Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things are all we see.
—Sequence for the Feast of Corpus Christi

This summer day an image of your bounty;
this storm that’s rolling in your wrath, of course—
your mercy, too: We could not live without it.
Yes, all the things we see are metaphors

for you, and we see dimly in a mirror.
I look, and those I know all seem to me
trees walking, ‘til you make my vision clearer.
When will you touch my eyes and let me see?

I walk a world of shadows, nothing real.
Content with them, I ask you, “What is truth?”
You do not answer, only set a meal
and give your flesh to me, my tongue and tooth.

And all the bread I’ve tasted was an image,
just ink and paint and paper, dry as ash.
And all the wine I’ve drunk was but to mimic
the soul that sips a flood where you were gashed.

But when I eat the meal you set before me
I feel the life that rises from the dead.
The seed that fell and rose reveals your glory:
You offer me my first real taste of bread.

Last Supper, drawing, Philips Koninck, late 1650s. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over traces of red chalk, heightened with white gouache, with framing line in pen and brown ink. Laid down. – This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60888837

Before him in shame shall come
all who vent their anger against him.
—Isaiah 45:24b

Oh, I have railed in anger at the sky,
vented my rage, O Lord, and cursed your name,
yet I shall come to look you in the eye,
shall see you just as clearly as my shame.

Yes, I will have the same as righteous Job:
with my own eyes shall see you on the earth
and stand so close that I could touch your robe,
although I have defied you since my birth.

Then I will cry out weeping, “Where were you?”
and you will ask, “Who shut in doors the sea?”
and there will be no answer—no, it’s true—
but that you stand upon the earth with me.

As close as you’ll be then, Lord, be here now
to show that mercy greater than my death.
Show me the livid marks on hand and brow,
my Lord and God, as close as touch and breath.

Anonymous Byzantine illustration; the pre-incarnate Christ speaks to Job. Book of Job in Illuminated Manuscripts.List of Byzantine Manuscripts with Cyclic Illustration.Mount Athos.Megisti Lavra Monastery. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10827565

The bright daylilies riot in the garden:
They shout their colors ‘til the sky gives in
and grants the weeds and all offenders pardon.
The high judge nods and sends the rain again—
not torrents of destruction, merely showers
in mercy shown to us and to the flowers.

But even so the lilies have their moment.
They followed on the irises now lost;
chrysanthemums already start to foment
rebellion, though they all give way to frost.
Each one its glory in the sun unfurling
will wither in its hour of dead leaves curling.

In Eden only bloomed no fear of autumn
but that was overthrown.  In all our years
the pleading for it fills each short-lived blossom;
they wilt though we may water them with tears.
O judge of all, will you not grant us mercy?
Though spring rains come at last they leave us thirsty.

We protest with the lilies ‘til you hear us;
in solidarity we march through time
and watch them fall, as men and flowers near us
are one by one arrested in their prime.
This order cannot stand; it, too, is falling.
Beyond our shouts some other voice is calling,

as if the judge himself became the lily
condemned to sink beneath the winter snows.
If spring should come again then he would fill it
and overturn the fall each blossom knows.
His clemency would flower in full pardon
and Eden spring again in every garden.

The tawny daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) (c)2007 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man) – Self-photographed, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2237229

Day after day, week after week we pray,
“O Lord, I am not worthy to receive,
but only say the word—but only say—
and shall my soul be healed.” So we believe,
yet somehow, month by month, comes no reprieve
as year by year our sicknesses consume
the dust you brought forth naked from the womb.

We cannot help but know, though long we’ve pled
for ignorance or for some other fate,
the slave will die, centurion hang his head.
We pray through every moment we await
that which must come, though we know not its date—
two women there, one taken and one left,
one gone into the dark and one bereft.

Or if not death, an unseen thorny crown,
a broken frame, the sins we cannot best.
What does not kill us simply wears us down
and none of us is spared the final test.
What is this prayer, this hope we have confessed?
What but the drowning hand thrust from the wave
before it sinks, if no one comes to save?

Take, then, O God, the flutter of our hand
as frantic as the flickering of flame
upon the altar, take the breath that fanned
these torches by the whisper of your name,
as gifts we bring which only you can claim.
Take them as acts of faith despite our doubt:
Yours is the altar where we flicker out.

Still do you bring us back to life each day;
still is your mercy every morning new,
so we may bow our heads again to pray,
we who will fade as quickly as the dew,
“I am not worthy, Lord, receiving you,
but say the word and I shall be made whole,”
and wait for you to speak into our soul.

detail study for the “Heller Altarpiece” By Albrecht Dürer – Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21792217

When all is said and all is done,
one thing I’ll know, one thing I knew:
You love us as you love the Son,
your love in him and he in you.

