Seven Stanzas at Easter

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.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike (1932-2009)

A St. Patrick's Day Gift

from Keith and Kristyn Getty.



From the Getty Music website:

What Grace is Mine

Kristyn Getty sings ‘What Grace is Mine’ at Shadow Mountain Church, San Diego in Feb 2009. In 2008, St. Patricks Day and Easter Sunday landed in the same week, which hasn’t happened for over a century. Kristyn wrote lyrics to match this well known Irish Traditional Melody.

Leads into ‘In Christ Alone’, the hymn written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend.

Eleven Reasons to Celebrate in March

1. It’s supposed to be the end of winter. Or so they say.
2. We got to spring forward. Hooray for one hour less sleep.
3. St. Patrick’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day.
4. There’s March break. Perhaps you know it as spring break or reading week. No school is always a good thing.
5. Three reasons in one: Pi Day, Pi Minute and Pi Second.
6. We have the the spring equinox, when everyone in the whole wide world has the same length of day.
7. And don’t forget Johnny Appleseed Day.
8. Some people have been giving away free books.
9. My oldest son’s 30th birthday is on the 26th.
10. It’s Women’s History Month. My apologies for mentioning it, but I need eleven reasons and I’m running low.
11. Some very interesting people have birthdays on the 11th. Like Ezra Jack Keats and Wanda Gag.