The Consolations of Writing

Too Much Light 1: Prepare the Way

Delays are bad today; nothing moves.
Contained at interchange, a stencil house smiles, as though
to make this place feel more like home.
Small comfort: we go nowhere fast.
The morning yawns through Western traffic haze; the day’s
light’s too bright. We squint in glare.
Lane changes ache; all is standstill
until a way can open up, within this artery of roads.
No wilderness; the way prepared
congeals, and so we wait
with hearts tuned out (the voice won’t shout
that says, Prepare the way.)

Evening Collect: The Horn is Lifted (Cornucopia of Heaven)

Adriaen van Ostade - A Baker Sounding His Horn (Wikimedia Commons) — Adriaen van Ostade – A Baker Sounding His Horn (Wikimedia Commons)

Evening Collect: The Horn is Lifted

After Hammock, “Tres Dominé”

O God –

the empty horn is lifted;

the hollow shell is given voice;

the broken branch is whittled out

and sings.

Three persons,

my emptiness becomes Your fullness;

my earthen jar becomes Your vessel;

my bruised reed hums with Your song

in praise.

My soul

is empty, yet Your table flows with plenty.

The thrum in my heart resounds in Your space.

O God, to You this broken shell is lifted:

let it fill.

Expectation (The Cornucopia of Heaven)

Expectation

After J.S. Bach, “Mass in B Minor: Et Expecto Resurrectionem”

We              begin           small:

a kernel        dropping        to soil

a weak          and fickle      seed

a broken        passing         moment

                                      dust

                         expectantly,

                                  expectant…

of what           breaks forth

                              in trumpet-shower,

            in polyphonic spring,

                        in vibrant alleluia

                            voices thrumming, harmony

                                     bursting

                  from these broken chords

                        in joy!

           What we sow now,    broken,

                        soon we reap

                in harvest plenty,

                        singing where

                            our tears once fell:

            Alleluia!

                        Alleluia!

                                    Alleluia!                   Expectantly.

Prayers of Intercession (Cornucopia of Heaven)

"Musée Henri-Mathieu-Judaïsme (5)" by Ji-Elle - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. — “Musée Henri-Mathieu-Judaïsme (5)” by Ji-Elle – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Prayers of Intercession

After Felix Mendelssohn, “Veni Domine, Op.39”

Veni Domine, et noli tardare.

Come, Lord, and do not delay.

(Traditional prayer)

With empty horn

      and plaintive voice:

                Veni domine,

                    we cry.

Sunk in mire,

      sunk in self:

              Et noli tardare.

Our earth is cracked, our reservoirs dry:

            Veni domine, we cry.

With rising anguish, rising hearts:

            Et noli tardare.

Awaiting future harvest, while

the crops are languid in these days

                        O Veni domine,

                        we cry.

The horn of plenty has no sound

            but groans of prayer,

               from Spirit fuelled:

                        O Veni Domine, et Veni

                               Domine, et Veni                                                                                                Domine…

With dread and hope, in mounting cry:

            Veni domine, O Veni

                        Domine –

                               Expectant,

            at the clouds we sit:

                   O Lord –

            Come; do not delay.

The Lord’s Prayer (Cornucopia of Heaven)

The Lord’s Prayer

After Otto Nicolai, “Pater noster, Op. 33”

Our Father –

the heavens are Your home,

       earth Your tent,          and yet

           You are a Father.           Teach

our fickle hearts,       our yelling hearts,

           to still, to stop

to look upon               Your glory, high

                               and lifted up.

Our Father who         our Father in

            Our Father, You who are in heaven

                   hallowed be

              Your name, Your will

      be done in us,    be done in dust.

This broken, fickle dust proclaims

            Your high, exalted, heaven name.

Our Father – You who are

            in heaven – lift

       our      broken            prayers.

       Hallowed be Your name, Your throne

            be known on earth

                today,  as in

            Your heavenglory     home.

Assurance (Cornucopia of Heaven)

Assurance

After Giovanni Gabrieli, “Exultavit Cor Meum”

From depths,

            from brokenness, the trumpet

sounds, the trumpet

                        sounds the new,

            it sounds the dawn

                        of low made high.

                                    Exalt, my heart!

            My heart exalts.

                        My eyes will see,

                                    my ears will hear

            O Domino,

                        exalt my humbled knees

                                    and hear

                        the polyphonic joy, the song

                                of humbled, broken

                                     songs arising

                 from the fractured soil,

                        the soul

                                    now sings

                        a trumpet call…

Kyrie (Cornucopia of Heaven)

Kyrie

After Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, “Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie”

From earth, from soil, from hearts, from fractures

             Kyrie               Kyrie

From death, from fire, from quake, from anguish

                          Kyrie               Kyrie

From drought that blocks, from self that locks

                                    Kyrie eleison

From sin, from toil, from pride, from hate

            Christe             Christe

From plenty turned to nothing, starving

                          Christe             Christe

From world rebelling, fair made foul –                                                                                                                      Christe eleison

Sing, creation. Sing, dead bones.

            Kyrie               Kyrie

Long for what has died to live

                         Kyrie               Kyrie

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy –

Long for when He comes again –

                                 Kyrie eleison.

Esurientes implevit bonis (After J.S. Bach’s Magnificat in E-flat)

Two women who knew the truth of a God who exalts the humble were Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. Both were unlikely mothers, one a virgin, the other barren and ridiculed by her husband’s other wife, Penninah. When Mary heard the news that she was bearing the saviour of the world in her womb, she looked to the song sung by Hannah, the barren mother, a thousand years earlier, to express the topsy-turviness of God’s act of grace expressed in Jesus.

This poem is inspired by Bach’s setting of Mary’s prayer, a beautiful piece which my fiancée (also called Hannah) performed tonight at St Paul’s Cathedral. The movement that inspired it is the setting of these words: “He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.” In his setting, Bach uses two recorders, an instrument used also in his Brandenburg Concerto No.4 to express the lifting up of the humble. I hope my simple words tonight can express something of this exalting grace.

Watch a performance of Bach’s piece

Esurientes implevit bonis

Look: humble Hannah is full;
Penninah goes away hungry.
Grace interweaves a broken fabric;
stillness sings with gentle voice
and fills the earth with noise.

O magnify: the humbled proud
listen as the faintest voice
is heard most resonant, the seed
most small at first soon yields a field
of plenty in this day.

Catechism 40

What should we pray?
The whole Word of God directs and inspires us in what we should pray, including the prayer Jesus himself taught us.
(New City Catechism)

What then?
The whole story beckons:
Creation, fall, flood, a people
set apart yet crumbling.
Every moment shines
what-might-be against what-is,
entropy’s melancholy truth, and yet
this potentiality of grace.
The sorry state, the hope of otherwise,
drags knees down and elevates hearts
in hopeful, humbled prayer.

Afternoon Flight

A willy wagtail, was it?
Perhaps, but no time to check What Bird Is That?
as it wags its way through lanes at lights,
a truck here turning, there a foot
compressing asphalt.
Yes,
I have seen its tail – proud tuft of feathers –
pluckily braving the afternoon rush,
and seen it hover, tentative,
just above Old Geelong Road,
as though not quite prepared to fly.
Sometimes it slips
beneath my sight, and then
it darts, as though to dare the traffic.
None destroy it, yet most – unaware –
continue changing lanes as they
would on any normal Friday.
Stationary, I see its tail
greet the traffic, weekend-bound;
such smallness seems almost defiant here.
Is grace defenceless as we drive?
No: cars resume, as green returns,
yet willy wags the tail, and faith
skips the traffic’s plight.