Brother Our Way

We go, brother, our way into the wolves
As lambs with no purse, no bag, no sandals.
No shelters from contingencies, no bread from padded budgets,
No tunic of market surveys, no extra sandal for the dust,
No pretending that this is not difficult, that this is a career,
A romantic vision, a respectable thing, an admirable project:
Not a road to success.

We go, brother, our way through the shadows and curses,
Self-chosen perditions packaged by the therapy of sophistication
Of empty words and salutations, the delays and distances
Of ambiguities and conferences, workshops, and the winning
Of titles, badges, superlatives, expansions of the vitae.
There is to be limpid simplicity, like spring water:
Not the booze of congratulation.

We go, brother, our way in the warlands
And we look for open houses as the Son of Man has nowhere
To lay His head, to succeed with the crowds, to be elected,
To win. Ours is the journey of peace, not violence since we are called
To strive with self and the other selfish powers.
We say Peace through the door, and we stay,
Not, though, if it returns.

We go, brother, our way to find the sons of peace
Who will receive our old-fashioned preaching:
All have been called to the mystical festival, and
All have been compelled from the Law and the by-ways, but
All have not chosen Cross-comfort in the heart:
They wanted more than restoration of nature and perfection,
Not life but a shadow, rehearsal of shade.

We go, brother, our way with what is provided
In the perilous regions of contingency beyond all prediction:
We will find five loaves and two fishes, the Showbread and the Waybread,
We will drink from the Well of Bethlehem, the Dayspring and the Wine,
We will sing the Trinity and pray the Son at the hearth of the city:
The sons of peace there want the Gospel that may slay us:
Not the androgynous mantra of a lee shore.

We go, brother, our way to the sick who need physicians,
As exiled Samaritans, red-crossed, the wounded Inn-ward fetching.
In His Name we will heal them,
In His Name we will subject the nameless and drive them outward,
In His Name we will face them, and not camouflage them away from offense.
“The Kingdom of God is near you,” we will say to the dying,
Not death, for once. And the living will be glad.

We go our way, brother, through the land of unbelieving,
An overlay of shadows juxtaposed on a wide country green, gold and blue.
The land and its stories wait for our News,
The land and its dead long for Trinity, the Word and the Body,
The land and its present groan for Cross and the Day:
The Gospel explodes from our tongues, and the Eucharist burns in our hands:
Not the sinner’s prayer, but Baptism we portend.

We go, brother, two by two, into the city of universal calling,
Where few are chosen, as perdition is on sale these days and more are buying.
I am Orthodox because I’m American, rooted in the river hills,
I am Orthodox because I’m human, unnaturally bound to die.
I am Orthodox because we’re brothers, you and I,
And if they do not receive us, we will shake the sand, brother,
Not faith, for there is no other.

Comments

[Deacon James]

Father, this is lovely and very edifying. Thank you for your labor, which so refreshes us who read it.

[John S. Bell]

I loved it; Wendell Berry's Mad Farmer meets Eliot's Quartets and Choruses from The Rock with St. Andrew looking on.