New Commandment

Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.

—John 15:9-17

Lord, you gave a new commandment,
laid your life down for your friends.
All our questions had one answer:
Love each other to the end.

Oh, but loving is a labor:
We are willing; we are weak.
In the service of our neighbor,
where, Lord, is the rest we seek?

Shepherd, lead us to still waters
where our hearts may be refreshed.
Shelter all your sons and daughters
as we come to break the bread.

There you lay your yoke upon us.
When we make our sacrifice
for the ones you put before us,
we will find the burden light.

We will find in you our comfort
as we labor in your name,
for you work with us, our brother,
that our loves may be the same.

When we turn to serve each other,
filling hands and washing feet,
when we love as you have loved us,
then our joy will be complete.

Tacuina sanitatis (XIV century) 5-alimenti, acqua calda,Taccuino Sanitatis, Casanatense 418 By unknown master – book scan, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1638829

Bruised Reed

The bruised reed broke off in your hand;
the dimly burning light blew out
that in the storm wind could not stand
and could not raise a joyful shout.

Not only broken: hollowed, carved,
the marrow scraped out of the bone,
the reed you make a flute, O God,
to sound a clear and piercing note.

So you will take the guttered wick
and gather up the grime, the soot,
to write your word in darkest ink—
the vanished flame still shows your truth.

For this, O glory of the Lord,
you came, a reed, to break with us.
You doused your flame, shone out no more,
to swirl your soot into our dust.

Write it in my most distant parts—
though broken, they are not cut off;
though doused, the light burns in my heart.
I still am gathered in your love.

Creator: R. Welch (Photographer) Date: c.1914 Original Format: Photographic Print Description: Meadow Reed Grass on the banks of the Boyne, County Kildare. PRONI Ref: D1403_2~068~A By Public Record Office of Northern Ireland – https://www.flickr.com/photos/proni/13716765545/, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42300357

As If

As if the calla filled with rain
and dripped it from the rim:
a good too great to be contained
that overruns the brim.

As if the sky of midnight stars
pooled in the eastern hills
and spilled itself across the dark
when morning's bowl was filled.

Or if the beating of the heart
kept every music's time
and nothing could be sung apart
from that internal rhyme.

The fractals in a grain of sand
or feathers of a bird,
the riverbeds that cross the hand—
so fragile and absurd—

run over with the infinite,
and wonder lays its weight
upon the ones who swim in it
and bow before its face.

We cast our eyes demurely down
and find more witness there.
Magnanimous, the dusty ground
holds us in marvel's care.

Headstone from Arnos Vale Cemetery with a lily carved on it By BristolIcarus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59525140

Not Enough

I give you all I have, O Lord,
the wine that filled my cup,
the dregs beyond the drops I poured—
but it was not enough.

I give you all that I can be,
the stuff I'm knitted of,
unravelled all the threads of me—
but it was not enough.

Enough to make a good return
for all that you have done.
The world, the flesh, the devil spurned—
but it was not enough.

I broke my heart, give you the bits,
the shards of all my love,
for there is nothing left but this.

O child, there never was.

Birdoswald roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall. “This case shows something of the range of pottery used by the Roman soldiers whilst serving on Hadrian’s Wall. Different types of pot had different uses in the same way that we have metal pans, ceramic plates and china mugs. Like today, the army in the Roman period had military contracts with certain suppliers. Some pottery manufacturers in Britain took advantage of this system and would have made large profits.” By Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33765158

Sower

On bearing good fruit:

Turn my earth, O sower,
thistle-choked and thorned,
lying fallow, stone-filled:
Sift it more and more.
Harrowed, softened, broken,
deep the furrow's scored.
Ready me for sowing,
plowed with ruined sword.

There the seed will burrow
when you give the Word,
hidden under sorrow,
roots that reach the core.
After winter snowing,
springtime bursting sore,
summer's golden growing,
autumn will run o'er.

Tend me through the slow days;
nurture me, my Lord.
Slow, the work of growing;
great is the reward.
Grown to be scythed lower
(thus are harvests born),
I was yours at sowing:
Spent, I still am yours.

