Prayer in a Time of Fire

For the grey-green forest,

Lyrical in beauty,

Nurturing life and joy –

Now gone.

We pray

For those who rise in courage

To battle monsters,

To bear the dragon’s breath,

Struggling, exhausted,

We pray.

For those who cower

On new-crowded beaches

Desolate with fear

And too much loss to count

We pray.

For history made palpable:

Country townscapes

Wearing charm and welcome

Utterly destroyed

We pray.

For those so cruelly bludgeoned

Grieving for the arms

That will never touch again

And the words now no more spoken

We pray.

For sweet summer air made bitter

Tainted by smoke,

Choking and unbreathable

Blotting out the sun

We pray.

Let us never be a people

Of cold hearts and crossed arms

Wearing indifference as a shield

Terminally self-seeking

We pray.

Elizabeth Speaks

The flesh is fading, but the love is strong

And wonder overwhelms my every breath;

For who am I to walk in miracles

When, humanly, my womb was only death?

I did not hear the wild angelic words:

What do I know of angels and their ways?

Yet he, my learned husband, is struck dumb

While my lips open wide to sing God’s praise.

I do not know if it is shame or pride

That bids me hide myself from careless eyes

The while my body swells with burgeoned life

And all my soul’s a-tremble with surprise.

There is a knowing deep, deep in the bone,

Where all my living comes down to this place:

This life in me that reason can’t explain,

This aged flesh a temple of his grace.

My grandmother's oak

My grandmother’s oak (I think of it as hers)

Is growing old now, with some branches bare;

I watch it, fleeting, from the passing train,

And think back fifty years, when she was there.

All histories bear their own entanglements,

And I, still near a child, I did not know,

And know not yet what she was to herself,

Or how her years spelled out their ebb and flow.

Now, looking back, my guesses grow more sharp,

But, sharper still, the holes I cannot guess,

Yet she is still a memory of love,

A shade within my childhood’s wilderness.

No magic wands

(against the snake oil salesmen)

There are no magic wands,

No miracle cures,

No happy-stance comets

Blazing with pre-set glory

For those who learn and do the right techniques,

Or say the sorcerous words.

Or pay the fee

To some bright charlatan who laughs away

Long years of patient learning with the nudge

That they know all the secrets.

Sit, walk, stand

Under the truth;

Know that the world grinds on

With sludge, drudge, trudge,

With pain borne heavily

With shoulders bowed,

With harsh mortality,

And everyone

Must drink the cup until the world shall change.

And yet

We draw in mercy with each breath

We drink down kindness, wonder, beauty, joy

Here in the very valley of dry bones,

Singing the songs of worlds we’ve not yet trod

Where flowers bloom from every swardy sod

Dark powers shattered by the iron rod

Forged from the nails that thought they could kill God.

His peace, his peace

Sings over everything.

Mary's Questions

Oh angel! It is so easy for you

To tell me not to fear –

You who dwell in light unimaginable,

Forever praising God,

What do you know of fear?

My path is different;

Even in Spring’s upspringing

I feel the slow drag of flesh,

And the questions, like a thousand sword-points,

Bearing down upon me:

What will my mother say?

And Joseph, how will I explain

That I bear Another’s child?

Unless an angel comes to him,

How shall he believe?

And my friends (I can see it now):

Cruel smiles, pointing fingers,

Whispers I only just hear?

This is a small, small town,

I can get away with nothing.

Oh angel, have you any idea?

In this hour of second-guessing

Where has my courage gone?

And who am I to raise a child

Who is not like any other?

He will be the Son of God –

And my mind retreats

From the unearthly strangeness of it all …

But he will be God!

God himself

Will be a baby!

God himself

Will need me,

Will be vulnerable, alone,

Will need me.

God himself

Will taste of fear,

Will understand

This path I scarcely name.

God himself

Will be with me, will be so small, so small …

Let it be to me according to your word.

On This Shore

Love

Reaches to this shore:

This partial place

Where broken monuments to stone-dead hopes

Stand in the rubble,

Foolishly restored

By men with solemn ribbons on their chains.

We, who have glimpsed,

Or dreamt,

A better light,

Flailing our way through scrambled pilgrimage,

With stone-grazed hands and shins,

Stubbed toes,

And count our wounds as worthy;

Give us strength

To travel further, harder,

To do more,

And to be unafraid of sitting still

Under the willows, where the old lyres hang,

Mourning our exile,

Mourning our own kind,

Waiting until the morning of Love’s lovely dawn,

Claiming the promised land here in the dark.

