growing up as the God-man

Harvey S. Mozolak

he has left the bed

of animals

Joseph borrowed a house

from some distant kindly relatives

and he is walking now

it seems early

but somehow nothing he will do

will probably be premature

when he walks around the room

outside in the small street

and at the nearby field where Mary

takes him for air

it is like he is a wild creature

caged or un-caged

it is difficult to tell

Auden called him a tiger

once I versed him a panther

his Book said behold a lamb

he has begun to hunt

and stalk evil where it is found

in the neighborhood and nation

like a child who cannot let a pet or beast

be still he will find the foe

and confront its tottering stand

with childlike simplicity of spirit

himself the taunted prey

he the serious game in grace

this is where my Father

sent me to walk

and take a stand

in a sapling

he tells Mary he wishes today to climb

to see beyond Bethlehem's soft beginnings

she warns him of its dangers

one hand to each low branch

he places

he has not yet strength to climb

will the pure and holy virgin

aid this early crucifixion?

are these the lion claws of Judah mounting

he the treed king of beasts?

straw pole

Harvey S. Mozolak

a hey for the hay

he’s bailing us out…

born beneath

the post

holding up the roof

of a barn

with stars stowed

in the rafters

caught

Harvey S. Mozolak

a manger moment

caught in time

frozen figures

warm God

caught just in time

for life beyond

refigured

God’s yes

Harvey S. Mozolak

one large brown leaf

enough to cover

our fall?

December speaks

through the spokes of tree limbs

beyond the stars themselves

a knowing “no”

in the nakedness of God

earthbound

table of Christ

Harvey S. Mozolak

the fragrance of setting

the communion table

wine unstopped

sharp free opened grapes

aged sweet and mellow

leaping to awareness

a life beyond the flask

beyond into the air

unseen but tasted

bread one whole

ready to be broken

and passed to hands

warm like awaiting ovens

faucet shut off

Harvey S. Mozolak

the phrases flow

wetting with ebony

a great deal of paper

with drying thoughts

of the ever God bowed

bent and twisted

into the dates of Augustus

but after the twenty-fifth

we quit counting

and only he does

for us

Christmas Sursum

Harvey S. Mozolak

cold this night when the night

creates anew all days

and an infant’s birth and breath

begins the opening of all graves

and closed hearts

when a baby’s beginning cry

are the first words of God

in our living human tongue

God singing to silence

angry un-quietude with peace

come here and near

and offered to us

the blood of God surging

in the cup Mary bears

and Joseph lifts up

diminishing the morning light

with the tiny tender struggling body

we receive and hold as warmth

o magnum mysterium

Harvey S. Mozolak

the enclosed within

maiden-held God

o great the small

he the I AM of all

mystery come to dust

and flesh for faith

in the greatness of the unseen

contained for us

to blanket bind bruise

bleed and bury
for from his bandages

the blessing of healing will come

post feast post

Harvey S. Mozolak

when it is over

all that is left

the red tail lights

left from looking

down the streets

of strung blinking lights

the cold pots and dishes

soaking in the sink

lost Legos making their way

deeper into couch cracks

and the flesh of gifts

crumpled un-ornamental

balls bagged for the trash

he is off to Egypt amid slashes of red

washed and walking the shore of the sea

then like a prayer shoved into the seams

of the walls of the city-promised peace

the earth unraveled

rutted with ruin

is his swaddling for death

and when it is over

all that is left

is his life posted

that we might live

afterWord and feast

gloria

Harvey S. Mozolak

above the wool-dotted field

a corona of angels

lights and warms a flock of men

as yet manger-unknown

lamps lit to lead

to the light of life’s new breath

where Joseph whispers

Mary quietly sighs

as the baby cries

in a barn’s darkness and cold

higher than the hills

Harvey S. Mozolak

the angels are painted

in glory about the madonna

with the Christ-child

a picture that did not take place

others with cows

donkey and sheep show

although

the unclean shepherds

crowding within

under the loft of hay

peaking beneath the straw

at the blanketed babe

have just seen

been to a concert

of an angelic choir

their hearts must still

beat in blessing

thump and trumpet

with the high praise

shepherds’ flocked praise

Harvey S. Mozolak

song from sky

sad and hurt bleats

among lost lambs

ewes and rams below

readied for sacrifice

a tree cold

covered with rare snow

for the star of stars has fallen

for the herd has been heard

by God

art by Moze

Shawn A. Mozolak

2015

earth kept

by king David’s greatest child

God’s sole Son

we are held

in the keep of the Shepherd of Israel

fed in the lowly Lamb’s manger

by the living staff of life

wood- one day his scepter of mercy

hoc est corpus meum

chaliced in our hands

HSM

2015

Seasonal Advantage

Have you noticed that from morning soft news shows to local noon TV and even through public service and plain old sales promotional advertisements there is an attempt during this month to highlight, underline and “stir up” interest in using the December weeks to strengthen relationships, family ties and the doing of positive social things.  Find a way to give more, to feel and share peace and joy and understanding.  In fact, it is a yearning for Advent amid the pre-Hollydaze-ing muzak noise and over-bright light displays.  A search for family and friendship of God amid war and anger, hybris, hunger and hatred.  A search, sadly that will not find until we are found in the infant-small— God’s greatness in the December weak.   

