Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.
(Hildegard of Bingen)

She blew where He willed;
His breath was her command.
He breathed into her heart, and out
Into the world she blew,

A feather, light but travelling
Where firmer objects could not go:
Into the palaces and minds of kings
Of bishops and of popes.

And when they watched her,
They were struck by what they saw,
That light-as-air, soft thing,
Tickling their consciences,

She was not insubstantial; her
Substance was the stuff of God;
He held her high, she drifted where
He bid that she should go.

Her feather was not white;
She did not fly in fear.
She was the feather of the King
And He has made her grand.

A name encased in mystery;
A hero fading from the light;

A life with no-one taking notes;
A set of tales with hazy truths;

A legacy that supercedes
The details of names, concrete dates;

A light within translucent source;
A see that caught some northern souls;

A truth that spread beyond the wall;
A kindled flame, now burning still.

She cries –
Out in the street she cries,
Wandering the streets in search
Of any who will hear.

To those rudderless ships she cries,
To horses without bits to guide them,
To foolish ones led by their tongues,
She cries.

Come to me, she cries, with food
Enough for every clamouring soul;
Come to me and eat from me.
There is only silence.

And so the heavens shout to deaf
Ears and raise their voice to sing
Of glory and of wisdom, but
The hungry do not eat.

Still she cries, for simple ones,
And lifts her chant up to the skies;
Out in the street, into the town;
Wisdom cries and cries.

If we met one day,
resting beneath some eucalypt,
taking noonday shelter,
breaking bread and sharing peace,

would we, I wonder, look each other
in the eye and see kinship’s glint,
the marks of grace, the familiar signs
of those bought with the same price?

We may have fought;
you clashed, I know, with ones like me,
and held some causes which I, from
my low-church, urban pew, reject.

Though maybe if we walked along
the same North Queensland paths, beneath
the same trees took our rest at dusk,
we might have paused as friends;

perhaps if we could lay to rest
the differences of time and place,
we could recite our common prayers
and eat from the same bread.

Though we are many, we are one;
yet more than bread must be our union.
We can join hands if this is true:
that you found life upon Christ’s tree.

This
my only
boast – two arms like
a tree held out with
widest love whose
depth and
breadth I
cannot
fathom,
can but
rest in-
side.

When the ones who had fled emerged from their caves,
the fire died down, the Emperor’s rod
no longer raised, from some they received
mercy, from others the shame of the lapsed,
all the judgment accorded to those who denied
the name of the Lord for fear of the sword.
Cyprian stood as one of them, for
he knew in his heart the burning power of dread,
the instinct to flee, the shame of return.
Call as he did for these ones to find mercy
when they returned with heads sorrow-down,
he knew now full well the call of the Cross
and when his time came, he had grace now to stand
where many, like he, had other times quaked;
the mercy he found had transformed him.

Few people seem aware of the many hungry souls there are, who are longing for some sympathetic soul to speak to them about spiritual things. Sanctified common sense is what is needed, tact to deal wisely with all comers…
(Mother Esther)

Fallen, bones broken, she came to warmer climes;
Melbourne’s burgeoning streets beckoned her,
Lanes bursting with the wealth of newfound gold
And edges frayed with the homes of the poor.

While some sang hymns to hungry souls,
Esther saw the open mouths
And bodies sore, in need of beds;
She stayed well after her bones were mended.

Soup filled the hungry mouths, and words
Of tact and saintly common sense
Gave food and succour of a deeper sort;
The streets became a cathedral, a home.

But still, somehow, the streets cry out
For those who dare to be the hands
And feet of Jesus, walking in
The city’s fraying, fading seams;

And still our broken bones need casts,
And hungry mouths need soup, and lonely
Bodies need companions, and
The rich with gold need ears to hear.

Listen: hear the holy name
Chanted in the streets as those
Sisters walk the laneways with their
Needle and thread to stitch the seams.

The mute man with the tangled tongue and
Stoppered ears knows now the truth
That frees his tongue, says, Ephphatha!
And opens that which has been blocked.
The daughter freed from demons knows too
That dogs may eat the crumbs beneath the
Table of the king’s own children,
And her mother knows as well the
Power of audacious faith.
And the poor who die with voices
Fading in the walls around them –
Do they know this shaking truth too?
Those who hold their wealth as placards
To proclaim their right to enter,
Knocking out the poor from houses
Built for lowly ones like them –
Will they hear this truth in their ears
Stoppered as they are against the
Flooding torrent of God’s swift
Reversal of all expectations?
Do they hear Him cry the cause of
Those they stomped on yesterday?
Have they eyes to see His Glory
Manifest in all the lowly
And despised, forgotten things?

No-one could know –
this baby just like
any other,
no defining
features, halo,
anything to
set it out from
Eve or Adam,
all their sins
already branded
into its tiny
DNA,
and nothing here
to say that this
flesh will bear
the Word Made Flesh.
How very ordi-
nary this child
chosen among
millions to bring
forth the promise.
(There are no
angel heralds,
shepherds or
wise men today.
Only this: the
eyes of heaven,
seeing what
The prophets saw.)