May all our tears be rain.

Learning Lament

We cannot speak the language of faith,

From the deepest place, the heart and the root of our being,

Till we learn the language of lament,

The language of our broken, needy world.

Yes, the gift is freely given,

But the road

Is still the path of pilgrimage

The Via Dolorosa,

Pursuing our Lord

And walking after him –

He who already holds us fast.

This is a world of stones –

Stone altars, stoning, stony wilderness,

The stone-hard hearts of men

Who only give

Hard stones instead of bread.

Down there, down there,

We must take the light,

The light that we have seen,

The Light who is our Love.

There in the dark

Take hold afresh

Of him,

Himself,

Our only anchor place.

Then

Reaching out

To grasp a flailing wrist,

Skeletal, dreadful,

A hand outreaching from the lowest place,

To where we stand on tears,

In tears proclaiming,

God is already here.

How can they know

Unless we walk the darkness by their side?

I have not yet learned to be old ...

I have not yet learned to be old:

My world

Glistens with sky-eyed wonder.

My heart

Still dances under the stars

Tasting moonlight;

While my feet,

Toe tangled in grass,

Wiggle to their own rhythm.

Laugh with me,

Bright leaves of spring,

Chortle the air with birdsong!

Search each storm

For rainbows!

Rest within the shade’s embrace,

Smiling at dandelions.

What is this thing called age?

Dull paint upon the body’s chariot?

An extra blanket in the howling wind?

A sorrow for the things that are no more?

A little pain?

A softness in the heart?

These shall not make me old,

Shall not defeat

My butterfly-skipping hopes,

The prayers that bind,

Fiercer than fierce,

To glories just beyond

My fingers’ reach.

I shall stretch out my sails

With hands that time has cobbled into knots,

To catch the dawn-wind of my Father’s love,

And steer to brave horizons,

Learn new songs,

And, open-handed, face both day and night.

We were so young

We were so young and brave,

Fire-eyed and gorgeous,

Gobbling down life,

Drinking down rain and music.

We were so young.

We were so young and brave,

Never then knowing

That sorrow-weight slows you,

Entropy tries to claim you.

We were so young.

We were so young and brave,

So little dreaming

How deep were the gorges jumped;

Why others faltered.

We were so young.

We were so young and brave,

Laughing at shadows,

Seeing no substance,

Light, there was light before us.

We were so young.

We were so young and brave,

Loving with freedom,

Choosing forever-commitment,

Handfast and steadfast.

We were so young.

We were so young and brave,

In this sober country

We harbour no regrets,

For we chose with courage:

We were so young.

Know Your Limits

Know your limits, know your place

Know the whole world floods with grace;

Know that you have been set free

To walk in love’s entirety.

Know that you are weak and small,

Know the mighty Lord of all

Lifts you up to heights unguessed

His holiness to manifest.

Know your voice is small and weak,

Know that he commands you speak

Gloried angels bend to hear

Mercy lift you out of fear.

Know your limits, child of man

Called forth by the great I Am,

Meek with wonder, take your place

In the annals of his grace.

Carss Park, September

Early Spring:

On sun-blessed waters

Knife-sharp gulls

Float in the moment’s tranquillity;

We sit

In lengthening shadows

Watching an infinite sky

Whisper hallelujah.

I will arise and go

To my Father’s many-mansioned house,

Under his roof-beams,

My corner’s rest

The lapping waters

And the glory of the light.

On Government Policies

Cold and metallic, bitter on the tongue

Blind cruelty stalks the land.

Genial, smiling, blokey

And heartless as a bank vault:

Dollar-signs, false fears, and the tramping of the boots –

Jackboots marching, trampling tender shoots

Ripping kindness by the roots.

It is not cheap sentiment

To stand against the zeitgeist

To refrain from sloganeering

Ersatz comfort easy-bought.

Compassion costs the heart

Pierced through and nailed apart

With ancient nails.

Let us renounce all cruelty

Let us not dehumanise

In the kingdom of my Father

There is no us-and-them,

In the kingdom of my Father

We clutch Christ by the hem.

Let the little children come

My Strength is Renewed

My bones are weary with great weariness

Of living, yet my heart sings like a bird

(The one who had escaped the fowler’s net),

I find renewal in your every word.

You draw me, draw me, from the depths of dark

Into that light which pierces like a sword

Unmake, remake me, shatter and re-form;

You are my life, therefore I call you Lord.

You were undone to do me up again,

Broken for me to reconstruct my soul

Out of the stuff of your transforming grace

And in this great defeat I am made whole.

