"there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" from "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen

christus paradox

We concluded worship on the Feast of Christ the King this past Sunday by singing "Christus Paradox." What powerful words. We sang it to Paradox, the tune written especially for this hymn by John Van Maanen. Sylvia Dunstan, the United Church of Canada minister and prison chaplain who wrote the hymn, set it to the tune Westminster Abbey. There is a wonderful version on Youtube sung to the tune of Picardy by The Birmingham Chamber Chorus. The hymn sings the great ironies of the incarnation of God, the Word made flesh. Singing this great paradox into our hearts and souls and bodies is crucial if we are to live and tell the truth about the servant Lord of the upside-down kingdom of God. What a gift ...

the last thing

Who'd be afraid of death.
I think only fools
are. For it is not
as though this thing
were given to one man only, but all
receive it. The journey that my
friend makes, I can
make also. If I know
nothing else. I know
this, I go where he is.
O Fools, shrinking from this little door,
Through which so many kind and lovely souls have passed
Before you,
Will you hang back?
Harder in your case than another?
Not so.
And too much silence?
Has there not been enough stir here?
Go bravely, for where so much greatness and gentleness have been
Already, You should be glad to follow.

- by Monk Gibbon

whose pulse may be thy praise

"Thou that has given so much to me,
Give one thing more - a grateful heart ....
Not thankful when it pleases me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart, whose pulse may be Thy praise."

- George Herbert, "Gratefulness", The Temple

praying

"It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

they know me at this cafe

"They know me at this cafe. When I come in from the vineyards they put a drink in front of me. As a sign of respect I take off my sunglasses whenever I speak to the proprietress. Here I can reflect on the Romans, their triumph, and the tiny thorn in their side that we represent. The owners are exiles too, scattered people, as are their customers, who all seem to wear dark suits and flash gold teeth behind their cigarette-holders. Our children go to the Roman schools. We drink coffee, and some kind of powerful fruit brandy, and we hope that the grandchildren will return to us. Our hope is in the distant seed. Occasionally the card players in the corner lift little glasses in a toast, and I lift mine, joining them in their incomprehensible affirmation. The cards fly between their fingers and the mica table-top, old cards, so familiar they hardly have to turn them over to see who has won the hand. Take heart, you who were born in the captivity of a fixed predicament; and tremble, you kings of certainty: your iron has become like glass, and the word has been uttered that will shatter it."

- Leonard Cohen ("Book of Mercy", #18)

the chapel

A little aside from the main road,
becalmed in a last-century greyness,
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by,
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds, too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass.

christians and pagans

People turn to God when they're in need,
plead for help, contentment, and for bread,
for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.
They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God's own need,
and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,
see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand with God to share God's pain.

God turns to all people in their need,
nourishes body and soul with God's own bread,
takes up the cross for Christian and pagan, both,
and in forgiving both, is slain.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, July 1944 ("A Testament to Freedom", p. 541)

kyrie

Because we cannot be clever and honest
and are inventors of things more intricate
than the snowflake - Lord have mercy.

Because we are full of pride
in our humility and because we believe
in our disbelief - Lord have mercy.

Because we will protect ourselves
from ourselves to the point
of destroying ourselves - Lord have mercy.

And because on the slope to perfection,
when we should be half-way up,
we are half-way down - Lord have mercy.

- R.S. Thomas (from "Mass for Hard Times")

to live on this earth

To live on this earth
you must be able
to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver

which

And in the book I read:
God is love. But lifting
my head, I do not find it
so. Shall I return

hill christmas

They came over the snow to the bread's
purer snow, fumbled it in their huge
hands, put their lips to it

a deep happiness

I have been enjoying reading a collection of Leonard Cohen's poems and songs entitled "Stranger Music". Near the end of the book I found this little poem - "A Deep Happiness" - to which I find myself returning ...

the dove

     I saw the dove come down, the dove with the green twig, the childish dove out of the storm and the flood. It came toward me in the style of the Holy Spirit descending. I had been sitting in a cafe for twenty-five years waiting for this vision. It hovered over the great quarrel. I surrendered to the iron laws of the moral universe which make a boredom out of everything desired. Do not surrender, said the dove. I have come to make a nest in your shoe. I want your step to be light. 

- Leonard Cohen (Death of a Lady's Man, 1978)

the bright field

"I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you."


- R.S. Thomas

the props assist the house

The Props assist the House

Until the House is built

And then the Props withdraw

And adequate, erect,

The House support itself

And cease to recollect

The Augur and the Carpenter –

Just such a retrospect

Hath the perfected Life –

A Past of Plank and Nail

And slowness – then the scaffolds drop 

Affirming it a Soul 

- Emily Dickinson

you can never be sure

"I hard hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write"

- W. S. Merwin ("Opening the Hand")

love after love

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."

- by Derek Walcott

sit down, Master, on this rude chair

a prayer for the week ...


Sit down, Master, on this rude chair of praises, and rule my nervous heart with your great decrees of freedom. Out of time you have taken me to do my daily task. Out of mist and dust you have fashioned me to know the numberless worlds between the crown and the kingdom. In utter defeat I came to you and you received me with a sweetness I had not dared to remember. Tonight I come to you again, soiled by strategies and trapped in the loneliness of my tiny domain. Establish your law in this walled place. Let nine men come to lift me into their prayer so that I may whisper with them: Blessed be the name of the glory of the kingdom for ever and ever.

- Leonard Cohen, from "Book of Mercy", 1984