Miserere Mei, Deus {Have Mercy on Me, O God}

 

I remember exactly where I first heard the piercing note at the 2:00 minute mark in the above song. Surrounded by chilly stone and tile, and later by rich warm wood and angels overhead. That first moment I was just outside the chapel, overhearing the New College Choir practise for Ash Wednesday evensong.

The piece was even more stunning when I was sitting in the pew a few hours later and those notes rang out from every stone and surface, as if the angels high above were giving voice to the Creator. . .

. . .Let me explain that when I say there were angels overhead, I mean there were really angels above me.

Ever since that day, I love to listen to the haunting Miserere Mei, Deus on Ash Wednesday (and throughout Lent). Though I had been attending an Anglican church for a while before spending four months in Oxford, I don't think I knew then that Psalm 51 was specifically associated with Ash Wednesday. 

Have mercy on me, O God,

    according to Your steadfast love;

according to Your abundant mercy

    blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

    and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions,

    and my sin is ever before me.

Against You, You only, have I sinned

    and done what is evil in Your sight

. . . 

Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being,

    and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

. . .

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

    and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Your presence,

    and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.

(Psalm 51.1-4a, 6-7, 10-11 ESV UK)

This Ash Wednesday has been grey with great white flakes of snow sifting o'er the valley like powdered sugar. They came more and more rapidly, until a fluffy almost-four-inches of snow crunched underfoot and buried the roads. My sweet boyfriend offered to come pick me up for evensong in his four-wheel-drive truck, but it was not to be. After quite a harrowing afternoon that ended with his work truck being towed, we both decided that staying home was best. 

In the gathering dusk I put the kettle on, lit three candles, and streamed our Ash Wednesday service. I even crushed my blackened match so I could join in the receiving the sign of death on my forehead whilst saying, "Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return." And though I couldn't receive the physical Eucharist with the congregation, I prayed the Prayer of Spiritual Communion, receiving the sign of death that leads to Eternal Life. 

It was not the way I would prefer to step into Lent—separated from my physical church family—but there was still a sacred space, a sacred time that I was able to step into, perhaps in a deeper way than if I had been physically present with other believers. Still, I look forward to gathering in person as we continue this Lenten journey.

I also look forward to removing some noise in my life (the car radio, shows, certain foods) in order to listen to the call of the Father. I can only say I sense that He is moving, that He wants to speak something to me that I have not had the quiet or space to hear before this season. So I ask for an open, hearing, obedient heart. I ask for eyes to see. And I give thanks for all the ways I have experienced His kindness today—from beautiful, much-needed snow and Nick's safety, to the quiet darkness, lit by a trio of beeswax candles and warmed by a mug of tea. 

O Lord our God, grant us grace 

to desire You with our whole heart,
that desiring You we may seek You;

and that seeking You we may find You,
and that finding You we may love You;
and loving You we may hate those sins
from which You have redeemed us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

—St Anselm

Year in Rearview

Contrary to a large percentage of the population, I loved 2021.

It was a surprisingly good year in so many aspects. I got to see all of my best friends over the year (I got to see Max a whopping three times!) and introduce most of them to my small group and work friends, who are like family to me.

This last year was one where I grew decidedly closer to my small group, especially the Hendersons. They often invite me over for dinner or movie nights, they are open-hearted and honest with me, their kids ask me to sit with them at church, and I spent three holidays with them in 2021. I feel very blessed to be part of their family and our small group community! 

In one of those "Only God could have done this" things, I not only got to spend a month in Arizona, I got paid for it by work! Spending the month of March with Doc and Alice was SUCH a gift... I loved making meals for them, going for walks with Alice, going out for walks by myself in the evenings (people in Arizona aren't crazy about having stupid lights everywhere!), seeing interesting places and critters, and meeting nice neighbours. And, of course, it was very fun to get to see my Max-friend for an evening when he was near Phoenix for work. My day in Sedona was one of my favourite memories of the year.

After being invisible for pretty much most of my life, in 2021 men suddenly asked me out. Perhaps not getting out much in 2020 made them bolder (or desperate?), so they asked. Granted, most of them weren't believers, so I said "no" as kindly as I could—but I appreciated that they asked! It made me feel seen. 

