Lord,
This woman who encountered her shadow
perceives the numinous in You,
leads the women who come with grief
and myrrh to Your grave.
Alas! What a desperate night I’ve travelled through:
extravagant the desire, dark and moonless
the needs of a passionate body.
Accept this spring of tears,
You who empty the seawater from the clouds.
Bend to the pain in my heart, You
whose incarnation bent the sky
and left it empty.
I will wash your feet with kisses,
dry them with my hair, feet that Eve once heard
at dusk in Paradise then hid in fear.
You who are limitless mercy - who will trace the results
of a lifetime I’ve done wrong, evaluate
my weakness? I ask, remember me,
if nothing else, as one who lived.
‘Troparion’ (a short hymn in Byzantine music, used in the Eastern Orthodox Church)
Abbess Kassiani (804?-?), tr. Linda Sakelliou
A day of silence: no lengthy visits to the Temple’s Passover rites on this Sabbath, no lingering with extended family, no breaking bread with cherished friends. Not even the possibility of a noisy, wailing funeral procession parading through the streets of Jerusalem. No, this is a day to gather together behind locked doors. A day of bewilderment. A day of grief. Some dash tears of anger and confusion from blotchy cheeks, others sit rocking themselves back and forth, as if still trying to embrace the One who healed them, feeling bereft of his familiar presence, always palpable no matter how big the crowd.
This is a day where fear dominates: fear of the absolute, ultimate unknown. It is a leaderless, rudderless day, where there is no choice but to admit the power of death, and acknowledge the presence of loss. Every now and then someone whispers a half-formed sentence, but they soon stutter to a halt as memories take over again, still too precious to be spoken aloud.
Although each does not know it, at some point during this day each and every disciple in the room will see again the events of two nights ago (was it only two nights?): each sees the Christ knelt before them, pouring water into a clay bowl, and, reaching for a cloth, wiping his feet with a feather-light caress here, her feet with a firm kneading there. Here, by the end of this Sabbath day, each disciple will wonder if it really could have been the waters of eternal life cupped in the hands of the One who still is their Creator, Teacher, Saviour, Messiah, Mentor, Leader, King. By the end of the day each disciple will say yes, it was here, the wonder of it is, yes it was right here that the waters of eternal life were given to me in the touch of the One who is still my friend, my brother, my beloved.
It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again
it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower
and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary
is one of water’s wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail
if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass
to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip
then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience
water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along
drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song
which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again.
‘A short story of Falling’
Alice Oswald
on the brink of… Canon 7D. f2.8. 1/1000. ISO 200.
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