Tag: Christ

Alleluia, and Good Morning

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, The Church7 Comments

Resurrection.jpgToday is, for many, a day without irony. It is a day one can see not just daylight through cracks in tomb doors, but can look back into what was their tomb from the satisfying light of a new dawn.

These patterns of light and dark, day and night, life and death happen so regularly that they’re almost not worth mentioning. Except, they are.

The ancients call it Paschal Mystery. A repeating pattern of living and dying and renewing that, through the eternal Christ, is everywhere present, everywhere accessible.

Faith is merely the God-given sight necessary to awaken to it. And Easter is the primal, archetypal key that opens that door.

Today is Easter. Resurrection. All that was dark, dead, hopeless, and not, is brought back into glorious harmony with God and the cosmos. Through Christ, today, we feel its warmth. Today, we know its hope.

Today is for all todays until all tomorrows are todays.

Alleluia and good morning.

_______________________

Picture found here

Of changing seasons and the heart of man

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

The weight, the stink of summer sweat

erased, now late, the greening days.

Pursued no more by Spring’s regret,

once come the crisping Autumn ways.

* * * * *

Delivered, fresh, with fondness, fields

that love no more the drawling heat.

Welcome, Autumn’s respite, real,

her daunting face of beauty, sweet.

* * * * *

To smell the winds and wayward sky

is once again one’s place to know.

A speck, a grain, a hollow sigh-

to plant, to seal, to die, to grow.

* * * * *

And underneath her drying skin

are gifts of death, of seedling hope;

entombed, encoffin’d earth, within

the ground, while truth, with life, elope.

* * * * *

And you, O Man, so faint and dull,

where fate and folly freely meet,

your seasons, many, twist and pull-

your grasping, brash; God’s touch, discreet.

* * * * *

Return and taste the Summer gifts

the iridescent, squeamish Fall;

the Winter’s breathless cold uplifts

till Christ, like Spring, will death annul.