One of those fellows did get quite a few "yes" responses from me, however. :) Which is maybe part of what made for such a good year. Having never dated someone in my town, it was an unexpected gift to have someone to be with—and to not have to rely on texts and phone calls to carry the relationship. We could just go out for dinner or walk around town or play hockey in the park together. Embodied relationships are so much deeper, even if it's a lot harder to say difficult things out loud rather than in writing. Both long-distance and in-person relationships have their drawbacks and their perks, but I have found that I infinitely prefer in-person relationships... Even if breaking up is way harder.

Of course, 2021 wasn't all rosy. Dear family friends passed away. My best friend was/is going through a divorce. I had several fights with my stubborn will. I had to both say and hear hard things about myself...things I'm still trying to face. And I had to break up with Nick. My heart and will are still terribly opposed to that last item, but there was no way around it. Maybe one day I will be thankful that we broke up, but it sure isn't today. Today it still sucks. I still don't know how to act around him when I see him. And I still cry myself to sleep.

 

I'll close with the things that have been the sights and soundtrack of the year...

Albums/Artists:

Sigrid

Arvo Pärt

Novo Amor

Audrey Assad

Hymn of Heaven (album) - Phil Wickham 

Songs:

It's Always Been You - Phil Wickham

This song hit me with a force the very first time I heard it...and it still does. 

Take My Hand - Skerryvore

I know exactly where I was when I heard this song for the first time. Nick played it for me and it instantly felt like "our song." 

Shiloh - Audrey Assad

When pain comes to show you
What you'd rather not know
What will your heart do?
What will you let go?

Show Me - Audrey Assad

Bind up these broken bones
Mercy bend and breathe me back to life
But not before You show me how to die

Wrecked - Imagine Dragons

I heard this song when editing a piece for Reflect. It made me think of Aaron... Aaron, whom I still miss. Whom I still write letters to, even if I can't send them to him. 

Shows:

The Chosen
Let the record show that I do not like Bible shows...but I love The Chosen. Any show that makes me cry during the Eucharist at church has gotten something right. I have quite the soft spot for Matthew.

All Creatures Great and Small
This show has been an aesthetic delight with its Yorkshire views (and how adorable is Nicholas Ralph?!)—though I always make the mistake of sitting down to watch it whilst eating, and inevitably the vet is birthing an animal or cutting into a beastie...

Books:

Last Bookshop in London
I got on a WWI and WWII kick this last year-and-a-half-ish. This book was a good one! I yelled "I hate this book!" at least twice whilst listening to it and crying my eyes out. Trust me, that means it was good. There was a lot of "people banding together to get through hard things" stuff going on in this story.

Last Christmas in Paris
If this list were in order, this book would be number one. The audiobook is first rate with narrators for each character. The story is told in letters during WWI. The first time I read the book it made me think of Aaron and all the years of letters we exchanged.

Tolkien and the Great War
This one I listened to (I don't know if I could have made it through just reading on my own) and I found it both interesting to know about Tolkien's life and how WWI influenced so much of LOTR (esp The Scouring of the Shire), and heartbreaking to see how so many bright, influential poets, writers, professors, musicians, and the like were mown down in WWI.

Reforesting Faith
Such an interesting book about trees in the Bible (and trees in general)!

I was on a tree kick early in the year (when am I not?) and also loved this podcast series about Trees from the Bible Project fellows. Seriously, go listen to episode one!

In. . .

In all of my inadequacy

I stand,

Eyes cast down,

chin quavering,

salt trails glistening

In all of my paucity

of soul I come,

Weak-willed,

straining to have what I want

and to do what You want

In all of my scarcity

of mind

that streaks my days

with fear and grasping,

I hide from the world

In all of my insufficiency

I kneel,

with downcast eyes

and open hands,

letting go my weak will

Lift up your heads

ye mighty gates!

Be opened,

ye ancient doors!

The King of Glory enters in!

In all of His sufficiency

He stands;

In all of His humility 

He comes,

Emmanuel, God enfleshed

In the fullness of time

He brings love,

filling empty hands

and hearts and minds—

including mine

In my empty

He enters, a seed in the

dark womb, burgeoning 

life, growing light—

the Eternal Dayspring

In the first light of day

He is the spark

divine, disgorging the rich,

feeding goodness to the

starving, my soul included

In Him my soul, too,

rejoices—

In my lonely places,

In the unbearable waiting,

He enters in. . .

