Tag: Holy Week

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this king

Who are we to fall before a King on colt ascending,
palms pressed flat to scattered stones
that shake with ancient, living song?
We are adoration, lifted from the tongues of urchins,
setting play aside to ponder
what a King this King might be.

Who are we to lift our heads as eastern gates to sunrise,
seeing light we’ve seen before
as orphans through a weeping glass?
We are once-blind pupils in dilation, through stigmata
setting sight aside to wonder
what a King this King might be.

Who are we to stand within the Holy Home of worship,
sandals set aside in favor
of our washed and naked feet?
We are kin to Christ, no guest but children at the table,
setting rights aside in service
to the King this King might be.

Who are we to enter in such doors, drawn up from bone and
skin, through frames adorned like bloody
brows, pinned back with rusty nails?
We are blood-bought butchers cleansed, passed over in our feasting
on the broken blood and body
of the King this King might be.

Who are we to rise from dust and ashes in the dawning
of a Kingdom borne of sorrow,
of a King made sin for slaves?
We are witnesses of sound and fury in the making,
bursting open with the glory
of the King of Kings we see.

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it on the seas
and established it on the waters.

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.

They will receive blessing from the Lord
and vindication from God their Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, God of Jacob.

Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty—
he is the King of glory.

Psalm 24
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deathlife

(dedicated to Beth Mason)

i.

How do you keep
showing up
each day, when each day
is bereavement?

How do you lift your head
at the sight of the cold and beautiful light
standing like a child
by the foot of your bed
in need of you,
needing you present,
as she always does,
to feed and clothe and hold her close,
to keep the monsters back,
to guard the door?
How do you go on
when you wish the light didn’t need you
to illuminate the world?

How do you rise
every time the sun rises,
to face it and the shadows it creates
as one who willfully worships,
in adoration
of All that is beyond and above and within you,
All that you will never understand
and yet trust for your very life?

How do you face yourself
and the shadows you create
that bend backward to the earth
like westward crops at nightfall,
to fill and fade and fall again?

How do you take and eat
when you long ago
gave up birthrights for bellyfulls,
when you can just about taste the bread
but cannot lay your head on the breast,
when the wine smells of blood
and the blood savors like wine,
when you hunger to bear
children like the pregnant earth,
yet remain empty?

How do you
then live?

ii.
 It is a cold and beautiful light
that pierces the eye, the hand, the side,
and comes away red with life,
coursing over the dawn of a soul
in baptismal torrents.

Dive deep into the
waiting well, the warm and terrible darkness
gushing forth,
the life that we struggle to grasp,
that grasps us, and holds us under.
Somewhere in the crimson sea
we will lose all will to live,
and die instead.

iii.
 So I ask the greenshod world
“How is it that you come alive again?”

And it answers me:
“Smell the air, feel the soil, taste the
deepening springs beneath.
Would you not awake
to such liquid light?
Would you not leave your winter
and take new garments
upon yourself
at such a call?”

And outstretched arms
beckon me in, blooms releasing
the incense
of a long and faithful sleep.

“Come to the spring
with us, drink deep and be merry
once more,
for hope lives
and lives again.”

Then I unfurl
and come forth.

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battle-blind

(for Palm Sunday, from my upcoming project WORDS FOR THE CHURCH)

“Trample our foes
under metal-shod heel
under ramrod doctrine
and volumes of steel!”
You are, too often, in our battle-blind sight,
our war horse for nothing but wild-eyed fight.

But on this day
entry to the Holy City is unlike any rebellion,
heralded by children
paraded through palms.

Salvation is not by our swords, or woken by our wars,
and the power enters peacefully,
on the back of a young donkey,
as it entered years ago
on the breast of a manger.
The only blood spilt is of a servant King,
that His wakening children may ever rise and sing.

Lay your banners low
at the sandal-shod feet of
the Infant, the Infinite, the Shepherd, the Lamb.
His Gospel is peace, and mercy toward man.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time for war, and a time for peace…”
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8b