Category Archives: Devotional

Long Shadows: A poem for Reconciliation Week

One of my most significant spiritual mentors, theologian Peter Adam, likes to say of my country’s history that “old sins cast long shadows”. (You can read a piece by him on this from The Gospel Coalition here.) The dark history of white settlement in the lands now called Australia, Adam contends, casts long shadows onContinue reading “Long Shadows: A poem for Reconciliation Week”

Microprayers for Lent: Final Week

35.Can clay say to potter, Why did you make methis way?Clay traitor greets potter with faithless kiss. 36.Soldiers kick up dust beneath urgent angry feet.Creatorof stars and soil is still. Dust covers Him. 37.Before they flee do His shame-faced friends recallbrieflypalm fronds, dusty road, humble king on donkey? 38.My feet, like theirs, carry the fallenContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Final Week”

Microprayers for Lent: Week 6

28.(But can You make my wilful will as soft, aswilling to change at Your touch as this clay?) 29.Some days I could see You transfiguredand barelynotice. Transfix my eyes. Show me truth. 30.First, this truth: You became clay, became dust.The potterbecame like the fragile clay He made. 31.The same hands that sculpted soil into lifenowContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week 6”

Microprayers for Lent: Weeks Four and Five

17.When did clay first think to shirk the potter?As lungsfirst billowed with breath, sun barely risen? 18.I was not there at first dawn yet I too wake withthe sameserpentine thought in my drowsy brain. 19.Great mystery: that clay should breathe and defy.Greater this:that dried up clay should breathe again. 20.When it breathes, what does theContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Weeks Four and Five”

Microprayers for Lent: Week Three

11.Only You with the gentle wind of Your fingerscan sweepthese layers without losing me. 12.Your wind it was that first animated dust –so nowcatch me up in the willy-willy of You. 13.Scoop me, spiral me in the eye of Your storm;swirl meup in Your whirlwind. Enspirit me. 14.For only in the dance and condensation ofYourContinue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week Three”

Microprayers for Lent: Week 2

5.Dust clogs the corridors of heart’s chambers.Have mercy:teach love to this dust. 6.Clean airways. Clean neural pathways. Clean roadsto love.Breathe clean air in me. 7.Wipe clean eyes overclouded with dust.Give sightto know my earthen flesh in others. 8.(And what of the dust on the countertop and shelves,the haze in my line of sight to You?)Continue reading “Microprayers for Lent: Week 2”

Microprayers: First Week

What is this quintessence of dust? William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.Ashen brain breathes ashen prayers.My God –can ashes rise? 2.Dust clings to prayer’s mouth.I breathe;Prayer disperses… 3.Dust too collects in glory’s crevices;I longfor life, not death. 4.Water me with the condensation ofYour Spirit.Make me mud to mould.

New Year

I no longer resolve,fatigued by my own failure,all previous years’ zeal turnedto crumbs surrounding my table. Instead I will sweepand, in sweeping, take noteof these archeological layers,the fossils of all these discarded selvesand all I thought I could be: the days I failed myself before sunrise,the anger that burned before the day felt its heat;theContinue reading “New Year”

Advent 5

As a child, it was alwayspure anticipation, the sense of somethingpouring out of a constantlyself-filling source, readying itself solelyfor our delight. Now I keepthe list running in my head of allthat is not yet done, might not be done withoutmy doing. Though gifts still beckon, so toothe slowly nagging sense of somethingthat must be filled,Continue reading “Advent 5”