An October World

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. . . Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”

—Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables

Yes, Anne... They give me several thrills, friend. I have delighted in this maple tree outside of my office turning aflame with autumn glory in the last week or so. A stiff wind and some chilly rain are likely denuding it this evening, but I'm thankful to have caught both this morning's glory (above) and a late afternoon burst of gold over the weekend (below).

How right Robert Frost was when he said, "Nothing gold can stay."

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

— R. F.

October has been marked by ephemeral gold, amber, and crimson leaves. By a Harry Potter songlist played over and over, and by a full moon, huge and shrouded by misty clouds. By hikes in autumn air and walks under the stars. By blueberry wine and questions about verbing out one's name, one's self. By nights watching the Anne films with Tosha, Lynnette, and David. By eating far more pumpkin and apple things than I should have. And by the reading of Emily of New Moon.

 

But in my quieter moments—though those have been too few—October has marked 14 years since Summit Semester and our fabulous Farvest Hall. Fourteen years since Amadeus in Denver, the Cheesecake Factory, and a visit to The Tattered Cover. Fourteen years since I began forging a deeper bond with Aaron, Reese, Chels, and Stephen. Sometimes in the autumn the grief hits hard, but this year the weeks have been full of friends visiting, of small group nights, of evenings talking with Nick, of films or reading or trying to catch up correspondence. 

This autumn has been happy, which has surprised me again and again. For so long I didn't expect to ever again be fully glad that it doesn't seem possible. Of course, there are sad things, hard things, even ugly things. But they feel small right now. The shadow is a passing thing and light and high beauty are beyond its reach. 

Granted, the days used to seem longer, always with room to write letters or e-mails... And now they seem ever-too-short, but the people are there in the days—real, present. No more being long-distanced from everyone (though I'm still long-distanced from too many!), now I live in a place where I have graciously been gifted a good, thoughtful, loving community—at work, at church, and with various friends.  I want to share that community as I can and as I should. And I long to hold on to quiet space and room for pouring my heart out to the Lord...and for listening to Him. It is a balance, especially when my mind is so full from each day and each week. 

I hold all of these things—beauty, community, words, gladness, truth—loosely in my slightly curled hand. Fourteen years ago life was nearly perfect, too...and then came dark, dark days. And years later, deep, dark nights for my aching soul. Seasons ebb and flow, rise and fall. There are no guarantees that either the good times or the hard times will last forever. So, I am thankful for the love, beauty, and safety I have experienced this year. 

Not knowing what any future moments or days hold, I receive the now as gift, trying to learn not to grasp (and in so doing, strangle out the life of the beautiful things God has granted). As I have just journeyed through the wilderness, the precipice injury (and many other places on the way to the High Places with Much Afraid and her companions, Sorrow and Suffering), I find that I am still trying to learn the very first letter in the Alphabet of Love: Acceptance with joy. Still, many more years down the road from the first time I read the book. Why am I still at letter one? I don't know, but it's where I find myself. So, there I will continue to try to open-handedly accept with joy, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing gold can stay...not yet, anyway. But one day, the New Kingdom will come down and marry earth. And then, perhaps, we will have an everlasting autumn (with sunflowers and daffodils, too) where gold can stay. It sounds like an October world to me, which is a deep delight to my soul!

Prayer

Lord, help me...save me from the world outside of me, trying to crush me and push me into its mold.

But Lord, I have swallowed the world and it is inside of me. Save me, too, from the world within... The world that burns, that eviscerates, that kills like an ever-spreading cancer. Save me from being eaten alive, emaciated, and gutted. Save me from being drowned by the lies swimming in the channels of my mind and heart. . .

You say: 

Take heart, I have overcome the world. The world outside you. . .and the world inside you. The Hell to come, and the Hell you let burn within. I have overcome that like the light overcomes the darkness. Like life overcomes death. 

I am the Resurrection and the Life. 

                        I will lead you to the Father. 

                                  My Spirit will guide you into all Truth. 

                                                      And the Truth will set you free.

