December 21st

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.


Amen.


*


I'm going to try to put this into words and say that I love to hold you in my arms. I used to be so jealous of Mary I thought it must be a sin and was so much ashamed of this I could barely confess it to you, especially this time of year- the favored and blessed! The virginal girl giving birth to God himself- the one to hold you, comfort you, care for you but that feeling passed away a long time ago, because I do all those for you as well; in my own way, I get to be like Mary too.


And how I love to care for you! How I love to cradle you close, your head in my arms, and pour my love out to you like a lullaby without sound, simply from every part of who and what I am, rising up like mist from the ground of my being, which is after all, you.

You’ve come into my heart and I carry you there, cherished and close. In some other place, perhaps you are rejected, hurt or scorned, but in my heart, you are treasured, adored, the source of deepest and eternal delight.

At first, you were only a promise there, a rumor, a whisper. I was carrying within me it seemed nothing but sin and how you could remain there I couldn’t understand.

But you broke those bars of disbelief by the manifest fact of your presence, your love consuming all the half-thoughts that held me and I couldn’t turn away, because where I can I go from you when you live with me?

Each day I demonstrate my love for you in practical ways in the monastery of my life, through I feel like it’s never enough and I long to do something great to make up what I lack. I stay out of obedience right where you’ve rooted me, and pray, because it’s pride in me to feel guilt over the grandiose things I feel certain I should be called to do that you haven’t asked me to, while overlooking the actual acts of love that are mine to offer to the precious people you've given into my care.

I have seen you clad in incandescent strength and beauty as gold mail, crowned with joy like a flame, overflowing with laughter, fearless and shining. At the slightest lift of your right hand all those heavenly hosts that surround you would lay their life down and count it all joy. The edges of that sword you hold are sharp enough to burn right between soul and spirit, sundering any subtle lie from its captive prey, and I know without doubt that every other crown ever worn was only a shadow and sign to point back to your throne.

Perhaps it's undignified to speak of lullabies to the king, but it's close to Christmas, and I think that is your secret you share with the very young at heart- that you are the child of God and one hidden meaning of this is that you are the one that is held, cherished. You, the rose of Sharon, lamb-hearted and dove-spirited, held always in the arms of Abba and born of a virgin, the darling of the Trinity clothed in humanity, the very image of all that is good, the first born of a new creation.

But when you are with me, the glory you wear is that of the robe woven all of one piece, and you don’t mind the hovel that is my heart. You are accustomed to small and humble spaces. I spread out my worship like a welcome mat and I crown you with kisses and you are mine to adore. I am your garden of aloes, frankincense, honey and myrrh, grown by your hand; all these riches you’ve given me that is my pleasure to give back to you.

The wonder of this never leaves me alone. That I myself am your home! Who am I? I have done nothing to earn this. What can I give in exchange? Those waters are without price.


But there is one thing I can give, and that is simply to say yes. It's as though I stand in paradise and which would I choose? Shall I live in your presence or earn death? Shall I die trying to be what you made me? That death has already been undone. Oh my darling, how I delight to sit in the shade of your opened arms upon the tree of your life offered up! I accept. Let it be unto me according to your word.


Now I'm saying to you and now I'm praying-

You came once
and each day since you ascended
has been a thousand years long in the waiting-


So come here,


so come now,


Come down from the heavens of consummate love,
you forever begotten


and be seen incarnate.

Come like the colors of dawn revealing the sky

hidden by the dark of a thousand year’s night

shattered by light flashing forth from every horizon.

Lift up your heads!

The king of glory has passed though those gates

and made the way open.

The prince of life has made death his captive

and become your redemption drawing close.

Come forth,

desire of nations

throwing open the door to the house,

a thief in the night come to plunder

the horror, the sorrow, the tears.


Run under your rod the idols that haunt us

and shatter them in pieces-

They are as nothing, as a non existent thing.

We shall look for them and not find them,

even the memory of them is taken.

Release your beloved creation from agony, mute

long suffering in labor under blind dominion.

All the bones of your children are piling up in layers of ages

All the blood in the ground saturated, crying out-
How long, Oh Lord, how long?


Break this world finally free of its long and aching futility

let it shout in one great cry of jubilee-

Let it be born again in the fullness of purpose.


The waters of life will flow out freely

through the open gates of forever,
and we will see your face.


Come, Lord Jesus,


Come quickly.

November 25th

On the 20th, I posted a poem. The next night, I saw Jesus in a way I had not before and ever since then, I have been trying to bring it out into words. This is the best I could do. I wish I could do much better. I had to write it like a prayer in prose.


As I worked on it, this prayer stayed very much in my mind:


Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord.


Amen.


*


November 21st


In the evening, I wanted to be with you.


"Jesus!" I cried, reaching out. Nothing came into clear sight.


But you spoke- You have Me.


These words of assurance were rich, and I pondered them until my thoughts let go into sleep.


In the night I woke and reached out again for you. I found you on the cross, blood red and coming closer. That was not so strange, I’ve seen you there before, so I accepted and stretched out my arms, a channel for my love, awakened, to pour through.


