Monday, July 31, 2017

This Silence (Be still and know)

This silence drips,
Cold and wet,
Like leaves after rain,
Like the rusted corners of gutters,
Softening the frozen core
In the centre of my heart.

This silence screams,
Tornado-like,
Through my quivered, straining senses,
Though nothing has moved,
At all,
In this breathless place.

This silence shines
Like a dark pool,
A catalogued mirror
To the chatter of my soul
Reflecting things that,
Rightly,
Never see the light of day.

This silence climbs,
Like a tearing vine
Across the crumbling edifice
I have to call my pride:
Demolishing, yet holding me,
At one and the same time.

This silence calls
A name I do not know,
A new identity.
I strive to hear,
Reaching down,
Falling deeper
Into silence.

This silence changes
The things I thought I knew.
My eyes torn
From the immediate,
Dazzled,
While in darkness,
With a splendour that brings tears.

This silence holds,
Embraces,
Overturns,
Renews,
And wraps me in your peace
I still don’t understand.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Jazz Concert

Notes like a beach ball
Tumbling and turning,
Stripping the silence,
Hard sound coruscates.
Splitting the spectrum
To shatter and sing:
Music in waterfall,
Dancing cascades.

Structure devolving,
A cubist re-forming,
Soft with sharp edges
And melody flowing
Through bottomless vessels,
Yet still holding shape.

 Then to rebuild
With layers of balance,
Negotiate gravity
In letting go:
Waiting complexity’s
Strange resolution.

Transcend the minor key
Echo of emptiness,
Streams that flow over stones
Seeking the sea.
Fulfilled in fullness
Go bold into silence
Fracturing angel songs
So humanly.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Beyond Hope

There was no hope, or so I believed. She was so ill, my sweet little daughter. My wife had already given up and hovered by the bed waiting for the final breath, wrapped six miles deep in gloom. It was stifling; it was unbearable. I have always been a man of action, a man does not get to my position by wishful thinking, and I had to act. When the usual things do not work, you try the unusual things, even the risky ones if you are desperate enough, and I was desperate. To see that precious life snuffed out would be like helplessly watching the sun set knowing it would never rise again. I have always been a pious man, a ruler of the synagogue, so I cried out to God, and, within the space of a breath, I remembered the Teacher from Nazareth.

I had heard he was nearby, so I flung on my cloak and went forth to seek him. It wasn’t difficult, I only had to follow the noise of the crowd, and there he was, unmistakable, at its centre, while the people thronged around him, each one wanting something from him. Well, I couldn’t fault them for that, I desperately wanted something from him as well. People recognised me and let me through, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself prostrate at his feet, begging him to come and heal my little one – I who had never begged any man for anything before! He looked into my face as if he were searching my very soul, and immediately agreed.

We made slow progress through the crowd, with everyone wanting something from him as he passed, but he stayed focused on me except for one incident with a woman who touched him. I was inwardly screaming with impatience, so I didn’t follow exactly what went on, but I said nothing, because I didn’t dare offend him.

And then, when we were properly on our way, some of my own people met us, and told us we were too late, she was already dead. It was as if my heart left my body and plunged into an abyss of darkness. But the Teacher seemed quite unperturbed, he turned to me and said, “Don’t be afraid, only believe.” I wondered what I was supposed to believe, but I was too shattered to say anything, and simply, blindly, kept going with him. He let no one else, except 3 of his disciples, come any further with us.

He swept into the house and dismissed the mourners and all their cacophony, telling them that she was not dead, only asleep, and they laughed at him; but though they offered him only the bitter laughter that one gives to the lunatic pedlar of impossible hopes, they scattered when he told them, and I marvelled, briefly at his authority. Greater marvels were to come, though, for he bent over my little one, took her hand and bid her to rise. And it was as if the dawn came while the sunset still lingered in the sky, for she rose from her bed and walked, and hope walked into our lives again, a doorway into glory.

And then, in the most ordinary way possible, he told us to give her food.

And I began to glimpse that, somehow, in this one man, heaven and earth had joined together. It was much later before I fully understood.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Georgia O'Keeffe

How you disturb me:
The curve of your flowers,
The intimate spaces,
Where beauty detours;
The visceral spaces
Vicissitude traces,
Engaging. Engulfing
And yet love endures.

Through light and darkness
The spirit, not soaring,
But delving, in wonder,
To compass the small.
Near is the courage
And fearless the forging:
Owning, and gaining
And compassing all.

What are you saying?
To whom are you speaking?
How you do challenge
And make your paint sing!
Nothing is static,
Arrived, or arriving.
Journey to stillness,
But carry a sting!

