I Cannot Keep Awake

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life,
and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
For that day will assault everyone
who lives on the face of the earth.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.”
—Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

My eyes will not stay open;
I cannot keep awake,
but trust what you have spoken
that swiftly comes the day

when you will come restoring,
come bringing exiles home.
I may not be here for it,
but I wait, even so.

The memories we carry,
old sorrows we still weep
like seeds the winter buried,
not dead but fast asleep,

with Jesse's stump forgotten
yet watered by the dew—
all that we lost shall blossom,
becoming something new.

The fruit we stole in Eden
and Cain's rejected sheaves,
their shoots will grow like weeds then
into your mercy's feast.

And if I cannot see it,
if I am buried deep,
yet you will come, Redeemer,
to wake me from my sleep.

Detail of Jesse from the Stained Glass window of All Saints Church, Hove, Sussex. England, Photo By Malcolmlow, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64575403

The Dying and the Dead

O Son of Heaven, only lord of life,
I offer you the dying and the dead:
the man who turns from burying his wife
to hear his doctor say the cancer's spread,
the children falling silently to earth
in cracks and crevices of toppled stone,
the mother who will not survive the birth,
the young man once more eating all alone.
Take them, O Lord, in venerable hands—
the labor of our hands, the bent world's fruit—
take all the grief and death, O Sorrow's Man:
“This is my body given up for you.”
For we all bow our heads and feast on dust;
we all will drink the cup of bitter tears.
O, take this dented chalice and these crusts
and crawl into each crumb, each drop of fear,
each block of rubble burying the lost,
each cancer cell, each blade that rends the flesh,
each prison wall, each bullet, every cross,
and all the myriad doorways into death:
Imbue them with yourself, O God who bleeds;
take as your skin the many silent roads,
drawn out so every line to your heart leads,
and drown death in your pulse's ebb and flow.
Then we will eat your flesh and drink your blood
in that one meal where all of us take part
until the tide has turned in mercy's flood
and we live on forever in your heart.

*Memento mori*. Gravestone inscription (1746). Edinburgh. St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard. Photo By Daniel Naczk – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51699963 Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

Vine

As Eve and Adam ate and fell,
all swallowed by the gates of death,
their children in its shadow dwell:
The teeth of hell are locked and clenched.

Woe for the fruit that passed our lips!
Oh, that we would have kept our fast!
What would we give for one small sip
of Eden's streams—but they are past.

So we become the meat and drink
that gluts the hungry maw of death
yet never fills it to the brink.
If it could, death would swallow heav'n.

O Christ, whose fall was marked by ours,
you came to be death's bread and wine.
It swallowed you down, soul and scars,
and up you sprouted like a vine.

Around the gateposts then you wound,
your living bursting from the dead.
The gates of hell came crashing down,
and death was choked by wine and bread.

Out of the garden, you, firstfruits,
took Eve and Adam from the ground,
not broken reeds but living shoots,
and brought them where the sun shines out.

Now Christ the sower, Christ the seed,
you bear us on your upward climb
to where the harvest ever feeds
on heaven's living bread and wine.

Convolvulus vine twining around a steel fixed ladder By Namazu-tron – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7282183

Carved

We carved a road through knowledge
into the land of death,
but Christ that road has hallowed
and blessed it with his steps.

We wrought it with temptation;
we plucked it from the tree,
but Christ has walked that highway
like dry land through the sea.

We should not have been mortal—
would not, had we not sinned.
We opened up that portal,
but Christ has entered in.

Our flesh was meant for heaven,
as all the wondrous earth.
Christ, knit with his creation,
draws heaven to the dirt.

So all the earth he's drawing;
he's dragging us on high—
we clutch his muddly garment—
right through the needle's eye.

And all that we have ruined
in him will be restored.
The road through death is new-made,
and Christ shall bear us forward.

By Michelangelo – http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Eva2.jpgTransferred from de.wikipedia to Commons by Roberta F. using CommonsHelper., 9 September 2007 (original upload date), Original uploader was Nitramtrebla at de.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7556462

The Foolish Virgin’s Song

At midnight, there was a cry,
‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps.
The foolish ones said to the wise,
‘Give us some of your oil,
for our lamps are going out.’
Matthew 25:1-13

O God of day and God of night,
when Christ the bridegroom comes for me,
and if my lamp no more burns bright,
by your good grace then may it be,
O God of dark and God of light,
that he my shine a light for me.

For when these moments all uncoil,
no light will shine from my poor dust.
If ever I had any oil,
it flowed from him as he was crushed—
not by my strength, not by my toil,
but only his outpouring love.

