Her husband’s name hangs over Sydney’s harbour,
A governor in the early days,
But hers drops somewhere from our memories:
To some, an artist, a painter of note;
To others the mother of social reforms
Who lifted the lowly while herself on the couch,
Always, it seems, with a child on the way.

To others still her birth is a mystery:
Was she born in West Bromwich or, some say, Macao?
And why did she have as a child some seven
Convict wet-nurses, all heavy drinkers whom,
Eliza felt sure, curdled the milk
She drank from their breasts? History knows,
And we are left to guess.

Yet we can glimpse what this history made:
A mother to many; the governor’s wife
Who did not cling to glamour or hold
Her position as something to prize, but to use
As a means of grace-giving; took premature children
To her own breast to save them,
And lifted the lowly while lowering herself.

The pastor should always be a leader in action, that by his living he may point out the way of life to those who are put under him, and that the flock, which follows the voice and manners of the shepherd, may learn how to walk rather through example than through words…For that voice more readily penetrates the hearer’s heart, which the speaker’s life commends, since what he commands by speaking he helps the doing by showing.
(Gregory of Rome, Liber Regulae Pastoralis)

Tossed about by secular waves,
Gregory clung onto prayer.
Though shipwrecked by life,
He found there a raft
Which stilled him and calmed him
And gave him grace to serve.

Floating in the Word – a river
Deep enough to contain
An elephant, yet smooth enough
To let the smallest lamb bathe safe –
He fed on timeless truth and found
Enough to feed his flock tenfold.

He learnt from Job’s humble, cut-down tree;
He clothed himself in ash and dust
And knew that all the best he said
Came only from God’s pure stream.
The Shepherd let his people graze
And grazed along with them.

I cannot foretell the future. I cannot guarantee that all will be well – that we shall all come through unscathed. One thing only I can guarantee is that, if we do not forsake Christ here in Papua in His Body, the Church, He will not forsake us. He will uphold us; He will sustain us; He will strengthen us, and He will guide and keep us through the days that lie ahead…Let us trust and not be afraid.
(Bishop Philip Strong, Papua New Guinea, 31st January 1942

Some were beheaded,
Some were betrayed.
Others looked into
Their own fresh-dug graves,

Some killed out at sea,
Some killed on the beach,
Some killed as examples,
Some thrown to the waves,

And still some survived,
Pulled out from the flames,
Living sacrifices
To live and to praise.

And we who look on now
Must make in our own way
The choice that then faced those
Who stayed in their places,

To live or to die,
Each option the same,
When living is Christ
And dying is gain.

My heart is stirred and the wind is blowing
From the gentle south; it brings
Spring’s soft footsteps with each stirring
Song it sings from winter’s aisles.

Look, the fig-tree is now blooming;
See it herald in the springtime.
Look, the bridegroom comes for his bride
And my heart stirs with his theme.

You, my king, are excellent
Beyond all men, the fairest one.
Your hear is pure, your robes are fragrant;
Grace flows from your every word.

Who may dwell beneath your bowers?
She who has clean hands and white robes.
See the bride; she comes to meet you.
See her heart prepared for you.

Hear, O daughters; listen, guests who
Gather round our wedding feast.
Clean your robes; wash clean your hearts;
Come and join our wedding feast.

See the lamb; he waits for his bride.
See his garments, white as snow.
Let him wash your hands and your heart.
Let your hearts stir with his theme.

On his island amid the temper of seas
and warring armies, conquering waves,
Aidan, it seems, sat still,

calmed somehow by the Prince of Peace,
and with eyes quietly opened wide enough to see
the doors that stood ajar for him

to walk straight through with the words of truth
that others had before him seen as pearls
too good to give these northern swine;

Aidan spoke calmly where other men yelled
and taught where others had stormed off, disgusted,
declaring unteachable those Aidan taught

and dismissing the regions that soon were ablaze
with the strongest of fires, that need not yell
to prove the certainty of its flame.

One day as I was passing into the field…this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself…Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed.
(John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners)

I saw the Pilgrim burdened down
with chains around his legs and heart.
He clutched his ears with both his hands
and screamed for what he heard there.
“I am cursed,” he said to me,
“for daily I hear such vile things
against my name and against God
that I cannot look at Him.”

