The Day We Call Good

terrible terror of truncated breath
of breathing belabored and broken
terrible terror of merciless mocking 
of inhuman isolation a token 

horror of horrors this unsunnable sky 
this day leached of color and reason
horror of horrors this interminable night 
this unending fast of a season 

never forever these hands breaking bread
their healing and hope interrupted 
never forever these feet bringing freedom 
their kingdom message corrupted 

mercy oh mercy for the watching women 
for all who in long agony wait 
mercy oh mercy for the upside down king 
for the one who died as death’s bait 

The title of this is inspired by one T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (and my personal favorite of the four),“East Coker”:

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood –
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

When I was little, I always got confused between Good Friday and Black Friday. I thought that the Friday before Easter, the day that we remember Jesus dying on the cross, should be called Black Friday. I mean, according to some of the scriptural texts it was literally black, not to mention the spiritual and emotional darkness that choked it.

Like, God died today. What’s darker than that? What are we doing, going around with the audacity to call this day good like we are commenting on oysters or the weather?

Then eventually it hit me that that's the whole point. That's the gospel—that a criminal execution and punctured skin and the silence of God is actually, ultimately, very good.

Now, the darkness of Good Friday anchors my faith. I have found myself clinging to it, hiding in it, finding breath again because of it. Because I couldn't trust a faith that didn't have a day like this. I couldn't trust a God who didn't embrace pain like this.

If he hadn't, how could I trust him with my pain? With the world’s? If my faith didn't have a story that invites us into unutterable agony—that forces us, really, to sit in sorrow, confusion, rage, all the accompanying horrors that no human is spared from, that steadfastly refuses to look away from it all or breeze past it, and then makes it the cornerstone of its Theory of Everything, its Hero’s Journey—if my faith didn't do that, I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn't believe it. And I wouldn't want to.

But not only does my God experience all the worst and beyond the worst of what we ever will, he performs this crazy alchemy with it, metabolizing darkness into light and grief into rejoicing, somehow without eclipsing the reality of evil but without giving it the last say either. And so now all my days are flooded by the bright shadow of the cross.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's still Good Friday. And there is blood on the ground.

---

I wrote this poem last Good Friday, when NaPoWriMo coincided with Holy Week. It will be interesting to see what this year's poems center on, since usually Holy Week inspires a lot of the content. I was visiting someone, jetlagged, on an unfamiliar mattress, up too late, feeling like I needed to mark the day somehow. And then this happened. I rarely write in rhyme and meter—it doesn't come naturally to me. It's an area I'd like to work on. But every once in a while, the muse decides to have some fun. This poem almost doesn't feel like me, it's so different from how I normally write. But it works, I think, the repetition and the rhyme creating this kind of pounding, like a racing heartbeat, like drums foretelling doom. It creates this feeling like you can't escape. Except Jesus could have. And he didn't.

stay awake (even today. especially today.) —

Aberdeen