Christmas 4: Holy Innocents

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
(Matthew 2:17-18)

Rachel weeps; the Spirit keeps
vigil with the ones who mourn.
One child lives, though many die;
that child will die for all.

Herod paces and erases
innocence across his land.
The tyrant frets; the child-king flees
and grips his mother’s hand.

The deed is done and I am numb;
must Adam’s debt be paid this way?
No, God Himself must lose a son
and tears will be praise one day.

Christmas 3: Follow Me (For the Feast of St John the Evangelist)

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?”
(John 21:20-21)

Some followed to the cross, some to their tombs,
some were stoned, some were flayed,
some beheld the lions’ roar…

And others followed into cells
with ageing eyes in the dying light.
Some grew old to the ring of words
more bounteous than all the world.

Some saw, some hoped
but never saw.
All were held, transformed by Life –
what was, what is, what ever is,
is still to be, what waits.

The day remains, and we remain,
yet nothing is the same.

Christmas 2: Boxing Day

This is how the child leads:
A shepherd charged with feeding the grieved
takes every stone hate hurls at him;
a king and his page trudge through charity’s snow;
boxes are filled with surplus things;
the lion lies down with the lamb.

We who eat from Plenty’s horn,
flush with leftovers, paper scraps,
beneath the season’s plenty-green tree:
look where the child goes;
watch Him grow and mark His steps –
Stephen, Wenceslas, and all
who’ve eyes to see, come see.

Christmas 1: “A little child shall lead them…”

There were perhaps others
on the look-out for kings that day,
scouring the glossy mags,
checking out the trendy spots,
tracking every star on the rise.

It was easy enough with the census on
and everyone back to their homes,
easy to know who would be where
(and no-one who was anyone would ever be there,
in a no-name backwater, in a cave full of stock feed).
Busily tracking celebrities’ tweets,
they would have missed
the teenage mother and her sheepish bloke
(not even the father, the word on the street went),

only shepherds,
whose eyes were careworn enough to spot
the angel singing praise, whose knees
were weathered enough to bend with heaven’s wind,
and whose minds, trained to recall
their Shepherd’s Almanac of facts,
had not forgotten the promised day
when lion and lamb would meet as friends,
and a little child would lead.

Advent 4: The Fruit

Climb the rugged beam to see
the scurry of life around the tree:
lion and baby, adder and lamb,
sheltered in this outstretched hand.
Thick with promise, the leaves gather birds
and the birds whisper secrets in long-forgotten words.
Turn your ear from self to sky
to hear the heavens in reply:
There’s hope for cut-down trees, the song
echoes in the on-and-on.
Lift your anxious stumpy fists
and open fingers out to grip
the hope that bursts, the life that beats.
Barren soul, the first fruit’s here.
A little child leads.

Advent 3: The Branch

Kingdoms fall from might;
panelled houses cannot keep out the flood.
The humblest stump brings forth the branch
and a little child leads the animals’ dance.
As the baby rests its head in the nest,
the greenest hope turns to solid twig,
and then as firm and fixed branch.
Reach out: these arms reach out to hold,
to gather in what scatters far.
A little child shall lead; a man
shall climb the rugged beam.

Advent 2: The Shoot

When You come back again
Would You bring me something from the fridge?
(Steve Taylor & Peter Furler, “Lost the Plot”)

Remember praise?
It fed your roots back when you learnt to crawl,
back when you burrowed into soil
eager to receive all the earth had to say.
And today?
Defeat is the last refuge of the desolate stump.
Promises of orchards seem taunting,
a mockery. We hoped such things when we were young
but now…
Even Nebuchadnezzar, cut down,
hangs no gardens, only grazes like a cow.
But remember Job of the cutdown tree
when the first shoot of green
defies the brown stump.
Remember the farfetched, microscopic life
that burrows like a promise
and fells kingdoms with its might.

Advent 1: The Stump

If no good as a tree –
no fruit budding,
no birds to rest in its shade –
then cut it down.
The wood may serve for a building or,
at the very least, a fire.
Get in first before inferno comes;
better to be a stump when the fires rage.
Resignation rests in the undergrowth,
but the faint song of Maranatha stirs
the itchy roots that remember praise…

Suscipe

Nighttime cradles you in my arms
but I am uncradled,
and what strength I have to cradle with
is finite and growing finer yet,
my widow’s mite at the temple gate,
libation pouring out.

Daytime is an offering too,
a departure yet a giving,
an act of will to defeat the Will,
a living sacrifice that draws
fire and taunts the futile Baals.
Yet I am drawn to Baal.

At night again, while summoning sleep
into your limbs that want to climb,
I climb Mount Carmel again and seek
the fusion of my breath with His.
My memories of self from freer days
are rocked to stillness yet they climb.
This tangled prayer I bundle up
and sacrifice it whole.

My Examen

Give me only your love and grace. That is enough for me.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Suscipe

Resolution is void.
The more I look inward,
the more each motive,
each spirit I discern
becomes a snarl, a defiant reminder
that my best attempts are, at best, no good.

Though I ask my conscience to justify
each act from rising to setting of sun,
only the man on the tree has answers for me.
My questions, at best, hammer nails.

What am I doing, have done for Christ?
The soldier sounds the Spirit’s reveille;
Morning exercise leaves me faint;
only Your love, Your grace animate me.

Lying upon my desultory stone,
this alone can console: the sight
of heaven descending to where I lie,
and God in this place, though I did not know.