The Darkling Thrush

Photo by Ankhesenamun on Unsplash

I leant upon a coppice gate

          When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

           The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

         Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

                      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware. 

— Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush

Can you see it? A barren field, grey skies, lowering clouds, and scraggly weeds whipping in the wind. The year is closing, and for Thomas Hardy, the nineteenth century was closing; buried in crypt like a corpse. Everything looked bleak, grey, gnarled, and worn out. 

Though much of 2020 was fairly normal for me at a daily life level, it was not without its pall. A dear family friend taken in death—the mother of my best friends growing up. No Holy Week and Easter Sunday gathered together with fellow believers. Nine months of not being able to worship side-by-side with other believers. The death of Mike Adams. The bleak reality that there is no longer free speech in America. The sudden removal of one of our delivery drivers, someone who had been on our route for years. Normal-person-sickness cancelling our Christmas plans with extended family and friends. 

Break-ups. Ageing. Cancer. Suicide. "The ancient pulse of germ and birth / Was shrunken hard and dry, / And every spirit upon earth / Seemed fervourless as I." My sister described her normal-person-flu symptoms as leeching the colour from life. "Everything seems grey and un-enjoyable." Being sick is like that, insipid, uninspired, listless, and dull. Christmas felt like that for me, even though I was (blessedly!) with my immediate family. The year 2020 felt like that for many people. Like a corpse outleant o'er all the land, like weeds against a flat, grey sky. Colourless. 

At once a voice arose among

   The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

    Of joy illimited. . .

In the midst of death, decay, and listlessness a song of joy breaks over Hardy. The singer isn't a young bird, a hearty bird, a colourful bird. It is "An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, / In blast-beruffled plume" who has "chosen thus to fling his soul / Upon the growing gloom." We often think of children being resilient or hues of colour in a bleak setting. And they certainly can be... But what I love about this turn in the poem, what made tears streak down my cheeks today, was that this was an aged, frail thrush. There is no freshness, no innocence here. He knows hardship. Yet he full-heartedly flings his very soul out into the gathering gloom.

I don't know what 2021 will bring. But I'm tried of being told it will be dark and fearful. It may be. Given the evidence of how the masses have been led by the media to believe outright lies, how the Left is openly saying they want to put people in "re-education" camps (sound like Hitler pre-WWII to anyone else?), and how Christian companies are being dropped by their credit card services for having normal Christian morals, I don't anticipate that 2021 will be better than 2020. It may be much, much worse. Things I never thought could happen in America have happened, are happening. . . I'm not sugar-coating that or denying what could be.

But. 

      But I want to be like that frail, weather-beaten, aged thrush.

                      I want to fling my soul out into the gloom of the gathering storm.

Not in recklessness, not because I've given up, not because I'm saying "Oh, to Hell with it!" and calling it quits. I am not. I will not. I want to—God help me!—throw my soul out into the great big world and let it be a note of beauty, a moment of colour, a breath of inspiration, and a glimmer of Hope.

If ever there was a moment in my lifetime with "So little cause for carolings / Of such ecstatic sound" this is it. I've personally had worse times. But this is bigger than my own griefs. This is a gathering gloom of national, global proportions. And I want to put my finger in the dyke, if only as a brief stopgap, a clear note in the pre-storm silence of "Some blessed Hope, whereof [I know] / [Yet the world is] unaware." I want to sing "In a full-hearted evensong / Of joy illimited." And that means, to be clear, that I want my soul to be filled with Beauty and Truth, which both flow from and point to Jesus—the Word without whom nothing that exists would have been at all. There is no limit to the joy which flows from Him. Let there be no limit to His joy "trembling through" me, either.

“...that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

— Mary Ann Evans (aka: George Eliot), Middlemarch                 

 

“If anything is to shock our souls, 

let it be Hope.”

— Bryan Wandel
 

August is the Cruelest Month...

...to paraphrase T. S. Eliot. 

I rather hate the month of August. I'm physically, emotionally, and soulishly drained by this hot and crazy month. It is the hardest month at work. It is freakishly hot (making sleep difficult). And I'm out of people energy. Every summer. Then there's the added sorrow of September 3, already looming. 

But God.  God is kind to surround me with His love. With generous friends and family. 

Did you know that kindness makes hard days and weeks brighter? 

It does. 

