"For in him we live and move and have our being-as even some of your own poets have said!"

--The Acts of the Apostles 17: 28

To have a roof to shelter us,
to mark the measure of our days far truer than the crafter's cut,
to sense no blurs, nor griefs, nor any sad confusions
amidst a wider,
deeper wisdom stretched out across our years-
would this not be true life?
To add to gaiety our gentle measure,
to rise above our faint and false absorptions-
pride-less in the face of truth,
less prudent in the presence of grace
with newer bonds across our lives
and surer cords to link us all-
one, to one, to another.

For if we could ask for one Lenten assurance
it might yet be this-
to know that we are held,
and healed,
and have our very being in that which is Divine;
to know that we are bathed in new and altered aspects,
un-compiled of time, or terror, or fear of death,
fully aware of those vague perceivings
which we have only guessed at,
or hoped for,
or yearned to be real in our darkest points of pain.
Then what weariness would be eased within us!
Then what words of seeded hope
would find good ground awaiting!
For from beyond the broader movement of our lives,
far beyond the quickened pace and pressures of daily personhood,
would not God's presence declare itself near and un-heavened
until the urge,
and sound,
and flowing feel of Spirit
in-breaks all around us-
on our faces,
in our ears,
beating in the darkened depths of our sleep
and meeting us once again at waking?
Would not this same Spirit blow across our streets
and up to all our safe and shuttered sanctuaries-
there to stir our pious prayers
and bring to light our hidden lamps-
unquieting,
persistent,
rising as a wind that grows
unable to be turned away,
or made to cease?

Yet how easily-time and time again-
have we chosen restraint as our leading path-
embracing a reserve still forged and formed of other strong importances.
We want the new and now
freed from all the babbling creeds of centuries past.
No prophet's cry-
nor Psalmist's soft sedations!
No words of simple sureness-
nor quiet, gospeled grace.
We strive for inner portent,
visible and clearly cut,
beyond all loss of histories blurred confusions-
yet still we stumble,
stumble along on the edge of nameless rage,
haunted by a hundred hidden fears-
failure,
worth,
death,
despair.

For gone from us,
far gone are all the truer days
dimmed among the sparse words left to trace Christ's path-
when God in flesh raised high such heated issues
and demanded faith's full measure,
when fearful speech of him was food and drink for Council's,
when all the roads were live with poor,
and winds were stilled,
and hearing came again to ears that had been dead to sound;
When feet, once gnarled,
moved-restored-- free in rhythm's dance
and sight returned to shut and slated eyes.
He moved there then,
threading through the fallow fields,
and bold he was to twelve in prophecy of pain and kingdoms
startling them to him in love,
while holding ever-close their lives in simple grace.
In him
and with him
and through him
they moved and ministered
and met their lives complete
amidst compelling unity
strong and sure in him.

But they too would turn unsure
turn to push impersoned,
fully fleshed Divinity away,
to flee and fall beyond his words and tones
of a present time of promise
and an hour drawing near.
How quickly they could see all the snares set cunningly-
new visions for the lost
fresh hopes for the despised
the blunt and bold reversal of an order
grown so customed and so caustic-
and all his walking there among such dangers
and the lonely tread of truth.
He had loved too many poor,
and he had touch too many tortured-
and they had dared to be
too ardent in their speech of crowns and kingdoms!

So maybe we can understand and sense the chaos left to them-
their belief and unbelief,
their wildest hopes confirmed,
refused,
then raised again in cross-beamed sight;
the fear,
the panic,
the quick and dark debates of vast assurances
once gained but now gone-

For these are yet our Lenten fears as well,
that one who was so swift in wisdom's stride
could fall to such finality-
that one who knew the gifts that flawlessly
were his-
of praise,
and love ,
and life so strongly lived-
could fail.
What of his word of peace-and his call to want and to work for more?
What of his vision to live as if God were in us,
released from the bonds of heavenly gates-
making us matter,
making us sister and brother to all?

We have all felt this fall of silence here
and the fading of our hope
as we might feel the sudden loss of one whom we have loved,
who has been for us an uttered voice before our every need.
We have looked so hard beyond the edge of possibilities
and have clutched so tightly to the stones of hardened doctrine.

We have held the sounds of our own small movements taut,
and pieced together words
and scraps of speech for comfort.
And we have rushed with idoled haste,
and have searched so many foreign faces,
and have beseeched so many flowing names,
and have traced and tracked
a myriad of plausible conjectures,
and have prayed,
and watched,
and prayed again
in ceaseless yearn and empty gain
upon the hard remaining lack of him.

For we have heard-
close and clear,
the leadened steps of death
as near as each new morning
and have filled the darkened void within
so quickly with possession-
not presence,
not peace,
not power so unlike the world's perceptions.
Bent-kneed,
we have knelt beneath a cultural cross
wiped clean of blood-soaked stain
and social disregard-
freed from all the fragments of its crass mosaic
where he can no longer walk to us again
nor make his ministering gestures in our sight,
helpless there,
and held in temporal time.

We speak so boldly now of vacant tombs-
but what of vacant lives?
What of searching souls,
and lack of hope so strong
it offers only dust and darkness.

We have known this here-
the unheld return of anxious anxiety-
and have searched for words,
and signs,
and hopes
that might be left in him for us.
But we have not surmised the full remembrance of him now
a stronger, present treasure here,
until we've marked what dignity,
and what part,
and worth he has for us-
this humble
healing One we hold so distant
yet who is so ever-near!
For in the curious blend of our grief and gladness,
we can still listen for his leading-
and heed his call to take time to let go
so that the timeless
can take hold in us and through us.

In him we live,
the poets have penned-
In him we live
and move
and have our being-
our lives and our angers,
our loves and our scorns,
our doubts and our fears-
but also our becomings
but also our becomings-still!