out so every line to your heart leads,
and drown death in your pulse's ebb and flow.
Then we will eat your flesh and drink your blood
in that one meal where all of us take part
until the tide has turned in mercy's flood
and we live on forever in your heart.