Religious Poetry Through the Ages
George Bailin
(Member, Monroe United Methodist Church)
good friday: april 10, 1998
what did he speak
that injured you?
or any?
friend, on that dark,
that clotted ignorance
which wrecks our passage
home,
did he not lighten
the mass of gloom?
and offer spark-
ling word, a bright
way to go?
what did he speak
that injured you, or any?
what did he say
that hammer blows
should wreak that damage
on his palms?
that rose-red blood
should stream
from his breaking ankles?
you, with mallet
in your fist, hear this!
from his hemorrhage
a thousand psalms
have flown to the skies!
the spikes
have each become the perfect
axles,
on which this planet rides.
your brutish strikings
of which he cried
with failing voice
have pried apart the midnight
jaws that snare
our white feet.
oh foolish ones,
on the anvil of his bones
what a great ignition
leaps
to show the lonely path!
1998
Ann Weems
This Church
We don't pretend to understand the mystery
of what goes on in God's Church.
We just know we feel a pervading spirit of love
that reaches into the niches of all of us
and pulls us out into the open,
free and alive and belonging.
We believe this spirit of love exists because
God's Spirit lives within this Church,
this unity of persons trying
to be the Good News.
We see this Church as a circle of persons
holding hands...and dancing...
supporting each other, accepting each other,
loving each other.
Each person in this dancing circle
is facing outward...reaching into God's world,
listening for the whimpering,
watching for the hurting,
willing to offer a cup of cold water
in His name.
Sometimes they need the water;
sometimes you need the water;
sometimes I need the water.
Being a part of the Church
means knowing that
the cup is always filled
in His name.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.1; Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
1877
1as when olives are crushed for their oil.
Pied Beauty
TO CHRIST OUR LORD
Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded1 cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls;2finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;3
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
1877
1streaked
2"chestnuts as bright as coals"
3patchwork farmland
Anonymous Lyrics of the 15th Century
Jesus'Wounds So Wide
Jesus' wounds so wide
Be wells of life to the good,
Namely1 the stround2 of3 his side
That ran full breme4 on the rood.5
If thee list to drink,
To flee from the fiends of hell,
Bow thou down to the brink
And meekly taste of the well.
1particularly
2stream
3from
4fiercely
5cross
God, That Madest All Things
God, that madest all things of nought1
And with thy precious blood us bought,
Mercy, help, and grace.
As thou art very god and man,
And of thy side thy blood ran,
Forgive us our trespass.
The world, our flesh, the fiend our foe
Maketh us mis-think, mis-speak, mis-do -
All thus we fall in blame.
Of all our sinnes, less and more,
Sweete Jesu, us rueth sore
Mercy, for thine holy name.
1from nothing
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