“When the LORD, your God, brings you into the land which he swore
to your fathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
that he would give you,
a land with fine, large cities that you did not build,
with houses full of goods of all sorts that you did not garner,
with cisterns that you did not dig,
with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant;
and when, therefore, you eat your fill,
take care not to forget the LORD,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
The LORD, your God, shall you fear;
him shall you serve, and by his name shall you swear.”
—Deuteronomy 6:4-13

The houses that we did not build
with goods we did not earn are filled
from vineyards that we did not tend—
Will they be ours, Lord, in the end?

At tables laid with bread and wine
we did not make, there shall we dine
in cities filled with feasting halls—
yet none were driven from their walls.

In days gone by, by might and sword
and conquest did you give them, Lord;
in days to come are none cast out
from cities where the swords are plows.

Yet now we stand upon the height
and let the prospect fill our sight,
where all our hearts have always been—
but shall we ever enter in?

Turn back the hand that struck the rock;
silence the grumbling of the flock.
Let not the golden calf take form—
or else have mercy on us, Lord.

For all these things and more we’ve done,
and now our race is all but run.
This grace we beg on Jordan’s strand:
to enter then the promised land.

Imagined painting by Frans Pourbus the Elder (c. 1565–1580) depicting the Israelite‘s God showing Moses the Promised Land Photo By Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49066369

We ripen so on gifts of sun and rain
that soon the heavy stalks begin to bow,
the sway-backed vines to bend beneath the strain.
Then they must break and rot until the plow
turns undertaker—or face harvest’s pain.
And see: The scythe is at the grindstone now.

From our first breaking forth in leaf and root
we’ve carried in our bodies this dread death.
We have been faithful, though, and borne good fruit,
touched by a yeast from spring wind’s gentle breath.
He runs unseen the length of every shoot,
and in our breaking shows and inward strength.

He shares in the destruction of the wheat,
one with us in our terrors and our dooms;
and in the wine press as we know defeat,
what has been ever with us dives and blooms
to face the bitter and enjoy the sweet,
transforming casks and barrels into wombs.

So we are crushed, but never are destroyed;
laid in our tombs but never left alone—
yet we are still ourselves, still unalloyed,
transfigured, though, beyond what years have grown—
and from our wounds this yeast brings forth strange joy
as yet unhinted by the wines we’ve known.

Ancient wine press, south of Hebron mountain. On the right the treading pit. In the middle the precipitation pit. The vat on the left. By איתן פרמן – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3255195

“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.  
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.”
—Luke 12:32-48

Let it be this, Lord; let it be.
Of all our needed tasks ‘til then,
let this be what you have for me
to work at ‘til you come again.

For some are prophets of your word,
and some apostles teaching true;
some build a house on what they’ve heard,
and all here have their work from you.

Then let this be my task assigned;
in mercy, let this be enough:
Employing hand and heart and mind
to serve in daily acts of love.

No prophet I, yet may I speak
in words of comfort through the days.
No might have I, yet work the deeds
of love in ordinary ways

at this, the table in the world,
with this, the bread that on it stands:
Let your love’s banner be unfurled
above the work of human hands.

This is my task, my busyness,
and when you come to raise the dead,
Lord, may you find me doing this
and call me where you break the bread.

Albert Samuel Anker – Still-Life with Coffee, Bread and Potatoes – http://www.sightswithin.com/Search/albert%20anker/Page_2/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37060415

Aflutter though I came,
I’m stopped dead in the gate—
an image in its frame—
by wonder in full spate
and wings of sabled flame
that come to consecrate.

The lime-tree leaf’s too pale,
yet larvae love to eat.
This glory will not fail
through all the year’s defeat.
a Giant Swallowtail,
in summer’s cruel heat.

As breathless as the day
beneath weight of drought,
I watch the mother lay,
then rush into the house
and find the air to say,
“Come quick! Stand here: Look out.”

Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes), Shirleys Bay, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada By D. Gordon E. Robertson – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33484737

We wander in a shadowed world,
a night that has no dawn.
Lord, let us have your word unfurled
while still we journey on,

a lamp to cling to in the dark
that makes the pathway bright,
until the sunrise in our hearts
transforms the weary night.

Then light of highest noon shall stay,
and we shall see in sooth
all things by light of endless day,
and see at last their truth.

So they saw Christ upon the peak
in glory then unknown,
and ever after saw all things
by what what they had been shown.

A voice that spoke, “This is my Son,”
forever ended night;
a light more piercing than the sun’s
transfigured heart and sight.

O, send that light into our dark
to say the day shall come,
the morning star rise in our hearts,
and we see Christ, your Son. Amen.

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities!  All things are vanity!
—Ecclesiastes 1:2

Teach me, O Lord, to count my days
that are my only store;
for all my works and all my ways,
I cannot make them more.
Turn me from every wind I chase
to look upon that shore
where I will find no lasting trace
of those who came before.

Nor will I leave there any print
upon that shifting sand:
No memory will last in it
of any who there stand.
No matter, for the waves will sing
to lead me from the land.
I shall be gone, but still the wind
comes streaming from your hand.

And I will carry nothing there
upon that endless flood;
no treasures take, no burdens bear—
not even flesh and blood.
So I must cast away my care,
let others take my goods.
But let the wind bring you my prayer
across the waves, O God:

Lord, take from me the vanity
that tries to write my name
here on the margins of your sea
where none may stake their claim.
When all that is attached to me,
all praise, O God, and blame,
I leave behind for what shall be,
your wind blows on the same.

