With the dawn of a new church year, we are launching a new feature on our website, a weekly post of poetry that resonates with the lectionary readings for that week (Revised Common Lectionary).
Lectionary Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
Anaphora of
Basil the Late
Scott Cairns
Found in
Anaphora: Poems
O Holy. O Holy Silent Father
Inexpressive.
O Mother All Compassionate. O Most
Adorable
and, yea, allegedly, Most Adoring!
O Most Still!
We deem it proper, meet, and right enough
to speak to You
more or less directly—duly or not
assuming some
interest on your part. We speak to You
concerning much
You must already know. We often praise
the majesty
of Your holiness, knowing next to naught
of holiness;
of holiness we possess scant context.
Regardless, we
dare to praise You for the sometime sweetness
of the many
gifts apparently bestowed, and—despite
our more common
habits of complaint—we praise You, giddy,
and blinking still
at the intermittent, quiet, subtle,
altogether
inexplicable pulse of joy rising,
compensating
recurrent daily pain. We acknowledge
that we should yet
exalt Your dear, capacious names, Your One
and Holy Name.
We hasten yet to bless You, worship You,
offer meager
thanks to You, and glorify You, the God
Who is, Who is,
Who alone occasions life, insofar
as we can say.
We apprehend with contrite heart, humble
spirit, that we
should pledge to You our will, our wits, our breath,
for it is You
Who have thus far deigned to bestow on us
some little bit
of truth. Who among us can speak of all
Your mighty works
or of your silence? Who make Your praises
heard? Who can tell
of the odd miracle at sundry times
or Your famous
disinclination to meddle in ways
detectable?
O Master of All, of heaven and earth
and of all dim
created beings, both the apparent
and undisclosed,
You sit upon the throne of glory, look
upon all depths.
You are invisible, unknowable,
ineffable,
without beginning, without change,
Fathering our
Lord Jesus Christ, our God, our Savior, Whom
we call our Hope,
Who—in Himself—reveals You, our Maker.
In Himself, He
proves the living, Unwritten Word, true God,
Wisdom before
time, through Whom has come the Holy Spirit
to be revealed,
which Spirit remains the Spirit of Truth,
the Gift of our
late, filial adoption, pledge of an
inheritance
yet to arrive. Despite our grim, our gloom,
remember us.
from Anaphora: Poems by Scott Cairns
Copyright © 2018 by Scott Cairns
Used by permission of Paraclete Press
www.paracletepress.com
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this is a truly wonderful project. thank you.