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

Mid March

Mid March

And the new-crisp apples

Sing in the shops

The summer heat still lingers,

Listlessly,

But the reeds in the ponds are browning

And the dragonflies

Forget their summer languor.

Mid March

And the skies are blue,

So blue

You could lose yourself forever into blueness.

The Japanese maple

Is sending its leaves, forthwith,

Into early retirement.

The world breathes in

And out.

Mid March.

And the workaday world looks back to the holiday season

And feet submit to stiffer shoes again.

Mornings are darker now,

And some kookaburra

Laughs, far too early, at our human folly.

The Lenten season coils around our hearts

Unnoticed

All we see is autumn’s bounty

And nights grown cool enough to sleep again.

On Saying the Creed

I believe …

And believing,

I stand together with the company of saints

Knit together, woven by his grace,

Across centuries and continents.

I stand with the martyrs

Of every generation;

The ones who strode,

And the ones who fumbled.

I stand with the clear-eyed,

Theologians and philosophers,

Who gazed into the deep places

And saw more than their own reflection;

And with those who could only mumble hopefully,

Choosing to believe that the mystery was real.

I stand with those who argued deeply,

Trying to decipher how it works,

Sometimes forgetting this, their common ground;

And with those who would rather reach out dusty hands

For the work that must be done.

I stand with the loved and the unloved,

The feeble and the fainting,

The highly valued and the overlooked,

All borne to the same shore.

They all crowd together,

Every nation, every language,

Linked in a mighty shout

That neither death nor hell can silence,

The word that undoes man’s kingdoms:

I believe …

We understand

As our frail crafts spin on roaring seas of doubt,

Tossed by the world’s winds’ sneering,

Our masts bent to a question mark,

That a nail-scarred hand holds the tiller,

And he shall steer us home.

Yes, I believe!

Ash Wednesday 2019

Down the feathers fall

Petals drift lazy with no wind to stir

And we hear again the silence under chatter.

Was it for this he came,

To the stringent places

Straightjacket of the heart

More sere and lonely than the curlew’s call?

Was it for this he came,

Down beyond our measure

Feeling the air grow thick,

And tasting death all the way?

Was it for this he came,

For stuttered hymns

From dry, bruised lips;

Why would he choose our pale, dead words

Above the angels’ alleluias?

Was it for this he came

To the straitened place and time

The wilderness of wanting,

He who had nothing to repent?

Was it for this he came,

Was it for me;

The passion and the agony

That these dry bones might live?

When love became a solid thing

The earth could not bear his weight.

The Preacher

I have been poured like water,

My words gush forth like wine

Till the heart is sere and bloodless,

And my tears are pickling brine.

I breathe air thin and daunting

A higher altitude

As I strain my understanding

And my vision is renewed.

This is my price-of-paying

Hid from the eyes of all,

Love’s thorns pressed on my forehead,

Till my pride tastes like gall.

Not with the easy answers

Not with the slick reply;

Down like a rock in the ocean,

Never to come up dry.

Straight past the shallow places

Down to the beating heart,

Where a seabed like Procrustes’

Reshapes my every part.

Then, with lips blue and stumbling,

How shall speak the way

To that place I have no name for,

Where love burns bright as day?

Yet I rejoice to be there

Assumptions all unmade

By his scarred hand held tightly:

Broken yet unafraid