Tag: fall

Thistles

Cast out from our parents' garden,
poured our sweat into the soil:
Thorns and thistles for a harvest,
little for so great a toil.
Yet, O Lord, will you accept it
when we bring our sacrifice?
Will you, can you, take and bless it
if we have no greater tithe?

What you spoke at our beginning
when you took the formless world,
molded, shaped it, set it spinning,
called its dusks and dawnings good,
does that word still echo for us
though our shaping comes to naught?
Does that goodness still enfold us
if our harvest goes to rot?

Messy, naked, hungry, empty
we come from our mothers' wombs;
we will go forth in the same way
to the silence of our tombs.
Only you can fill these hands, Lord,
with the gifts you'd have us bring.
Take our nakedness and failure:
Let it be our offering.

Planta de cardo en flor, en una vereda de Montevideo By Fadesga – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144819271

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