You loved him ere the world was made,
and you have loved us too so long,
before creation was arrayed
before the seven days had dawned.

And this, the love you set in him,
proceeding from your inmost thought
as light when everything was dim,
is that you send into our heart

and, in us, draws us into yours
that we within your heart may rest.
You open to us heaven’s doors,
the heaven of your inmost breast.

The Son in you and you in us
and love around, between, among
draws us into your loving thus
to dwell while endless ages run.

All glory to the love that was,
the love that is and is to be,
and praise for what that loving does
and did and will eternally.

Rothschild Canticles, folio 106r. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002755

The soul within my body, form in stone,
cry out alike for light and to be known.

Dissimilar we are, and yet the same:
All matter speaks the uncreated name

and says the Maker’s making will not cease
‘til all that’s made is perfect in his peace.

The mountain’s magma, blood within my veins,
spill out in cataclysm, chisel’s pains,

‘til all of our excess is worn away
and what is left is timeless as the day.

O Sculptor, pare me down to shape and line
and let the essence of your image shine!

Female Figure, c. 2500–2300 B.C.

Bastis Master, Cycladic, Kimball Art Museum, https://kimbellart.org/collection/ag-197002

We vow ourselves to heaven; we aspire
to union with the God who made all things,
but who can bear the all-consuming fire?
We cry for mercy when it only stings.

I have to nerve myself for you and stand
as close as I can manage to the flame,
in range, a place for sparks to land
and singe, minutely brand me with your name.

Each small humiliation burns away
what should not be—a little twinge, a pinch,
transforming me just barely day by day
and inch by tiny fraction of an inch.

Not conflagrative, cataclysmic change—
I am not swallowed in the flame’s abyss,
yet I am altered, to myself made strange
by waves of heat and each small firebrand’s kiss.

O God, you’re gentle with us, for you know
of what we’re made, that we are dust and ash.
I will be changed if you would have me so.
Your mercy fills each spark and fading flash.

Sparks from a pyrotechnic sparkler. By Gabriel Pollard – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1541671

O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill!
—Sequence for Pentecost

Dust, and will you stir me with your breath?
Dry bones, tinder for the flame,
waiting for that life beyond our death,
and for the one who speaks my name.

Tired heart, I long to beat again;
weary soul, I wait for light:
Long it is, the hoping until then,
‘til fire shall drive away my night.

In the limbo of the halfway-filled,
silent do I struggle on:
Undefeated, but my cries are stilled
within this hush before the dawn.

Faith this cannot be, nor is it doubt,
waiting for the strength to stand.
Wake, o light that cannot be put out!
This tinder’s ready at your hand!

Come, then, Spirit, to my spirit wan,
worn by apathy in strife.
Stir the embers kindled by the Son,
and breathe again in me his life.

Rushing wind, enliven without storms:
Stir up peace forever true.
Flame that every element transforms,
now burn me, wake me, make me new!

Took a late shot today. We all went to the store this afternoon, and I left my camera behind, didn’t get back until it was almost dark. We spent the rest of the night looking for fireflies (aka lightning bugs). June 15 195/366 By Rhett Maxwell – flame, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48392539

A restful meadow in a Texas spring
before the sun has scorched the green to gold
but restless with the creatures on the wing,
eyecatchers that no eye but God’s can hold;

a field of firewheels blazing in the sun
where blankets of bluebonnets spread their peace
and all the troubles of the world are done
except the labor of the mother bees,

their busy drone in every buttercup
and sanctus, sanctus sung by mockingbirds
with clatters as the mourning doves rise up,
such praise in every wing and every word:

This is the place where you refresh my soul
before we dare the canyon in its gloom,
mesquite trees sprouting thorns from every bole—
before that, let me see the wildflowers bloom.

And when we’ve passed the shadows, shepherd mine,
spread out your table in the live oak’s shade.
Pour me the chalice brimful with your wine
and break for me the bread your mercy made. Amen.

Vincent van Gogh – The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet – Google Art Project – Google Arts & Culture: Home – pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21856347

No mason worth his salt laid out these lines;
no architect designed these crooked roofs.
What midnight sky is this where no sun shines
and yet the flowers glow, the morning’s proofs?

Where was the Father when this church was made,
and by what miracle does it still stand?
The road before me plunges into shade—
oh, even there shall I be in your hand?

Keep, in your mercy, stone stacked upon stone.
The beauty that we try for, bless with grace.
The road we walk, let us not go alone
but comfort us with glimpses of your face. Amen.