Therefore I love and laugh and lift and live

In you who are my treasure and my king

And though death stalks my every mortal breath

Your life in me will give me everything.

The hermitage

I carry my own hermitage within:

A place apart, the world can wait outside

And nothing know, nor ever penetrate

The recess of the self where I abide.

My cell is furnished with such pretty things:

The stars of night, the sunlight on the sea,

And every lovely flower’s tenderness,

And music of heart-stopping poetry.

Here my beloveds, in the arms of prayer,

Rest tranquil, and my terrors are laid by

With tears of thankfulness. I can let go

Of all the busyness which I decry.

Here trembling hope has learned to reach in trust

And smile again; here peace with folded wings

Waits to embrace, to still my tottering doubts,

And whisper melodies till my heart sings.

And here is rest until my rest shall come;

Here, at the heart of all, my altar stands,

For underneath all things is utter love,

And I am held forever in his hands.

I am the Soil

I am the soil you planted

I am the soil you sang

You are the seed that carries life

Into the heart of man.

I am the weedy desert

I am the shallow soil

And the world’s birds find lodgement here

Come to frustrate your toil.

You who are seed and sower

The only life I know

Dig me down deep and bring your plough;

Water and weed and sow.

That there might be a harvest

Out of the heart of me

Hold back your scythe a longer while

Till I am whole and free.

Drought

This is the dry, dry season, sere and spare

The cracked, bare earth becomes, itself, a prayer.

The heart feels dried down to a baking bone

Where every drop of water dies alone.

The breath of heat has shrivelled up the shade

And trees forget the reason they were made.

Nothing is ample, nothing rich or lush,

The dried grass shrinks, the silence seems to crush.

The soul is gasping, struggling for its breath,

The movement and the effort feel like death.

Rain were a mercy almost beyond prayer

But oh, when mercy falls, all life is there.

And should a little wind stir forth a cloud,

That were enough to be all unfaith’s shroud.

In Memoriam, RHE

Stars in your courses, sing your far cold songs

And show how love lights up the silvered night;

And while we fumble in the sorrowed dark

Your beauty guides us where we have no sight.

We are the exiles in the land of death

Far from our rest, far from that better strand

Where peace and glory need no sun nor moon,

That blessed place built by a nail-scarred hand.

We mourn, as mourn we must, for beauty gone

Too soon away, we mourn the silenced tongue,

We mourn the empty place where once she stood,

We mourn the grace-songs which remain unsung.

We mourn for those of hers who mourn the most,

The deep-bereft, their every tear a prayer,

God of the lonely, wrap them in your love,

Heart-breaking beauty, meet with them right there.

Stars ever-bright sing on! We all must come

Sooner or later to that dreaded shore,

Oh may the welcome light of our true home

Show us the path till we need fear no more.

The Duchamp Exhibition

Here broken are the ancient unities,

Assumptions all undone.

Loki descends again:

Jokester, trickster,

Eternal disrupter,

Planting one foot in chaos –

The necessary counter

To the finished and correct.

My disturbance is your art,

My response, my resolution,

Seeking meaning below the madness

(Sometimes the well is dry).

All of us bear this quest,

Or die from lack of questing.

So, though you dazzle,

I will not deflect:

One thread of truth

Holds all the spinning world

Entire;

And love is not enough,

Until it’s all.

Easter at the Waterfall

Down from above it comes,

The plashing, living stream

Pure as the rain’s sweet breath,

Wild as your secret dream.

Down it flows out of sight

Down to the hidden place

Knowing it came from light

Knowing it falls with grace.

Abundance watering

Those who know not its source

Still bringing life downstream:

Love gives without remorse.

So all my days you pour

Mercy abundantly:

May I give as you give,

In your provision free.

And, as you rose again

Out of death’s darkest night,

Through every doubt and fear

May I await your light.

In Darkness

Are all the deepest things in darkness done?

In the black silence,

The hidden places,

The wombs of our becoming.

Or the seed beneath the soil?

Or the secret shadows

Where deeds of shame unfold:

The things we dare not see?

And the face of the sun was hidden

Lest we behold his pain

No mortal eyes could bear;

Lest we behold our shame

Before we knew

The sweet kiss of forgiveness.

And men cried out in fear.

Then, in the darkness,

Behind the mighty stone,

In the womb of our restoration,

Life returned:

Not with a tentative shoot,

Testing for frost.

Life unconstrained,

Sharper than galaxies,

Fiercer than our wildest joy,

Meeting us everywhere

The dark would pin us down.

