For the Baptist

"The last and greatest herald of Heaven's King,
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he than man more hamless found and mild:..."

William Drummond of Hawthornden

Unknown Letter

"But Jesus bent over

and wrote with his finger

on the earth

and again bent over

and wrote on the earth...."

Tadeusz Rozewics

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

Salome

"...And then, Salome! Still a child (a child!)
She drinks the potion, horrible, defiled,
That summons up dark vengeance and the sword...."

Mikola Zerov

Adoro Te

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Like the Samaritan Woman

"Lord, won't you come and quietly speak
as if asking me for one cup of water first
like you did the Samaritan woman who came
to draw water out Jacob's Well?
You know that since I'm a sinner
I lack courage----"

Hae-In Lee

Mysterious Wealth

"Feeling today like the Prodigal Son
just arrived back in his father's arms,
I observe the world and all it contains..."

Ku Sang

In My Father's House

"Friday mornings, while challah rises,
I walk to shul to practice desert prayers...."

Dewitt Clinton

Miracle

"It all happened on the water
Jesus' walking
the fishermen watching
from their boats...."

Susan Griffen

Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis

"Maybe He looked indeed
much as Rembrandt envisioned Him
in those small heads that seem in fact
portraits of more than a model...."

Denise Levertov

Proverbs 31

"...She looks for wool and flax
And works with her hands in delight..."

Revelation 6:7-8

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Mark 8:24

He spit in his eyes, put his hands on him and asked him, "Do you see anything?" He looked up and said, "I see men, as trees, walking."

Genesis 3:17, 18

"Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field."

Deuteronomy 26:5

"You shall make this response before the Lord:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor."

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

Ascension

"Stretching Himself as if again,
through downpress of dust
upward, soil giving way
to thread of white, that reaches
for daylight, to open as green
leaf that it is . . . "

Denise Levertov

Via Negativa

"Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within..."

R. S. Thomas

On Belief of the Physical Resurrection of Jesus

"It is for all
‘literalists of the imagination,’
poets or not,
that miracle is possible,
possible and essential...."

Denise Levertov

Hast Thou No Scar?

"Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on hand and foot, or side, or hand?..."

Amy Carmichael