So. Much!

A box of sunshine (sweet words, creative-cute cards, and lemon-flavoured everything) from my creative, thoughtful sister... Sent after being rather heart-disappointed.

Flowers, chocolate, and cheese from a good friend after the same hard week.

I love the colours of these flowers! Plus, they lasted two weeks. 

Surprisingly, the cheese and chocolate have lasted longer.

A thank you gift from my sweet co-worker for assisting her in shipping a lot of packages this summer. 

Here is a close-up of the necklace. . .

This was part of the theme of the summer. Have grit. Determination, yes. But also, the grit that feels like its rhyming counterpart. . . The irritation produces the substance that covers the grit with beauty. Without the irritation, the disruption, the foreign object, no pearl can be formed. But from that little grain comes something beautiful. How much more beauty might be born from this gritty season in which we are living?

August is in many ways the cruelest month. But it has many pockets of kindness and love and beauty.

Thanks be to God!

Messy Christmas

The branches have traded

Their leaves for white sleeves

All warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe

Scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees

Christmas lights tangle in knots annually

While many people are wrapping up their Christmas lights rather than untangling them from last year, some more traditional churches are just entering into the celebration of the Christmas season. For them, Christmas begins on the evening of December twenty-fourth (since the Creation, days begin the evening before—think of Genesis 1:5: "...and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" etc.), going through to Epiphany on the sixth of January. 

This year, snow fell like shimmering garments on tree arms a week before Christmas. Yet for many of us, by the time the day itself rolled around, the sun had melted the tree robes and we were down to shirt-sleeves and thin sweaters. I love snow, but who decided that it is “necessary” at Christmas? 

Our families huddle closely

Betting warmth against the cold,

Our bruises seem to surface

Like mud beneath the snow

Some kinds of "snow" feel necessary... We want the blanket of "nice feelings" at Christmas to mask the cracks in our families of origin or in our marriages, in our loneliness and in our broken spots. But holidays have a way of hitting our bruised places. An argument in the car on the way to a Christmas gathering reminds us of the scores of fights we've had all year. The question, "So, are you seeing anyone?" (and you know they want to add "yet" at the end of that query) rankles when you're tired of being alone, or you've recently broken up with someone, or you feel somehow lesser because you in fact don't have someone. Sometimes the bruise is cruel and bone-deep: someone is missing in the pew at midnight mass with you; there is only the memory or shadow of someone you dearly love hovering at every crowded table, making it feel incomplete. 

It is a muddy, messy time, this Christmas. Messy Christmas. That is the phrase my phone auto-corrects to instead of "merry" Christmas. I laughed the first time happened. It struck my cynical side as humorous and morosely accurate. The mud of the Fall still lurks beneath the snow of the now-but-not-perfected redemption. But clean slates are coming. . .

So we sing carols softly

As sweet as we know

A prayer that our burdens will lift as we go

Like young love still waiting under mistletoe

We'll welcome December with tireless hope

Hope. Christmas is replete with Hope. God joining to flesh in a miraculous marriage. The Redeemer was born. Happy, sentimental sigh. 

But the crushing reality is that the Redeemer wasn't born as an adult. Things didn't change when He came. Yes, there was the flash of Heaven, opened to the shepherds. There was a great sign in the heavens, leading the wise men. Then, just like the previous four hundred years, there was a lull. Silence. Hope was born...but He wouldn't be revealed for another thirty years. 

I wonder if the shepherds were like fourteen-year-old me: not subtle, hanging around wherever I could—whenever I could—to be around the guy I was crushing on. Or did they cease hoping? Certainly, unflagging hope is hard to cultivate, especially when your hope is placed in the wrong thing, the wrong outcome, or the wrong person. Those shepherds waited for thirty years. Did they continue to hope? Did they connect that awe-filled night years ago with the peripatetic rabbi stirring up the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Jewish people, and the Romans?

Hope can be hard to cling to in the darkness, but that is precisely where we need it the most. Where we need Him the most. Thirty years before the Rabbi began calling fishermen, the ancient, long-awaited seed of promise was sown, becoming a tender shoot in Egyptian and Galilean soil.