When you returned the gesture- now that image, not encountered before- that one was too strange for me. I turned inward to the room, but I found you there blood red and brutally scourged, wide eyes staring white from your mauled face.


the slain lamb-


all my life I've known those words, but now I see the blood, the horror of innocence marred, the gaping wound, all the gore before had been hidden by the black and white print on the page.


When you give me these images, this vivid revealing, what do you want me to do with them?


What should I do with this?


These things- holy, precious, ineffable- far beyond my ability to comprehend, you place them in my arms and I'll hold onto you no matter how you come, but my legs can't hold the weight of the blood soaked


even my clothes became heavy when I hold you with my red slicked arms, blood in my hair against my face and you


you can't seem to move or speak, barely held together, pulled loose, still wearing the woven cruel crown, almost unseen in all the blood from the wounds


I gathered up all the pieces of you as gently as possible, placed my face against your mangled beard


I am the good shepherd, you had said.
I know my sheep and am known by them.


I repeat your words as I hold you-
you are the good shepherd and you give your life for the sheep.
no one takes it from you,
you lay it down of yourself.


you lay it down.


when you say love,
you mean the cross.


I asked you to teach me your language.
is this your language?


if I hold you close enough,
will you pull back together?
can you speak at all?


my beloved Lord,
I’m only your disciple
and I don’t understand what you’re saying
with your staring white eyes and your shivering
but I'm listening
I'm listening with all that I am to you.


do you have to go back?
but this already happened-
is finished.
how is this happening?


My mind is not keeping up, keeps falling back into the literal but then I remember how you suffer in and with the least of these and how they are dying right now, starving, beaten, thrown aside, unclean and unloved,
unseen by anyone but you,


how they are you.


So I pray.


“Let You be loved- let them be loved- let somebody love them- the outcast, the suffering, the dying, the unclean. Let someone put their arms around them and care for them and love them. Bring someone to care for them, so they are not alone, so You are not alone in Your terrible suffering. Don’t let them suffer alone.”


These words fall into your waiting ear, your Spirit, the words caught in your plans unknown but I know the ways you weave and work through and lift up, breathing through my prayer, my life, a small breath to join yours.


I want to take that terrible crown off you.
I realize suddenly-


It must have been Mary who actually did that, when you were already dead, your cold body collapsed awkward off the cross, she who had pulled out splinters from your small fingers and rocked you to sleep in the velvet stillness of the middle eastern night.


I think- a Catholic person would understand this better. I should be living in a convent, but I’m just myself and I’m taking those thorns off you.


The blood makes it easier. I can slide it off slowly, carefully, easing it out of your skin, through your hair and now I’m holding this, blood soaked, in my hand.


this can’t be happening
how is this happening?
this all so sacred that it’s simply not possible-


these literal thoughts are like rocks in the stream.
I keep bumping up against them.


I put the crown of thorns on the corner of the couch- I hang it there! -as if it were something we laid down for a moment because there was something else to do right then.


I have you bundled in the blanket. That blanket has been there from the first, when there were four walls and no windows. Now there’s nothing but open views, the stone floors and still that old beloved thing, in which you so often bundled me when I was bruised.


You are dark with blood and broken and still haven’t spoken. I can barely recognize your face and each time I see it, the words from Isaiah are blazoned across my understanding, pressing deeper than words, pressing into vision- the suffering servant that was mauled beyond human recognition, horrible, startling.


I want to knit you back together. With relief I remember your prayer, the prayer you taught your disciples when you walked with them, and they asked you how. Once you comforted me with this prayer, now maybe you are giving me the inexpressible gift of comforting you.


“Our Father,” I whisper to you, and just at the mention of His name, love warms through you from the inside out, visibly easing your pain. How much you love Abba! Your love for each other is the most beautiful thing I have ever glimpsed.


With relief, I settle you carefully closer and pull all my thoughts together, because I am going to pray this as slowly and deeply as I know how to do it.


“Our Father, who art in heaven…” As I speak, all your lessons are coming back to me, lit up.


“Which does not mean some kind of distance or any kind of aloofness, it means Abba is the Father of us all, not like this divided and fallen world, but above it in perfect love, in perfect good, in wholeness- loving the world and his all children so much that he sent you, his only begotten son, to reconcile the world back to himself through the cross.”


We pause to wonder at this perfect goodness of Abba, how he claims each one of us in love as his own, his beloved child.


“Hallowed be Thy name,” I continue in a whisper. “Which means that his name should be set apart from all other ideas and concepts about god, so that his true nature shines forth, as the one and only Living God, who looks just like you, whose name you made manifest, whom you glorified, and who glorifies you.”


We pause to pray that Abba’s name be set apart and to shine forth, so all can see and come into His light and be found, welcomed and healed.


“Thy kingdom come,” I whisper. “Like yeast kneaded into bread, like seed breaking open, the tender sprout breaking through the ground and growing slowly up toward the sky, opening up, and spreading out strong branches into places of rest.”


