Ordinary Time

Oh let the whirling planets twirl,

And numbers dance in forms sublime:

For I have seen the hand of God

Outstretched in ordinary time.

The beat of rain on bended weed,

The rapid flash of beating wing,

The sunlight angled on a leaf:

Who needs to hear the planets sing?

The warmth within a stranger’s smile,

The sound of water, scent of sea,

The love that holds through daily things –

These are, for me, epiphany.

The angels bend their eyes to watch

The sacrament of cookery.

The artistry of everyday,

The small things in humility.

Oh God of galaxies and stars,

Like a weaned child, may I find rest,

Not in the things too high for me,

But here and now, against your breast.

If Shakespeare were a Sat Nav ..

Go therefore ye, and take the subtler way

The bend sinister where the paths collide

Do not engage ye with the vaunting banks

But haste ye on towards the rising day.

Then, in a little while, too soon, too soon,

Before the town’s drab outskirts come in view

Curve to the rightwards through the woodland way

The road less trodden, underneath the boughs.

Curve softly there, and bend ye ever south,

Though every winding would ye take astray

Stop not for goblin’s curse or witches’ ring.

Up to the hill, the highest in this place

(Though naught is seen beneath a lowering sky)

Prickle ye out the downward sloping track

Nor backwards glance, but leave such things arrear,

And spend ye merrily the careful path

That winds without the rocky tumbled crags

Bethink ye not to turn to left or right

Until the mighty highways come in sight.

Gambol ye sunwise then (not widdershins)

Around the mighty circle. Count the ways

And take ye then the road ye number three,

Then turn ye leftwards, very suddenly.

A mile, a mile, and yet a mile again,

And still more miles, till weary heart grows lean;

Then looms a river. Cross ye not the bridge,

But take the underway, nor think to pay,

The ferryman (for that were coin in vain)

And roundabout the twisting streets go on

And sharply east – and ye have reached your home!

Purification

Deep are these waters, deep and moving fast,

My mind, caught in the eddy and the swing,

Falters at knowing, yet is called to know,

The wonder and the mercy of this thing.

Once I would look at lepers on the street

Shuffling past, “Unclean!” their bitter cry,

Locked up within the prison of disease –

Yet these, I knew, were far more clean than I.

I, daughter of the seed of Abraham,

Born in the covenant, the fold of God,

Was now a creature of such bitter shame

I cringed from streets where decent women trod.

I cringed, and in the lonely bitter night,

I wondered how my life had come to be

A gagging poison moving in my veins

A tremulous and hated infamy.

But oh, my story is as old as time,

When the seducer came, well, I was weak,

And ignorant, believing this was love

Soon I became the victim false men seek.

Shame spiraled down through shame, and down some more,

Until that day they grabbed me from some bed,

And hauled me forth with coarse and cruel jests

I stood there silent, broken, with bent head,

Awaiting stones; but that day no stones came

Instead clear words I never thought to hear

Turned the accusers back upon themselves.

For the first time, I felt a different fear.

I heard their footsteps leaving, one by one,

Till all was silence, then I raised my eyes.

He looked at me as though my soul were real

And there was nothing for him to despise.

I did not understand, how could I then?

My dirty life was clean. My soul reborn

Sang with the angels, laughed against the night

And rose up like a bird into the dawn.

He took my shame, I never dreamt what cost

He placed on it – for shame he paid such price!

My worthless life was reckoned at such worth:

Purification comes through sacrifice!

And so he gave what I had never sought;

And so I live, and so he died for me,

And so his dear blood has my freedom bought.

He was made captive for my liberty.

I walk in wonder, I am mercy’s thrall,

Unfeigned, unstained, a captive of delight:

Washed into whiteness, no shame to recall,

And lifted into glory clean and bright.

Going away

Going away

It is only when you leave that you remember

The smell of eucalyptus in the air,

The rain that drums so hard and fiercely tender

The sunlight far too bright for you to bear.

The artful architecture of the gum trees

Where each branch twists in balance to the whole

Where leaves are worn as garnish, not as garment,

Their beauty has been rooted in my soul.

The balmy air of a soft summer morning,

Before cicadas sing the heavy heat

A sky so blue you yearn with reaching sorrow

And ground too hot to walk on in bare feet.

The Music

The Music

Sometimes I hear it in a sudden snatch of birdsong,

The intensity of rain,

Your footsteps in the breeze.

You laugh through the cicadas

And splash in the fountains:

Air and water sing of you.

But more often I hear with my eyes.

The sky’s infinity sings of you:

Blueness in immeasurable caress.

I catch your tune in the rain-dropped leaves,

The gladness of buttercups,

The playfulness of clouds.

