O Emmanuel

J. Kirk Richards

O Emmanuel

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us

O long-sought With-ness for a world without,

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.

Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name

Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,

O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

Be folded with us into time and place,

Unfold for us the mystery of grace

And make a womb of all this wounded world.

O heart of heaven beating in the earth,

O tiny hope within our hopelessness

Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,

To touch a dying world with new-made hands

And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.

Malcolm Guite

“O tiny hope within our hopelessness”. I love how the life of Jesus curls both inward and outward in this poem. Mysteries within mysteries, but at the same time, revelations opening into wider and yet wider horizons. Foldings and unfoldings. So beautiful. Like the whorls of shells or the swirling stars, all these seem to speak of the same pattern, the same name. Unspoken, but singing out through everything.

 

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

Arcabus

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

See, as they strip the robe from off his back
And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
And love is firmly fastened onto loss.
But here a pure change happens. On this tree
Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
Here wounding heals and fastening makes free
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
And here we see the length, the breadth, the height
Where love and hatred meet and love stays true
Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light
We see what love can bear and be and do,
And here our saviour calls us to his side
His love is free, his arms are open wide.

Malcolm Guite


The inside-outness of this poem is wonderful. Guite captures the convergence of opposites in the person of Jesus – loss/gain, wound/heal, death/birth, defeat/victory. The Easter story goes against  every human instinct. Power in weakness? Victory in death? It bends my mind.  

Supper Being Ended

Carl Holsøe

Supper Being Ended

In the quiet place
at close of day
he washes the feet of my mind
from the dust of its fret.

His infinite eyes
see the straining and wounds of the road,
his hands
bring smarting
and cleansing
and balm.

The grace of his health
restores my soul
her place in the circling stars of perpetual praise.

Then, taking again the seamless robe,
the Alpha-Omega,
Master and Lord,
we talk together,
friend with friend.

Joan A. Bidwell 

To be able to speak my worries, my tiredness, my concerns, and know that I can let them go, what a relief that is. To feel that someone who loves me knows and cares and understands - I raise my hands in thankfulness, and rest. 

 

A Quiet Roar

J Kirk Richards, "Though He Were Dead, Yet Shall He Live"

A Quiet Roar

one

he lays his left hand along the beam

hand that moulded clay into fluttering birds

hand that cupped wild flowers to learn their peace

hand that stroked the bee’s soft back and touched death’s sting

two

he stretches his right hand across the grain

hand that blessed a dead corpse quick

hand that smeared blind spittle into sight

hand that burgeoned bread, smoothed down the rumpled sea

three
 

he stands laborious

sagging, split, homo erectus, poor bare forked thing

hung on nails like a picture

he is not beautiful

blood sweats from him in rain

far off where we are lost, desert dry

thunder begins its quiet roar

the first drops startle us alive

the cloud no bigger

than a man’s hand

Veronica Zundel 

We know this story so well. Jesus, God's son, dies on the cross. We know it was for love of us. For love of the whole world. Did nature, did the animals know their Creator walked the earth? Did they recognize him? The winds and waves did. And when he was crucified, the sun darkened, there were earthquakes, rocks split apart, and the curtain in the temple was torn in two. And yet somehow, Jesus' death in the midst of all this, was easily overlooked by humans. 


  

Palm Sunday

Minerva Teichert, "Christ's Entry Into Jerusalem"

        Palm Sunday
 

        Astride the colt and claimed as King
        that Sunday morning in the spring,
        he passed a thorn bush flowering red
        that one would plait to crown his head.

        He passed a vineyard where the wine
        was grown for men of royal line
        and where the dregs were also brewed
        into a gall for Calvary’s rood.

        A purple robe was cast his way,
        then caught and kept until that day
        when, with its use, a trial would be
        profaned into a mockery.

        His entourage was forced to wait
        to let a timber through the gate,
        a shaft that all there might have known
        would be an altar and a throne.

        Marie J. Post

Descent

N.C. Wyeth

Descent

They sought to soar into the skies

Those classic gods of high renown

For lofty pride aspires to rise

But you came down.

You dropped down from the mountains sheer

Forsook the eagle for the dove

The other Gods demanded fear

But you gave love

Where chiselled marble seemed to freeze

Their abstract and perfected form

Compassion brought you to your knees

Your blood was warm

They called for blood in sacrifice

Their victims on an altar bled

When no one else could pay the price

You died instead

They towered above our mortal plain,

Dismissed this restless flesh with scorn,

Aloof from birth and death and pain,

But you were born.

Born to these burdens, borne by all

Born with us all ‘astride the grave’

Weak, to be with us when we fall,

And strong to save.

Malcolm Guite