Spikenard & Ash

She moved like silence

in a room full of eyes,

broke the jar

like a prophet breaks the sky.

No words,

just oil

— and the scent of burial.

The men coughed,

like they'd inhaled scandal.

She poured a year's wage

on his worn feet,

and wiped them with her dignity undone.

And the church—

still, at times, finds itself

in the crucible of pain and suffering.

There, it pours itself out—

in hostels and prisons,

war zones and refugee camps,

where the broken bodies of the world

become its altar.

Worship spills like spikenard

from hands that serve.

It anoints where hope is fragile,

bearing the fragrance of grace

amid the ashes.

They called it waste.

He called it beautiful.

While they plotted with knives,

she ministered with myrrh.

While they counted silver,

she counted it joy

to anoint a dead man walking.

Perhaps

the angels held their breath

as glory filled the cracks.

Ashes and spikenard.

A woman, a Christ,

and the scent of the end

which smells like the beginning.

- Rev’d Jon Swales