Ascension Day

Well, today is Ascension Day and so this marks the very last poem for my Swelling Year project. When I first set myself the task of writing a poem for every day of the liturgical calendar, it seemed to both me and to others to be biting off substantially more than I could chew. Well, a little over a year later and the project is finished – and what better way to finish than with Jesus ascending to heaven.

Ascension Day

I wonder did they see the clouds
Gather round You as You soared,
Envelop You in vapour-praise
As You rose slowly home?

And did they marvel when they saw
Gravity that day defied
Or did it just confirm for them
What they already knew?

For He, their minds might have reasoned,
Who raised the dead and was once dead –
He who made the bread stretch far
And was Himself the Bread –

Could gather clouds as witnesses
And make the air raise hands,
Could rise as though He made the sky
And was its risen King.

Clouds and Crowns No.2

The promise of green pastures, quiet streams
Beckons me, Your shepherd’s hand not far;
And so I wander, safe wherever You are,
Your sun delighting with its kindly beams,
The radiance of Your bright fire; it gleams
And glistens, heaven’s welcome door ajar,
Sunset splitting sky, a perfect scar.
And how it is that You order my days
Which wander, dreamy in their hopefulness,
Now vibrant, and now lonely under me,
Is one of many mysteries of Your ways:
For rain and heat both equally can bless
And You can reign, though nailed to a tree.

Clouds and Crowns No.1

As part of a bigger sequence of poems that I’m working on, here is the first of a seven-part poem that I will be writing and posting over the next week: a crown of sonnets, a series of interlinking sonnets in which the final line of each sonnet forms the first line for the next. I hope you enjoy reading them.
 
Crowns and Clouds
I.
Sometimes the doorways to imagined lands,
Homes where our triumphs dwell and we can fly,
Soft lands of untold riches locked in sky,
An ever-drifting joy beyond my hands;
Sometimes a space in which my mind expands
The boundaries of all possibility,
A blankness never threatening with Why? –
Malleable and shifting like the sands;
Sometimes a twisted, tangled woolen skein;
A floating vapour-yearning; silent tears;
Sometimes the cushioning refuge of dreams;
Cotton comfort; floating hopes and years;
A hand, a fist, an offering of rain,
The promise of green pastures, quiet streams.

Walking With God – William Cowper

For the past eighteen or so months I’ve been working my way through William Cowper and John Newton’s Olney Hymnbook, setting the less well-known hymns to new tunes. The recordings I have made are not particularly high quality – I don’t have any fancy equipment to record them with. But here is my recording of one of the first ones tunes I wrote – to Cowper’s beautiful “Walking With God”. Here are the lyrics in case my poor diction doesn’t allow you to appreciate the words.

Walking With God – William Cowper

Oh! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void,
The world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return!
Sweet the messenger of rest!
I hate the sins that made thee mourn
And drove thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

Power Perfected in Weakness (After William Cowper’s “Light Shining Out of Darkness”)

Perhaps the most influential poem that William Cowper wrote was this hymn, “Light Shining Out of Darkness”, which contributed the phrase “God moves in a mysterious way” to the English language. The poem has a very simple, consistent rhythm and rhyme to it not found commonly in poetry today, but it also contains some of the most magnificent and comforting imagery of God’s power found outside of the Bible. My interpretation of Cowper’s poem was inspired by a recent post on A Devoted Life based on 2 Corinthians 12:9, one of my favourite verses in the Bible.
 
Power Perfected in Weakness
(After William Cowper’s “Light Shining Out of Darkness”)
 
God shakes the footprints of the sea,
            The oceans of the clouds;
Darkness trembles, hailstones flee
            At his resounding sound.
 
He carves crevasses into earth
            And tree-trunks slowly bleed;
He weaves the seasons to new birth
            First with a dying seed.
 
A spear has pierced through his own soul,
            A crown of thorns his brow;
He breaks apart to make the whole
            And he shall show me how.
 
And so he plants thorns in my side
            To teach sufficient grace
And rips away the shame of pride
            To shine his radiant face.
 
Deep darkness is his canopy
            Yet he is thick with light;
He spreads the vast, dense galaxy
            That he might shine more bright.

12 Poets #2: William Cowper

Cowper_wChristian literature has few stories as troubling as that of William Cowper, the eighteenth-century poet and close friend of John Newton of “Amazing Grace” fame. A long-term depression sufferer who attempted suicide multiple times and died in despair, his is hardly an uplifting story. Yet it produced some of the most beautiful – and, often, comforting – poetry written in English. This month I will look at four of his poems, ranging from the tragic to the comical, to appreciate the genius of a man who suffered much yet also endured much and whose work bore fruit that he could never have imagined.

Liebster Award Nomination

liebster-blog-awardThanks so much to http://djhardesty.wordpress.com for nominating me for the Liebster Blog Award! What an encouragement, and from a great blogger too.

