As for you, o holy brothers: the Lord came to send this fire on the earth, and he longs for it to burn boundlessly. I’m not so spiritually conceited as to presume that in feeding that fire I’ll add any heat to your own ragingly hot resolve. No. I do it so that you’ll influence the next generation more powerfully if you teach not by the dead sound of words but by your own living example, backed up by the advice of the best and most ancient elders.

Until now I’ve been tossed all around in a treacherous storm. Now it’s up to the spiritual breeze of your prayers to sweep me into the safe harbor of silence.

–John Cassian, The Conferences, 24.26.19, tr. Jamie Kreiner

Though I have written reams and reams of words
as here-and-gone-again as morning dew,
they yield no thirty-fold and house no birds.
Empty of all unless they’re full of you,
these lines are painted signs to say I YEARN,
just so much kindling, only fit to burn.

Set them aflame, O God, and let them rise
as incense disappearing in the air—
sweet savor, and man’s smudge against the skies,
and then a breeze, and they were never there.
But still you hold them in your memory
where they are burning in eternity.

O God, come to my aid; O Lord, make haste
to help me: All the noisiness of flame
is rushing wind and cracking wood laid waste,
but burned to embers then they blaze your name
in steadfast silence.  Take from me my word
and give me that the formless void first heard

and let it shape me, let it make me light
and heat as I am burned but not consumed
where there is no more darkness, no more night,
and flame is feather for a Spirit plumed
to shelter us beneath her fiery breast.
In burning silence may we find our rest.  Amen.

Magdalene with the Smoking Flame (c. 1640). Georges de La Tour (1593–1652) Oil on canvas, 117 x 92 cm (46 x 36.2 in). Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8872704

Let all the earth cry out to God with joy:
the hungry grasses pleading through the soil,
and, reaching further, flowers seeking sky
to consummate and wither by and by,
then concentrate their forces in the seed.
Let them cry out to heaven in their need.

Let all the earth, the soil itself, cry out.
The spring rains now, but soon is summer’s drought
when roots dig down to mine the ground for life
and leaves unfurl to a sky with sunlight rife.
All this, all this they draw into the seed,
the sun and rain God sends them for their need.

Cry out, O earth, ‘til winter silence comes.
Leaf falls, frost falls, snow falls and benumbs
all that still lives and all that silent sleeps,
and in that rest the seed its spring hope keeps
though it fell first.  Lie fearless there, O seed.
Though you are dumb, the good God hears your need.

Let all the earth cry out to God with joy,
with joy, though it be agony and toil,
the breaking and the hungry upward thrust
as living water courses through your dust.
This was the end of hoping, little seed;
this is new life. Cry out in joy your need.

Growing sprout in sand– By Evan Kirby evankirby2 – https://unsplash.com/photos/jl8x6XpE8Y4Image at the Wayback MachineGallery at the Wayback Machine, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61639164

So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
—John 10:1-10

All we, like sheep, had gone astray,
grown fangs and hunted after prey.
As if a lamb took up the sword,
so far we wandered from our Lord,
for we have followed after thieves
and, oh, our shepherd grieves, he grieves.

So he has clad himself in wool,
the very wolves of hell to fool.
They close their jaws upon the lamb
and swallow down the Great I AM;
now death devouring him shall die
and dawn shall break at last on high.

And in that morning we shall see
the wolves we had begun to be,
cast off the shaggy, ash-gray pelt,
and let him clothe us with himself
who bore our wool to be with us.
He will divinely gild our dust.

One hand on earth and one on heav’n,
he draws all things together then,
and when our winters all shall pass
the wolves shall turn and browse on grass.
Then wolf and lamb at last shall be
one springtime flock eternally.

Anton Mauve – Heide te Laren – http://www.rijksmuseum.nl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2606315

Let there be sunshine. Let there be silent rest
within my head that can’t stand silences.
Let there be peace in my unquiet breast
and, too, an end to my defiances,
my closed and empty fists slack at my sides
until the feast is laid upon the table.
Let there come forth from in me all that hides;
let there be welcome for it, make me able
to welcome what I cannot stand to see—
there in the bright sun let it take its place—
to bid it sit and break the bread with me
and learn to bless its strange, unlovely face
and know myself the enemy I bless,
the thief who’s broken into quiet places.
Let there be sunshine there. Let there be rest.
Let there be room for thieves within your graces,
there where we long to go though we are strangers
to you and to each other and ourselves.
Let there be somewhere free from death and dangers,
where peace comes as the dew and overvelvets
and all is still, and stillness is alive.
If this exists, let us someday arrive.

A meadow with dew in the morning By MrBenjo – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153645408

Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu
—“Sumer is icumen in”

What follows was spurred, first of all, by reading a footnote to an essay on the medieval English lyric “Sumer is icumen in,” on the use of “sumer” to mean “April,” not “summer.” It was spurred secondly by listening to “Sumer is icumen in” on YouTube and being struck especially by the lines quoted above: “Well singest thou, cuckoo; stop thou never now.”

Comes April, and the mourning doves
fill all its hours with falling note,
as cottonwood on breeze-breath moves
in the bright sun, a drifting mote.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

The wildflowers almost past their time
still bloom along the interstates,
and young men come into their prime,
impatient for the world that waits.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

Sing, ye doves, your falling notes;
days stretch out beneath the sun.
Tireless be your mournful throats:
Keep the spring that tries to run.
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu.

