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…

Winter

Winter Prayer

O Lord, please close the
eyes and ears of my soul to mammon’s
every whisper and murmur.
How can I mirror Your perfect image
and likeness, if behind
my own rolled stone lies my
flesh as master?

Winter Writing

And thus, I return to my
writing, after a hiatus in autumn
lasting into winter, a soul
appearing adrift amongst the lost…
but maybe never far gone,
but rather more like Saint Paul –
restored at cold night to my
bridled, waiting horse.

Light

Awe

Lord, there is no
darkness too dark for Your Light.
There is no noise too loud
for Your Silence. There
is only You, and before You
I stand mute.

The Truth

The Light came out of
the darkness, and still comes out.
The darkness could not
restrain the Light, and still cannot.
The Light shone and still
shines, while the darkness
cowers, by the Light made blind.

Light and Hope

Where there is darkness,
there has to be Light, to see it…
Where there is despair,
there has to be Hope, to free it…

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.

Luke 5:16

"But He Would Go. . . to Lonely Places"

The things that I
Think are important, O Lord,
Vaporize the closer I
Get to Thee, like when a
Wisp of Your Breath
Brushes aside a
Few desert grains, and
Eddies a cool,
Running seep reveal.