A continuation of my “Holy Week at Home” posts; on Good Friday we stand at the foot if the Cross as Jesus is crucified.
Look up.
He is unfurled
aloft,
Like a flag of surrender,
So that you might see, and know
It is finished.
Like a scroll,
So that you might read the lines on his skin and find the place
where it is written in rivulets of tears:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
I have been anointed to proclaim release.
And I am releasing—
I am giving up
my spirit.
A broken body
Arched like a question
inquiring into your frailty;
testing whether it is tolerable
For love to cost this much.
But if you will stay
In this place without answers
Then you will learn that the
rending and the mending of the world
are two notes of the same song.
You will learn that there is no such thing
as dispassionate salvation
or tentative redemption.
And how in the Divine economy
everything is given
And returned
Eternally.
You will learn that nothing is ever wasted
even when waste is the only credible conclusion.
Even when all the evidence suggests defeat.
You will learn that victory is not the same as winning;
that truth is not the same as certainty;
And that peace is not the same as pleasure.
But all of this is offered now, only now,
On this desiccated and necessary hill,
The final bequeathment of a dying God
Who cannot teach you the secrets of eternity
Without entering finitude.
Look up, into his face.
Look up, and see how he is grieving all of your endings.
Look up, and see how he is dying all of your deaths.
Look up, and see the world pass into something new.
Look up.
By Another Road 