Refractions

The ashes on our forehead have a name:  Perhaps of an old, frail, and sad but ready body,  or an interruption – sudden, tragic,  that always could have happened, and then did,  against our hope.  I can name names, and so can you.  [Name names now.]  Please stretch with me, and hold within your ashes  those who are not inscribed on granite risers, or sung in litanies:  From the first occasion – when an ark floated above conscience –  to the latest drowning of hope. [Name names now.]  Canaan, Shechem, Moriah,  where gods called for death against the Liege of life.  The baptizer, beheaded, pointing to his cousin,  Lazarus wrapped and stinking, waiting for his friend,  Ezekiel’s rattling skeletons, waiting for the breath,  stacked like Buchenwald, Mariupol, My Lai or Phnom Penh.  [This is the part where, years and years and centuries from now,  you speak of your own ashes.]  Wherever something, n...

For the Transfiguration The first was at the water as you moved into 
 the house of purpose that would be your life.
 Dragged through the river
by your prophet cousin,
 drenched and emerging, 
dove descending,  then the voice, “beloved.”  The next was on the mountain,
 Word, and Law, and Prophet – 
 hining face, bright cloud of holiness,  terrified companions,  then the voice, “beloved.”  Then silence down the mountain,  “Not a word, until…”  Until the third, when darkness took the land,  abandonment your cry, “forsaken me”.  sour wine, your crying out and then last breath.  Your baptism, completed in your corpse,  now tears the veil, splits rocks,  shakes earth and empties tombs.  And then the voice, though this time not from heaven:  but from the crucifying soldier who surrenders,  then avows “this was God’s Son!”

  Remembering Julian of Norwich  All that is made, the nut:  in the mystic’s hand,  planted in the earth,  growing and producing,  harvested and home.  In the deepening now, life:  will always come to be,  is always underway,  always already is.  For to us a child:  is always to be born,  is always being born,  is always born already.  For to us, great love: is always to be risked,  is always being risked,  is always risked, already.  All that is made: will always come to be,  is always underway,  always already is:  The deepening now,  the nut in the mystic’s hand,  all that is made.