We Work the Soil

A combination of Ordinary Time readings from Genesis and thinking about the Eucharist:

We work the soil, to reap its thorns and thistles;
we toil until we join the buried seed.
We sweat the days from birth to our dismissal,
and what we long for, we can never eat.

There is no bread that satisfies our hunger;
there is no wine can slake our endless thirst
until we taste the dirt we're buried under,
until the dust we came from comes to dust.

For we have poured out blood upon these furrows,
and thereof we have eaten bitter grains.
The firstfruits that we offered God were sorrows;
resentful and downhearted, we were Cain.

And this is the compassion of our maker,
the light that guides us into ways of peace:
He shapes himself of sod to be our savior;
the master serves his servants at his feast.

Not just the wheat Cain burned upon the altar,
but Abel's lamb disguised as simple bread.
So God accepts Cain's once-imperfect offering,
and Cain at last, at last can lift his head.

The dust we taste is not our bread forever,
and sorrow is not all we're doomed to eat.
Our seeds will finally grow to something better;
our bitter plantings blossom into sweet.

Cain and Abel, 15th-century German depiction from Speculum Humanae Salvationis By Unknown author – Title of Work: Speculum Humanae Salvationis Production: Germany; 15th century.Source: http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibrary/controller/subjectidsearch?id=10614&startid=11550&width=4&height=2&idx=2, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34028272

Not Perfect

“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:38-48

The sun you made shines on us, bad and good;
your rain turns field and fallow both to mud.
You water weeds and wheat; you give them light,
and love us when we're wrong, as much as right.

This is the love you ask us in return:
to love the ice and love the fire that burns;
to love the noontime and the deep of night;
with all the stars to shed alike our light;

so to be wounded when our love is spurned;
so to be frozen; so, too, to be burned;
pierced by the sun and blinded by the dark;
shining on all the same our brief, bright spark.

Is this a weight that mortal flesh can bear?
Not since we've known what good and evil were.
How shall we carry love for all the world?
O, help the wheat, and help the weeds, my Lord!

Let what I am grow ever toward your light,
both in the sun and in the stars of night.
I am not perfect, and I am not just,
but pour your mercy down upon my dust.

Rain falling on a field, in southern Estonia By Aleksander Kaasik – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63681273

Vulture

Before he sent the raven or the dove,
Noah unleashed a vulture from the ark
and there she waits, still circling up above,
unhurried as the beat of her own heart.

For all the secrets buried in the flood
she clears away for Noah and his kin.
They dig their fields on plots she has made good.
Where she has cleared a place, we start again.

And after our next great apocalypse
(and every cataclysm after that),
when all our songs have died upon our lips,
she will be there, her hunger just as vast.

But now she hangs, as silent as the grave,
as patient as the mountains wearing down.
Upon the heights or underneath the wave,
wherever we may go, we will be found.

We need not run—no, she will come to us.
In all the world, there's nothing else so sure
as vulture's wingbeats stirring up the dust
when she has come to make us clean and pure.

If man were meant to fly, he would have wings,
but flipperless upon the flood we rise.
She is no gentle dove, no olive brings,
but someday she will raise us to the skies.

American Black Vulture Coragyps atratus, Farallon, Panama, 2005 December; This individual was one of a large group of vultures (and circling frigatebirds) waiting for fish offal from local fishermen. By Mdf – first upload in en wikipedia on 21:55, 13 December 2005 by Mdf, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=704791

Something New

He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Mark 8:27-33

How could we know what “Christ” would mean
before you showed the way?
What could we think of but a king
to hold eternal sway?

It wasn't 'til you touched our ears
(since Eden, deaf to you)
that heart could grasp or we could hear
what you have done is new.

Our eyes could never see your face
until you opened them,
not just in healing but in grace,
in weeping at your end.

(How could we know of death's defeat
before you rose to show?
Not since the serpent spoke to Eve
was there aught else to know.)

Then touch our ears again today,
and give us eyes to see
there are new worlds in all you say,
new grace and mystery.

Our minds can know and hearts can feel—
if you have touched them, too—
beyond the lessons of the years,
you will do something new.

Full title: Christ appearing to Saint Peter on the Appian Way.Artist: Annibale Carracci.Date made: 1601-2.Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/.Contact: picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk..Copyright © The National Gallery, London

Save Us, O God

So the LORD said:
“I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created,
and not only the men,
but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air,
for I am sorry that I made them.”
But Noah found favor with the LORD.
Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10

Save us, O God: The waters rise
to drown the earth in flood,
as thunder drowns the heartrent cries
of creatures you called good.

Relent, O God; have mercy yet—
Our lives are but a day.
What could it take to clear the debt
before we're swept away?

Bring back, O God, what we have lost
beneath this flood of tears.
Though we could never bear the cost,
redeem the squandered years.

Renew, O God, the world you made:
Split land from sea again.
Though all your works we have betrayed, 
we, too, come from your hands.