The lift of a bird’s wing

Breaks my heart with melody,

And the trees cry “Hallelujah!”

In antiphonal chorus.

The waves crash with angelic percussion,

And the small things warble, “yes!”

But clearest of all, the music sounds in stories.

Its chords ring out in courage and sacrifice,

Pianissimo in tenderness,

And marching sharp in truth.

Harps sound in common kindness,

And flutes in soul’s resolve.

The mystery of grace demands

An orchestra of tears.

In the story of your love

The music swells past bearing.

Blessed are the ears that hear,

And the souls that listen

And the hearts that understand.

Blessed are they that sing

Your own notes back to you

However out of tune.

And blessed are the feet that move in time

To the melody of heaven.

Let ..

Let me dance in your heart this fragile moment,

Let us kiss souls with wonder we have seen.

Let us hold hands and weep for life’s short-falling,

Let us hold vigil for what might have been.

Let us strew roses in the sunless alleys,

Let us plant trees where no tree ever grew,

Let us be unafraid to speak affection

Nor, in discomfort, turn from what is new.

Let us clap with delight like little children.

Let terrible compassion make us wise.

Let us breathe deep and share our secret dreaming.

Let us not let our old clothes cramp our size.

Let us wipe slow tears from each other’s faces

Let us look up and laugh against the sky.

Let us be swords – but not against each other.

Let us take up the Life that bids us die.

Visiting Dachau

Dizzy with dreams we drop into a time

Where no dreams were: this stretch of bitter stone

Where the soulless aridity of scorn

Screams at the anguished, “Now you are alone!”

“What is a man?” The wind, so cold, so spare,

Pierces with mocking questions the great void

Between our sweet reality and theirs;

Thus are our bright illusions crushed, destroyed.

What separates us? Sixty seven years,

An educated nod to being kind,

A literature and a geography:

The comfortable counties of the mind.

But what unites us blows with bitter teeth

Across those counties. I and they are one

In all our fumbling, broken, human fear,

In what we dream, and what we leave undone.

As vulnerable as they, but not as brave,

I stand diminished, and I stand in tears,

Yearning their courage as I fear their pain,

Knowing that no attrition of the years

Must dim their story. At the chapel door

One crown of thorns says all that we can say:

The crucified stands with the least of these

And strips our false self-images away.

Telling the Truth

Snow falls on Dachau, wintry year on year,

Covering, like the subtler snows of time,

The lineaments of naked truth and pain.

We speak the story.

The blur of story, and of memory bent,

Bending to edit, bending to rewrite, 

Will waver what is etched in blood and stone:

Theirs was the story.

We must remember, we must stand like trees,

And put our roots down in the bitter place,

To drink in all that is, and all that was:

Facing the story.

Every pretending opens up a gate

Through which a monstrous evil may walk forth,

To spew more filth on an uncaring world,

Numb to the story.

We must stand witness under time’s cruel lash:

The least we can do for the least of these,

Till memory becomes a sacrament,

Knowing the story.

Stark truth must stand, and we must speak its name,

With heavy lips but a courageous heart,

Speaking that our own souls have played their part –

Owning the story.

Let it not fade to make us comfortable,

Let there be justice done and justice said,

Until that hour when every wrong is dead:

This was the story.

Hallowed be Your Name

First I must be hollowed:

From the twisted maze of wanting,

From my grasp of rags of comfort,

Ointment for the ego

And a pillow for my head.

Backwards, untwisting,

The subtle machinations,

The coil of self-deception,

The scaffolds masking fear,

(My intellectual lumber).

Let Your clean wind blow through my bones,

Piping desolation

Through the thin marsh, breathing

How all living comes undone.

And I bow my head.

The ground must be cleared

Before the cornerstone is set.

Let me rise, exulting,

Not in my own cleverness, but the foolishness of God.

Laughing as the winged birds laugh

High on the driving wind.

Your praise in every stone.

The Final Enemy

I.

High are the rocks of Shadow,

Deep is the cold, cold stream,

Weary the heart that wanders,

Silent the swallowed scream.

Time, that erodes our dreaming,

Wearing our comfort down.

Leads the resisting body

Down where our last hopes drown.

Eyes far too dry for crying.

Lips that grow tremble-weak,

Memory for our confusion,

Songs that no longer speak.

The vital flame of being

Burns down to bitter ash:

What was the use of loving

When it all turns to trash?

Dark is our mortal darkness,

Dark beyond human ken,

Falling into the silence,

Can there be life again?

II.

See the hilltop stretching rocky,

Outside the provincial town;

While the crowd, with shock-turned faces,

See their midday sun go down.

See the tortured bodies hanging

Stark on sticks twixt earth and sky:

All creation holds its breathing,

For the Life of Life must die.

