Tag: flesh

Proud Flesh

barnstormingblog4 Comments

nailhole

 

frost125143

 

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly whenever they’ve been set down –
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong than the simple, untested surface before.

There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised:
proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds,
wears them as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest –

And when two people have loved each other,
see how it is like a scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
~Jane Hirshfield  “For What Binds Us”

 

proudflesh

 

 

A gaping wound heals slowly,
new flesh rising from beneath and from side to side,
growing thicker and stronger than thin skin torn asunder.

That binding scar may not always be beautiful
but it won’t give way,
held fast and tight
built to last forever.

Like our horses’ legs caught in gates or fence
where gashes meld together dark,
we too have proud flesh —
we won’t forget our wounds
or His.

When they are visible
you may see from where my healing comes
and where I remain so soft
and so tender
and so proud.

 

 

love2

 

love1

Your Very Flesh

barnstormingblog2 Comments

noblesseeye1

 

birchbay6917

 

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to everyone that asks,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem,
and have the richest fluency, not only in its words,
but in the silent lines of its lips and face,
and between the lashes of your eyes,
and in every motion and joint of your body.
~Walt Whitman from his preface to “Leaves of Grass”

 

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Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks and today is the start of another summer season of relative rest, of another transition for several thousand college students moving on to another phase of life with advice of all sorts ringing in their ears.

Commencement is best suited to start in a season that itself is a poem.  Summer simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons. Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending, yet, like the length of our fleshy days on earth, it eventually winds down, spins itself out, darkening gradually into shadow.

In a few short months we will let go with reluctance as if no summer like it could ever come again.

Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday. Our very flesh can depend on it.

Surely such a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.

 

marshmallowlunde

sisters5:17

 

Turn Aside and Look: An Apparition of Petals

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japanplum2

plumbranchjapan

plumjapan2

All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
But the word of the Lord endures forever.
1Peter 1:24-25

camelliajapanpink

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
~Ezra Pound “In a Station of the Metro”

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atthestation

During our visit here in Japan, particularly at the train stations, we are met by a sea of faces — each man, woman and child with a place to go to work or school, a place to return home to, a bed to rest upon. It can be overwhelming to think of the millions who pass through the same place in a day and to wonder at how each person, each hair on their head, is cared for and counted by God.

Yet, like the transience of flowers, we are mortal, each of us, except in our clinging like petals to a wet bough –the word of the Lord, our Creator. Only then we become more than apparition.  We bloom where we are planted.

japanfreesia2

fallencamellia

Suzuki_Harunobu_-_Woman_Admiring_Plum_Blossoms_at_Night

Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night, Suzuki Harunobu, 18th century
(the print that inspired Ezra Pound’s poem)

 

God Among Us: The Word As Flesh

barnstormingblog5 Comments

dandy910152

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14

 

For me it is the virgin birth,
the Incarnation,
the resurrection
which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical.
Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws.
I am always astonished
at the emphasis the Church puts on the body.
It is not the soul she says that will rise
but the body, glorified.
~Flannery O’Connor

dandy9101510

Good is the flesh that the Word has become,
good is the birthing, the milk in the breast,
good is the feeding, caressing and rest,
good is the body for knowing the world,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
growing and aging, arousing, impaired,
happy in clothing, or lovingly bared,
good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
longing in all, as in Jesus, to dwell,
glad of embracing, and tasting, and smell,
good is the body, for good and for God,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.
~Brian Warren Good is the Flesh: Body, Soul, and Christian Faith

 

The Word was made flesh.
As our pastor preached last Sunday: this one verse in John is the crux, the heart, the center point of the Gospel.
Without God putting on flesh to become like the rest of us, He is not one of us.  He must be fully God and fully man — both.

So He comes from the body of a mother, born a baby frail and weak, just like us. He hurts, He thirsts, He hungers, He stumbles, He falls, He weeps.
And He dies as we do.

Yet He rises again to walk, speak, eat, and be touched so that we too may rise as He does.
The Word was made flesh so our flesh, weak and frail though we are,  becomes His body glorified.
~EPG

sosoft

The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.
We beheld the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth.
In the beginning was the Word, The Word was with god.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
He came to his own, and his own received him not.

icecrystals112815

 

Lenten Grace — As His Flesh: Ours

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photo by Emily Gibson
photo by Emily Gibson
facing east to the rising sun by Jim Randall
facing east to the rising sun by Jim Randall
photo of BriarCroft Sunrise Service 2013 by Emily Gibson
photo of BriarCroft Sunrise Service 2013 by Emily Gibson

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall…

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
~John Updike from “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Our flesh is so weak, so temporary,
as ephemeral as a dew drop on a petal
yet with our earthly vision
it is all we know of ourselves
and it is what we trust knowing
of Him.

He was born as our flesh, from our flesh.
He walked and hungered and thirsted and slept
as our flesh.
He died, His flesh hanging in tatters,
blood spilling freely
breath fading
to nought
speaking Words
our ears can never forget.

And He rose again
as His flesh: ours
to walk and hunger and thirst alongside us
and here on this hill we meet together,
–flesh of His flesh–
here among us He is risen
–flesh of our flesh–
married forever
as the Church
and its fragile, flawed
and everlasting body.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten