O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill!
—Sequence for Pentecost

Dust, and will you stir me with your breath?
Dry bones, tinder for the flame,
waiting for that life beyond our death,
and for the one who speaks my name.

Tired heart, I long to beat again;
weary soul, I wait for light:
Long it is, the hoping until then,
‘til fire shall drive away my night.

In the limbo of the halfway-filled,
silent do I struggle on:
Undefeated, but my cries are stilled
within this hush before the dawn.

Faith this cannot be, nor is it doubt,
waiting for the strength to stand.
Wake, o light that cannot be put out!
This tinder’s ready at your hand!

Come, then, Spirit, to my spirit wan,
worn by apathy in strife.
Stir the embers kindled by the Son,
and breathe again in me his life.

Rushing wind, enliven without storms:
Stir up peace forever true.
Flame that every element transforms,
now burn me, wake me, make me new!

Took a late shot today. We all went to the store this afternoon, and I left my camera behind, didn’t get back until it was almost dark. We spent the rest of the night looking for fireflies (aka lightning bugs). June 15 195/366 By Rhett Maxwell – flame, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48392539

A restful meadow in a Texas spring
before the sun has scorched the green to gold
but restless with the creatures on the wing,
eyecatchers that no eye but God’s can hold;

a field of firewheels blazing in the sun
where blankets of bluebonnets spread their peace
and all the troubles of the world are done
except the labor of the mother bees,

their busy drone in every buttercup
and sanctus, sanctus sung by mockingbirds
with clatters as the mourning doves rise up,
such praise in every wing and every word:

This is the place where you refresh my soul
before we dare the canyon in its gloom,
mesquite trees sprouting thorns from every bole—
before that, let me see the wildflowers bloom.

And when we’ve passed the shadows, shepherd mine,
spread out your table in the live oak’s shade.
Pour me the chalice brimful with your wine
and break for me the bread your mercy made. Amen.

Vincent van Gogh – The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet – Google Art Project – Google Arts & Culture: Home – pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21856347

No mason worth his salt laid out these lines;
no architect designed these crooked roofs.
What midnight sky is this where no sun shines
and yet the flowers glow, the morning’s proofs?

Where was the Father when this church was made,
and by what miracle does it still stand?
The road before me plunges into shade—
oh, even there shall I be in your hand?

Keep, in your mercy, stone stacked upon stone.
The beauty that we try for, bless with grace.
The road we walk, let us not go alone
but comfort us with glimpses of your face. Amen.

When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
—Acts 1:1-11

So now a nothing meets our eye,
a gap between the earth and air.
Our Lord ascended to the sky
and we are all left standing there:

left looking for the one we lost
returned again then taken back—
the world a word that he had glossed
is now lacuna in our lack;

left waiting for what will not come,
our brother as we’d known him long—
the voice we loved has fallen dumb
and no more do we hear his song;

left yearning for his promises,
remembering the word he spoke
to send another friend to us
as real as was the bread he broke;

left staring at an empty hill,
yet through through this emptiness we grope—
his promised something comes to fill
the empty hands that reach for hope.

So now we wait for what he said
he’d send us from his Father’s hall
and find him in the broken bread—
left hoping, yet not left at all.

Ascension of Christ by Adriaen van Overbeke, c. 1510–1520 – https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/antwerp-school-circa-1510-1520-the-ascension-of-5790472-details.aspx, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83155533

[T]he Church fasts and prays in order to have less flesh by mortification, and by prayer to acquire wings, because prayer is the soul’s wing by which it flies to heaven. So the soul will be able freely to follow Christ in his ascent: he ascended, opening the road before us, and he flew on the wings of the winds. For a bird that has much flesh and little plumage cannot fly very well: consider, for instance, the ostrich.

–Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, ch. 70 “The Greater and Lesser Litanies”

Consider well the sparrow here
that neither sows nor reaps the seed
yet faces winter without fear
and know that God will meet its need;

the swallows in the Temple eaves
that swoop and dive and make their nest
in better shelter than the leaves
and at God’s altar take their rest;

but they that fly to heaven, you see,
are breath and prayer, are quick and light.
An ostrich in God’s aviary,
I cannot match their upward flight.

Nor can I, like the Spirit, move
upon the waters, skimming waves,
for I am not the wind-swift dove,
nor penguin that abysses braves.