See the twisted thorns that crown him -

Adam’s curse upon his head.

See the darkness close upon him

As he hangs there in our stead.

See him crying out completion,

Yielding up his desperate breath.

See him locked in fatal conflict

Dying to o’erpower death

III.

There is dust upon the centuries,

The long defeat of ages,

And to dust we shall return.

Fragile flesh that clothes us,

Evanescent mystery;

As we cling to the known

It slides from out our grasp.

What can contain us?

All our devisings,

All our bartering,

Our wildest efforts and our futile dreams,

Come to this one thing:

That we may live.

For the last enemy

Is death.

IV.

Here behold the glorious morning,

New creation’s primal day.

Now has come the long night’s ending,

Death itself is done away.

Now behold him, oh behold him!

He has overcome the tomb,

He has pierced the deepest chasm,

Burned across the deepest gloom.

Born a man as man to suffer,

Born a man as man to die:

Death itself he has defeated,

Death itself was turned awry.

Now behold him – risen, glorious!

Come back from that alien shore.

Now the final foe is vanquished

Death itself shall reign no more!

Remembrance at school

Like so many before me, I did not know

Why the Queen needed saving.

We were told to remember, but they forgot

To tell us why the war;

And I dared not shuffle.

Heads bowed, eyes closed ..

But no one said a prayer;

Only the ticking silence

While we stood abashed,

Till someone said the oath.

I was moved by the words’ wild beauty,

The autumnal tinge of immortality

For those who grew not old.

And I stood transported,

With silly, pricking tears,

Eight years old and feeling

The immeasurable burden of time.

Child of His Love

You are His daughter, His child of delight,

Taken from darkness and woven in light,

Learning His music to dance in His sight

You are the child of His love.

You are so precious, He treasures your soul.

Your wounds are washed and He’s making you whole,

Your name of glory is writ in His scroll,

You are the child of His love.

You are His workmanship specially made.

Held in His hands you need not be afraid.

Dressed in a beauty that never can fade,

You are the child of His love.

Passion and promise; now waiting a crown

Made of that sun that shall never go down.

White beyond sight He’s preparing your gown.

You are the child of His love.

Lovely in Jesus, made whole and complete,

To rest in Him and to learn at His feet

Where all His comfort your sorrow shall meet,

You are the child of His love.

Through Lenten Lands

In this waiting is becoming ..

I shuffle-walk the desert of my questions
In the too-long season, the dreary, dark-grey dryness,
Checking the sparse map constantly, for fear I’ve gone astray.

Who said Celestial City was an easy stroll?

I would be swept up in Your love
In the great tide of the wind, that soars above the mountains,
Buffeted by wonder,
Screaming glory-praise into the wild, wild air.
But first I must grow wings.

Or heart-whole gathered in the gentle of Your care
Healed into certainty, resting in Your arms,
Needing no other lover in a world entire;
In the shelter-shade of knowing I am home at last,
Washed in that river.

But I am not yet come.

The stones of this world’s hurting crack against my feet.
I shrink from the sun by day and the moon by night,
Lest they illuminate
The wide stretch of my terror –
As if talking makes it so.

Forgive my folly.

These hands .. these hands ..
These hands – they cannot build
A house to be the dwelling place of God:
Built from the building blocks of stony hearts,
This only foolish hardened heart I have.
Better to tear down walls of my pretence,
Better to stand alone in scouring wind,
Face down the maelstrom of my brokenness,
Better to stand till I am forced to kneel,
Better to kneel till I fall in despair,
Until I know You are already there.
Here in the pray-er, and here in the prayer.

What did I think? That I’d come waltzing home,
Lurch, leaden-footed in my lovelessness,
Bringing my bleating hell to heaven’s halls:
Complete in incompleteness, armour-clad
With self’s excrescences and all befouled?

But still Your rain falls gently on my soul,
Washing the while I wait in Lenten Lands,
Until this pilgrimage has run its course.
In desolation, but not desolate.
For here, for me, Your table is prepared,
In presence of my neediness and pain,
In presence of my doubt and striving fear,
Till I am present with You once again.

Dancing Words

I shall set these words a-dancing, mad-spinning,
Across the table You have spread for me:
No containment, skirts lifted,
With glimpses of glory in their flashing feet.

Let my tongue soar the eagle’s way,
Unconfined by earth.

“And the Word became flesh ..”
And flesh became
A lamp for God to burn in.
The words ricochet through centuries,
Though they tried to contain them in stone.

Let me be of that other company:
The minstrels, the prophets, the wild-eyed-drunk-with-wonder.
Open my mouth till my breath
Can laugh in the enemies’ face.
And take these syllables:
Star-bright, diamond-hard, supple as grass in the wind,
And make of them a moving monument,
A mobile of the Spirit,
To dance in the light above our faces
While we learn Your vast delight.

