We gloried in a midnight blank and starless,
and fathomed not what morning’s light could be.
How could we know we’d always dwelt in darkness
until we understood we could not see?

But now a comet blazes on its mission
to herald something dawning like the day,
and finds its target with a cold precision:
to pierce our eyes and show, at last, the way.

And now we see, and what we see is shadow.
We learn to know ourselves, our gyves of gloom,
and we begin to dream a restful meadow,
a flowing stream, and peace, and lives in bloom.

But that’s a dream for other nights than this one:
Rise up and gird yourselves to leave in haste.
The comet streaks above us like a missile
to lead us home across the desert waste.

An image of comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp), taken on April 04, 1997 with a 225mm f/2.0 Schmidt Camera (focal length 450mm) on Kodak Panther 400 color slide film with an exposure time of 10 minutes; the field shown is about 6.5°x6.5°; at full resolution, the stars in the image appear slightly elongated, as the camera tracked the comet during the exposure By E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria (https://sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756556

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said, 
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him,
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said,
“I came into this world for judgment, 
so that those who do not see might see, 
and those who do see might become blind.”
—John 9:35-39

How many times, O Christ, have we been here,
my blindness and your light? But still draw near!

Stoop to the dust, the flesh and blood of yore.
Spit on the ground, and make the clay once more,

and smear my eyes. So close I feel your breath,
use death itself to drive away my death,

for I am blind again. Who has not sinned?
No man but God himself, enfleshed, enskinned:

He only has not lost the glorious light.
Over and over, I have lost my sight.

I say I see; in truth, Lord, I am blind.
I saw, and darkened once again my mind.

I killed the light I had. So do all men
until you bring the dust to life again,

renewing all creation in your clay
to live unendingly in your bright day.

Again and yet again I’ve sinned and died,
but even so shall God be glorified

when you have vanquished death and given sight.
Draw near, O Christ, and let me see your light!

Healing of the Blind Man by Jesus Christ by Carl Bloch – http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=49664, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25991123

Amid the news of violence,
the tolls of bomb and gun,
the agony that cries out
in witness of what’s done
when princes play for prizes
and lives are trinkets won,
come, peace, and turn our eyes here
to look on Christ the Son.

We see no kingship in him;
the rending of his flesh
gives us a kinship with him—
the dying know their death.
O peace, come give us vision
to see him gasp for breath
and feel our lungs’ constriction,
and know him in ourselves.

In every rib protruding,
in every splintered bone,
in carelessness and cruelty,
in his death is our own.
Come, peace, and lead us to him
whose suffering we have known,
to look on him we’ve wounded
and lay our weapons down.

We carry in our bodies
the dying of the Lord,
all we, like lambs to slaughter
whose blood shall yet be poured.
Then come, O peace, disarm us;
turn back the sharp-edged sword
to plow our hearts to softness
and sow your seeds once more.

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

Teach me to love where I no love have found.
The world is wide, and widely grace abounds
though I see not the goodness in each place.
Then everywhere, O Lord, show me your face—
in things unlikely, people not my own—
and help me love in truth what you have shown.

Teach me to take your mercies as they fall.
Your dove alights on sinners when they call
as well as saints; your sun sends down its ray
on those who follow you and those who stray.
Then how can I deny to love the one
who shares your light with me, when all is done?

Teach me rejoicing in another’s good
though they stand where my feet have never stood.
Their minds may rove where mine will never go—
there is more truth than my poor mind will know
until we stand together at your throne.
Then let me love them as you love your own.

Teach me a shepherd’s patience with his flock.
You sought me when I’d fallen from the rock
and when in brambles fast my fleece was caught,
and still you seek each one your hand has wrought.
Teach me to love them all as you love me.
Your true disciple then, Lord, I will be.  Amen.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Sermon on the Mount – Rossetti Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48994943

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her,
“Give me a drink.”
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
“How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.—
Jesus answered and said to her,
“If you knew the gift of God
and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘
you would have asked him 
and he would have given you living water.”
—John 4:7-10

I offer you the morning, Lord;
I offer you the day.
I offer, asking no reward,
each step along the way.
My every word and deed and thought
I offer freely: Take, O God.

I offer evening when it comes;
I offer you the night,
and through the dark my heart is dumb
and will not ask for light.
Such goodly measures you have poured,
how could I ask for any more?

And still I hear you: “Give me all.”
And still I strive to give,
and still I miss the deeper call
my heart would heed and live:
“If you but knew the one who speaks,
you’d asking for living streams to drink.”

I know you, Lord, and yet I don’t,
refusing to be known
myself. I will and yet I won’t
draw closer to your throne,
but deepest thirst I can’t deny—
then give me courage now to try:

My heart is desert-dry, O Lord,
a place where nothing blooms,
and all the mercies your have poured
are seeds within their tombs.
Pour greater streams to make them flow,
and let your living waters flow!

