Riff on Psalm 18:1-20

RIFF ON PSALM 18:1-20

I love U, O Lord my strength, * my high mountain refuge, the source of any immunity I possess.

When the earth’s crust cracks and realigns, * U are the difference between falling and floating, my safe place, and my equivalent of a monastic cell.

I call upon U, the source of being, to preserve me and those I love * from the swarming viruses around us.

In the overcrowded hospital, death washes over me in waves, * I am baptized in darkness, and I am afraid at the core of my being. 

Estranged, I descend into hell; * there is nothing to restrain my fall; my slide into oblivion is irresistible. 

In my desolation I call out to U, * I call out to U, for there is no other.

If U had ears, could U hear me all the way from heaven? * Ears or not, do U notice any of this?

When the earth shudders on its axis, exposing cracks in its fabric, * is that a sign of Ur taking interest? 

Is the burning forest and seething wind * a flexing of divine muscles, a restless stirring of sacred power provoked into action by heedless abuse?

Ice caps cascade into a swelling sea, * and starving bears wander across garbage dumps.

Tornados blast across the plains and trailer parks.: * Is that U that swoops upon the wings of the wind?

If so, it is Ur shadow, Ur backside, so to speak, because that is most certainly Ur face coming toward me down the hall, * Ur face, shrouded by a mask.

U lift me up and change my dripping bed clothes; * U wait for me outside on the lawn, entrusting my care to anonymous angels and prayer lists.

U reach deep into the abyss and touch me beneath the failing flesh; * U bring me out into an open place, a true, beloved space. 

Maundy Thursday Thoughts In Social Distance

MAUNDY THURSDAY THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE

Exodus 12:1-14

On this night a ruthless pharaoh met his match

As a ruthless angel passed over Egypt

Striking down the first born in every household, stable, or stall,

That is, except for those behind the bloodstained door posts of the Hebrews’ homes, 

Those the bloody angel skipped, noting the exceptions on a ragged list,

       Parchment or papyrus, a Passover script for future generations to recite.

Now it is our turn to ask the unaskable, to pray that the Unseen Virus pass us by,

Pass over our doorways washed in the blood of that other lamb,

Pass over our scattered children in their homes,

Pass over us all in the whole sequestered land. 

Psalm 116:1,1-10

“How shall I repay the Lord?”

“I will lift up the cup of salvation, calling upon the name of the Lord.”

Lift it up, but not “in the presence of the Lord’s people”.

Not “in the courts of the Lord’s House, in the midst of Jerusalem.”

Lift it up, but at a Distance. 

“Honor our vows”, but in solitude, unwitnessed but for passing angels, spirits

             immune to viruses, or else have already had them all and are pure

              antibodies, unburdened by inconveniences like vulnerability, or air. 

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of a servant”. 

Precious in your sight is our death. 

So we have died of the virus, already, before we were born. 

Snatched from nothingness, ourselves no less than viral angels floating 

               randomly on a collision course with everything else,

Our precarious lives, our tenuous breaths, our next moments and their      

                 disappearance into the nonexistent past,

Nonexistent but for that unexplainable snatching, that lifting up of a cup,

 That gesture of defiance toward the black hole of nothingness,

That cause for an offering of thanksgiving, that mind blowing offering of

                    thanksgiving, that Eucharistic breakthrough that offers everything,

 Angels, viruses, precious deaths.

And thus shall we repay the Lord. 

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

“As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord’s death til he comes”. Except now, in this time of separation, when no meals are shared among friends, no comradely quaffs of wine or beer, no ecstatic invocations of a future Jerusalem, only the flat computer screens, the flat faces of multidimensional spirits, semi angelic projections of Socially-distanced persons, stretched out across the time space continuum like Jesus of Nazareth, stretched out between heaven and earth, stretched out but not stretched thin, not exempted from the possibility of pain, transcendent but not immune. Our access to one another is restricted, rendered remote, but not our vulnerability, not the risk we take when we care about each other, however great the distance between us. That mutual vulnerability is what connects, even when the cup is unreachable, the bread an image on a screen. So the cup has become grail-like, elusive, veiled behind an electronic haze. And we have become questers, knights-errant on a search for that which can only be received as a gift, pilgrims confined to quarters, reaching out toward the cup of salvation with virtual hands, washed many times over, and yet not altogether clean.