The Time of Breaking

It is the time for breaking

Old platitudes depart;

We people-in-the-making

Must un-defend the heart.

It is the time of mourning

For what may never be;

Small truths no longer scorning

We face our finity.

It is the time for speaking

The words we could not say;

With no more image-tweaking

We face the light of day.

It is the time for grieving

The good we failed to do;

Too weak was our believing,

Too swift the moments flew.

It is the time for lighting

The lamps we need by night;

To read the wall’s strange writing

Demands a truer light.

It is the time of breaking

Our false strongholds of fear;

Hypocrisy forsaking,

For reckoning draws near.

The Shadow of a Great brightness

There – not there!

Skittering at the edge of sight,

The shadow of a great brightness,

Wrenching my tear-filled eyes.

Have I seen truly?

Have I seen at all?

Ever, at all?

Moments of such illumination

My earth-sense doubts them real.

The shadow of a great brightness:

And, in our moon-struck folly,

We dare not whisper what we see,

Fearing the rolling of each other’s eyes,

Fearing the desecration of self-doubt,

Fearing, in fact, our own humanity,

In its amphibious state between the worlds.

There is more than meets the eye,

Yet we want our eyes to meet

In the shared language of our daily life

(Imagining that this is understood);

And the shadow of a great brightness

Remains our silent mystery.

Let us rather acknowledge that the limitation

Is rather in ourselves, who can’t else know

The things that great illuminations show –

Acknowledging we have so far to grow.

And the shadow of a great brightness

Is more real than sun and moon.

The Last Passover

We were so blind that night,

Our eyes tight closed against truths too big to bear.

We saw, and we did not see,

We knew and remained ignorant

We were like men who stared at the letters

But could not read the words.

Now, with our world reborn,

Now that we finally truly begin to understand

(A beginning that will continue into all eternity,

For who can compass the infinite?),

Now, when the pattern is complete and its glory is revealed,

Now we know it could be no other way.

It had to be the Passover.

It had to be the Passover.

He was the new Moses, the better-than-Moses,

Who would lead his people to freedom through darkness and terror,

Who would take us out of slavery into the fullness of the promises,

Who would show us the way to our true home.

And He was the paschal lamb

The one whose blood was spilled so that,

Though we should feel the bitter cold that flows from the wings of the Angel of Death,

Yet it would not touch us

And we need no longer be afraid.

And He was the unleavened bread in whom no hint of corruption lived,

And the bitter herbs became his crown of thorns.

It had to be the Passover.

Yet we were so blind.

We did not see how his every word, every gesture,

Was loaded with layers of meaning.

We did not see the sorrow and agony that lay beneath his gravity.

Nothing made sense to us then.

He took the bread and broke it.

“This is my body,” He said.

These were words that could tear the universe apart

And we simply took and ate.

We did not know that his body would be broken

So that we could be made one;

One with each other,

One with God Himself,

One with his purpose and his power.

(But, Oh, the horror of that breaking!)

And then He took the cup,

That solemn cup

Of ordinary wine,

“This is my blood of the New Covenant,

Poured out for many

For forgiveness of sins.”

We had no idea.

We were too afraid to ask.

But now we rejoice as the forgiven.

Every year we had spoken the words

Eaten the food

Remembered and remembered,

Drunk the wine

Remembered,

And never seen

It all was pointing forwards and not back:

Not to Moses but to Christ.

He made the blind to see.

The Equipoise (Easter Saturday)

There is deep silence at the heart of things:

The still point at the swinging of the tide,

Pause between heartbeats, space between our breaths,

The first star that comes blinking to our view,

The hanging moment of the pendulum

Before it courses back, the equipoise,

The turning point when everything hangs still.

And thus with time: this day, the silent day,

The day between the days, when death and life

Hung equipoised in some eternal place,

The victory surely known, but not to us.

Your people waited, hushed, as audience,

Who did not know there was another act

Yet still gazed at the curtain in despair –

For surely, surely, this was not the end?