Forget, O God, what we have done;
remember not the past,
but bring your sons and daughters home
through storm and flood at last.

Restore, O God, all humankind,
and let the waters part.
Let earth rise up again to find
the mercies of your heart.

12th-century Venetian mosaic depiction of Noah sending the dove By Anonymous Master – basilica san marco, venice, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4147510

The Law Is Heavy

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.
Matthew 5:17-37

The law is heavy, Lord:
I cannot bear it all
or keep it, whole in every word.
Beneath its weight I fall.

But you have borne its dread,
fulfilled its every jot,
and set before us life and death—
Choose life, for I cannot!

I am not clean within:
My brother knows my guilt;
against my sister I have sinned
and cannot pay the debt.

Forgiven I must be
and washed, as if a child.
To lay my gift before your feet,
I must be reconciled.

Come, earth and heaven's son
who bridged the great divide—
In you alone could they be one,
and so, in you, can I:

At one with earth and heav'n,
with sisters, brothers, too.
In mercy, let me be forgiv'n;
let me be whole in you.

A an etching by Jan Luyken from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations housed at Belgrave Hall, Leicester, England (The Kevin Victor Freestone Bequest). Photo by Philip De Vere. https://www.flickr.com/groups/the_phillip_medhurst_collection_of_bible_prints – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20116195

Fig Leaves

Then the eyes of both of them were opened,
and they realized that they were naked;
so they sewed fig leaves together
and made loincloths for themselves.
Genesis 3: 1-8

Also inspired by this reflection: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=114492308223659&set=a.112923281713895

What we covered up in fig leaves
you have plumbed in all its depth,
came as Adam to forgive Eve,
plunged into our dirt and death.
And you peel away the covers
as you tear the veil in two.
So you show us to the Father,
though we've hidden from his view.

Naked came we here a-borning;
naked only will we go.
Blessed be, at night and morning,
all the workings of the Lord!
Youa re working our salvation
in our termbling and our fear.
We're your working's incarnation,
and your own has brought us here.

Lay your hands upon us, healer;
spit into our crumbling dust.
Mudmaker, anoint and seal us
by the dirt you share with us.
Sweet the fruit that we had stolen;
sweeter still your flesh and blood.
Ephphatha! The tomb is opened!
We are as you made us: good.

A fig leaf cast in plaster used to cover the genitals of a copy of a statue of David in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum. By VAwebteam at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26076667

Scraps

Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
Mark 7:24-30

Also inspired by this reflection on the above passage: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=114492308223659&set=a.112923281713895

Filthy souls and all unfit,
mercy still we claim.
Begging, at your feet we sit,
weeping out your name.
At the table or under it,
the bread of life's the same.

What are scraps of heaven, Lord?
Heaven all the way.
Everything in just a word,
with nothing left to say.
Throw your scraps out to the world:
loaves and fishes, they.

Fragments of infinity,
infinite within.
Dogs beneath the table eat,
feasting like a king.
I will never worthy be:
Savior, enter in.

The Woman of Canaan by Michael Angelo Immenraet, 17th century – http://www.unionskirche-retten.de/seiten/bildpatenschaft/bild-18.php, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37307817

I Shall Not Fear

Based on Psalm 46, to the tune FINLANDIA:

I shall not fear, though all the earth is shaken,
though mountains fall and seas in tempest rise,
though I am struck, the heart within me quaking,
and I will fall as strength within me dies.
In me there flows, while all my walls are breaking,
a living stream whose source will ne'er run dry.

Then I will trust the spring that rises in me,
though nations fall and kingdoms topple down.
And I will drink and let the waters fill me
with saving hope when deep despair abounds.
God is my rock, from him these waters streaming
are all my life, where only death was found.

Let mountains fall, and let my heart be shaken:
The waters flow, and deserts they will fill.
The sword is bent; the bow at last is breaking:
All wars must end and fade as all things will.
Yet God is here, unmoved when I am quaking;
I cling to him who bids my soul, “Be still.”

A natural spring on Mackinac Island in Michigan By DaemonDivinus, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=982411

New-Create Me

New-create me, God my Father;
heav'n with earth in my alloy.
Sweep your winds across my waters;
shape my formlessness and void.

Set the land and sea in order;
separate the dark and light.
Let each evening have its morning;
let my days lie down in night.

Stars like heartbeats mark the moments;
arcs of sunlight count the breath.
Part the waters with your doming:
blood and tears and gall and sweat.

Earth and ocean, set them teeming
with the life that you supply:
Creatures on your mercy leaning,
fruitful, may they multiply.

I am one, your own creation:
Plunge your hands into my earth.
Plant a garden in my chaos;
grow your plenty in my dearth.

Make me, God; remake me ever:
work and sabbath, drought and flood.
Shape your new earth and new heaven;
see your work and call it good.

The first day of creation, by Jean Colombe from the Heures de Louis de Laval [fr] – This file comes from Gallica Digital Library and is available under the digital ID btv1b52501620s/f12.item, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39323912