More details

The Samaritan woman (c.1919), by Ettore Tito – berardiarte.it, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138780816

Farewel, my frendes! The tide abideth no man.
I moot departe hennes, and so shullen ye;
But in this passage the beste song that I can
Is Requiem Eternum—I preye God graunte it me.
Whan I have ended al myn adversitee,
Graunte me in paradys to have a mansioun,
That shedde his blood for my redempcioun.”

Index 769 Trin. Coll. Camb. MS. 1157, with readings from Balliol Coll. Oxf. MS 354. Fifteenth Century. In One Hundred Middle English Lyrics, ed. Robert D. Stevick, No. 77.

The tide abideth no man—
nay, mercy, nor no woman—
but swift and soon departs,
and feeble, yes, and able
find cut the final cable,
the moorings of their hearts.

And though I long to tarry,
the storms will howl and harry
my none-too-sturdy craft.
This sea is shoals and coral:
Toss every box and barrel
to keep a shallow draft.

Oh, there is no availing,
for now the wind is galing:
I sail the final strait.
Then heave, me hearties, heave-ho!
The moment comes to leave, though
I wish that it would wait.

Farewell to wife and lover,
to father and to mother;
farewell to kith and kin.
I sail an ocean farther
in passage to a harbor
that I can shelter in.

O Lord of wind and weather,
of towline and of tether,
set me a course fair east
and bring me, of a surety,
where all the saints in purity
make merry at your feast.

Let all the sailors learn ‘em
the Requiem Eternam
and sing it as they go,
and may God bring us safely
to angels chanting bravely
Cantemus Domino. Amen.

Boys’ Life cover, August 1925 – https://books.google.com/books?id=Nm1A2M7aaGIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99175652

And even if our moorings come undone,
there still are tulips blooming in the sun
and hyacinths to fill the air with scent.
What if our stories lose what they had meant?
The dawn still follows when the dusk has fallen;
the day still wakes though hope is all forgotten.
Though ignorant armies still may clash by night,
the mockingbird ascends in joyous flight
to perch up in the topmost of the oaks;
an innocence we lost it yet invokes,
and songs we have forgotten still it sings.
Look up and bless the flash of white-barred wings!
We can be true to one another yet
though all things else may falter and forget,
but each one follows still its given way.
So soft the nighttime follows blazing day.
The bread is laid upon the table still:
Come sit with me, and break, and eat your fill.

Mockingbird, 1923, By Crawford Jackson – https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Near_nature%27s_heart;a_volume_of_verse(IA_nearnaturesheart00jack).pdf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=174275170

“How long, O Lord? How, how? How long?”
A white-winged dove awakes the dawn—
I missed the alarm, but this I hear.
A nesting pair comes every year
and builds again what time tore down.
All spring and summer will resound
in the golden light of dusk and dawn,
“How long, O Lord? How, how? How long?”

They build where grass has long since grown
above the feathers of their own
when from the door I watched the hawk
devour the fallen of the flock.
Yet still they build to lose it all
when spring and summer turn to fall,
who cry out now at dusk and dawn,
“How long, O Lord? How, how? How long?”

For winter passes, as do hawks,
through solstice to the equinox;
and spring returns, as do the doves
to build again their nests and loves,
until our winters all are past;
until an answer comes at last
for all who ask at dusk and dawn,
“How long, O Lord? How, how? How long?”

In Texas, By Dan Pancamo – Flickr: White-winged Dove, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16276493

Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
—Matthew 17:1-9

There are lights that cast a shadow,
brightnesses that make us dark,
overwhelmed by all that’s hallowed
as we catch the merest spark.

In our littleness we look on,
but we cannot comprehend
what this shining now betokens
in the one we call our friend.

When I glimpse you, Lord, I tremble
though I see the smallest part,
for you see how I dissemble
in the shadows of my heart;

and I fall before your glory
in my terror and my shame;
and you show your mercy toward me
when you dim again your flame.

Then you stoop to where I’ve fallen—
always in the dust we meet.
Here you offer me your comfort
as you raise me to my feet.

Yet the spark I caught is burning,
and it makes my darkness bright.
O, refine me in your furnace
‘til my eyes can bear your light!

This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah. 
–Luke 11:29

Let me see the sign of Jonah
when I’ve fallen in the depths:
In the crushing, in the cold there,
swallow me into yourself.

From the chaos of the tempest,
from the darkness of the tomb,
gather me into your refuge;
carry me as in your womb.

You have walked the waves that drowned me;
you have sunk in death’s abyss.
There you sought me and you found me,
as you came here just for this.

So you have me in your keeping
in the deepnesses of death.
Oh, she is not dead but sleeping—
You will give me back my breath.

Austrian – Leaf from Missal – Walters W339R – Obverse Detail By AustrianGottschalk – Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18845832