The Unsealed Jar

Chris E.W. Green

Why do you seek the living among the dead?
— Luke 24:5

Take for example this open window
or this unsealed jar
filled with nothing. Now,

think:

   the chasm over which the Spirit broods,
   the gape between the cherubim,
   the Virgin’s tomb,
   the contracted womb—

See?
Emptiness,
no longer empty.
The grave is not a void,
not to be avoided.

For he is not here,
standing in the crowd
or out from it.

He is not here,
no more among the living
than among the dead.

He is not here,
not another body in the room, but the room itself
emptied for us. An absence

holding all our attention.

Chris E.W. Green
Priest, Poet & Theologian

Photography by Ricardo Braz

Ekstasis Magazine