Tag: Christ

Advent

Like a whisper passing through a crowd of children,
All eyes suddenly straining up for the angel,
He is coming,
Really he is, and all shall be well, the kingdom is coming.
The forgotten truth flames up in winter dimness,
Lighting hope as the days darken,
He is coming.
This world of pain and cruelty will be remade,
All shall be well, no more tears,
He is coming.

To children bent over screens, livid in the blue light
Of a thousand earthbound stars, dizzy and deafened,
The moon speaks, rising over silent fields,
He is coming.

To the warriors of hatred and contempt
And to their broken victims
The earth speaks, as the harvest rots
Like those who planted it, unburied,
He is coming.

To the last trees, the trapped wild things,
To the no longer teeming waters,
The wind breathes over the chaos,
He is coming.

To the evil thoughts feasting like cancer
On human hearts, multiplying misery,
The One with the sharp sword speaks,
I am coming.

Like a whisper passing
From the gardener to the healer
To the prayer to the maker
To the broken child
Lighting a candle against the darkness,
He is coming.

Like a whisper passing
From angel to stupefied angel
In the marvelling silence of praise:
With empty hands, in weakness and poverty,
To a failed creation with failure
To a dying creation with death
He is coming.

Like a shout, like the new-created light,
Like life out of death,
He is coming.

 

tRuth 2015

 

image © Karl Grobl/Pixnio CC0

Advent Sunday

Winter sun lifting the heart:
Frail, crisp, clear like a glass bauble
Delicate and precious, retrieved
From long storage.
We begin again, the old story,
The high hopes: he will come.
Not with reassuring return of beautiful
Music and readings, no Wachet auf,
No choral perfection, no mince pies.
He will come, shattering the baubles
We hold dear, searing us with the touch
Of truth’s cold blade.
He will come shaking the tree
Of our bauble-hung life.
Hatching from the shards
Like blinking, naked chickens we will come
Disorientated to his clear light,
His forgiving judgement,
Who holds our tiny worlds like baubles
In long-suffering hands, until he comes
To work his new creation white-hot
From his furnace of change,
He, the Light undying.

 

tRuth 2019

 

image © Anne Roberts/flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Your friends were with you only for a season

Your friends were with you only for a season
To hear your word and share your holy life,
And then they scattered to the world’s far corners
To bring joy to indifference and strife.

Lord, so with us: we walk the path together
A year or two, we’re knit in friendship’s bands,
Until you bid us follow where you’re leading
In lonely coracle to unknown lands.

Teach us to part: for parting is not ending,
In glory we will meet if not before;
The bands of love in prayer grow ever stronger,
We bear each other to those separate shores.

And so we weave a net of grace and kindness
Across the world and down the passing years;
Christ is the net who binds us all together,
Who makes our souls through sharing hopes and fears.

And so farewell, in gratitude and laughter
For all that Christ has given in this place;
Lord, lead us on to find tomorrow’s blessings,
Tomorrow’s friends, tomorrow’s gift and grace.

 

tRuth 2019

I had the tune Londonderry Air in mind when writing this, but one would need to repeat the last verse.

 

image © Mike Prince /flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Advent

Tempest: the gnawing gale
Drives the rough sleepers from the seafront,
Sleet splinters flying on the wind’s wail.

Tempus fugit: time flees fast,
Drains away and is gone through fingers
That cling to be safe, cling to what cannot last.

Temper: a sword for its purpose is tried,
And a soul for its truth: what justice from you
For those who have nowhere to bide?

Tempus fugit: time runs out like the sand
When He comes who made time and asks
His searching question of those upon either hand.

 

tRuth 2018

 

image © Robin Stott cc-by-sa/2.0/ http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2160484

 

Advent

Like the bulb beneath the earth: awaken.
Thus God’s urging in the soul’s blood,
the intangible currents of heart-mind:
Awaken.
Something is coming, disturbing
the status quo, the somnolence.
Awaken. Are you ready?
Do you have the tools, the ears,
the nerve-cells yearning for his caress?
Or is your back turned?
What does he bring? What will it do to me?
Questions, questions. Awaken.

 

tRuth 2018

 

Monstrance

I
An absence
Framing a presence
holding a silence:
the realest place on earth.

II
My heart
though scarcely real
holds your reality
a light, a silence,
a deep place of meeting,
knitting beyond mind’s reach
a throne for the night of time
the blazing Uncreated.

III
Your showing
means meeting: heart speaks to heart
love flows to love
greeting each throned presence
each prism of the All-Loving.
I bow before you
revealed in ten thousand hearts
daily benediction.

 

tRuth 2016

 

image copyright tRuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Like a red bird in a cage

Like a red bird in a cage
My heart hangs in my ribs and sings.
In that same heart
Christ the great Lord of the universe abides
Like a bird in a cage
Of anxious, rigid bars marked ‘Number 1’.
Fly free, great golden bird,
Like sunlight that no bars can hold;
Melt my fear until my heart like yours
Rains tears of pity for your stunted world
And sings your song of sorrow like a gushing spring
To rise, to rise.

 

tRuth 2016

 

image copyright Quartl, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Begin in closeup

Begin in closeup:
A base of polished oakwood, smooth and shining,
Dovetailed joints as tight as when they were first made
With a sharp chisel in a workshop
Redolent of shavings and shellac,
Long ago.
Shining brass pans and chains, butter-yellow,
Speaking of long and careful use,
The love of a craftsman for the tools
Daily familiar and warmed by his hand.
And a pointer, delicate, needle-thin,
Trembling at a breath.
These are goldsmiths’ scales for measuring
The very precious, the very small.
Next, let your gaze pull back to see the whole:
A precision instrument made with love for one purpose.
These scales are like a soul in this:
Made to know the joy of being a creature,
Something made to do one thing superbly well:
To hold, respond, to speak truth,
Fitted to the Maker’s hand.
A thing that by doing its work
-carrying, reflecting, pointing –
Becomes what it is.
But a soul is unlike the scales in this:
The soul grows through carrying, reflecting, pointing;
It changes, warmed by his hand.
A soul lives more deeply and puts out new green
Tendrils, leaves, blossoms.
It is shaped by what it carries
-choosing, affirming, rejecting-
Until it points only to its Creator,
The tremulous needle stilled due Christ.

 

tRuth 2015

image CC0 MaxPixel