The hawk that on the high wire preens
or up against the sun may glide,
velociraptors in its genes,
can dive to drive out sin and pride.;

and even vultures show their trust
in God’s provision, good and kind,
who ride upon the slightest gust
and eat what others leave behind;

but I can only turn and flee
or coward hide my head in sand.
What mercy there can be for me
must come like birdseed from God’s hand.

So he, unstinting pelican
who tore his breast to feed his chicks,
comes to his ostrich once again
who flies just like a load of bricks

and leads me where he first has stepped
along the way he first has known.
A better shepherd never shepped,
and he will lead me gently home.

And when you led them out into their freedom
a fiery pillar lit the midnight sky—
another wonder of your hand to lead them.
They walked into the sea and found it dry.

As bleached and barren as a sky in summer,
a fervent and an unrelenting sky
whose bluer deeps are drained, and when I plumb them
there’s nothing there but sand, empty and dry.

Where are the living waters of your mercy?
Where is the cloud in all this burning sky?
I walk through the abyss, and I am thirsty.
Send me the rain, O God, for I am dry.

Moses at the Red Sea by Aoki Shigeru – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46655431

Look. Sometimes, you decide to end the line with a ridiculous word because it fits the sense. And then you’re stuck for a ridiculous rhyme, so you look in the rhyming dictionary and find a word you’ve never seen, but you like it. So you look it up in the OED and–miracle of miracles–it fits the sense perfectly. So even though you usually try not to drop fifty-cent words in these things, you use it. It means “made of gold and ivory.”

I stumbled on the journey, Lord: You caught me
across the shins.  You always do.  I try
to carry out the precepts you have taught me—
I always fail.  Here in the dust I lie
beside my Lord, my God, my stumbling block,
where he will feed me honey from the rock.

And when he lifts me up as he has promised
it will be but to set me on himself,
for all the myriad mansions of our solace
in his pierced side have their foundations delved.
Our home is built on you, O cornerstone,
and someday I will rest on you alone.

And we shall be like you, be adamantine.
Though we are dust and unto dust return
you raise us up again chryselephantine
with gold that in the furnace did not burn.
‘Til then, O Christ, be dust with my dust here;
though I have fallen, Lord, be ever near.  Amen.

Crystalline Gold By Unknown author – Enhanced from resourcescommittee.house.gov/subcommittees/emr/usgsweb/photogallery/ (resourcescommittee.house.gov/subcommittees/emr/usgsweb/photogallery/images/Gold%203_jpg.jpg) [via Wayback Machine], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38780

Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
—John 14:15-21

What is the word for us except its keeping?
No ornamented columns to a facade
but piers sunk deep into the earth and deeper
until they strike the bedrock of our God.

And who can know the length of such a burrow?
The blind worm does not work by plan and chart
but digs ‘til all he does becomes a furrow.
As seeds spring up behind, he finds God’s heart.

So then I know this road but in the walking;
I only know my loves in loving them.
What does it matter that I walk in darkness?
This is the way to New Jerusalem.

We hold your word, a mystery unfolding,
and we unfold ourselves to its commands.
This road can lead me nowhere but your holding;
I walk the darkness cupped within your hands.

Vincent van Gogh – Wheatfield with crows – Google Art Project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22621755

You bade me hold my tongue, but I have spoken,
have wrenched the desert open at the seams
when I should not.  This silence I have broken,
and like the stone it pours out living streams.

I grumbled at the working of your mercy
and envied the contentment of the dead.
I cried out to you living, hungry, thirsty:
You made the waters flow and sent the bread.

And yet, O God, you led me to this desert
as you will lead me through the vale of gloom.
I know that even there I shall be sheltered;
then let me see you make this desert bloom.

Though I break faith as easily as silence,
you never once have broken faith with me,
for never have you sworn this road was trialless,
yet ever here beside me you shall be.

Oh, someday, maybe, I will learn to listen,
to wait for you in trust and not to speak,
yet when the sun and all the dead have risen
we’ll shout your praise from every mountain peak.

The iris burns blue flame beside the door,
but I have seen this miracle before.

The daffodils unfurl above the grass;
in truth, I hardly notice as I pass.

The amaryllis spreads its scarlet wide;
I have no echo blooming deep inside.

The tulip opens empty to the sky,
and so do I, my God, and so do I.

This is a picture of the Semper Augustus. This tulip is famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during the tulipomania in the Netherlands in the 17th century.By Unknown artist – Norton Simon Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=199488