When sorrow was the sea ..

The first line was a quote I read somewhere, the rest is what it inspired ..


“When sorrow was the sea, You taught me how to swim”.
When darkness was the way, You led me limb by limb.
You hold me fast to You, through all things bright and dim.

You tore apart my heart, when it was hard and cold,
You changed the price tags on this life I bought and sold;
And, though my skin is numb, Your sure arms still enfold.
I shall not walk the stars unless You lift me there;
My soul is empty noise till You transmute to prayer.
Through storm and gentle rain You teach me how to care.

I run, I walk, I shine, for You have named my name,
And, nestled in Your love, I need no other fame
You raise me to become the life which You became.

Through nights of broken glass until Your perfect Day,
Through death to come to life, since You’re the only Way
My need drowned in Your depth, as You make gold from clay.

And through my bleeding tears there comes a great AMEN
Song of my finished hope, I glimpse it now and then,
Love is the treasured joy I find again, again.

No Going Back

No going back at all, my hand in His
Is held fast close for all eternity;
Nor would I turn aside if that I could,
His love is all the universe to me.

All of this striving, all this wearing thin,
Falls from me like dead leaves at Autumn fall,
All swept away with yesterday’s debris
At that small moment when I hear His call.

All the complaining of my jaded heart,
All of this grief because in dark I dwell,
All of this jarring noise He has caught up
In the vast harmony of His song’s swell.

No going back – not because I am brave
But because He continues to the end
And holds me still, myself continuing
All that I am into Himself to spend.

Forward and frontward, upward and afar,
Over soft meadows or through piercing stone,
I shall go on, there is no other way.
I shall go on, afraid but not alone.

Even when darkness weaves its bitter doubts
Even when fear destroys my solitude.
Still, in the poisoned night I cling to Him:
My only rest lies in His amplitude.

I – who am I and what shall I become?
Who is this mystery that I call me?
What shall I be when love has had its way?
What is this song in its entirety?

No going back till every note is made
Beautiful in His loveliness made whole.
He is the song, and I a tuneless voice
Wrapped in His music, mind and heart and soul.

The Impossible

What am I to do with a God like you?
All day I beat myself
Against the rock of your improbable truth
Battered to despair;
Then you touch me
(It doesn’t matter: sunbeam, butterfly,
The soft new leaves of Spring)
And I am broken once again
By the tenderness that comes and carries me.

Both law and gospel
Scour me out precisely with the curette’s blade
Till I am nothing
A hollow thing
Deflated.
And then, oh wild wind of the Spirit,
Sun, moon and stars,
Music defying gravity,
Love, yourself, bursting through creation,
Entering my emptiness
Overturning death,
Scattering my altars till my heart laughs with you.

There is no walking with you
I must learn to dance,

Where angels fear to tread.

Commitment

I shall not walk away,
Though the waves break over me,
And I go down into silence,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the words grow bitter,
And the air is torn with cruelty,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the needs are wrapped up,
And the whitewash clogs my breathing,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away
Though the paths are darkened,
And I grope, confused, to reach you,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the heart grows heavy,
And the feet too tired for dancing,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Till the true dawn brightens,
And a nail-scarred hand receive us,
I shall not walk away.

The Nonconformist

The Nonconformist

Walking amongst the outward forms, I tripped,
Swirling down through the layers of knowing
Towards the black silence.

Set upon by the lachrymose beasts
And pummeled with emotions not my own
In search of proper feelings which I cannot find,
Is motley out of fashion?

Transparency appears the last defence
But, even so, the image is a lie;
Revealed by the proper reflection.

I would go as the wind goes
But, having too much substance,
Dismiss the childish fantasy in search of solid self –
Yet Thine is the glory ..

Me? Oh I would roll upon the hills of paradise,
But that would be to circumvent the journey,
And that is not allowed.

Gather me then, in the tendrils of your promise,
More solid than this fleeting earth;
And carry me, however long it takes,
Learning Your honesty.

Christchurch Earthquake, Feb 2011

The beautiful is crushed,
The lovely is brought low.
Through streets of woundedness
The broken waters flow.

The cry of humankind
Reverbs with fresh dismay
Where flowers decked the square
(‘Twas merely yesterday).

The twisting of the roads,
The rubble all around
Where grief and pain and death
Are waiting to be found.

Tonight the stars bend low
Above this broken place:
For our crushed agony
Is haunted still by grace.

Where mercy seems far off,
And hope a broken lie;
The faithful stars shine still,
They shine and do not die.

At devastation’s heart,
Where death has torn us wide,
We find Him waiting there
For us, the Crucified.