The Last Supper

He spoke the wine before the blood.

He spoke the death that was to be

He spoke it to twelve wondering men

And, in his mercy, spoke to me.

He knelt and washed their puzzled feet

He knelt beneath the olive tree

Embracing all the dreadful dark

My servant God laid down for me.

He took the yeastless bread and broke

Before the nails were driven through

And still his broken people come

For only he can make us new.

That cup of blessing which he blessed,

The cup which only he could drink

The cold, dark horror of our sin,

The depths of death where we must sink:

He knew, and in his knowing chose,

And drank it down, and took our place,

We taste our healing in his gift,

And raise our eyes to seek God’s face.

He gave the feast who is the feast,

Our exodus, our paschal lamb;

Our Moses and our great high priest,

God absolute, the great I Am.

Attempting poetry

To take one word

From the rubble of my thoughts

And give it wings to reach

Another’s heart.

To hear the music

Under the music

And play it back

In lucent syllables

To reach for the far thing

And find it

Waiting

Near.

To struggle into joy

Because it hides

Between one breath

And the next.

To wrestle with holiness

In Jabbok-like defeat

And sing

With crippled tongue.

Learning to let go

In order

To hold on

He is the one who comes

He is the one who comes

Into our darkest place

Not with transcendent light

But with an aching grace.

He is the one who comes

Into our tearless pain

And, in that numb, stark place

Wakes us to life again.

He is the one who comes

When no Hosannas ring

With one pure chiming note

Teaching us how to sing.

He is the one who comes

Softer than a caress

Touching our gaping wounds

With his own wounds that bless.

He is the one who comes

Lifting up all we are

Bearing us all the way

Unto the morning star.

Why do birds matter?

(Inspired by a headline on a magazine cover that asked this question)

Why do birds matter? Why?

How could a world so be

Where birdsong never trilled

From each surrounding tree?

Where parrots never squawked

In colours like a jewel,

Nor eagles rode the sky

With talons sharp and cruel?

No mother ducks to teach

Their little fluffs to swim?

Nor swallows in their dance

Who dart and turn and skim?

No terraces bedecked

With peacocks’ wondrous tails,

No kookaburra glee

When our own laughter fails?

No question-mark-necked swans

To grace each lake or stream,

No flash of brilliant wings

To teach us how to dream?

No tender nests to show

Us safety when we cry,

No tossing from the nest

To teach us how to fly?

No albatross to claim

The wild waves as its home,

Secure with its own wings

However far it roam?

And how else could we learn

The deepest truth of all:

How much we’re loved by him

Who marks each sparrow’s fall?

I shall not listen now

I shall not listen now

To the old song of my neediness,

That croaks along, slightly off-key.

There is so much better music:

Birdsong,

Grass-hush,

The merriment of water,

The thousand whispers of the wind,

The beat of human hearts,

Syncopated laughter,

Susurrating leaves

The cold melody of moonlight.

But beneath

Even these

There sounds

A love song

So piercing

It breaks my heart

For all eternity:

That heartbreak that is gladder

Than the fiercest joy,

And holds all things entire.

A Long Way from "Kansas"

We’re a long way from "Kansas" right now,

And the fruit has long gone from the vine,

The water is bitter with dust

And there is no sweet, heady wine.

The loaf on the table is plain

But this is our own journey-bread;

As strong as the flesh that once died,

And then was raised up from the dead.

No carnival flaunting is here

No flags wave, no trumpets shall sound

We walk a strange path through the air

And find that we tread solid ground.

No fiction of fanfares, no feast,

The heart strangely miracle-blind;

And yet, as we hold to his hand,

All fullness, all solace we find.

We sing a new song day by day,

A song which the angels can’t learn

For theirs are the wings and the light

And ours are the salt tears that burn.

But we know the measureless grace

Which carries us right to the end:

We stumble, we falter, we fall,

Yet he is already amen.

The Christchurch Shooting

Our brothers and sisters,

Our cousins and our friends,

We stand beside in the sorrow and the horror,

We sit beside the waters of Babylon,

And weep again

And weep again with you.

All history seeps with blood

From innocent Abel

To the latest ones,

Butchered in a place of peace,

And the shots ring out a challenge to our tears,

But the tears are greater,

Every tear a prayer.

We stand, we sit, we kneel,

We walk with you,

Through the darkness and the horror,

Carrying a light,

The only light we have

It is for you,

And the darkness shall never defeat it.

Hatred wears a thousand faces

Love wears one

Crowned with thorns for now, but finally,

The only victory.

Let us walk together