I wish I knew what the centurion knew
who took authority as solid fact
and recognized the rank he saw in you:
I wish I had his faith that you would act,

for I have prayed—“I am not worthy, Lord”—
that all the hungry may at last be filled,
the mighty cast down—only say the word!—
and clamor of our wars forever stilled.

The martial drumbeat sounds with every dawn
and marches on as regular as day.
To those who have, more good is battened on;
from those who have not, all is ta’en away.

Just say the word, O God, and fill these shelves:
Make pantries with your plenty overflow.
Come fill our tables—O, come fill our selves!—
for you have promised us it would be so.

Then give me faith to trust that you will speak,
that you have seen the empty, aching hands
and mean to fill them with the good they seek—
while all the evidence against you stands.

And give me ears to hear you tell me, “Go.”
Give me a willingness as I am sent,
whether to reap the fields or cast and sow
or let my sword into your plow be bent.

And let me someday hear you tell me, “Come.”
I’ve brought my loaves and fishes to the feast;
I did my work, and said, “Your will be done.”
Help me to trust that I will taste and see.

Follow a New York City street
beneath a January sky,
the steel-gray concrete at your feet;
an old church clock tower looming high

rings out the sudden mark of time,
the day half-waned and flying fast.
Though everyone ignores the chime,
one man shouts out as he goes past,

“Shut up, you bastard! Just shut up!
You took my father first, you took
my brother—” doesn't miss a step—
“and now you're taking me!”  Don't look,

though you can't help but wonder if
he knows what no one else will tell.
Alone among a crowd that drifts,
he rails against the tolling bell.

His spittle flying toward the clock,
he comes on perpendicular
to cross the pavement where you walk—
falls silent, finished as the hour.

God bless whatever came of him—
the anguish that you can't forget,
the scene refusing to dislimn.
The old church clock is ticking yet.

Trinity Church c. 1900 By Unknown author – Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University ([1])., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8097329

On the very night before Herod was to bring him to trial,
Peter, secured by double chains,
was sleeping between two soldiers,
while outside the door guards kept watch on the prison.
Suddenly the angel of the Lord stood by him
and a light shone in the cell.
He tapped Peter on the side and awakened him, saying,
“Get up quickly.”
The chains fell from his wrists.
The angel said to him, “Put on your belt and your sandals.”
He did so.
Then he said to him, “Put on your cloak and follow me.”
—Acts 12:1-11

Four guards on each, my hands and feet,
they locked me in a prison cell,
'til I'd be called to judgment's seat,
and shackled me as evening fell.

He'd told us, Take no second cloak,
but take the road just as you stand:
The place where I don't want to go,
that's where this jorney has to end.

So I lay down upon the floor
and knew I could do nothing else
than what I'd been arrested for.
To leave off was to leave myself.

And in that darkest place, a light:
My chains fell noiseless to the floor.
A man stood there in silence bright;
we walked through every bolted door.

He left me in an alley, then,
as Jesus left us on a hill,
and until I see him again
I will proclaim his mercies still.

13 Estancia de Heliodoro (Liberación de San Pedro)By Raphael – See below., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16019841

Combining today’s readings on the Good Shepherd with this Sunday’s readings in which Paul competes well for the faith:

On those who can't complete the race,
have mercy, Lamb of God.
For those who cannot keep the faith
lift up your staff and rod.
On all those lost along the way,
who wait to see the break of day,
or who stand here in need of grace,
have mercy, Lamb of God.

On those who fled in cloud and dark,
have mercy, shepherd Christ.
Whom fear has driven far apart,
let them be reconciled.
Seek them beneath the moon and stars
and bring them to the burning spark
that shines forever from your heart
of mercy, shepherd Christ.

On those who can no more withstand,
O Lamb of God, grant peace.
Whose bodies sink on Jordan's strand—
Oh, let their striving cease!—
or trembling now before you stand
and know their time is close at hand,
who long to see the promised land,
O Lamb of God, grant peace.

Agnus Dei c. 1635–1640, by Francisco de Zurbarán, Prado Museum – http://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/online-gallery/on-line-gallery/obra/agnus-dei-the-lamb-of-god/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160338

O God of plans and promises,
your children shine like stars,
and they should be as numberless
and fill the empty dark.