Therefore we wait in every turning point,

Between the breathing out and breathing in,

Between the understanding and the thought,

Between the darkness and the coming light,

The space that waits between our tears and prayers,

Knowing that you, yourself have been here too,

And sanctified our turmoil with your peace

Good Friday Thoughts 2017

 This time last year I walked an English Spring
And all the promised wonders that ensue.fresh,
Where all was daffodil-shiny new,

And drank the metaphor of life reborn

This time, this year, my world to Autumn slopes

 The dying season hovers, close at hand,

Birds fly away and flowers turn to dust

The season’s adumbration cloaks the land.

So here I stand, as the year’s circle turns

And brings me back to Calvary once more

Where dark was darkest and death cruelled the earth

With hopelessness more bitter than before.

And here I visit but I shall not stay

I know the story and its gloried end;

I know my Winter has a future Spring

I know that He who died now calls me “friend”.

I know that He is life and shall not die

Again. I know His victory is complete,

His suffering is the anteroom to joy,

And it was death who suffered full defeat.

I know that seasons turn and roll and flow,

But He is faithful in His constancy.

He died, He rose, He lives forever more,

And on that day His love was sealed to me.

I Thirst

I – skitter-minded, child of little thirsts,

Longing life’s mud puddles,

Quickly quenched,

Always, always,

Too easily satisfied,

Only acknowledging

Teaspoon deserts,

Which a little glitter hides.

You draw me to the silent places,

And open my aridity

Till my whole self yearns your streams,

Your living water.

Salt of the earth, you tease my tongue,

The puddles all evaporate

And this thirst feels like death,

My heart spun drier than the dust between the stars.

Except a grain of wheat …

Watered, I sprout.

But you – what did you thirst,

Hell raw on every nerve,

The torment of the utterly alone,

Strung from the precipice,

Falling into flame?

Angels held back, aghast,

At the unravelling of Life,

The coming down

To this.

Was it my thirst you bore,

Or something more:

Love,

Unsatiated,

Reaching out through everything

For me?

Let the Rain fall

Let the rain fall, bleak and hard

On the shadowed desolation

The wound at the heart of the world.

Let the torrents try

To cleanse the stain, the spot incarnadine,

Bleeding death, and fear and rottenness.

Let us gather all our great technologies –

Surely something will succeed?

Surely we can make our peace?

But failure sticks, chokingly, in our mouths

Till our mumblings make no sense

In the misery of rain.

There was only one way, only, ever one,

He took it, lashed with thorns, vicious with nails,

Into the desolation, the forsaken place…

Let the rain fall, gentle with blessing,

Let the skies sing triumph!

Let the angels' alleluias mend our faith again!

Whole in His brokenness, blood washed out by blood,

We begin again, acknowledging His victory:

The price we could not pay.

And the Passover moon looks down

And the Passover moon shines down

And the man kneels in the garden

And the bent, gnarled trees kneel too,

While creation holds its breath.

Men sleep, this agony too much for them.

(In dreams we can forget).

But the trees know,

And the Spring breeze pauses its dance,

And the distant sheep are still.

Only the stars, steadfast in their constancy,

Have no fear that he’ll say “No!”

And unravel all redemption.

Those same angels

Who once ministered

When he endured the wilderness

Hold back now,

Covering their faces

Before such holiness.

“Nevertheless ..”

His will, already crucifed,

Accepts the cup,

Shrinking from its vileness.

And the trees lift up their branches,

Looking strangely like a cross.

Tibouchinas in Holy Week

Tibouchinas in the rain

Purple flowers, sky of grey

Whisper of the king who came

Draped in our dark robe of pain.

Flowering when the autumn chill

Turns some other leaves to brown;

Here a promise to fulfil

When our world is turned around.

Promise, not of golden days,

Or of blossoms yet-to-be,

But the mercy in his gaze,

Love in our infirmity.

Promise to walk by our side

Through whatever grief we face.

Nailed to us, he will abide,

Lifting, leading into grace.

Promise of the mourning king,

Man of sorrows, Lord and God,

Promise that through everything

He is sealed to us by blood.