"...For you [John] will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,

To give knowledge of salvation to His people

By the remission of their sins,

Through the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76b-79)

Hope. It comes in through those very cracks we long to cover. He enters into our broken places. He is gentle with our bruises.

Let our bells keep on ringing

Making angels in the snow

And may the melody [of Hope] disarm us

When the cracks begin to show

Like the petals in our pockets

May we remember who we are

Unconditionally cared for

By those who share our broken hearts

_______

The table is set

And all glasses are full

The pieces go missing

May we still feel whole

We'll build new traditions in place of the old

Cause life without revision will silence our souls

Last year, table after table was set, glass after glass filled. But the gaping hole of grief gnawed at me like an insatiable, unwelcome guest. Every table felt incomplete. There was a strange distance between me and everyone I was around. Like I was in a glass bubble and could see them, but I could touch them, couldn't really hear them. Those layers show up in many ways at various times, but all last Christmas I felt it. I couldn't enter fully into anything, because I wasn't whole. I am still not whole. I will always carry in me a bleeding wound. And it will only grow as the number of empty chairs rivals the number of full ones. And one day, the perpetually bleeding bite from grief, from death will kill me. Then I can fully enter in to the Kingdom come, to the City of God and the Feast of the Lamb. Strange how a fatal wound precedes life. 

The missing pieces haven't gaped so glaringly this year, but the numbness is still floating around. My heart, mind, and body are all topsy-turvy this season. The missing pieces can never be filled—but sometimes there is a new friend waiting in a vacant church pew; there is an old friend who remembers the ache with you, and even carries it with you for a bit. 

So, let the bells keep on ringing, making angels in the snow. And may the melody surround us, when the cracks begin to show this messy Christmas.

"Snow" by Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neal)

This you taught me beyond the grave...

Dear Aaron,

The wind is sweeping through the pines tonight,
rattling my windows, whispering 'round the trees
The sky is weeping rain tonight,
Pouring out its pain upon the needles and the leaves

Always, always these are the nights I want to write
a letter to you, but where would I send it to?
Instead, I find your old letters,
weeping o'er their leaves, seeing your words anew

Tonight you reminded me that Despair makes a
show of his strength—or of our flaws—
Yet all the while he's trembling,
Fearing his bluff is up, but if we pause

And listen to his terms, with bowed heads
and hopeless hearts, saying
"These we will take!"
He confidently assumes we are paying

Paying the price of defeat, when really
we are rallying to fight his prideful will
to the bitter end,
Making the end less bitter on that battle hill

The Dark Lord wages war, precarious,
He doesn't have the upper hand,
But he uses our doubt
against us; yet wavering, we stand

Willing to sacrifice ourselves;
Even when hope has died in our hearts,
We will go down
Fighting against Despair and his darts

And unbelievably the eagles come,
Hope beyond hope—unlooked for—
Holds out a wing
To cover and to carry us once more

But when everything sad doesn't come untrue
under the sunless sky and the lidless eye,
Still we press on
Toward journey's end, by our living Despair dies

This you taught me beyond the grave,
Across the years you reached out to me
In red ink written
Ages ago, when we were younger and free

Free in ways we didn't know and often shunned,
You were wise, I was naive as could be—
Behold, time reveals truth
If only we have the eyes to look and to see

Ashes

The sky is the colour of ashes—

       White and grey;

The eaves drip icicle tears

       falling away

My life is filled with ashes,

       my mood is fey;

Death upon death finds my heart

       falling away

Across my forehead a cross

      —charcoal dust—

Reminds me that my frame

       will soon rust

Over the shadow of death

       a Cross

Reminds me that life

       can flame from loss

The kernel of wheat

       must die,

Roots of the tree lie buried far

       from the sky

Are these ashen flakes

       the soil

Not of death alone, but of

       figs and oil?

Are these ashes the fertile

       land, unseen,

Until I have God's eyes

       to see the green?

Is this ashy, narrow place

       a birth canal?

Is this dark smothering earth

       life somehow?

Does the thriving tree begin

       as a cross,

Planted in ashes, in death,

       in loss?

From that hollow hole

       comes Tov—

Roots mingled with ashes, whose

       fruit is love

From the hollow grave

       rises Love—

Preparing Earth, through us, for

       the Kingdom above.


______

Photo by Tobias Stonjeck on Unsplash