Summer comes when silence falls,
storms that turn the boys to men.
Keep the spring here with your calls.
When will April come again?
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu, cuccu.

‘Sumer is icumen in’ [Whole folio] ‘Sumer is icumen in’, a vocal composition for several voices; it is probably the most celebrated piece of English medieval music. The melody is one of the earliest known examples of what is now the major mode, and the earliest example of ground-bass. Besides the English secular text ‘Sumer is icumen in’, the melody is provided with a Latin sacred one ‘Perspice Christicola’, and it is the earliest known manuscript in which both secular and sacred words are written to the same piece of music. Catalogue entry: Harley MS 978- Illustrated catalogue – Online viewer (Info), CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31452995

Then the two recounted 
what had taken place on the way
and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
—Luke 24:13-35

We know you in the bread and in the breaking
who knew you in the cutting of the stalk,
the threshing floor.  The furnace heat of baking
was in our hearts who listened to you talk.
You took our brokenness and in the taking
you made the blind to see, the lame to walk.

And now the dead rise up to life eternal,
not as the green blade rises from the earth
to ripen gold and fall again a kernel,
but as a harvest from a barren dearth
to overwhelm the mere and mortal vernal.
Because you rose, the spring is all new birth.

We know the ordinariness of dying,
but you have turned all nature on its head:
The wheat had grown where buried seed was lying,
but now it sprouts out of the broken bread
and all the broken earth is glorifying,
for life himself’s alive and death is dead.

Supper at Emmaus (circa 1606) By Caravaggio – Pinacoteca di Brera – Self-scanned, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15219563

The startlement of iris in the garden,
which I forgot my husband planted there
a year ago, has written on the air
a signature in indigo and gold
to seal the declaration of our pardon.
Remember this, when summer comes to harden
forgiving earth wherein the bulbs unscrolled
surviving transplant and the winter’s cold,
these words that laid their fragile treasures bare
to changing skies even as the thunder sounds,
as if such gold once lost were easy found.
Yet easy found, impossible to keep,
is found again beyond the winter’s sleep
in the bright light where mercies still abound.

Irises, 1889, by Vincent van Gogh, J. Paul Getty Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=763619

The source of prayer, and like as not its answer;
the chasm into which we pour our needs:
the wayward child, the relative with cancer,
the broken that on brokenness still feeds,
the hopelessness when nothing comes of deeds;
and then the stillness out beyond despair.
If there’s a home of silence, it is there.

I’ve never been but in the dark past midnight
when there is nothing, nothing left to do
but wait the outcome already in mid-flight
a thousand miles away and lost to view.
The resignation then was all I knew,
no comfort, nothing I’d have labeled “peace,”
just heavy heartbeats I could not make cease.

And yet I feel at times a certain craving
even stronger than the pull of cigarettes
for seas beyond the storms of daily braving,
beyond the long doldrums of my regrets,
the surge of just deserts and swell of debts.
The urge for further seas tempts me to sail
where all is still and words—Oh, God!—must fail.

Out there where holiness seems most like madness,
where I have nothing, not even a boat,
naked, bereft of every sorrow and gladness,
and it is terrifying just to float
remembering, soundlessly, how someone wrote
all shall be well, all manner of thing be well,
and even if it won’t, all shall be well.

Saint Anne, Coptic tempera plaster wall painting from the 8th century By Anonymous (Faras) – Stanisław Lorentz, Tadeusz Dobrzeniecki, Krystyna Kęplicz, Monika Krajewska (1990). National Museum in Warsaw. Arkady. ISBN 83-213-3308-7, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1693497

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
—John 20:19-31

You bless the ones who have not seen,
who missed the spear’s edge cutting clean
between the ribs, nor heard the keen
of women at your cross,
but who believe you even so
and blindly follow where you go,
who were not there and cannot know
or reckon up the loss.

But we have seen you, risen Lord,
have seen the one we most adored
led out to slaughter, riven, gored
upon the gallows-tree,
and, oh, we see you suffer still
as Cain picks up a stone to kill
and Isaac lies upon a hill
nowhere near Calvary.

Poor Abel dies afresh each day,
and wolves rise up, the lambs to slay.
Have mercy on us, Lord, we pray
who see and so believe:
The world does what it always does, 
and you will daily suffer thus.
What blessing can there be for us
who see, and seeing, grieve?

Oh, let there be some mercy left
for those who see your body cleft
as we are hanging here for theft—
O Savior, hear our prayer!
Show us your wounded hands and side
and offer us a place to hide.
The narrow doorway open wide
and let us shelter there! Amen.

Plaque with Doubting Thomas, German (MET, 41.100.202) This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60896646

And we must go on in the midst of this,
leaving behind the anguish of the tomb,
leaving the breath of peace, sweet comfort’s kiss
enfolding us, and set off through the gloom
like travelers to Emmaus—racked with doubt,
unable to see the Lord, yet hearts afire—
into the valley with only one way out
asking for eagle’s wings and not to tire.

Camino de Emaús, by Lelio Orsi, 1560–1565- http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6802241