Punctuation and Breath (For Jeremy Taylor)

Lord take from thy Servants sad carefulness, and all distrust and give us onely such a proportion of temporal things, as may enable us with comfort to do our duty.
(Jeremy Taylor, The Golden Grove)

If, he suggested, we thought of each day
as being a day of business, we would
rise with the first light and kneel with our thanks
for the night of preservation now behind,
and with hope for the day still ahead.

Would we, perhaps, prepare then for each
small, terminal breath to be our next-to-last –
the bubble, the drop of life’s last hurrah
looming above our Damocles heads,
carrying with it this question: If not now, when?

Would we no longer count the pains of our days
as though keeping a score, a tally of woes
to signal the time for the season to end?
Or would we, perhaps, be content just to rise
and take what we needed, no more?

Would we rise to the garden, to the golden of groves
with each prayer a mustard seed or an acorn
and our wayfaring hearts thankful for each
breath that we take and the briefness of each,
punctuating the pause until we go home?

Viva La Via Media!

(An Open Letter to Those Surprisingly Contained in the Anglican Liturgical Year)

Dear Sirs and Madams:
How are you? We here
The undersigned write in reply
To your numerous questions why
You are contained in the Anglican year.

We know you did not really like us;
You may have abandoned our polite norms
Or offered your own counter reforms
But this isn’t really pleasant to discuss!

If you accused us all of grievous sin,
If we, once or twice, alluded to
Ex-communicating you,
We both meant it – we are quite sure! – in
The nicest of all possible ways.
We don’t mind that you converted,
Or, as we prefer to say, reverted
To the Papal See’s malaise.
We are not even that distressed
If it turns out, at the final twist,
That you did not actually exist.
We’re sure you meant it for the best.

So at the end of the liturgical day
Don’t ask us why like you so:
The truth is that we just don’t know,
Except to say, in our moderate way,
That if you did some silly things
We will not hold it against you,
For we have done some silly things too.
(We’ve even divorced the occasional king!)

And so, dear friends, when all this is said,
We hope that all this enmity
Will not prevent a cup of tea
Between sworn enemies before bed.

And, if you choose to still besmirch
Our name, we won’t return the curse,
For we remain, dear madams, dear sirs,
Ever yours,
The Anglican Church.

Sabbath Walk

You took me down, at the first dawn of dusk,
To the path full of trees in their wintery still
Where my footsteps pulled me to the beckoning end
And the smooth-flowing river bid me run.

Yet slowly I walked and slowly I thought,
Each footstep a breath and each breath a prayer.
My feet you made small and my head you made weak
And my heart you made beat to this slowest of days.

You showed me small things which my eyes had not seen
And kept my eyes softly, humbly on the ground.
Each peppercorn you had seen in its fall
And you showed me the small that I might see you more.

You opened on trees these impossibly small
Green hopes of leaves, the minutest of cones
On Banksia branches, August red fire,
September’s town crier, the promise of dawn.

And if in my smallness I could at last see
What yesterday I had been too large to find,
Then I walked home now quietly hopeful in this:
That your hands of eternity could shrink to hold mine.

Bread in the Springtime Part Three (Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost)

I.
Absalom, my son! he cries.
Absalom, my son, my son!
Would that I had died, not you,
O Absalom, my son my son
Absalom! My son

II.
Deal gently with the boy, he said,
The father with the son that raged
And took his wives and took his bed
And wanted now to take his crown.
Deal gently with young Absalom.

And when it came that Absalom
Was caught up in the trees and hung
Halfway somewhere between earth and
Heaven while his mule went on,
The soldiers came and killed the boy.

But Absalom is safe? said the
King when news of victory came.
May all who fight against you, King,
Become like Absalom now is.
The king fled to his room and cried.

III.
And underneath the broom tree he,
Elijah, faithful one in few,
Lay his head and wished to die.
But at his side a soft voice said,
Get up, Elijah, take and eat.

And there beside him was some food,
A cake baked on hot stones and a
Jar of water. He ate and drank
And lay his head down once again
And slept that he might die.

Again the voice: Get up and eat.
The journey is too much for you.
And so Elijah took and ate,
And then he rose and went up to
Mount Horeb, there to meet with God.

IV.
I am the bread of life, he said.
Whoever eats of me won’t die.
His followers were troubled, said,
This is a difficult teaching;
Whoever can accept it?

The bread of life looked out on men
To see if there were any who
Understood or who sought God.
Seeing none, he offered up
His body as the sacrifice.

V.
My Son, my Son.
My God, my God.
Out of the depths, we cry.

The Best We All Can Do (For John Henry Newman)

Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst:
Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best.
(Christina Rossetti, “Cardinal Newman”)

When near to death, perhaps he saw the veil
Lift off from Moses’ face, reveal the shine
Which glimmered there, the presence of the Light –
The kindly light of truth – reflecting full
Where other times it had seemed faint and dim.

