You create and give; I take and arrange words like atoms, rhythms like pulses and the matter of your cosmos like the setting of a table: an act of grace here, a wilderness feast. You create and I, created, imitate. More, I steward the tones you have embedded in our movements, our speech. I listenContinue reading “Poema”
Tag Archives: God
For the New Year: Again
And so it starts over: our spinning wayAround the sun; our cycle of light, dark,Hot, cold; plants losing, gaining leaves and bark.If we hear what the seasons have to say,It will be only their incessant bay,Their insistant reminders – at the parkOr down the street – to heed the sparkOf summer light, and the dyingContinue reading “For the New Year: Again”
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 refugeContinue reading “Advent 2: The Shoot”
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 sacrificeContinue reading “Suscipe”
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 justifyContinue reading “My Examen”
The moment
when I realise not that I must always be Somewhere – fording some Jordan, scaling some Hebron, engaged in daily grandiose deeds – but that here, now, at the interstice of wilful self and the ever-grinding call to nothing grand but a pile of dishes, a child needing a hug, a moment of playing atContinue reading “The moment”
Nourish the Soil
Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none…(Luke 13:6) If year after year I too am fruitless, it is not for want of grace, for want of a vine dresser to plead my plaintive case. No, fruitlessnessContinue reading “Nourish the Soil”
Learning Father (II): For Eli
…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk… (Hosea 11:3) In truth, I teach this child very little. So much is sheer instinct, determination, what HR would call “get up and go”. But there’s little of HR, more of the deep-sea diver or the alchemist at his art, to how this small enthusiast takes toContinue reading “Learning Father (II): For Eli”
Watching Grass Grow
I for one enjoy it: the slow, steady bursting from soil, those optimistic points of green poking sunward, the outward spread of tiny tufts, the promise of patience rewarded. And so daily I take my little son outside to see the garden, to “check on the grass”. All moments are wonders to him, yet IContinue reading “Watching Grass Grow”
Damascus 1
Something ends here: paused mid-threat, flung groundward, the man called Saul can breathe no more murder while the horse kicks up its hooves and he points his arms half-desperate at heaven. Something begins here yet it looks altogether like dying: the fall, the pervasive dark, the eyes failing to see, and yet the spirit cognisantContinue reading “Damascus 1”
The Consolations of Writing 