Stones and Water

Bring back your sons from afar,
daughters from all the earth's corners:
Draw us again to your heart;
give us new hearts for our stone ones.

We have been exiles so long,
dreaming each moment of Eden,
though we've forgotten its songs,
choked with the dust we're still eating.

Trying to make bread from stones—
stones were the seeds we had planted—
ground into dust with our bones,
dust is now all we are granted.

Pour the rains on us again:
Dust becomes mud becomes garden;
rivers of blood in our veins
pump through the ground we had hardened.

Flood all the waste with your streams;
lead us by spring and oasis
not back again to our dreams,
but to the new things you're making!

Lead where we've never yet gone,
not where the river first rises
but to the sea as its runs:
Mercy alone satisfies us!

A stream in Teesdale. By Mentifisto – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8646124

Down Every Trail

For the Feast of the Ascension:

The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:16-20

Come with us, Lord, down every trail
and walk with us by day and night,
our compass when the stars have failed,
our lantern making dark ways bright.

You send us out into the world
to baptize all things in your name,
but in them all your embers burn
and wait to rise in glorious flame.

And in us, too, your Spirit shines,
a fiery pillar in our hearts.
Within ourselves your road unwinds;
with every step, new mercies start.

Give us the eyes to see your spark
and by its glow to find the way,
that love may guide us in the dark
and lead us into brighter day.

And so with us, within, without,
show us the pathway straight and clear
through night and day, through hope and doubt:
You will not leave us orphaned here.

End of the trail, Boynton Canyon, Sedona, Arizona

Moar Birbs!

Your Spirit came down like a dove
beside the river Jordan
to point us to the one you love--
now birdsong fills the morning.
We see the lilies of the field,
consider well the ravens,
and know your goodness with us here
on earth as 'tis in heaven.

The gulls that glide upon your breath
still hover o'er the waters.
Wherever sparrows build their nests,
there you have set your altars.
The swallows clinging to the eaves
know you are their true shelter:
the shade and safety of the leaves
your fortress and protection.

And if a single feather falls,
your hand is there to catch it.
If death should silence all their calls,
new life awaits new hatchings.
So bird to bird calls out your name
and note by note rejoices,
and we who marvel at this grace
lift up our hearts and voices!

Painted tiles with design of birds from Qajar dynasty By Unknown author – davidmus.dk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25157065

There’s No Voice

There's no voice if you are silent;
there's no echo in the dark.
There's no flame if you don't light it,
though we strive to strike the spark.

So my heart shall yet be formless
and my soul a waste and void
'til you speak a word and form them,
'til you fill me with your voice.

I am earth awaiting water,
to be furrowed for the seed.
Shape this clay into a daughter:
Spirit, speak again in me.

Take my earth for your remaking:
Unheard thunder in the ground.
Though subsonic, set me quaking
with the rumble of your sound.

Then, when I cannot yet hear it,
let me trust the word that springs
from your endlessness, O Spirit,
from the voice that in me sings.

In the hiss of spark on tinder,
in the bass that shakes my chest,
give me song to praise the singer
or to call the silence blest.

The Pentecost depicted in a 14th-century Missal By Unknown author – National Library of Wales, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44768060

Fledglings

God knows the sorrow of the birds
for fledglings fallen from the nest,
the song that no more will be heard,
the empty place beneath the breast.

He saw the sparrow as it fell
and watched it growing cold in death
who wrapped it first within the shell
and counted every quickbeat breath.

And every year, of years on years,
he watches hatchlings fledge and fall;
no note is doubled to his ear,
no feather copied—firstlings, all.

And every sorrow of the heart,
and every nest bereft and bare,
alone stands naked in his dark
as one whole world beyond compare.

What is the weight of sparrowkind
in gravity's relentless pull?
A world ends in disrupted flight,
and still he carries each in full.

And for each one, a nest he builds
where sparrows rise up, ever spring:
his hands, with myriad feathers filled,
where nestlings fly and ever sing.

Song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) By Cephas – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107680551

In the Furnace

Based on the story from the book of Daniel:

When my sudden doubt has cast me
in the furnace of my fears,
Son of God, O stand there with me
where the fires rage and sear!
Give me courage in the burning
not to run or douse the flame,
but to take it as an off'ring 
for the glory of your name.