Perhaps he knew then full what once in part
Had beguiled his mind and kept it turning;
Perhaps all his apologies were now
Fulfilled and made redundant by the face
That shone full now before his lifting shame.

If he was right where other men were wrong,
Or in his best attempts he had defiled
What others knew and longed for him to know;
If Oxford had moved swiftly to the truth
That others in their middle way forgot –

It never was enough nor far too much
A claim to lay before the throne, the Cross,
Where all our best attempts shall be forgot
And all our follies nailed or else refined,
Save that we trusted and that we proclaimed

This saving truth – Christ Jesus is His name.

Garden of the Poor Clares (For Clare of Assisi)

How many hearts have burned, though dead,
to hear the truth that they have died
amidst their riches, and felt sparks
of life fly into their dead hearts when
they put to flames their deeds of wealth?

How many nobles have thrown down
the gauntlet of their wealth and died
the death of all their treasuries
just that they might enter life
as through the needle’s eye?

How many earthly-rich Clares have
left behind their stores of wealth
and palaces to take the road of
dying ones who led the way in
the Christ’s cross-scarred and risen footsteps?

How many poor Clares have yet bloomed
like pear trees on their prayer-worn knees,
noble lives of worldly riches
swapped for sacrifice in gardens
where the tree of life yet grows?

How many have locked treasure houses
from the pearl beyond all price
and have not known the tree of life’s fruit,
guarding their weak knees from bending,
guarding their poor hearts from breath?

The Fire and the Treasure: A Rondeau for Laurence of Rome

And then they came to judgment. And he was inquired again of the treasures, and Laurence demanded dilation of three days, and Valerianus granted him on pledge of Hippolitus. And St. Laurence in these three days gathered together poor people, blind and lame, and presented them tofore Decius, in the palace of Salustine, and said: These here be the treasures perdurable, which shall not be minished, but increase, which he departed to each of them. The hands of these men have borne the treasures into heaven.
(From The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, trans. William Caxton)

Like treasures we are put through flame
And do not scorn the fire’s shame;
Like treasures, sent through fire to
Make our treasures pure, anew,
Subverting death’s despotic claim.

We bear the world’s hatred and blame
And are negated, yet this game
Does not control the fire we go to,
Like treasure.

This treasure which we bear: its name
Is called the Stench of Death, not Fame;
Though folly to proud hearts, still true.
These riches in the field call you
To give up all you own to claim
This treasure.

Silence and a Candle (For Mary Sumner)

All this day O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen
(A Prayer of Mary Sumner)

God of all generations,
all mothers and all fathers, all
children and all women who
care or cannot from grief care;

A pause, a silence; candles

all homes in peace, all homes in war,
all families who fall under
the rod of poverty or beneath
the oppressor’s stubborn heel;

A pause, a silence; candles lit

for husbands who love wives and for
husbands who do not love, for
wives who search for love and do not
find it in their storehouses:

A pause, a silence.
Hear our prayer.

For children who grow strong within
the arms of love and grace surrounding;
orphans with their smoldering wicks
and all bruised and broken reeds:

Spirit of the living God,
Hear our prayer.

For homes with scars and festering
tissue where the homes are scarred,
and homes with war zones, blackout drapes:
God of all our generations:

God of mercy,
Hear our prayer.

Spirit of the living God,
we call, all mothers, children to
you of all our generations.

God have mercy.
Hear our prayer.

Dominic and the Inquisitors (For Dominic, Priest and Friar)

If we picture him, as so many do,
seated with the red inquisitors,
seeking heretics in each closet,
proud in righteousness and judgment,

we must not silence in memory the man
who fought with truth as his sharp weapon
and never took a place of power
but kept his mouth a flaming torch;

or the humble priest who heard
the Pope sadly declare that no
longer can we say that silver
and gold have we none (Dominic

knew this to be true; he knew
the stumbling block of bishops’ gold),
quipped that it was also true that
we could not say: Rise and walk.

And if his house upon the hill
was by later brigands burgled
in a quest for holy weapons,
let us still remember this:

the priest who travelled many miles
with his flaming torch in hand
and debated until daybreak
with a burning, reasoning love.

Who Was He? (For the Transfiguration of the Lord)

Who was he, do you think, when he shone there that day,
whiter than all the world’s bleach could make him,
when we climbed up the mountain and he was ablaze
and our hearts were dilated within us?
Why was he joined up there, on that stark mountain-top
with those prophets, Elijah and Moses,
who stood there and talked like the oldest of friends
or like servants receiving their orders?
And who then were we three as we stood there and watched,
three ignorant fools stunned with blindness?
Who were we to see such a mighty spectacle,
like three swines gobbling up the finest pearls?
And then what said that voice that boomed there like the ground
was a-shaking with heaven’s vibrations?
When it called him God’s Son, this bright-shining-day Lord,
did our hearts comprehend what it meant then?