So here comes the part I have to do to accept the nomination…

11 random facts about me:

1. I am the youngest of three siblings.
2. I teach English in a secondary school.
3. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
4. I taught for six months in Malaysian Borneo when I was 25.
5. I learnt German in high school but have forgotten most of what I learnt.
6. I enjoy running but injured myself about eighteen months ago and still cannot run as much as I want to.
7. I love to cook Malaysian food.
8. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.
9. I really love God.
10. I am currently completing my Masters in Education.
11. I like to play the piano – even though I am not very good.

Here are the questions that I was asked:

1.  Do you have a favorite topic to write about?
Grace. It’s an endlessly fascinating subject.
2.  When did you start writing?
As a very small child. Before I could write, I dictated stories to my mother.
3.  What are your feelings about this nomination?
It’s a lovely bit of encouragement. Blogging is a strange and isolated act if you don’t have people to support you with it along the way.
4.  How do you deal  with writers block?
I set myself a poetic form to work in and see what develops. Usually having some kind of creative constraint to work within gets me going again.
5.  When are you the most happy?
When I am with the people I love most and feel connected with them.
6.  When was the last time you danced, and what was the song?
A few months ago, in the privacy of my home, when I first heard this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdTQuNouujI
7.  What’s your favorite book?
Tough question…For sheer longevity in my life, a choice between “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens and “The Magician’s Nephew” by C.S. Lewis.
8.  Why/When did you start blogging?
I started my first blog in 2007 when I was beginning teaching and living in a new area of Melbourne and using my blog as a space to reflect on it all. At the start of last year, when I became more interested in posting poetry and other writing rather than random thoughts, I switched to WordPress.
9.  Have you ever wanted to quit writing?
Not really…I go in ups and downs in confidence about my writing but can’t really see a future in which I am not writing in some form or another.
10.  What is your favorite post from your own site?  Or do you have a favorite?
I wrote a poem earlier this year called “Gratis” which I’m very proud of.
11.  Have you ever tried to get published?
A couple of times. I had some poems published in a journal a few years back, and a handful of rejected poems, stories and bad early attempts at novel-writing.

My 11 nominees are:

1. http://confessionsofableedingheart.wordpress.com
2. http://thekingsofrubyhill.wordpress.com
3. http://eclipsedbylight.wordpress.com
4. http://scriptordeus.wordpress.com
5. http://aplaceforpoetry.wordpress.com
6. http://bishkekdiary.blogspot.com.au
7. http://lazywednesdays.wordpress.com
8. http://bluestonecity.org
9. http://kristinnador.wordpress.com
10. http://gracepieces.com
11. http://wanderingyetnotlost.wordpress.com

My questions for the nominees:

1. What prompted you to start blogging?
2. How do you feel about being nominated?
3. What most inspires you to write?
4. When do you feel most satisfied in life?
5. When did you last laugh uncontrollably, and what prompted it?
6. What is your favourite colour?
7. What is your favourite book?
8. Where is your favourite place to go?
9. What have you found most rewarding about blogging?
10. What makes you sad?
11. What would you change about the world if you could?

To accept the nomination, here are the rules:

– Place the Leibster Award picture from above onto the top of your post, say who nominated you and list their site.
– List 11 random facts about yourself.
– Nominate 11 other bloggers for the Leibster award and list their sites.
– Notify the bloggers of their awards.
– Ask the award nominees that you have chosen 11 questions to answer to accept their award.
– Answer the 11 questions left by the blogger who nominated you.

 

Congratulations to all my nominees. Keep up the good blogging!

Parousia

                    In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
(T.S. Eliot, “Gerontion”)
 
Still He bursts into our courts
Where our Pharisee-hearts change coins for doves
And the tables we man to show who’s in charge
Are upturned by His rage.
 
Still He comes with sword to divide
Soul from marrow and father from son,
Our many-tufted prickling weeds
From among the wheat.
 
Still He comes with light, with flame,
The ex-nihilo energy of singular force,
Moses’ bush-consuming-fire,
The fiery-bright I Am.
 
Still He comes to shake, to heal,
To wash in the waters of forty-day-flood,
To call frail Lazarus out of his tomb
And shake the rich man’s knees.
 
Still He comes like lamb, like lion,
A thief in the forests of the night,
An unblemished, bleeding sacrifice –
Mighty, grace in His mane.

Hope

Impossibly
            darting
                      amidst the cars,
                                  an aquamarine
                      balloon dances
           on Cemetery Road,
                                  waltzing over
                                            lanes and under
                       wheels, through traffic,
           soaring up
                       and dropping down,
           beneath these engines,
                       over bonnets;
 
                                   indomitable,
                                               it flies,
           resting on
                       the traffic isle,
                                   then gaining strength
                       to fly once more
           across the one
                       remaining lane,
                                   eager wheels
                                             charging on,
                                 balloon remaining,
                       through it all,
                                   unbroken and
                                               airborne,
                                                           withstanding the
                                               fumes and the
                                                                  traffic’s swift pulse
 
                                    reaching, at last,
                                                   the other side
                                                         of autumn trees
                                    and age-worn fence
                                             to soar once more
                                                         atop the tombs
                          of the Melbourne
                                   General Cemetery.