In your kindness and your mercy,
Son of God, deliver me:
Stand beside me in the furnace
'til the flames lie down in sleep.
Let me see you in this wonder
where I'm burned but not consumed.
Though the furnace roars like thunder,
let me sing a hymn to you:

I am standing in your presence
in the crucible of fear,
and you make the flames your temple
when you stand beside me here.
Sun and moon, sing praise forever!
Stars of fire, bless the Lord!
Though the flames reach up to heaven,
Here my peace has been restored!

Fiery furnace by Toros Roslin, Mashtots, 1266 (MS No. 2027, Fol. 14 V.) By Toros Roslin – Scanned from L’Art Armenien, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, Flammarion, 1989, P.130, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4512447

You Are the Way

Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:1-12

You are the way, and so you must be opened:
a door unlocked, a beating heart laid bare.
You draw us in, by love we stand beholding,
to lead us on through ways we would not dare.
So heaven's road, before our feet unfolding,
is heaven too, though we walk unaware.

You are the truth, and so you must be spoken:
the silence split, a shaking in the ground.
The Word as bread is nothing until broken,
so, piece by piece to vanish, handed 'round.
We take you in, your way through us unfolding,
and seek you out wherever you are found.

You are the life, and so you must be borning:
blood in your veins, breath heaving in your lungs,
subject to sleep and rising in the morning,
to rise again when all our nights are done.
You bear us on along the way unfolding,
through earth and heav'n, forever on and on.

Gothic door of the St Magnus Cathedral (Kirkwall, Scotland) By MichaelMaggs – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72391144

Glassblower

If I must go into the flame,
yet breathe in me
that by your Spirit I am shaped,
your glass to be.

So whirling, thrust into the fire,
I am reformed.
Your hands turn me; your breath inspires;
your heat transforms.

Let me melt down: Let what I am
grow soft, dislimn.
Blow through the glowing hollow, then,
to sound a hymn.

So glory burns, so glory blinds,
I sag and run
into what shape you have in mind
within this sun.

When I am cold again and sound,
what shall I be?
Whathaveyou, but let grace be found
somewhere in me!

If there is beauty in the lines,
it must be yours.
By breath and flame, let your design
myself transform.

A glassblowing demonstration at the Northern California Renaissance Faire in Santa Clara County. By BrokenSphere – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11557213

As You Set Moses

As you set Moses is the cleft
that he would not in glory burn,
Lord, lay your hand across the rift:
We see you not 'til you have turned.

O burning godhead, hide your light
behind these veils of purple cloth
that swathe your sun in violet night
still dazzling to the earthbound moth.

For no one sees your face and lives
except obliquely, spark by spark,
in flashes such as lightning gives,
transforming all the storm-torn dark.

Give us these glimpses, piece by piece,
within the ordinary day,
the breadcrumbs strewn where heaven leads
to show us heaven on the way.

O heaven, you who walked the earth,
suffuse it still with your own pow'r,
that we who stumble in the dirt
may find you in it, hour by hour.

The Rock of Horeb in Saudi Arabia By Wikkiwooki – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126902676

The Shepherd On the Hillside

For Easter season, and Good Shepherd Sunday:

The shepherd on the hillside
climbs down into the glens:
A river runs from his side;
the sun shines through his hands.

For oh, his flock has wandered,
his own have gone astray,
the whole driven asunder,
each one to our own way.

The hills stripped bare of grasses
plunge down into the gloom:
a thousand deep crevasses,
a thousand crowded tombs.

And he will plumb each gravesite
to gather up the bones,
restoring what he made them,
their flesh and blood his own.

There shall be none abandoned,
no tombstone left unturned:
Each debtor shall be ransomed,
each prodigal returned.

In silence we await him,
in separate sorrows lie,
for none in death can praise him
'til dawn shall break on high.

Then oh, the light shall touch us
that's streaming from his hands.
See how the Shepherd loves us
and makes us whole again!

Fifth-century Ravenna mosaic illustrating the concept of The Good Shepherd By Meister des Mausoleums der Galla Placidia in Ravenna – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155308