I grew up in the city, Lord;
I could not see the good
in promising a light no more
than starshine where I stood.

But we drove out beyond the lights
to see a meteor shower,
and lost count of the trailing brights
that passed above each hour.

We lay there in the cold and dark
and watched the shadows lift,
each one of us a shining star,
a promise and a gift.

We all came back to separate trails,
how many years gone by?
And now another comet's tail
has fallen from the sky.

O, let it be, God, let it be
that fallen is not gone,
that every star we cannot see
still shines, lost in the dawn.

In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2017/08/03/the-greatest-meteor-show-of-all-time/

I shared a version of this in my last post, and realized shortly after hitting “publish” that it needed revision. Luckily, a reader over on Substack (you should check out her work there) commented, showing me the way forward:

When I have come to you in wild-eyed wonder
to make a holocaust of my own flesh
(I tried to bear a yoke that I broke under,
and then I hoped to offer you my death),
I've turned away from joy, embracing hunger:
You come to me, O Christ, and give me bread.

And then I come before you weak and shoddy,
unfit, it seems, to kneel there and adore
the sacrificial Lamb, unstained, unspotted.
A spotted kid who can be nothing more,
I hate myself and I despise this body:
You come to me, O Christ, and offer yours.

And what is this you lay before me gently?
The goodness of the world that you have made,
the dust of Eden still with Spirit's breath in't,
the form and food you first to Adam gave:
Gifts from your hand, now in your hands a blessing,
fruit of the earth, flesh of our flesh you take.

So you become their sprouting, greening, dying,
as you become my weakness and my shame.
You bear the grape, and bear me up, entwining
all that you are with this poor mortal frame.
You graft me in, a branch upon the vine here,
and at your table I am unashamed.

The body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. By R. and K. Wood – The Catholic Picture Dictionary, 1948, Garden City Books, by Harold A. Pfeiffer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134736113

For today’s feast of Corpus Christi, I started with an idea I liked, and thought that approximating the meter of the sequence, Lauda, Sion, would be appropriate. (“Approximating, because I dropped a syllable from most lines. I’ve been doing a lot with unstressed line endings lately, and those require a two-syllable rhyme, and I wanted a break from that.) That resulted in the following:

See the table Christ has spread:
Soul and body, come, be fed.
How our shepherd cares for us!
Jesus, risen from the dead,
hidden in the wine and bread,
feeds our spirits and our dust.

He who came to share our pain,
cut down as the stalks of grain,
torn as vintage from the vine,
comes our living to sustain,
comes to be with us again,
gives himself in bread and wine.

Still he tends us, grain and fruit,
growing sapling, climbing shoot,
soil and water, sun and air.
Creeping tendril, searching root,
speak of heaven, seeming mute:
Mercy for us everywhere.

Who gives life to fallen seeds,
who the world's great hunger feeds,
plate and chalice overflow:
He who is and e'er shall be
all creation shall redeem,
highest heaven bending low.

And that’s… okay? I think it’s competent, for a congregational hymn. A bit stuffy, but sometimes a doctrinal focus does that to poetry. I wasn’t satisfied with it: It’s correct, but it doesn’t do anything for me. So I tried again, with more of focus on wonder than doctrine:

Not only bread and wine, but green and growing;
not only in the vintage, but the vine,
is Christ the root of hope in seed and sowing.
He touches every shoot with life divine.

Not just the harvest, but the germination;
not humankind alone, but humus, too:
There Christ the seed, redeeming all creation,
is sprouting now and making all things new.

So grape and grain are good ere they are gathered
or we have turned them into wine and bread.
Now Christ the vine has shared them with his branches:
We taste and see his life beyond our death.

He breaks the bread that he has made his body;
he pours the cup he poured himself into.
Come, take the meal and mercy that he offers,
for Christ our life has come to dwell with you.

