Call to Praise (The Cornucopia of Heaven #2)


Call to Praise

After Gustav Holst, “Psalm 148: Lord, Who Has Made Us for Thine Own”

 

His glory is above earth and heaven:

            and he has lifted high the horn of his people.

                        (Psalm 148:14)

Listen:
what begins small soon grows…

Let our voices rise –
            the voices
of His children,
            singing in
a gentle sea of hopeful praise

            and soon,
beneath, the day will dawn

upon each shore, upon
each hill, each cloud,
upon each flying wing.

Watch hail hurling! See
the clouds ablaze! the wind
casting waves!

Listen:
what begins small soon
erupts in hopeful praise.
                                    O Lord

who made us for thine own, we rise
in chorus, rising with
the coming day, this
            feast of plenty
                        on the wings
            of dawn, all flying,
green and singing,
fresh in morning,
wild in
                        its daily praising.

Listen, souls who turn aside
and greet the harvest with
your clutching hands:

O praise Him, all you mighty ones,
you weakling ones,
you dying, drifting, quaking ones

and praise Him
from the skies, from soil
within the toil of anxious day.
            

            Arise,
                        awake,
arise and praise:

His horn is lifted high…

The Cornucopia of Heaven – Prayer of Preparation

Camille Pissarro, "The Harvest" Wikimedia Commons
Camille Pissarro, “The Harvest”
Wikimedia Commons

Prayer of Preparation

After Gustav Holst, “Psalm 86: To My Humble Supplication”

Teach my dullness, guide my blindness

(Joseph Bryan)

We
begin small –

a seed,
a pod,
a bud,

soon bursting, soon
breaking
out into light.

Hear strings rise. Hear spirits lift
their weary, slowing hands.
See the sun open up the day.
See the Son open up

the way –

Almighty God

Lord, our souls are faint.
The day is bright, the sunlight blinds
and we have little voice to cry.

Hear and cleanse –

Cleanse our hearts,
the thoughts of hearts –
Magnify Your grace in us
that we may magnify Your name.

Teach,
O Lord,
our dullness, guide
our blindness
in this blinding day.

Hear our spirits soar
the more
for all our desperate crying out.

O Lord, our rain
in reigning drought:
in brokenness we cry, we shout –

O hear…

the strings of every aching one,
the strains of breath,
the stains of death.

We cry
and long – for all
desire is laid before Your throne.

Lift our hearts:
we lift our hearts

into Your shining day.

Speech

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein

If poets and statisticians ate
together, would their talk make sense?
What figures and what facts could they
summon up then as they spoke?
What heart would lie within each number?
How might every number lie?

The trends we graph are true, yet heart
defies the lines we fit to it.
The story of a pie-chart’s clear
yet has no start, no middle, end,
and all the beauty of a sonnet
makes no single world of sense.

A lion speaks; a tree falls deaf.
Perhaps we are condemned to fail
when sides cannot convert their ears
to hear another’s tongue.

Catechism 37

Detail from a painting by Antonio da Correggio Wikimedia Commons
Detail from a painting by Antonio da Correggio
Wikimedia Commons

Catechism 37

How does the Holy Spirit help us?

The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, comforts us, guides us, gives us spiritual gifts and the desire to obey God; and he enables us to pray and to understand God’s Word.

(New City Catechism)

Dove:

my best attempts are straw.

My righteousness is dust, my hope

of being more is void.

Dove:

Your peace like river flows;

your olive branch restores, implores

us into growing grace.

Dove:

rest on my spirit; open eyes

and ears and heart. Give gifts,

give life. Give comfort in this dross.

Dove:

only when Your flame descends,

and burns, convicts – O gentle peace –

only then, release.

Hospitality

Well, poems have been few and far between at The Consolations of Writing recently, mostly because – I must admit – I’ve been slightly distracted by my recent engagement to an absolutely wonderful girl, Hannah. This week I have distractions of another kind: a week-long, short-term mission in my own city, Melbourne. Today’s poem is a reflection on what it means to open ourselves in Christ-like love to the stranger in our home.

Hospitality

Open my hands:
You have opened Your hands;
You had nails scar Your hands.
      Open heart.

Open my fists:
You have unclenched Your fists;
You have satisfied wrath.
      Open hands.

Open my heart:
You have sword-pierced Your heart;
You have loved with Your scars.
Open fists, hands and heart:
       Open, heart.

Catechism 36

What do we believe about the Holy Spirit?
That he is God, coeternal with the Father and the Son, and that God grants him irrevocably to all who believe.
(New City Catechism)

God’s wind blows
wherever it wills –
blows and leads
the soul to life.

The Spirit draws
the dying spirit,
draws and enters,
giving life.

Spirit from
eternal Father:
dwelling in
and never lost:

breathing and
revivifying,
sign and seal
of life to come.

Catechism 35

Since we are redeemed by grace alone, through faith alone, where does this faith come from?
All the gifts we receive from Christ we receive through the Holy Spirit, including faith itself.
(New City Catechism)

Even faith’s a gift:
   the thought
that I can stretch out my hand
     and take
   free gift of grace,
in death does not occur;
     the soul
clings only to the dust,
           unless
respired by gift of faith.

Even faith’s from His hand:
   the Spirit
breathes out life-desiring life
     and life
    breathes hope that there
is more than death ahead.
      What life
desires, the Spirit gives.
           Faith first:
for faith itself’s a gift.

“August Sabbath”, and eight years of poetry

Eight years ago today, I began writing poetry. It was a beautiful spring day – the promise of things to come. But, as is so often the case at the end of a Melbourne winter, the spring was fragile. Cool weather could return at any moment and snap up the new growth. I was about to begin teaching and had recently emerged from a bad relationship; life was hopeful. Yet it seemed to me it could so easily fail. I turned to poetry to express this feeling and never looked back.

Today is another beautiful spring day. Life has brought more disappointment and more joy than I could have known. My hope is quieter, my heart more still and my poetry is – I hope – a bit better. But God is the same as He has always been.

August Sabbath

Hope settles as wind whistles in fresh leaves;
August grins in unexpected warmth, and though
Next week may bring cold worse than before,
New days are sure to prosper in His plan.
As we await the joys, the sun, the cold,
Hope settles and the wind whistles today.

Catechism 34

Since we are redeemed by grace alone, through Christ alone, must we still do good works and obey God’s Word?
Yes, because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, also renews us by his Spirit; so that our lives may show love and gratitude to God; so that we may be assured of our faith by the fruits; and so that by our godly behavior others may be won to Christ.
(New City Catechism)

Infinite grace demands change:
new life must be shown in the living.
Where the Spirit breathes out, the fruit must be seen;
infinite grace demands change.

New life must call others to live:
when the dead come alive, the living are changed.
Faith rearranges the atoms of souls;
new life must call others to live.

And Christ shall be seen in the changing:
slow, imperceptible, sometimes a strain,
yet certain as sunrise, steady as day.
Christ shall be seen in the changing.

Street Camping

We watched, static in our waiting spots,
lights red, traffic backed up Queensberry Street,
as the purple tent, pegless, half air-borne,
somersaulted across the road and stopped
at the stilled bumper of a nearby car.
The car was motionless, like ours, yet not
waiting to start. Content, the purple tent rested,
royal, carefree in this twilit crawl
in momentary grace.