I know the following and some previous posts are not poetry but now that I am not preaching every Sunday, it still is good to work in the homiletical medium:

ChristMass 

The message “some assembly required” comes on many of the boxes gift wrapped for all ages.  The manger is in a simple sense a box for God.  Certainly the blessed Virgin’s womb earlier was perhaps a warmer and friendlier wrap, that is, if the infant had been only human… but the packaging of God, the wrapping of glory with the tangles of time’s ribbons crammed into all the containing surfaces and corners of space, no matter where, must not have been comfortable for the God-man, Jesus the Christ.  Nevertheless he comes because some disassembly is required.  The God who created all things in perfection and peace and who watched all things be refit together for the human will and desire and not God’s intents and plans must now disassemble evil’s contortions, sin’s turns away and the change into the curvatus in se that the human heart finds acceptable and good.  The reassembly of the God and human relationship begins anew in the feed box at Bethlehem.  Sadly we use the tools of ropes, nails and hammer and he only his love, an open gift for us.  

Advent in North Carolina

Ever since I saw Ben Long’s fresco in the Roman Catholic church in downtown Charlotte, NC a few years back I have been interested this artist’s religious works.  The fresco which covered a whole large chancel wall which spanned from one side of the church to the other— is no more, fallen from the wall, thanks to some demolition at a nearby construction site.  But other smaller, earlier frescos adorn the chancel areas of several Episcopal parishes north of Boone, NC.  The Last Supper fresco is well worth seeing at one of them but during Advent his two smaller frescos depicting St. John the Baptizer and St. Mary mounted on either side of a rural chancel come to mind.  I had opportunity to see them in person this fall.  John is portrayed in a full sense of a wild prophet.   The blessed Mother of God is depicted in full pregnancy, about as round as possible.  Some might say, “She is really showing.”  It is after all Advent.  Much demolition is going on and many murals of the faith have fallen.   His comings— then, now in Word and Sacrament and again in the fullness of the eschaton— should be as evident in us and in our lives to encourage some to comment on our living portraits, “You are really showing… showing forth the Messiah, the Jesus, the Lord of the Universe.”

Christmas Eve with John and Luke

after the last gospel

driving home

dismissed among 

the night snow showers 

lit by a lantern moon

small clouds passing 

among the stars on the deep

between the altar’s high hung crucifix

and home around 

the balsam tree’s glittering globes 

and lights for the eve of the entry

of the first gospel procession

Adventuring Days

The newborn in California was an abandoned baby girl found in the debris of asphalt and rubble near a river on a bike path.   Read as a news headline, online:  “Newborn in stable condition after being found 'buried alive' in Los Angeles”   In the context of a day in Advent reading, it first sounded like, “Newborn in stable…  condition after being found buried alive….”  Drop the Los Angeles for a hillside full of Angeles and you have the incarnation at Bethlehem.   Christ the Son of God buried in a girl’s womb in the whereabouts of barn animals and the vast multitude of earth’s sinners.  

Buying into December Days

The catalog of religious items for Christmas, features— with free shipping (although Mary must have noticed the weight during the nine months, a rather long Advent wearing blue as she traditionally does!)— a “Vintage Nativity.”  Vintage has the meaning of something to do with grapes or wine (or maybe in this context, blood?) and also something to do with the period in which something (or someone) was made or begun (or again in the context of Advent, the only begotten conceived of the Virgin spring by the wind of the Holy Spirit).  Anyway, is this too much symbolism?  But the ad for the nativity notes the it is a wire construction and brings to mind the wire that often surrounds securing the cork in a bottle of wine.  (sorry for the symbol stuff again)  Then again the ad says that it can be easily molded back into shape if becomes distorted in storage.  Ahh…  it just begs, does not the words of the ad in the Word of the season, for talk about the distortion of sin and how the one stored in the womb comes in the manger to mold us back into the shape of the sacred.  So far the distortion of the ad reading.  What do you think, do you buy into more than symbolism and the wire held nature of the season?

COVERING THE STORY

The cover photo on the ELCA’s December edition of “The Lutheran” magazine is a nativity by He Qi, a Chinese artist who along with Japanese print artist Sadao Watanabe are personal favorites.  The vibrant pink-clothed blessed Virgin holds the infant Lord on her lap under the watchful eyes of dimly lit purple animals, Joseph and perhaps a shepherd holding a lantern.  The swoop of an angel curved above is also more muted than the Madonna and child.  While the piece is all is done in more Oriental motifs than the usual Western paintings normally traditional on Christmas cards and postal stamps one thing is out of place for any traditional, realistic nativity scene.  (Although this year’s US “religious” stamp is several years old because one might assume they haven’t sold out of it and exhausted supplies in a couple of years.  Does that say something about the phasing in of electronic greetings or the phasing out of religiosity in our greetings… at least on our envelopes?)  Here’s the thing that is noteworthy:  the baby holds in his tiny hand a bright, round, red apple.  Hardly soft infant fare.  He is bringing it back for the tree.  Obediently he will replace himself, as fruit for the forbidden bitten, on its branches, bright, red juice of his veins running down its cut grooves and trunk.  

In the jargon of philately envelopes are called covers…  this is a season of uncovering as the story is covered of our God covered with flesh.