On the Mount of Temptation

Twelve hundred feet up a sheer cliff,
through the winding passages
of a monastery carved into the rockface,
you come to a stone. A stone whose career
spanned forty days and forty nights,
two millennia ago,
and has not been sat on since.
A stone, complete with footrest
—that devil thought of everything!—
rising invitingly out of the solid mountain.
You yourself are shielded from the temptation,
by a considerate casing of glass,
leaving the holy seat secluded and unsullied.
Well, there are just some things
that you may travel the world to see,
only to find that someone else has decided
you still can’t touch them.
But your hand brushes the cool rock wall
on your way back down the twisting stairs,
rough-hewn edges worn smooth by the centuries,
and you enter the chapel, still encased
in the raw flesh of the mountain.
And there, beneath your palm,
throbs, slowly, an aeonic heartbeat,
a pulse that knows no difference
between cliff and wall and seat and stone,
between seeing and touching and blessing,
between itself and the planet it joins
a quarter mile below.
                                   And still
your fingers, even now, remember
how it felt when the temptations of the world
were traded for your soul’s desire.

At the Basilica of the Annunciation

Mother Mary lifts my eyes
and I am a child again.
My small hands slip into hers
as easy as breathing
and touch the loving callouses
where countless pilgrim hands
have rested, then carried away
infinitesimal flecks of paint,
infinite portions of blessings,
revealing, underneath the white,
the gray, and underneath the gray,
a love that has no underneath.

Rock of Unction

I never knew how soft a stone could be,
what depths could be contained within so flat
a slab of marble. Bathed in centuries
of tears, it holds them all, remembering that
first evening of sudden, hurried grief,
when Hope itself dissolved into a flurry
of oils and sheets and sobs, and the belief
that what was real could ever be buried.
But tears come also from joy, from the dawning
awareness of a light that shines through sorrow,
through stone, a strength that holds us in our longing,
and from that core, we lift ourselves to follow.
Thus we, this stone anointing with our tears,
find joy returned from all our griefs and fears.

Galilee

An inland sea,
its soft breath coming to rest
on the enfolding banks of my soul,
the water so still now,
as I step out
upon it.

Upon These Rocks

A stone holds what it knows,
and only Truth Itself outlasts it.
And though the centuries crawl by,
yet still it whispers if you ask it,
and tells of One it knew whose foot
did tread, or skip, or slip along it,
and shares with you that Presence still,
if you but lay your heart upon it.

Upon these rocks now will I build
my church with bones of sacred stone,
anchored in depths of earth and soul,
and there, unshakably, a throne
is raised to hold the lasting praise
my heart learned from the rocks of old,
and locked within this simple clay,
experience of inner gold.