The Sun Rises Easterly
He wakes
He gets up
Relief abounds
Outside the fleshy rabbit bounces
The egg, comedic, rolls like stone
Away from an opened tomb
That had been keeping the better things inside
He is awake
Marys there
Ready now to tell a doubting world
That it’s over, now
And everything’s beginning
C L Couch
Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash
Penance
(Holy Saturday)
The emptiness of God
There can be such a thing
When God has left
Because we cast God out
What it means to have God slain
All miracles and lessons ended
The company
The miracle of trust
To have the
Lord in body
Hungry, thirst with us
The source of faith in the room
And yet we struggled with
Him in the flesh
Now
Now there’s less than nothing
Fear of arrest, forgotten words
There’s hiding, lack of life
No prophecy unremembered
Is worth all this
C L Couch
Photo by Vincent Erhart on Unsplash
I took that image in a former Romanian salt mine. It was one of the darkest, most surrealistic and impressing place I have ever been. . . . The photo shows the 120 meter high vertical main tunnel.
The Rite of Reconciliation
(Good Friday)
Today is an awful day
Tomorrow will be worse
The certainly of death
And burial inside stone
With a heavy rock in front
To certify the edict
That this one had to perish
Officially executed
The end of a movement, too
And all the trouble pricking
Consciousness he caused
The subcutaneous agenda
The wife of Herod should be pleased
Another body to dissect
For an abomination-treasury
We learn today that life is cheap
That perfect people die
What hope for the rest of us
Whose morality is mingled
With selfish purpose,
Craven understanding
Caiaphas has won
Pilate has been mollified
Lip-service to Rome
The mob will lose its agitation
Everyone will leave
The oppressiveness of daily life return
I guess no one anticipates Masada
Those who should know better still
Will suffer
Grim happiness is undercut
By that which greed denies
There is a lesson here
It will be hardest on believers
Who do not falter
Who must face the scorn of those who
Will not look at them at judge them silently
The faithful hurt in many ways
The killing spirit spread throughout the land
No one in the firing squad knows
Who shot the fatal bullet
Unanimity in anonymity
Everyone’s a killer
The ire today is awful
The void tomorrow will be awfuller
We say now we wouldn’t do it
Look around, we do it every day
C L Couch
Aerial view of Masada (Hebrew מצדה), in the Judaean Desert (Hebrew: מִדְבַּר יְהוּדָה, Arabic: صحراء يهودا), with the Dead Sea in the distance.
Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25671212
Vigiling
I remember Maundy Thursday
As a loving day
Maybe we knew Good Friday’s coming
It’s a homely name, Maundy
I like it
I liked the quiet, burnished time in church
When had communion after dinner
In my home-like church
That was long ago, and there have been
Hard days since
Even then there were some challenges
I rose and fell
And tried to rise again
Isn’t this the life we have?
Maundy means mandatum
(sorry, teacher talks)
That is command
Because Christ gives to followers
Not a suggestion
A good idea in the feedback box
But a directive
Love one another
And I call you friends
Not bad for a Thursday
Looking toward an empty Saturday
Knowing that hope
And hopelessness must be comingled
For a time
The warmth on one day
The cold of a void the next
There might be triumph
Most would take
Small victory for more days of good life
And peaceful living
And why not
We follow as we will
Into the garden
Up the hill
To split places in the world
Underneath, as if to die
Hoping to awake
In a quiet place again
Leaving something like
A hibernation
Toward a meal with family
And our forever friends
Anathema
Catharsis
If we must have both
Well, that frightens me
Maybe you are more stalwart
I’d respect that, I’m sure
But for those of us
Even a little part part-rabbit
We treasure stillness
But the moving kind
That assures us there is day
To follow night
And a life in the light that’s good
It will happen
It might be hard at first
Maybe we fight, maybe we endure
But three days follow Thursday
Then we’ll know
We’ll know again
And for the first time
C L Couch
Sergio de Castro, detail of Jonah window for the Collegiate of Romont (Switzerland).
