Good Friday
Calvary was a glass box where God,
confined, no longer touched the world.
It was a white plain, without sound,
not the groaning, blood-soaked hill
the scriptures leave us.
I know.
Calvary hewed itself inside me once
with the chisel of a long sorrow
that fell, persistent, merciless
like cold, steel rain.
It was a place bereft of feeling.
Only the anticipation and
the memory of pain are feelings.
Pain itself is a huge abyss,
bled by the silence that mimics death,
but is not as kind as death.
Calvary is the place where
all strength is given
to the drawing of a breath
to linger in it unfulfilled.
God, now I go quietly inside
where you are dying in a glass box, still.
I am changing now to glass
to pass through and companion you.
I watch the rain, itself like glass,
crashing to an unknown life
beneath the earth. Where love roots
absolute, unbreakable, I cling to you
in a transparent act of will.
Music: Handel: Messiah – Part 2
Lavish Mercy 