Walled 17th-century kitchen garden at Ham House near London, with orangery in the distance. By mym, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9132385

The Four Creatures

The Feast of St. Mark, riffing on Ezekiel and Revelation:

In the roaring of the lions,
in the bellowing of bulls,
in the eagle as it's crying,
in the man who reads the scrolls,
there is but one song among them
as they gather 'round the throne:
Only “Holy, holy”'s sung then,
“Lord of hosts and God alone!”

So each stanza of creation,
every atom's syllables,
joins the song the creatures make there,
with the bellowing of bulls.
Every rock dove's doleful  mourning,
every cockerel note unfolds
with the joy forever forming
in the man who reads the scrolls.

For the song forever praises
him who sits upon the throne,
ever young and ancient days his,
Lord of hosts and God alone.
We will join th'eternal chorus,
join the eagles' crying throng,
one with all the lions' roaring,
all our music in that song.

The symbols of the four Evangelists are here depicted in the Book of Kells. The four winged creatures symbolize, top to bottom, left to right: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. By Book of Kells, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4013150

Never Ready

Riffing on the “My heart is ready, God…. I will wake the dawn” in psalm 57 and 108, which in some translations is “My heart is ready”:

My heart is never ready, Lord,
but I will sing your praise:
Awake, my dull and timid soul,
with song that wakes the day.

If but the bright'ning of the sky
were lightning in my heart,
how great the music I could cry
at every new day's start.

Or if the breaking of the dawn
could pierce my inmost shade,
I could arise like any sun,
as bright as new-made day.

But I am not each day renewed:
My dust is still the same
or worse as when you shaped it new,
but still you call my name.

And still you bid the sun to rise
and tell me so as well.
The light waits not for ready skies
to make the morning swell.

So if I am forever clay
and ever dark within,
yet I can love the breaking day
and sing its welcome in.

Sunrise in Marengo and Apollo Bay, Victoria, Australia By Riley Williams – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132368593

Good Shepherd

Jesus said:
“I am the good shepherd.
A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
A hired man, who is not a shepherd
and whose sheep are not his own,
sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away,
and the wolf catches and scatters them.
This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me,
just as the Father knows me and I know the Father;
and I will lay down my life for the sheep.”
—John 10:11-18

O loving shepherd of the flock,
the storm is rising high
and predators who stalk the dark
are circling nearby.

Your voice still sounds, a constant pulse
that rings out low and clear
amid the howling of the wolves
so swiftly drawing near.

O, let us hear you through the storm
and panic-stricken night,
and keep us safely in your fold
'til morning rises bright.

But if we're scattered to the winds,
still you would find us there.
If we are driven by our sins,
we have not left your care.

For you have climbed the farthest hills
and combed the valleys deep,
that even from the darkest vales
you will bring back your sheep.

Not one is lost forever, then,
though we have left the fold;
not one will slip out of your hand,
but you will bring us home.

James Tissot, The Good Shepherd.

Vine

One for John 15, on the vine and the branches:

O Christ, enlivening vine,
surround us with your leaves
and take our substance for your wine,
our harvest for your feast.

From springtime's tender green
'til growing time is through,
within your tendrils let us cling.
Let us remain in you

that all we bear and make
in your own good may share;
that all we do will have the taste
of your enfolding care;

and all that flows in you
may run into our veins,
as every day we are renewed
by wind and sun and rain.

So root us in your love
and hold us ever near
that our leaves, too, spread out above
to shelter others here.

Graft us into your life
and there forever keep
to grow still more like you, O Christ,
and make our joy complete.

Vineyard. Picture from popular bible encyclopedia of Archimandrite Nicephorus (1891). By Unknown author – Popular Bible Encyclopedia of Archimandrite Nicephorus (1891) RSL, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67480264

The Rising Word

The Word that spoke the light
gave up his final breath
into the waiting hands of God,
but, oh, the light still shines.
The Word now speaks again,
its mighty echoes rolling on.

Before the stars shone down,
before the mountains rose,
he was, before the world began,
and after stars burn out,
when mountains are no more,
he is, beyond our human span.

But human he became,
a moment and a pulse:
Eternity would live and die.
A fingerprint, a name,
to feel earth's downward pull,
and yet, beyond all hope, to rise.

The author of all life
rewrites the book of death
upon the pages of our hearts.
All glory be to Christ,
world without end, amen,
who pulls us into endless song.

Christ Pantocrator By Unknown author – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5820582