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