Creature

O Lord, You held me
cupped in Your hands, cradled
in Your arms. You made
me to tenderly lie against
Your bosom. You formed me and
shaped me until I was as
close to Your image and likeness
as a human creature could
become, and then You
looked into my face and
breathed my name, and like a
tiny mustard seed in
the womb You placed me –
into the innocent,
lush garden of an in utero,
warm enclave.^*

Confessing

I was too tired to pray,
so all I could barely whisper was
to ask Jesus to recite my
prayer for me, the very same
Jesus Who was being
scourged and abused at the pillar,
crowned with vicious thorns,
dragged cruelly through
screaming passageways to
Calvary, and then nailed
with filthy Roman spikes to a
Cross, and in the last
throes of His agony crying out,
“My God, my God, why
did You abandon me?”^*
Yes, that is the same Jesus
Whom I implored to recite the
words for me…because I
was too tired to stay awake and in
self-centered pity to pray.

Grace

O my Lord,
You so easily peer into
my heart, winding Your way
deftly and knowingly through the darkened
corridors and staircases
and recesses of my soul –
and alas You find
me – on a slab in a drab
burial cloth, hidden
behind a hewn rock hitherto
unrolled, but just as in
the Garden of Eden where
You found Adam and Eve in leaves
after their fall clothed, and
just as for Lazarus in
Bethany four-days aft his
death be told, You mercifully
summoned me forth,
and grace’s raiment You chose
that I wore.

Ode to Jesus

So much of You
is mystery,
so much of You is
Bethlehem stable and
Calvary Cross.

So much of You
is shadow,
so much of You is
Light o’ercoming doubt
of Thomas.

Matthew 17: 1-5

"As They Looked on, a Change Came over Him"

Which
one Heaven,
which one Earth,
each’s seeming the
mirror reflection of the other,
each’s image and likeness
and raiment
transfigured as on
Mount Tabor – strikingly
white, blinding the
eyes of those who from the
waters and clouds
the voice of God
heard…