We cannot bear the sight—
a sword edge bright and keen—
and so the angels veil their light
and come to us unseen.

They blunt the sharpened point,
soften the swifter slice
between the marrow and the joint:
We’re struck, yet we survive

because they take the weight,
transmute it for our sense,
turn glory to a commonplace,
unmagnify the immense.

A note of song, a book,
a color weaves a clue,
that we may see, where we will look,
eternity break through.

The feather-tip that paints
an ordinary word
that raises seasons up and saints
was never from a bird.

The angels of the Lord
descend on every stone,
and they will lead us heavenward
to see what they have known.

Kenny Harris (American, born 1974)
Ordinary Acts, 2017
Oil on canvas
54 x 48 inches
Private collection

It always happens in the midst of things,
the house a wreck, their shoes strewn on the floor:
Your eye caught by the sudden gleam of wings
stops you dead in the middle of the chores

and you don’t watch to see the half-sink fill,
the coffee-pot in pieces in your hands.
Arrested by the sunlight as it spills
from what you do not recognize, you stand.

But it knows you.  You never had a name
until you read it written in this ink
that burns across your vision as a flame.
Enraptured, you stand frozen at the sink.

You see what had been hidden just before,
see it now welling, streaming from all things—
the spilling sink, the shoes there on the floor—
all feathers fallen from the angel’s wings.

When the poor man died,
he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
—Luke 16:19-31

Beneath the jewels, the skin;
beneath the skin, the breath,
and all the silks we wrap us in
cannot cheat death.

Beneath the clothes, the flesh;
beneath the flesh, the bone.
We crave and gain and then oppress,
yet alms atone.

Alike we all are dust,
the rich as well as poor,
and sorrow come to one of us
makes all woe more,

but mercy come to one
is mercy meant for all.
To do as unto us was done:
This is our call.

Then come to mercy’s stream
and dip your finger in
to quell the thirst of one who needs
and cool the skin.

Does gold our freedom bind?
Oh, let the hungry eat!
And if we cannot so, then Christ
must set us free.

I’ll take what you have given, Lord,
though all things pass away,
and make what adds to no one’s hoard:
This bread is for today.

All flesh will come to what it must;
to dust we shall return.
For all creation comes to dust—
that’s all we ever were.

Let it be flour, then, reaped and ground,
that all things shall be bread.
Then dwell in it—in it be found,
as life where all was dead.

O Lord, in what you made, you lurk,
and will all things remake.
So may it be—but this my work
is here to knead and bake

no sacred gift on the altar laid
but ordinary food—
yet fashioned from the works you made,
and you had called them good.

Then may this bread be good for us,
our bodies and our souls,
and when we go, Lord, knead our dust:
Remake us to be whole.

Woman baking bread (c. 2200 BC); Louvre, Photo By Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69938567

You laid a table’s bounty
in sight of your enemies,
and laid yourself upon it,
then bid us come and feast,

because this is love’s true token—
the belovèd one is fed—
and this is why we’re broken,
for we were always bread.

Born from another’s body
in tears and blood and sweat,
then nurtured, mothered, fathered,
in all our helplessness:

So you were born, O Savior;
so given, as are we,
like bread upon the table
for someone else to eat.

You kneaded us in Eden,
hands wrist-deep in the clay,
and so you must have seen then,
you would be here one day,

but you have made it holy,
this breaking, dying dust,
that we might be as you are,
for you became like us.

Genter altar, lamb adoration – Jan van Eyck – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56859347

A widening slice of golden light
slides across the road:
a curtain pulled back from the night.
He kicked against the goad,

but each night this sliver wends
along the trodden dust
untiring, to where the highway bends.
The trees move at a gust

that does not touch the candle flame.
God bless the ones who roam
on such a night.  Who speaks their names
and waits for them at home?

And now the wind tears at the leaves.
The curtain should fall back
but doesn’t—are they bandits, thieves
adown the midnight track?

The eyes that watch too long grow dim—
surely not—this is false, too—
So many times they didn’t see him—
can it be now they do?

The curtain drops.  The door swings wide,
caught in the rising wind
that shakes the reaching candle light.
“Father, I have sinned….”

The Return of the Prodigal Son (Leonello Spada, Louvre, Paris) – http://www.pintura.aut.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7349982

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.

A vineyard in Napa Valley, California By Brocken Inaglory – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8377659

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.

Jar for one of the ‘seven sacred oils’, calcite – Museo Egizio, Turin S 8441 p02 By Museo Egizio In Turin (IT), CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147853257

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.

A polemical allegory represented as a five-headed monster, 1618 By Unknown engraver – https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=urn:gvn:RIJK04:RP-P-OB-77.294, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17279335

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.

Street art by Clet rapresenting Christ on a no through road sign. By Cletartista – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46838086