Luke 6:29-30

("If Someone Takes Your Coat,
Let Him Have Your Shirt as Well")

Why would the soldiers
at the foot of His Cross have wanted
to cast lots for His cloak,^*
imprinted with bright-red blood and
sweat and sputum as it was?
It was as if Jesus allowed it,
even at the precipice and point of His
peering over the imminent
cliff of death, that His
one remaining garment be
parted from Him and shared by His
executioners for warmth.

Gethsemane

(“Not My Will but Your Will Be Done”) *

…Alone now,
suffocatingly alone,
squeezing Jesus’ chest but
soon scourging every inch of His back,
Jesus’ temptation at its most
vulnerable peak,
nothing but the sounds of
His disciples asleep,
critically unable their lids to lift
and eyes open to keep,
the penultimate test of His will,
His followers blending
and fading invisibly into the
utter blackness of
the night, becoming part
of the stark silence
of immense isolation
enclothing Him, no more
Voice from the heavens as at the
rapture of the Baptism
on the Jordan, or when
boomed the Majesty of His
Father at the glorious
Transfiguration on
Mount Tabor, just Jesus’
agonized pleas in a
pool of red in the sweat
of His blood, and the
dawning knowledge His Father
had determined there
would be no remitting of the
nails and terrors of
Golgotha’s morning
Cross…

Luke 8: 43-48

"Who Touched Me?"

Lord, there You are — the
Only-Begotten Son of God,
the Word, the Word Made Flesh,
the Word Incarnate,
the Lamb of God … And
You are veiled behind this small,
metallic, tabernacle door, and
I am alone with You, and
all I have to do is to open the
tabernacle door, not
with a key but with
my heart, or to just lightly
touch the exterior metal, like
the woman with the
chronic bleed once did with
the hem of Your garment — from
whence You felt an
indescribable rush of
Your power into her flesh,
stoppering her bleed
forever, while around You the
crowd continued its
seemingly inexhaustible,
irrepressible press.

Holy, Holy, Holy

Lord, You are neither male
nor female in the limited terms in which
Your human creatures can think,
but the effect of Your Being
is akin to magnificent,
sheltering wings.
You provide shade and
shadow against life’s
blistering summer heat,
and at the first signs
of cold, Your wings enfold
into walls of comfort
against suffering. Your wings
are safe refuge for Your
creatures against storms
and terrors of the night, and against
anxieties which afflict their
sanity all efforts despite. How
good You are, Lord! How
generous and unyielding the
availability of Your
mercies! How so forgiving,
even to Adam and
Eve, who ignored Your
Garden of Eden warnings!
There is naught but
calmness in the Kingdom
beneath Your wings,
where supplicants can lie
at rest, lulled by the Sanctus in
angelic praise of Your
Love and Beauty.

Contemplating the Color of His Sacrifice

Sitting here,
The solitude around me
Is not just without sound. Its
Silence is painted
In blends of blood-red,
With nail holes and a
Spear puncture
Still softly oozing the
Aftermath of my sins, lo
Two millennia now His cruel
Calvary death, and
Even further back to when
The Serpent forked
Its tongue, and
Adam and Eve were
Cast outside the walls of
Eden’s heaven.