Beaches By Susanne Nilsson – At the Beach, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151773050

What is it, scribe of Florence, I deserve?
Much less than what I find I have tonight:
A day of aggravation dips and swerves

and upward soars to follow something bright.
It countermands my downward-winding way
to scatter on my darkness crumbs of light.

Who would’ve thought that Dante could allay
my small frustrations with the ones I love,
my vicious venal snipings that betray

my selfishness? Who better calls my bluff
as contrapasso cantos lay me bare?
The love I have is never love enough,

and yet tonight I find a comfort there
in sheer delight: For once, my sons and I,
who wrangle endlessly the chores to share,

in peace the selfsame kitchen occupy.
The younger one has finished making dough;
I stretch it with a practiced hand and eye;

the hungry elder one is far from slow
to get the pepperoni and the cheese.
The years to learn this rhythm aching slow,

but now we work in something like our ease,
a gift my anxious heart could not command.
Tonight there’s pizza, and tonight there’s peace,

and soon I will sit down with book in hand
and plate piled high with bounty all unearned:
a passo contra all I understand.

Then, Poet, teach me better than I’ve learned
and guide my steps beyond what I have known:
Tell me how God still breaks the crusts I’ve burned

and turns them to this mercy he has shown,
this grace exceeding all I ask by far:
these boys so strong and sure and almost grown,

this beauty like a door that’s left ajar
to spill some comfort of my thin-stretched nerves.
Pray I may come at last where my hopes are:

to the love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Dante Alighieri, detail from Luca Signorelli‘s fresco in the Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto Cathedral, Photo by Georges Jansoone (JoJan) Taken on 30 April 2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=834493

I feel a hint of autumn in the wind.
The first of August: Sure the year’s too young
for harvest, but it plumps within its skin.
The vintage seems already on my tongue

and in my mind the trees are dressed as pyres,
the leaves of yesterday already gone.
Nature’s first green is gold; her last is fire,
and sunset echoes gloriously the dawn,

consoling me, though I with it must burn.
There is a new world waiting in the vine,
and what is lost to me in season’s turn
is for my children wonder in the wine.

And though we stand each on a different brink,
we taste the bitter blended with the sweet.
The day comes soon when we’ll together drink,
rejoicing long beyond the summer’s heat.

Depiction of harvesting in the August calendar page of the Queen Mary Psalter (fol. 78v), ca. 1310 By anonymous (Queen Mary Master) – this file: scan dated 2009, uploaded (without identification of the source) 12 May 2010 by Ann Scott (medievalminds.comReeve-and-Serfs.original1.jpg), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16340916

“As Isis hid with Horus in the delta
from sight of gods as well as eyes of men
among the reeds, and found in them a shelter
to keep her safely out of evil’s ken,
another infant in the Nile lay helpless
until a woman drew him forth again.

“His basket like the casket of Osiris
was sealed against the tides of life and death,
yet he who lay within bore no divineness:
His span was barely longer than a breath
until he met with such another Isis
who saved his life from such another Set.

“And so between two tides he grew to manhood:
One bore him down, unlawful child of slaves;
the other bore him upward to the palace,
there where your slightest word condemns or saves.
He rode the two, no rudder and no ballast,
a man with gods, a life amid the graves.

“But now he stands upon another shoreline
and hears the waves are murmuring his name.
He should have drowned before, in the engorged Nile,
but all the wide earth’s water is the same:
Will he be safely drawn from it one more time,
or will his death at last make good its claim?

“Who drew him from the river of his mother
to look on light and draw his firstling breath,
and drew him forth when hidden in the rushes—
for only so his days had any length—
will draw him through this sea with these his brothers.
No, this is not the river of his death.

“For everyone must go the final journey
as through a Nile that none may walk dry-shod,
but at the end of all his sun-disc’s turning
entrust himself to currents and to rocks,
and only he may pass into eternity
who has the help and mercy of his god.

“But we who followed him across the desert,
we are as dust beneath our chariot wheels—
not like the rich, black land the river blesses,
the fertile ground the yearly flood conceals.
Unless some god bring us where life is deathless,
we’re sand where nothing grows and nothing heals.

The waters will not part for us, my father;
no one will pull our bodies from the reeds
as he was drawn to safety by your daughter.
There is a balanced order to our deeds:
You threw their infant sons into the water;
your sons must now be swallowed by the sea.

“Then when Anubis weighs us in the balance,
may he find out some goodness in our souls
that makes us light enough to pass his challenge
and enter in where death takes no more toll.
For surely we will drown here with our chariots:
This sea before us like a river rolls.”

Head of Akhenaten By Paul Mannix; Original uploader was Muntuwandi at en.wikipedia – Flickr Transferred from en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9423799

A wine for every thirst, and bread for hunger:
the fruit of every age of fallen seeds
laid on a table, long and ever longer,
for all our needs.

But who will bake the bread for your great feasting?
No one, O Christ: For all the years we wait,
you labor, working slowly as the yeast does.
It is not late:

It is the slow transforming of creation.
The stones of sorrow grinding this world’s wheat
prepare all things for your great fermentation,
that we may eat.

And so this dust, this something out of the nothing,
becomes the matter of your sacrament
until we find, O Lord, that you fill all things
in covenant.

So all that you have made you lay before us.
The world becomes your bread—which you will break,
which hides yourself, which you have given for us—
and we partake.

Then no one will be left back in the kitchen.
The master sits the servants down to feast
on bread he made himself, when we are lifted
with Christ the yeast.

“Woman’s Home Companion” 1919 advertisement – Buckley, George D. (1919) Woman’s Home Companion, 46, issues 1-8, Crowell & Kirkpatrick Company, pp. 1–, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76103161