Think of the palms, crushed and bruised
by the colt and the crowds,
and of the ones who came back, the poor,
the quiet, who came back to collect
their broken stems and bleeding leaves,
and wove them into something new,
something to sell back to the capricious
crowd on another day,
so that nothing may be wasted,
so that their hosannas may not
waste or be swept away.
___________
His last breath took him by surprise.
Until its vapour dissipated in
the ragged inhalations of his sisters,
beginnings to convert his death into ululation;
until then, he had thought that he would come.
Hard to say what happened next:
his astonished body wrapped and sealed,
cooling and settling in the garden tomb,
until he wondered how, in death, he could still hear
his sisters, his friends, his name.
Until light struck him like the dawn
as though the world still turned
as God intended, night before day,
he had thought it was too late.
Do you also want to be his disciples? asked the man.
Then try this: Listen.
Listen to the stories of the one you have walked by
a thousand times in as many days
dripping with pity without breaking your stride.
Open your eyes to the mundane miracle:
Mud, water word;
ingredients that made a world
and some body to see it, and love it
as God intended.
Open your minds to mercy, your hearts to healing.
He shook his head. I have never seen the stars, he said,
but night is coming.
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” – John 9:24-27
Dramatic irony, it was taught to me,
is when the audience, we,
have intelligence unavailable
to the characters at play.
The author knows more.
You do not know the day,
says the Word, nor can you create it
out of war, out of loathing, out of thin, cold air,
however close you think it comes to heaven.
Yet the hour is now here, the Word has spoken,
who speaks it into being with a breath;
the hour of spirit and truth.
The trouble is that we still do not see it:
the Spirit that moves where it will,
the truth that whispers beneath its breath,
that Love is God, waiting in plain sight
beside the well, and all else irony.
I find myself drawn to the contrast between reports this week that some military commanders are framing the war against Iran as an effort to bring about the end times, as though we may decide these things for God, in our wisdom; the contrast between that and Jesus’ words to the woman that the hour is already come, quietly, unnoticed over a cup of water, when reconciliation happens, and the truth of God’s love for the world, in all of its invented factions and fractions, has been revealed.
Fed by generations, torrents of history
running wild within the earth, the holy ground
shaped and watered by the tears
of war and weddings, piety and pity.
Still waters run deep within the earth,
seep between the shoulders of the land,
shrugging off the stories that we tell,
shifting and settling, remembering
when it was all, when all was shapeless
as water, and void, before he spoke,
“I am thirsty.” Thirsty for love, a peace
that brooks no derangement, defies
creation, spirited and true,
the stuff of life, if we but knew it.
He came to a Samaritan city named Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink” … The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” … Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying otherwise you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.'” (from John 4:5-10)
Image: Christ and the Samaritan woman drawing water, Catacomb of Callistus, 2nd century AD, from the from the book Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms, plate 29, via wikimediacommons. Public domain.
We too often misunderstand, I think, what it means to become like God.
We build our towers, our satellites in the sky, posing as heavenly bodies, the better to crater and control the earth.
We rain down judgement as though it were wise, and fragments of pity as though they were manna.
We remember the Flood instead of the rainbow.
We remember the Exodus without its cost, not only in the lives of the Egyptians we discount, but in generations spent in the wilderness, the period of God’s mourning for our enemies, made in the very image of the living God.
The image of God whose property is always to have mercy.
The image of God who was born in humility, who lived with love, who died because we too often misunderstand what it is to be like God. Whose life destroyed death, not other lives.
Too often, we think that God is in the rushing wind that rips through the air that we have torn apart to let God in, instead of in the silence, the sheer stillness, those moments suspended as though out of time, before the baby begins to wail again, like a siren, like a warning, like the child of God.
I commend to you this letter from the Archbishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem:
Image: The Tower of Babel, print, Anton Joseph von Prenner, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, via wikimediacommons
He couldn’t sleep for the moon
light streaming through creation,
for the sound of the wind sighing
over a sea too deep for words,
for the shiver when he heard him speak
liberty as though it were at hand,
the shock of justice overturned,
the taste of mercy submerged in wine,
dangerous world-defying love;
that shiver shook him awake.
He found him, he would remember
later, swaddled by the fire,
as though he had been waiting
for him since the beginning of time.
Is it this, that I would choose,
to undo the latches, throw open the doors,
empty the warehouses, let in the light,
let out the breath, let in the light,
let out the breath of the people bated,
bated too long,
to fast from the bread of bitterness,
scatter its crumbs to the crows
and watch them rise, the people free
to watch them rise, the people free?
Watch them rise
… Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to hit with wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
will not make your voice to be heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a rush,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord?
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. …
Ash Wednesday, Isaiah 58:4-8
Less a trick of the Light
condensing out of the cloud,
each droplet its own world
of shapes and shades,
ghosts of the martyred,
those sidekicks of salvation,
dissipating with their breath
than the Light of the world
condensing creation,
ancestors and angels,
witnesses and wantons
in one bright moment of hope,
burnt into the retinas of their souls
for all the valleys to come
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Matthew 17:1-9
By night, soothed
by darkness those for whom
visibility is treacherous
stretch out their palms to God
who clouds the stars.
The waters of creation still
bring life from beyond
the hills, the hopeful distance
Psalm 121
over the water 