I saw the Pilgrim reach the hill
and cast his eyes towards the ground.
“If I see the hill,” he said, “it
makes the chains smart all the more for
when my heart leaps at the sight, it
pulls the chains more tight around me.”
So he did not dare look up for
all the beauty that was there.

I saw the Pilgrim reach the stream
of flowing blood where, grimacing,
he sat and cried and said to me,
“This is all I hope to find:
red streams where flow the worst of me
and all the death that I deserve.”
I saw the Pilgrim clutch his chains
and tighten them around himself.

I saw the heavens open up
and there descending like a flood
was one who, I saw, had been wounded
and His clothes were white, ablaze.
I heard the wounded one cry out,
“I am your righteousness. Come give
your chains to me.” And so he rose,
the Pilgrim, though I saw him frown

with doubt and hold his chains some more.
“Throw off your chains,” the fiery one said,
and then I saw the Pilgrim’s chains
drop off like scales, like autumn leaves;
and though I see him oft like me
with eyes cast down and heart sore red,
I know he bears those chains no more: I
trust this truth for both of us.

Tomorrow I will be going away for a few days, on a school hiking trip, so there will be no poems posted here while I’m gone. To get ahead on the poems left for August, here is the poem for August 29, the second poem for John the Baptist.

His Name is John Part 2 (For the Beheading of John the Baptist)

A voice out in the wilderness,
He did not dance to please the king;
He ate the desert’s food, avoided
Herod’s permeating yeast.

Salome danced and Herod cheered;
His brother’s widow seized her chance,
To shut the mouth of one who spoke
The truth to power with no fear.

Ask, she said to fair Salome,
For John’s head upon a plate.
Her daughter did as she was told;
The fruit of repentance withered.

But if John had a moment to
Collect his thoughts before he died,
He would have given up already
The life he knew was not his own,

Trusting in a higher judge
Who saw through all the surface of
Salome’s dance and Herod’s court
And had declared John right.

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl – I know not which – coming from a neighbouring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.” Immediately I ceased weeping…
(Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII)

Under the fig-tree, Augustine cried,
alone to let the tears flow more,
and cried and cried, How long, O Lord?
How long will You be angry with me?

Crying out these things he heard
the strangest chant, the oddest rhyme
that he had heard young children sing:
Pick up and read, the children sang;

Pick up and read; and so he paused,
his tears stopped up for that moment,
the tales of saints and the voices
that had called them in his mind.

Finding then the book that he
had put down, he took up again
the words that in their briefness caught him:
they called him, gave him clothes

of righteousness, and doubt fled out
of his clear mind and certainty
took hold of him; he set his feet
upon the rule of Christ.

The fig-tree may have bloomed that day;
it may have stayed quite bare and dry.
But Monica sang and stood tall
with her weeping, renewed son.

For by the light of the faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead. And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed. Thou didst truly hear her.
(Augustine, Confessions, Book III)

While he mourned for the pangs of dying fruit,
fancying their sap the drops of mothers’ tears,
Monica wept,

and as she wept she dreamed, and as
she dreamed she saw herself upon
a wooden rule,

where a bright young man asked her
the cause of all her tears, and so she
mouthed the name Augustine.

But when the man dissented, pointing
to her son who stood with her,
Monica rejoiced;

and when she told him of her dream, though
his sight was tainted and he saw it
skewed to his position,

Monica saw clearly through her tears
and knew he would soon stand with her
amongst the saved.

Her tears did not cease then, nor her
cries to heaven with his name,
Augustine…

But her prayers rose with new hope
that He had seen her tears and heard her
prayers and her dreams,

that He who could do so much more
than she could ask or dream or hope –
He was weeping too.

What no building can contain
Has made its dwelling place among us;
What no temple can withstand
Has come to live within our walls.

What no body can perceive
Has entered in this living body;
What no heart can understand
Has come to dwell inside the heart.

What no eye can bear to see
Has made itself our source of sight;
What no priest can stand beside
Has come to stand now in our place.

What no sacrifice can please
Has made Himself the sacrifice;
What no life can ever reach
Has reached down to us, given life.

What dwarfs every universe
Has taken us into His hand;
What holds us inside His hand
Has come to live within us.