So there must be, by your good grace,
a fountain that is flowing still,
whose drops anoint each human face
that waits upon the bridegroom's will,
where mercy ever flows in spate.
The bridegroom's love my flask must fill.

The waiting seems forever long,
O God of day and God of night,
and though the hours stretch on and on
while we await the bridegroom's light,
may we yet meet him when he comes
with lanterns he keeps burning bright.

Francken, Hieronymus the Younger – Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins – c. 1616 By Hieronymous Francken II – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6860120

This Very Night

Inspired by the Lyke-Wake Dirge:

This night, this very night,
or any night at all,
the clock runs down, the flame burns out,
and Christ receive thy soul.

And all that you have said or thought,
any night at all,
shall be laid out before his heart,
and Christ receive thy soul.

And all that you have been or done...
shall be laid down before his throne...

And every gesture, every look...
shall be writ down within his book...

And then shall he that volume take...
and read whereat his heart shall break...

And then shall he rise from his throne...
to bear each wand'ring wether home...

And then shall he lay bare his heart...
to show where you are carven on't...

And all you are or could have been...
he makes his mercy to redeem...

And throws a feast of wine and bread,
any night at all,
then trust him and lay down your head,
and Christ receive thy soul.

Candle By Arivumathi – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24728169

First and Last

Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.
Matthew 20:16

When all our ranks and rites are past,
the first go not before the last.
When all who go, go there as dust.
the last go not before the first.

The fruit is from the selfsame vine:
Adorned in gold and jewels fine
or dressed in rags, or starved or dined,
alike the selfsame shroud shall wind.

The rich have not a rarer breath;
their grasping cannot beggar death,
and paupers, too, new wine will press:
the resurrection of this flesh.

No gold or rags, but blood and bone,
no jewels but the eyes alone:
So poor and rich shall rise as one
to bow before th'incarnate son.

Then all we've hidden shall be seen,
all we have failed to be or been,
all cut and mended, stitched and seamed—
each ragged edge shall be redeemed.

And all the gilded and adorned,
the battered, broken, bent, and torn
shall stand alike before the Lord
and drink the selfsame wine outpoured.

The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=490534

As We Look On Death

Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
John 11:1-45

You ask us, as we look on death,
to trust in resurrection;
to hope, beyond the end of breath,
that all our sighs are reckoned;
to love, though there is nothing left,
and say someone still beckons.

You stand with us outside the tomb
to mourn the one within it—
O, call him out again to you!
O'erturn the grave and spill it!
For we shall all go that way soon,
and you yourself shall fill it.

Here where the ground gapes open wide
and swallows all in shadow,
you come with us.  You step inside,
descend into death's furrow;
a seed stripped bare of pow'r or pride
is buried by the harrow.

You who had shaped us out of dust
as brief and weak as grass is,
who breathed your life into our mud,
are with us as it passes.
It fades, but you are still with us:
Breathe life into these ashes.

The Raising of Lazarus, 1310–11, By Duccio di Buoninsegna – Kimbell Art Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7125641

And If This Night

But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”
Luke 12:13-21

And if this night my life should end,
if I should stand before my God,
then all the gifts that filled my hands
will fall untended to the sod.

Oh, let them be as scattered seeds
that fall in death to rise in spring,
a harvest for the endless needs
from shoots that turn the furrows green,

and not as votives for the dead
to moulder buried in the ground
while those my riches could have fed
to their own hungry graves go down.

Give ear, O God, to this my prayer,
as you have given all I have:
What I cannot forever bear
let me not carry to the grave.

Let death not be the only thing
that pries my fingers from bright gold,
and all the good that wealth can bring,
oh, let me only loosely hold.

That when I stand before your throne
I stand unburdened by their weight.
And let it be my soul that grows
when I go planting not too late.

Rembrandt – Parable of the Rich Man – WGA19247 – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15417407

We Looked For You Among the Dead

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
John 20:19-31

We looked for you among the dead,
for we had seen your awful wounds.
You coem to us alive instead,
through still-locked doors in hidden rooms.

For you had learned to pass through walls,
through fear and pain, through hell itself.
You opened ways to pass through all;
with open wounds you pass through death.

We could not roll away the stone
that sealed you lifeless in the grave,
but you have passed on ways unknown 
through stone and door to come and save.

And though we hide from all in fear
and go alive to early tombs,
O risen Lord, still you draw near
to breathe your peace in upper rooms.

Inviting, then, you bid us touch
the open ways in hands and side,
to follow you through death and love
on pathways you have opened wide.

You meet us here in living flesh,
and we will meet what you went through.
Come with us yet through life and death,
and may our wounds lead us to you.