Tibouchinas in the rain,

Purple flowers for my king,

As my heart walks through again

The path of his suffering.

Palm Sunday

How do you ride in peace

Through the clamour of Hosanna?

The shouting of false dreams,

The loud hunger for a Kingdom

Which is not the one you bring?

You wear your kingship

Like a crown of thorns

While they throw their garments at your feet

Covering the stones,

Just for a moment,

And rejecting the chief cornerstone:

Yourself.

How do you bear it,

Knowing their stubborn pain

And the flippant excuses

Of hearts so disengaged?

Like children who turn

From one toy to another

Enjoying none,

Their anger waits the day.

Peace is the pattern of your gift

So you bring it bravely

To the place of violation

Where the Prince of Peace

Is not their heart’s desire:

When it comes to a choice

They would rather have Barabbas.

How do you ride in peace

Through the clamour of Hosanna?

Your face set to Jerusalem,

Your hands prepared for nails

Wearing your sorrow

Like the garments of a king?

Silence

Our words, so much less than

The inarticulate dream;

Our stumbling, bumbling counterfeits

Tumbling  from our lips

Grumbling with inadequacy

For what remains unsaid

Even when we say it.

We take Your words

And cut them up

Hoping to find actuality

In the inter-consonantal spaces,

And, when we find nothing

Declare that nothing’s there.

We are the impoverished

Who rise in the morning

And hear no angels’ song.

We are the foolish

Thinking words are less

Than our spirals of activity.

We are the ignorant

Who do not know

The power of Your words.

We are the arrogant

Making ourselves the measure

And the universe falls short.

How can You speak

Into the restless hubbub

Of our whirling self-justification?

Let us be willing

To wait in the silence,

Testing our words against truth

Falling silent

Waiting until

Your words remake the world

The Spoilsport

It was the best of times. I had never had it so good. Our property had recovered from my father’s foolish gift to my brother, and everything was thriving. We had more sheep, more cattle, more acres of land than ever before (because a prudent man re-invests by buying more good farmland with his profits, and the first thing I did when we could afford it was buy back the fields my father had sold to raise the money for my brother’s share of the inheritance – how I resented that!), and we were looking forward to record-breaking crops. True, we had heard rumours of a famine in faraway lands, but what was that to us? We can’t be responsible for other people’s misfortunes, if they squander their surplus in good years and keep nothing for the lean ones, well, they are to blame for their own troubles. A man must make his own wealth by his own hard work, or so I have always believed. And I certainly worked hard. From morning to night I was bustling about, organising this and fixing that, making sure none of our hired hands shirked in their labours. And in the busy periods I have never been above rolling up my sleeves and doing the work myself. Hard work is how a man earns respect in this world, and if you aren’t prepared to work you deserve to go without.

My father left more and more of the work to me, and that suited me fine. He would spend so much time gazing down the road as if he were expecting my brother to suddenly materialise on the road in front of him. Why, I don’t know, but old men have their fancies, and he must surely realise that I was worth a dozen of that idle scapegrace. A prosperous old age, and no lack of anything he might reasonably desire, that was my gift to him. I was a son any man could be proud of.

Then, one day, when the sun burned like a white flame, and the dust on the road was chokingly thick, my brother re-appeared. I was out in the fields, of course, and was only told later what had happened. My father saw him while he was still a long way off, and throwing aside every last vestige of the dignity belonging to our family, went running down the road to meet him. Only later did I learn that my brother had come back as a beggar and suppliant, as he should, in his disgrace, but my father would have none of it. Instead of sending him to work in the fields and sleep in the stables, he called for his robe and ring, and for the fatted calf to be killed for a feast of rejoicing.

It is beyond my understanding. Can’t he see that things were better without my brother? Can’t he see that my brother shouldn’t be rewarded for his behaviour? What will that teach him? The lazy boy has probably spent all his money on loose women and loaded dice. He is a disgrace! Somebody said, “look how much he loves him!” I don’t understand. He has done nothing to earn my father’s love! One bitter question rises in my throat like bile: whare is the fatted calf for me?