For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom,
it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.
—Matthew 11:20-24

As man is only born of woman’s sorrow
and flourishes and withers as the grass,
he lives today who may not see tomorrow
and only knows for sure that he will pass,
so fallow fields cannot escape the harrow:
They will be torn before the seeds are cast.

Yet we are seeds as well, these wounds our homeland;
we blossom here and call the ground redeemed.
Though labor’s days are long, we say they’re worth it
if from the weeds some grains of wheat are gleaned.
Ten innocents in Sodom and Gomorrah,
and we’d have blessed their generous regime.

What of the seeds that fall and never blossom?
What of the thorns that haunt these fertile fields?
The swooping birds too soon devour the harvest
and nothing grows, no matter how we’re tilled.
What of the cold winds of an early autumn?
What of the chill that blights the hoped-for yield?

If there were but somewhere a lasting springtime,
eternal summer reaching back to fall
and filling even winter with its green time,
enlivening the dead things in the soil,
a place where even Sodom in its sweet time
before the flames would heed a different call.

There is a place outside all spinning spaces,
a moment outside moments’ forward thrust,
and there the face whose image fills all faces
has wed his son to place and moment’s dust.
This one has come, is come, will come to save us,
preserve us even after we are crushed.

Eternity outside of wind and weather,
you see our rising and our falling here;
you who have bound yourself into our tether,
can you not save the fallen we hold dear?
But as we fall, you fall with us together:
O broken as we break, be ever near!

Reach back as you are ever reaching forward.
These harrowed fields: Let them with new life swell.
Let the seeds grow for fifty peaceful souls there;
let it be words of joy your angels tell.
Let mercy come to Sodom and Gomorrah,
and harrow us forever out of hell.

One for today’s readings on Moses telling the people exactly where God’s command is, and Jesus telling the people exactly what God’s command is, and the Good Samaritan:

I took the road to Jericho:
It’s you that I was looking for.
To find my God, how far I’d go,
but fallen, I can go no more.

I sought you, Lord, upon the heights
and far across the desert ground,
now these cracked ribs can’t raise a cry;
these swollen lips cannot call out.

But what I cannot say, you’ve heard;
though no one looks at me, you do.
To you my silence is a word;
my darkness is as light to you.

Though here beside the road I lie
as dust for all to tread upon,
pour out on me the oil and wine
until I overflow with balm.

For you have never dwelt apart,
O word of God forever near:
I find you in my wounded heart,
for you were here, were always here.

I had to take a winding track
to find you in the world I know.
Now lift me up and take me back
home from the road to Jericho.

The good Samaritan, after Delacroix by Van Gogh, 1890, Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

I pray for peace as wars run into years.
There is a kingdom somehow drawing near
where nothing dies, not even a leaf falls
except as medicine. There are no palls
for there are never funerals, never grief.
Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief—

Are those my lips that say it, and my mouth?
Go through the motions—it’s not even doubt;
it’s nothing, empty as the words I say
and mean—and know the wind will blow away.
A moment, and the words and I are gone.
What will remain? What grace will carry on?

The terrible, the unrelenting thirst
for brother’s blood we spill as at the first—
but even this is swallowed in the vast
unfathomable peace that comes at last.
I cannot grasp it, cannot comprehend
the ocean without shoreline, without end.

It has no hunger, neither has it need;
it swallows all, and yet it does not feed.
It takes our death, and then the dead thing lives.
The Lord taketh away—but, too, he gives
who knows the roots of death, makes them his own
and lies there silent as the unmoved stone.

This silence lets me speak words that confound.
This, then, is faith: I let myself be bound
by words that go unanswered. This is hope:
That there beyond the confines of my scope
the answer lies, with him, devouring death.
When this is finished, he will give it breath.

Letipea hiidrahn (glacial erratic) in Estonia By Zosma – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10887879

Embarrassment of nectarine and peach;
extravagance of cherry, berry, plum
all ripe at once: the summer’s sweetest feast,
as Eden was, as Eden yet to come.

Eat up, my loves; it’s later than it seems.
For every one we eat, another rots
unless we can them—jam the glut redeems—
and save some good that otherwise were lost.

Already time and microbe come for them
or storm or violence bruise the tender skin,
and then we’ve lost another summer gem.
Each one, once gone, will never come again:

No other cherry perfect like this one,
this bursting, overwhelming, nectar-sweet.
A gift, particular, and then it’s done,
not wasted but a taste of heaven’s feast.

Oh, savor it! It will not come again,
though there be other summers just as ripe.
God only knows if you will taste them then,
or if you, too, will fall to wind and time.

There is another tree: The fruit it bears
has waited since we first stole Eden’s plums.
Each peach today its firstborn sweetness shares
that holds the lost ‘til endless summer comes.

Madonna of the Strawberries, the Upper Rhenish Master, 1420–1430 By Upper Rhenish Master – https://www.kirchenblatt.ch/links/archiv/ausgabe-15/die-madonna-in-den-erdbeeren, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18344595

This originally had more wording taken directly from today’s Gospel, but those phrases felt forced. I rewrote them, and now this more of a riff on today’s Gospel sending the disciples out two by two, and the first reading’s prophecy of finding our real home:

The world is full of sojourners
and pilgrims on the way:
Lord, may their break their journey here
and rest until the day.

Give us a place to shelter them—
Oh, build for us a house
to be your new Jerusalem
for all who were cast out.

For earth is full of exiles, Lord,
who seek a truer home.
May they find here their bed and board
until the morning comes.

Give us your plenty for their needs:
We are your children all.
Give us your mercy and your feast
each time a stranger calls.

For we were strangers in the land,
were lost—now found and fed,
who find our home within your hand
and manna for our bread.

And you have given us your home—
so may we give to them.
From east and west your people come:
a new Jerusalem.

The Flight of the Prisoners (1896) by James Tissot; the exile of the Jews from Canaan to Babylon – https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/26577-the-flight-of-the-prisoners Jacques Joseph Tissot, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8860276

Written while attending a seminar on grief:

Give me an altar made of air
where I can be your worshipper
and kneeling, lay my nothings there
among the gifts that never were.

For promises were broken here,
and they are breaking in me still.
The locusts couldn't eat the years
that never came to be fulfilled.

The ways my heart was turned to wax
and melted, leaving emptiness,
my breath a litany of lack
that echoes in a hollow self:

the person I can never be,
the losses without fault or blame,
the future fallen to disease,
the wanted child who never came.

Such bread can never be consumed,
the off'ring of a hollowed heart.
I lay it in your hollow wounds,
and I cry out, “My Lord and God!”

Take what can never be restored--
what was not lost cannot be saved--
take all my empty places, Lord:
Fill me as once you filled a grave. Amen.

High altar of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, Photo By Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interiorvaticano8.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7272169

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