Month: April 2018

Oh! The rejoice of it! Oh, the amaze!
The Gift, the uplift! Alleluia-ful Day!
We thank you for Wonderful, Easter-ful Love
that we are the risen-up subjects of.

You’ve emptied the grave of us. Oh, what you’ve done!
The cross you’ve uncrossed. The big bang re-begun!
Now earth is made heaven, the prison the garden.
The sepulcher dances, set free of its burden.

Our graveful of misses and messes are blessed,
our Didn’t undid, and our No you have yessed.
The Can’t and the Shouldn’t made vanishing small
and death and its scariness not there at all.

Poor death has its rules, but Easter’s response
is that God can and will do whatever God wants.
There’s no How to explain or Therefore to defend;
there’s only your mercy and grace in the end.

The blessingful cross and the emptyful tomb
spread their arms and say Yes and say Hope and make room.
Your love sets us free and undoes what was done,
brings each me back to thee, and makes ones into one.

This Day! of impossible made into Yes,
made into Receive, into Trust, into Bless.
The angels are partying on our behalf.
Then what can we do but, oh, weep and, yes, laugh?

Ah! The leap and the bow and the fling of this day,
we dance and we sing what we can’t really say.
How to thank you with thanks for the gift that you give
we can’t say or believe: we’ll just have to live.

   —April 2, 2018

         They went out and fled from the tomb,
         for terror and amazement had seized them;
         and they said nothing to anyone,
         for they were afraid.
               —Mark 16.8

Our Sunday morning Alleluias won’t be enough.
We will fail to tell this mystery.
Only language honest enough to fail can speak
God’s grace.

Christ is risen, and escapes us—
escapes our words, our deeds, our lives—
and yet comes to us: our failure the sign
of God’s victory.

Before our failure Christ is risen,
beyond our failure Christ reigns supreme,
in our very failure we are saved
from capacity.

Fearless of our weakness now
we are bold to lay down our life, and falter,
hoping only for God to love magnificently
in us.

Christ is risen. Let terror and amazement
carry you. Let your words fall like petals.
Let nothing suffice to tell the unspeakable
but the light in your eyes.

   —April 1, 2018