Friday, July 14, 2017

Psalm of a Sydney Winter

I give thanks for skies so blue I get lost in their beauty;
For the slantwise sunlight, adorning every leaf;
For the golden blaze of wattle in the nadir of the year;
For brave, bright camellias with polished leaves;
For the cosiness of bed and the astringency of rising;
For the brilliant flash of lorikeets and white clown cockatoos;
For the dew that falls like blessing.

I praise your name for the laughter of kookaburras
Adorning the morning air;
For nights that wrap the house like a blanket,
Like the strong arms of your love;
For buds on bare branches, and the promise of renewal;
For nature’s downtime, the respite,
The pause between the songs;
For clear night skies a-thrum
With the alien melodies of stars,
Sharp as crystal,
Piercing the soul with beauty.

I thank you that, as seasons turn,
We see new aspects of your glory,
New ways to sing your praise.
I thank you that the seasons of austerity
Carry their hidden beauty:
Flowers of another spring
Pressed between the pages of our lives,
Promising the Spring that ends all winters.
I thank you that the sun and moon
Shall not cease in their rising till he comes:
The Son of Righteousness
Who rises
That the whole world may be healed.

Monday, July 10, 2017

The Robber's Tale

I will tell you the truth, I never expected to come to a good end. From my childhood I was one of those boys marked out for trouble, running wild and getting into bad company. It would be easy to blame all my family’s woes on the Roman tax system, but the truth is (and I can admit that now after years and years when my scalding hatred of Rome was the thing that propelled me on), my parents were wastrels, lazy, careless and concerned for nothing but their own immediate gratification. If they had been very rich, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered so much, or perhaps they would have plunged even faster into every kind of degradation. I know now that, while Rome certainly isn’t blameless (all kingdoms except one squeeze as much as they can out of the people at the bottom), it was only the catalyst that hastened my family’s inevitable destruction. But my parents blamed Rome for every bad thing that happened, and, as a child, I believed them. It is always easier to blame an external enemy.

So I grew up without a trade, without an inheritance, and with a deep anger burning in my heart. Is it any wonder that I gravitated towards the rebels and the robbers. Truth to tell, we were nothing more than a band of brigands, carving out our own little niche on the Jerusalem-Jericho road, which was infested with our kind, but we told ourselves that we were nobly resisting Roman rule, striking a blow for freedom; and we were foolish enough to believe our own lies. In fact we rarely attacked Romans of any kind, they were far too well defended. It was our own people, and heedless foreigners that we usually attacked, telling ourselves that they wouldn’t be rich enough to steal from if they weren’t collaborating with Rome. It is extraordinary the lengths we will go to so that we can justify ourselves and be heroes in our own imaginations, when the squalid truth was that we were simply criminals.

Of course I ended up getting caught, I wasn’t nearly as clever as I thought I was, and in one of the periodic clearances of the area I didn’t get away fast enough. Then I languished in prison until my execution date was set. I had time to do a lot of thinking then, being forced to sit still and quiet for once in my life, and some of my realisations really made me squirm. I got chatty with some of the guards and began to realise that perhaps these Roman soldiers didn’t exactly have the wonderful life I’d always envied. They also told me news of what was going on in the city (conversation helps pass the time, even for a guard) and inevitably I started hearing about Jesus, the teacher from Nazareth. I was fascinated.

The day came for my execution. Any man would be terrified of crucifixion, and I was no exception. As we walked the streets to Golgotha I noticed the crowds and realised it must be Passover. I had lost count of the days, and, anyway, whoever heard of keeping Passover in a robber’s den? So much for our allegiance to our own people!

Everyone knows the horrors of crucifixion, I don’t need to go there. It was only after I was strung up there in agony that I realised, from the things that the crowd were saying,  that the man on the cross next to me was Jesus. I looked at him, I looked at myself, and noticed the difference. But mostly I looked at him, even in my extremity, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. And when the thief on the cross on the other side started mocking him as well, it was too much. With a last surge of my own anger, I said, “Don’t you fear God? We are under the same sentence, be we deserve our punishment. This man has done has done nothing wrong!”

And as I said those words, understanding came. I do not know fully who he is or what he is doing, but I knew enough. And I knew that all my life I had misunderstood everything. I turned to him, and the tears in my eyes were no longer from the pain. Brokenhearted, with no more pride, no more anger I simply begged, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.

He looked me fully in the eye and replied, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 It is almost the end. My agony will be over soon. But I am no longer afraid. I am with Jesus.