A Poem for Holy Week
I’m not sure how interesting a poet’s process is to folks who are not writers.
Similarly, I am not sure that many people in the pews give much thought to how a preacher prepares a sermon or garners much gusto for the Greek roots of New Testament words.
At the risk of inducing boredom, a brief word on how some poems come to be.
There are times when Inspiration strikes and a poem flows from the tip of my pen to the legal pad as though it were already fully formed somewhere else (Somewhere Else?) and I am simply transcribing it for the record.
More often than not, I sit down to write without that jolt of inspiration and begin with a question or sentence that has been on repeat in my consciousness for a few days.
Sometimes the sentence is, “I do not have anything to write.”
Sometimes it is a question that has been circulating in the backrooms of my mind.
My poem for today’s eDevotion began in such a way. The first portion is made up of the questions I’ve been pondering in the Lenten lead-up to Holy Week.
In a world that has been flattened by technology, social media, anxiety, division, and a never-ending cycle of terrible news, how do we delineate Holy Week as something utterly different? What does the ancient and ever-present story of Christ’s death and resurrection have to say in our anxious and unprecedented moment in history?
This poem is a penny tossed into the well of those questions. May it serve as a signpost as we take the exit off the interstate of our high-speed, gridlocked lives toward a quiet hill outside of Jerusalem and the miracles of an extra-ordinary week two thousand years ago. May you have a transformative Holy Week and blessed Easter!
How can we rest when the world is aflame?
How do we parcel out peace or dare retreat?
What is a holy week in this forever swirl that is
filled with to-do’s too weak to be done,
too algorithmed to be left undone?
What is the invitation for us here below, caught
in the flow of nights and days, worries and ways
that we are pulled along this tantrum trail?
To the One who speaks in flame and peace:
Give us the grace to follow You anew.
Calm our anxious timelines, replace our weak wills.
May we die to the small self little ego scarcity mind
that clenches fists around the myth of mine.
May we walk the way of the Cross in the middle
of our mundane muddling and minor Golgothas.
May we nail our grief and shame to Your tree
and watch new life blossom green with spring.
May we surrender our cynic hearts and find
the cathedral of our chest filled again with
the breath of Your Spirit, the drum beat of
Your Sacred Pulse echoing off the walls
of the cave that briefly became your grave.
May we rest at your Table, at your Cross,
at your Tomb, and in your Holy Week-end
Sabbath's new creation Sonic Boom.