We pause to see it, pockets of his kingdom breaking out in quiet places, taking root, making places of safety, healing, seeing and loving one another, something so vast being knit together under the radar, something that will break through into perfect day.


“Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” I whisper, “that is- with the wholeness of love, faith and hope- by self-sacrificing love- having the mind of you, which is to empty oneself, not grasping at glory or a high place, but giving one's life up for another. As this is done with faith, hope and love in heaven, with joy, so it should be done on earth.”


We pause to consider the incomparable beauty of this, how it would remake this world, how beautifully his kingdom would show forth, and we pray that it may be so.


“Give us this day our daily bread… Our Heavenly bread, our Living Bread…”


How can I put into words what I know in that moment? You are the true manna- taken, blessed, broken and given. The mystery is profound and yet perfectly clear.


You lift you head, stretch out your bloody arm, and look straight at me.


Your eyes of depthless humility and love are saying-


I have held nothing back. I have given Myself.


I am shattered.


What can I do?


What can I say?


What I have left is so young I can’t stand aside from myself, so young I can’t hide. I offer my comfort with no sense of the ridiculous. I forget that I’m not enough for any of this.


“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I continue when I can.


It’s as though this line in your prayer is the hinge upon which everything else opens or closes. Our sins are like encircling chains that are tangled all over, like the catching arms of briars knotted one to another and stuck together.


We must release each other.


Freely we have been given, freely we must give.


Jesus has brought our brothers and sisters up out of the grave-


return to them their inheritance,


unbind them and let them go.


“Lead us not into tests, but deliver us from evil,” I finish, and as I do, I know that you have.


I know it by the open, bleeding wounds you bear, by the blood that has soaked through me as I have held you. You bore the brunt of it.


My shield and defender, Redeemer and Savior, you stood in my place and took it on yourself and thereby undid death and darkness. The worst that could be done was not enough-


You won.


"For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory," I breathe, because the truth of this is so overwhelming to me that I can barely speak at all.


When I sit up in bed, I see that it is four o'clock in the morning. I have no idea how long I've been awake. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, tipped into awe that won't settle.


I go right back to you, and you meet me there- whole, healed, scarred and full of joy.


*


“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name!”


Then a voice came from heaven:


“I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”


The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.


Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.


And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”


John 12:27-32


*


Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne.
Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own.
Awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee,
And hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity.


Crown Him the Son of God, before the worlds began,
And ye who tread where He hath trod, crown Him the Son of Man;
Who every grief hath known that wrings the human breast,
And takes and bears them for His own, that all in Him may rest.


Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side,
Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright.


Crown Him the Lord of life, who triumphed over the grave,
And rose victorious in the strife for those He came to save.
His glories now we sing, who died, and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die.


Crown Him the Lord of heaven: One with the Father known,
One with the Spirit Through Him given From yonder glorious throne.
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For Thou hast died for me;
Thy praise and glory shall not fail Throughout eternity.


Crown Him the Lord of lords, who over all doth reign,
Who once on earth, the incarnate Word, for ransomed sinners slain,
Now lives in realms of light, where saints with angels sing
Their songs before Him day and night, their God, Redeemer, King.


-Crown Him with Many Crowns, lyrics by Matthew Bridges and Godfrey Thring

July 13th

Last night I took the book down to find you. Lately my writing has been all parboiled and I wonder how I’m doing you any favors.

I know you told me to believe you in the every day but I miss you in the meantime. I speak this to the sink, the window, the landscape. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Don't leave me here without the sight of you, which is the breath of air to me. I can't help the way you made me; I can't do this life without you.

I remember again how the longing for you is a pleasure in itself, a doorway to a whole palace of rooms remembered.

In the book I saw you driven, going over the same old ground and loving that rich young ruler who went away sad. Looking at your friends, you said how hard it was.

*

I saw you last night. It took me by surprise, the throne you were sitting in, the angular planes of it. I was sitting in your lap and you wore a crown. Amazed, I felt with my fingertips just to be sure, never having seen it before.

I saw your eyes like lit amber looking into mine, the light that holds me still; I can see that I am known and welcomed for who I am, no more and no less loved. I saw your face, that almost scandalous human particularity- that you are even now the same person I’ve known before.

That I know you at all, that you love me, that I see you before me, it all enfolds me- I must lean forward, holding my breath and trace with my fingers those scars across your forehead and the creases that I love so at the corners of your eyes which look into mine easily, completely, holding nothing back.

I remember again the secret. You are meek and lowly in heart. God is a Lamb. This is a mystery at the heart of the cosmos, holding all together, the disclosed and crucified heart of God, that one low and pleasing note that promises harmony after the break.

I hold your face in my hands- your own human face! Realizing this is a series of moments opening each into the other and with each, I am losing myself more and more. I am nothing but worship and love poured out. It's effortless, it's all I can do. There is nothing but you. You are all that I want and all that I am to receive and I am nothing but yours.

Knowledge of the Holy One is like receiving one long breath of air that expands all the boundaries of faith into sight-

and sight into love -

and love into a loss of oneself

that is the finding of You.

Eternity might unfold in this way.