To think where darkest nights have taken this soul, and how thin the membrane between life and death, how loud the Accuser has screamed to pierce the membrane and throw me through;
yet here I stand, with no reason beside You and the sheer leap into faith that saved, the soft belly of love into which I fell;
so here I stand, with my eldest in my arms while he reaches the clothesline, spins like the chuckling Father who set this orbit to go, reaches and carries, and calls out Again!
So why not, when held in steadfast love; why not watch it spin again and shout the dead Accuser dumb.
You take it all, you and your brothers: my sleep, my leisure, my freedom, my heart. Daily I prepare myself to lose myself, to find myself in the joy of your laughter, the excitement of movement, the power unlocked from discovering words, actions, nodding or shaking, the lands that lie open to traverse as your feet become slowly, rapidly acquainted with walking. Daily this, all this, directs my pulse, my choice, my chance, my being. And I, though it makes me less of an I, am greater the more you diminish me. You finish me. You find me and nestle your sticky fingers in my ever expanding soul.
Startled by the beating of my own heart, the pounding of my thoughts in between my ears, I have found noise to be quieter than silence, have brokered terms of peace armed with a flashing screen. Nothing frightens like the thought that you may not be enough; You are enough, are All. In deep silence I meet the noise of fear, and greet Your warmest, primeval whisper.
They also brought food for David and all who were with him, including wheat, barley, flour, roasted grain, beans, lentils, honey, curds, flocks, and cheese. For they said, “The people are no doubt hungry, tired, and thirsty there in the desert.”
2 Samuel 17:28-29
Mid-crisis, after yet another narrow escape, the fugitive king rests, and this ordinary, abundant fare pausing somewhere - a plateau, perhaps where the enemy, his son, can still be seen? Or tucked away in the cleft of some rock, like Moses spared from judgment's full daylit face? There will be a time and place for judgment, and for the essay of souls, a time to examine heart's motives, to ponder the chance that maybe the rebel son's It. Yet in this middle point of crisis there is time even for kings to strengthen with grains, with lentils, with cheese, to eat honey and curds in the desert breeze.
The scent was masked as we walked, though hints of pollen pushed their way through cloth to me, and on return as I parked the pram and set excited new walkers free to roam, I soaked my senses in the radiance of fruit trees delighting in new white-pink growth, and the hope that if not now, soon at least, signs are sure, sure to be soon.
To prepare my children for a world of puddles, I must learn myself what to do with puddles, how to take the mud with the joy, how to wear the shock of the wet, how to delight in the splash.
To prepare my children for a world of shadows, I must learn how to see the sun in the shadows, and how to trace the dance of light, how to marvel at silhouettes, how not to fear the night.
To prepare my children for a world of unknowns, I must brace myself and unknow all this false security we held for years before this one, and rest when I don't know.
To prepare my children for a world of Day, I must learn the worth of days, and I must learn to face the night that our days may be unafraid.
Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours
of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and
chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Collect for Compline, The Book of Common Prayer
Full of contradiction, I am buoyed by the blossom of change in the trees yet wearied by the clock's relentless chime. Burdened by the weight of change and the wait for change alike, I am entangled in the too much too little of days and months. No clock marks His coming hour, nor days mar His face. O beauty ancient and new: blossom me eternal in You.
Deprived of the ordinary markings of days - drives to work, birthdays, people to celebrate - we cling more fervently to organic signs, the constant shifts in the garden, which trees have blossomed, which ones have leaves, how tall the pea plant has grown, how white its petals.
These and the aphids signal time: those and the snails migrating, the worms beneath the compost, the dead bird by the granny flat, rising and falling daily tallies, who died youngest, who's all clear and how long until - we cannot say - only greet other pilgrims on the way, and pray.
In these days of lockdown (my city, Melbourne, is experiencing the toughest restrictions of anywhere in Australia so far), I have been finding myself drawing increasing inspiration from the small things that I notice in my local environment, looking ever closer and closer to the consolations of the everyday. This video poem came from a moment of stillness while walking my children along the Werribee River, persevering through intermittently heavy rain. May we all keep noticing the small fingerprints of God in the easily missed details of our lockdown lives. Stay safe.
Watchful, I spy the first buds, now only the flower's potential, one day, soon - the fruit.
Impatient, I come here again, again each day to measure progress in the budding leaf
or to catch the lemon in the act of ripening, quince in mid-blossom, almond in leaf.
Wait, small heart. It lingers; wait. The signs are sure though August is fickle and eyes are sore. And God has granted each beauty its day; rest your eyes on this today.
The Consolations of Writing 