I thought I was done, until I read it again this morning before typing it out. I like it better than the previous attempt: There’s wonder, and the syllables seem to overflow in a way that matches the grace I’m trying to talk about. It’s not so stiff and formal–there’s the human feeling along with the doctrinal correctness, so see, it’s better! But when I read it again, it felt like it lacked a personal encounter with the subject. It really all comes down to description. Okay. So I grabbed my pen, turned to a fresh page, and started over:

When I have come to you in wild-eyed wonder
to make a holocaust of my own flesh
(I've tried to bear a yoke that I broke under,
and then I hoped to offer you my death),
I've turned away from joy, embracing hunger:
You come to me, O Christ, and give me bread.

And then I come before you weak and shoddy,
unfit, it seems, to kneel there and adore
the sacrificial Lamb, unstained, unspotted.
A spotted kid who can be nothing more,
I hate myself and I despise this body:
You come to me, O Christ, and offer yours.

And how can I receive what you would give me?
How can I ever make your goodness mine
unless you heal me, Lord, not just forgive me?
But only say the word, O Word divine,
and I can take the gift, can take the living:
your blood and body hid as bread and wine.

This is personal. Honestly, it’s probably too personal, and may not make any sense, unless you also have a history of scrupulosity and disordered eating (even a full-blown eating disorder). So for offering the world a hymn for the feast of Corpus Christi, this ain’t it. But in the end, it says more of what I really want to say. I’m finding this is happening more and more: It’s taking me more drafts–wildly divergent drafts, in some cases–to get at what I really mean. And what I really mean isn’t necessarily useful for congregational song, which is where this whole journey started. I don’t know what any of that means for what I’m doing, and what I hope to do, but it’s where I am right now.

The body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. By R. and K. Wood – The Catholic Picture Dictionary, 1948, Garden City Books, by Harold A. Pfeiffer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134736113

The longest day, when balance shifts,
the year worn halfway through;
someday this endless heat will lift
and bleached-bone skies be blue.

The springtime will be young once more—
a chance we never get—
when winter evens up the score
and cancels summer's debts.

This spendthrift season racks them up
until its days run out;
it drinks the dregs of every cup
and leaves us only drought,

then winter comes to fill the lakes
while spring sleeps underground.
But there are things the summer takes
that never will be found

until the summers do not burn
and winters do not freeze,
until the years no more shall turn
but counterpoise in peace.

Though now we weep for what is lost
to every old year's spin,
someday in perfect equinox
it shall be found again.

Summer Solstice Sunrise over Stonehenge 2005 Photograph Andrew Dunn, 21 June 2005. CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=195581

God bless all travelers now,
for soon they must be gone.
The road waits not a single hour
but even now runs on.

What they go out to find—
pursued, or to pursue—
give strength of heart and will and mind,
and body's might renew.

However far they stray,
among what friends or foes,
God, bless all travelers on the way,
and hold them ever close,

and hear them when they call.
In mercy, grant their boon,
for daylight wanes and shadows fall
and night is coming soon.

A homeward highway make—
yet even after home
there is another path to take,
another, longer road.

Lord, bless all who depart
on roads we cannot see,
and shepherd each one to your heart,
forever there to be. Amen.

Backpacking In a Pickup Truck, Lukas Robertson 2017-01-16 sheetstothewind – https://unsplash.com/photos/9qJb_wCFCrMarchive copy at the Wayback Machine, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61863370

The picture book my father bought
and brought home from a business trip,
I laid it in a carboard box,
your name upon the packing slip,

my name still written on the flap—
a book too precious not to share
for when your daughters fill your lap—
dead-lettered in its box somewhere.

As parcels under letters lie;
or under leaves old years' debris
remembering how they touched the sky,
communing with the new year's seeds;

and old selves lost to new ones made
responding to the seasons' turn;
so Beast lies dying in the glade
unless—until—his love returns.

Read out the story, then: She comes
to cradle his beloved mane,
and when she tells him of her love,
the handsome Prince is whole again.

The end.  Now read it out once more.
Today the postman brought your box.
Beast rises from the forest floor
where nothing's ever really lost.

Batten – Europa’s Fairy Tales By John D. Batten – Books, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31130471

Go HERE to see illustrations from the book this poem was written about, Beauty and the Beast, by Marianna Mayer, illustrated by Mercer Mayer.