Tag: suffering

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

The crucifixion of Heloïse

My Jesus,
This Good Friday I sit before your image of suffering
And yet I do not weep.
Instead my stomach heaves and brings up only bile
On this solemn fast-day.
I remember… I remember my own suffering.
What was it worth? Why should I fast now as a nun
Since my whole life is wasted?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Was it all worthless?

I was young, a virgin,
Trained all my life to live only in my head.
My uncle had brought me up like a boy,
Entranced by my intellect, my sharp joy
In the truths of faith.
I should not be wasted, he said, like a fat pullet
Domesticated by pregnancy and laundry,
My mind blunted by hormones,
Like a goose for forcing, crammed in a hutch,
A cage, a pretty morsel for a man to swallow.

And then he came,
Peter the superstar, the famous teacher,
To strike more intellectual fire from my flint,
To make me as good a debater as the masters of the schools.
Well, he taught me more than my uncle meant.

I remember the abject letters that I wrote him
Protesting undying love, though I was now a nun
And the son I bore him had been taken away.
No more theology for me, just the same old
Tame old hemming of altar linen
As if I had been given to the sisters at four years old.
This narrow women’s world stifles me;
There is no time for books, I have to run the house
And settle the squabbles of these little minds.

And so I had to cling to Peter and our love
As the one thing that gave my life meaning,
Its letting-go a noble sacrifice. Or so I thought.
My Jesus, now I’ve changed my mind.
You are the one who should have had my love
And what I loved in Peter was your bright glory
Confusing the message with the messenger.
He should have known. He was a man
And I malleable as a child,
Kept dependent as women are,
Taught to revere authority in the place of God.
What blasphemy.
Who ever taught me to revere your image in myself,
The snow-white flower of my love for God?

I can’t blame Peter too much.
He was trapped in the mask he had assumed,
The pure mind seeking for a pure mind,
Reality knocked him sideways.
But he was a priest and teacher, he should have walked away.

So where now, my Jesus?
My heart is numb, I can love neither him nor you now,
Or so I fear.
I belong to you with lifelong promises
And truly I will keep them, but what worth am I?
A used, discarded rag;
The mainstay of my life is burned to ashes.
I could have been a great lover of God,
Another Hildegard with visions, a Perpetua
Proudly embracing martyrdom.
But I will not be a Mary of Egypt
Fasting to starvation to atone for prostitution.
It was not my fault: this I will cling to,
And I know you say the same.
I have been betrayed, like you, my Jesus
And here I hang for however many years shall come.
Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel;
O bring life from this barrenness at the last.

 

tRuth 2015

The Collect for the Sunday before Lent

I am the dark sun
radiating the not-light of the world of pain
you have fallen into
self splintered into cutting shards
meaninglessly piled.
Name it if you will: depression,
loss of function, paralysing fear.
I am the dark sun
source of the dark light that reveals
what you’d rather not: pain and hidden bones
and unclean things.
We share this dim and alien world
you and I
illumined to differing degrees
by the dark rays of glory:
you on your cross and I on mine.
I am the dark sun.
This is growth, my dear, despite all,
the darkness of naked truth a glory deeper
than any you have seen before;
the violation of the Cross
the unmasking of a flinching, loving face.
Here what I AM is most terribly revealed.
Can you bear this much love?
You must be hollowed out to encompass it
as I have been.
No change is wrought on the Unchanging
only the dark light
reveals the glory of my willed defencelessness.
Courage, then:
be irradiated by this glory
let the shards be repatterned
to a supple, sinewed creature
with nocturnal gaze.
God’s darkness shining
transfigures your crucifixion
to the illumination of a hidden door.

tRuth 2006

Note: The Anglican Collect for the Sunday before Lent: Almighty Father, whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross: give us grace to perceive his glory, that we may be strengthened to suffer with him and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory; who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.