Three Days

Three poems

Good Friday

The mystery of passion is this:

Not that evil exists
     in a cruel and greedy world,
Not that good people suffer
     for bad reasons or none at all,
Not that we cannot finally
     slow injustice or quiet pain,
But that God responds
     not first by fixing what is broken,
But by making it clear
      that love suffers with us—
That in the darkest valley
      we are nearest to Christ’s heart.

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Holy Saturday

The quiet of absence
Is too quiet sometimes,

Like the quiet of soft rain
On cold granite headstones,

Or the stillness and dark 
Of a room when guests have gone.

But quiet isn’t always quiet,
When work goes on underground,

And sabbath is half-done
Till toil and death and shame are spoiled.

So teach us how to hope—
In spite of bones that know

That you are not here now—
That you are never gone.

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Resurrection Day

With fear and great joy
They ran to tell.

      If your kind and faithful friend had died
      A gruesome death and then said, "Good morning!"
      From behind as you went to put flowers
      On their fresh-tilled grave, what would you do?

Where do you run
With fear and great joy?

      How is a new world announced? "Do not fear"
      Whispered with power, growing, rippling out
      To hill and hollow, city, field, and slum
      With the holy whiplash of redemption.

With fear and great joy
You catch your breath.

       Frozen with longing for something not yet,
       Glass-eyed, agape, like a road-killed coyote
        In unfinished howl of rigor mortis—
       Truth is the hardest story to swallow.

What do you see
Through fear and great joy?

       Each friendship is resurrection practice,
       Reaching for love and faith and hope and rest
       Knowing full-well that time and space and sin
       And death challenge every effort, but still

With fear and great joy
You hold on tight.

Hope writhes and rises
With fear and great joy.