I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. –-Luke 16:1-13
Lord, you give by your good measure more than we could ever ask, shaken down and packed together, overflowing in our laps: Good the earth we reach unknowing, good the glowing sun and rain, good the plowing and the sowing, good the ripening of the grain.
Lord, our hands are small and feeble— This is more than we can hold, yet you give us all and freely, filling us with wealth untold: Rich the soil beneath the shadows, rich the root and rich the vine, growing first and harvest after, rich the tasting of the wine.
Lord, we’re born in need and hunger; mercy like a flood released spills on us in joy and wonder. You have made the world a feast: Sweet the footsteps of the pilgrims coming here to break your bread; sweet the wine you give your children; sweet the new life from the dead.
Lord, you hold back nothing from us; all we have is of your gift. Joy becomes a solemn promise in the saving cup we lift: Good the bounty ever growing; rich the gifts we can’t repay; sweet it passes, overflowing from our hands to all this day.
I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment; I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me. —Philemon 9-10, 12-17
No man is born to be another’s slave if all are children of the only God. Naked we came, and naked to the grave we go—the very road our Master trod— and no one wields by right an unjust rod. But I have come back, Philemon, even so, and Paul says he will pay you what I owe.
He means to come here—so prepare a room— and sent me on ahead to serve his needs while yet we wait the coming of the Groom. We labor, both, repenting our past deeds, but not as slaves: as those who have been freed. He sent me back to ask you for a choice, but you can read it here in his own voice,
for he would not compel you as you did my service. Say those years are at an end. Are you surprised I ran from you and hid? Stole from you, too? But I will make amends, for we must be as brother and as friends. Yet I have nothing but the grace of God who rules me with a more forgiving rod
as he rules all men: mercifully slow to anger, rich in love more than a king. In him, I am not what I was, although I’m still the most unprofitable thing— yet apple of his eye, jewel in his ring— and he will make a way for me or Paul to pay you back, who pays back each for all.
Yet if I must, if you compel again and make me fetch and carry as I did to go one mile, I will go two miles then. Unwilling, I will do more than you bid, for there’s a mercy from all ages hid and it is this most willingly I seek. Strike me, and I will turn the other cheek,
but do not strike your servant, Philemon. Let us in Christ’s own name be reconciled, begin again as we mean to go on. I left this home a runaway and wild, returning now a man, no more a child. But the strongest under too much weight will crack. If not for Paul, I’d never have come back.
Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little. —Luke 7:36-50
I have no alabaster jar, no precious thing to give: A broken heart, a wincing scar, a tongue that cried, “Forgive!”
and even these have I held back, have kept and called them “mine” though in these fragments, seamed and cracked, you poured a new-made wine;
though I have drunk it—deeply drunk— and by that taste I live; but still this frightened heart has shrunk from bringing you a gift.
If I should dare approach you here, dare set aside my shame, still I have nothing but a tear to lay upon your flame.
And yet I love. And yet you are. Then I must be your bride, must be the alabaster jar, broken. Take what I hide.
The sin you’ve taken—take the grief with all from me that pours. Now from myself am I a thief, and what was mine is yours.
I lay it on you as a balm, this burden of the world; and weep again for what will come, my hair, my fears unfurled;
and you have not sent me away or pulled back from my touch, who know—better than I can say— you have forgiven much.
Come, Lord, as you came once into the dark from light beyond the wisdom of our eyes; come as before and blind us with a spark who sit here used to night’s unbroken skies. Come truth from truth, to sift us from our lies. We tell ourselves that we are good and true— Remove the beam and let us look at you:
Not just the righteous, children of the light, or those who say they’re not like other men; not just for those who seek you in the night, whose hearts remind them of your mercies then; not only for the sparrow and the wren, the innocent, you plunged beneath the flood, but for the monstrous, too, you shed your blood.
And still it flows, for we are monsters still— Could we be else when Abel had no sons? How many stones cry out, and yet we kill, deaf to the wails our forebear had begun? And you are there in every single one, where open-eyed before the firing squad you stand condemned again, O Lamb of God.
Here in the warzone, cratered in the earth; here on the posters—LOST—but never found; a mother weeps remembering a birth here where a child is lowered to the ground; here, spotless victim, must your grace abound where wrens and sparrows die and monsters live, where so much, so much begs you to forgive.
Not for the righteous—they need nothing else; not for the just who pay back what they owe; not for the good wage war against our hells; not for the innocent let mercy flow: Loose the chains, and let the condemned ones go. Have mercy, Lord, and blind us yet again: Grant us a peace beyond this monster’s ken.
Brothers and sisters: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. —Philippians 2:6-11
For God so loved, he poured himself: the Father to the Son— the fullness emptying itself— and Spirit, three-in-one.
There was no drop of love held back for one to claim his own. All giving all, there was no lack ‘til one stood off, alone;
who came, God-with-us by his birth; who hunger knows and loss: God’s fullness dwelling on the earth, alone, then, on the cross.
He did not grasp equality, but opened wide his hands and let the fullness, flowing free, pour out upon our sands.
For in the image of our God we all were empty then, but he restores what we had lost and makes us whole again.
Our emptiness filled with himself, God’s fullness in us poured: Now we pour forth from where he dwells, for God so loves the world.
–Prometheus Bound (tr. David Greene), lines 1026-1034
Just finished rereading Prometheus Bound, and read up a little on the lost sequel, Prometheus Unbound. It’s likely the latter included a scene between Gaia, Mother Earth, and her son Prometheus, to whom she had whispered all his wisdom. This is a riff on that idea:
I did not tell you everything I knew, my own Prometheus, far-sighted one— but what is left unspoken still comes due.
I told you what I wanted to be true: Mankind could not live long beneath the sun— I did not tell you everything I knew
but hoped for hopes I could not yet construe when you stole flame from where ambrosias run— but what is left unspoken still comes due.
The flame you gave to man his mind imbued with craft: A raging blaze your spark’s begun. I did not tell you everything I knew:
You should have left him witless, weak, and nude— He wove destruction from the thread you’d spun. But what is left unspoken still comes due.
‘Til God should fall to Hades, this is true: There is no saving man from what he’s done. I did not tell you everything I knew, but what is left unspoken still comes due.
When every strife and sorrow’s past that dog us as we roam, oh, may each pilgrim come at last to find himself back home,
to shelter from the world of woes upon his mother’s breast— a petal of the great white rose where Virgil comes to rest.
And when the final bridge is crossed, the final race is run, may all the ones we thought we’d lost be shining in that sun. Amen.
*****
She is the deep night’s farthest eastern edge where first a glimmer seeps into our skies of hope across unfathomable depths— from there, the sun of justice soon will rise.
As ordinary, though, as any dawn, familiar, daily contours of our lives: The sun comes up; of course the night is gone. Miraculous, each time the day arrives.
Dark Mary, spotted only by the stars, through you the glory of the Lord came forth: Pray that his sun may rise within our hearts, that in us, too, the savior may be born. Amen.
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” —Luke 14:25-33
Teach me to count the days aright I have upon this earth: How many morns and noontides bright run onward from my birth? One only, speeding toward the night— O God, what is that worth?
And everything that fills this day is slipping through my hands, even as the moments fall away. Not long do we withstand the ticking clock. I cannot stay; I fall—where will I land?
I can take nothing when I go: The loss will be complete, for all we really get to hold is the cross, and our defeat. Then take the ones I love, O Lord: I lay them at your feet!
I know not when the time will come, but I know the day will end, and so I give my precious ones— You’ll hold them all ‘til then, and when that night is past and done you’ll give them back again.
Kate Bluett 