(image) Dominique Souse – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38701105
Campaign
Life is important
Though we contract on its importance
With agreements tissue-thin
On paper we’ve polluted
For nation-states that richer folk
Have hollowed out
What is left but
Value that has no protection
Words in a chamber without power
Charged with nothing but
Intention and
Words for marketing
How then are the poor protected
But they’re not
Maybe we live today
Maybe we don’t get the chance
Because the opportunity
Created in creation
Was stolen long ago
And we are left as shells
Abandoned by inhabitants
Left to dry on beaches
Away from water
The poor you will have with you
Is not an excuse for
Resignation
Lack of action
Real food to go with
Living water
And who is the poor
But all of us connected
To judge by what we take at last
You are impoverished
So am I
Everyone
Not one escapes
We’re all the same
As we’re all unique
No one person gets it all
That’s delusion
(you know that)
We share what we have
And leave more for the future
That’s a planet
Worthy to explore
Worthy to make contact
With beings, angels, and God
Of the universe
C L Couch
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
Chanton
(Notre Dame)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1117888314323791874
Cathedrals built to music over time
So relate certain Victorians
Now music while the cathedral’s coming down
Illumination
Challenging the fire
A story goes that Camelot arose
To Merlin’s music
There’s Aslan singing so that
Narnia can come to life
And did not the utterance of Christ
Make all worlds
They watch and listen to
The fire
There is heat to feel
Ash to smell
And the taste of ruination
There is more as music
Cups the feeling of the tears
And gives, unbidden, thought to soul
Vive la France
Vive l’homme
C L Couch
(c.f. first part of Hebrews 3, Christian New Testament)
After Words
(Lent 41)
x
There must still be words
We’re stuck with them, I guess
Or at least I am
x
We could end here
Or yesterday
But we won’t,
Which is not a matter of words
As it is of life
x
Yet we should be ready
Now,
To pause when needed
Maybe turn the pause to play
Whatever is called for
x
It’s called for often
Snow day
Day in the sun
Comp time (whoever has this)
Playing hooky
(you can look it up)
x
Work will resume
With its kind of
Awareness, learning, deciding
Not in cryptic ways
Or inaccessible
Though recall that there’s a mystery
In pretty much everything
x
The kind that moves a martyr’s heart
And for other reasons, too, can thrill the heart
Of each of us
Of the sort like
Joan, Priscilla, Rachel, Esther
Judith, Hrosvitha, and Hildegard
Who found their way with God
While in the world
x
And for the Joans, Priscillas, Rachels, Esthers
Judiths, though I don’t suppose we’ll be
Naming anyone Hildegard or
Hrosvitha for a while
We may
We will
x
I don’t know, I think we’ll find
What we need
As long as we don’t keep the process to ourselves
Or the results
x
Anyway,
I thought I should say something once it’s all over,
Our Lenten experience
We’re comingling times and traditions
Of the end of Lent (for those still counting),
The Passion, the Triduum, then
Easter and the Easter season
x
I pray
Together and apart
These are all good for you
The way spring days, clean from rain,
Can be
x
C L Couch
x
note for the blog
Counting forty days from Ash Wednesday takes Lent through Palm Sunday, which might seem odd given the reflective nature of the season maybe abandoned in triumphant celebration. But the count of days in Lent can take out the Sundays and Holy (Maundy) Thursday (when the celebration of the Eucharist occurs) and add in Good Friday and Holy Saturday to make up a count and observation of forty days. Timing of events for the Passion and the Triduum might overlap this way of counting, and it’s also true that some have it (more or less officially, according to one’s tradition) that the length of Lent (even the sense of forty days) be taken metaphorically.
I guess I’m counting forty days from Ash Wednesday and let the paradox of Palm Sunday prevail.
Whew.
x
Photo Credit: Wikimedia User John Morgan CC-BY-2.0
Lent 40
(hopscotch-counting)
Try again
Sometimes it’s hard
Though not harder and less rewarding than
A life inside a cage
Kept without a lock
Some count the season from day one
As I have counted
Some take out Sundays, a timeslip in
The forward flow of days
Any days that might allow for
Contrary feasting
Some leave the season longer
And forty is a metaphor
For wilderness experience
If we count forty from first Wednesday
We are here today
Triumphal entry, as it’s said
As songs are sung
As palms are waved in happiness
And salutation
For the one who’s here
While our invested time is closing
A passion time begins
When blood with flow with water
In a garden, on the streets, and
Later on a cross
What have we done?
What do we do?
How many who are cheering now
Will spit the words out later
Broken of humor into mocking?
How many will be caught
And tried by Caiaphas
With a nod to Pilate?
How many, at least, will try war
The worldliest of ways
In bids for freedom
With endings still debated in
The courts of heaven?
Well, we have something
We have had our season
And know without expectation
Any more than making
That another season follows
It’s today
The end and the beginning
Celebrate
But keep the palm fronds close
Maybe contrive a reminder
For the window sill
Over which we view into
The next spate of days
And on into forever
Take us with you
Some things we do alone
So many more need not
Go that way
We may go another
C L Couch
Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash
Lent 39
(penultimancy)
you must take time
to breathe
finish the song that’s been
going through your head
figure out what you were looking for
when you came into the room
(then find it)
pay attention to
what matters
which is not a scolding
but a happy watchword
paying attention’s fun
because you can (too) take the time
to gather in what’s pleasant
along the way
the thing is that the rest of the world
won’t stop with us, won’t take the time
except maybe to take it
and not give it back
choose something like a star
and Frost is right
we can select
from our own, something fantastic
that we’ll never keep
someone else could pick it, too
(we don’t have to tell
or make a fuss)
after all, what’s our own
but what is also shared
heart and soul
in an entire cosmos
the season ends tomorrow
with an entry into
everything that’s next
in practice and remembrance
we’ll have our parts
attendance won’t be checked
in any way that matters
(delight in grace)
but presence, well, let’s have it
as self-mandatory
vigil
and arrival
passion follows
C L Couch
Image by Mohit Mourya from Pixabay
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