All day the hazardous haze,yesterday too. I feared to takethe children outside; even the gardenwas clothed in the smoke of elsewhere on fire.Discomfiting, yetwe saw the world,a greenbluebrown orb of God’s graceheaving with the death of itand caught the surgethrough smoke-drunk eucalyptsof a day that will come yet bids us fightfor the day when we’reContinue reading “When we’re no longer burning”
Tag Archives: grace
Advent 6: Benedictus
They shall not live who have not tasted death.They only sing who are struck dumb by God.(Joyce Kilmer, “Poets”) And so Zechariah became one of the poets,hymning the God of Israel with new voice,for those who have most wept will most rejoice,while others full of grace who did not know itcould never pen a hymnContinue reading “Advent 6: Benedictus”
A Mindlessness Prayer
These days when all of the socks are odd and all your thoughts are scrambled eggs and, try as you might to talk to God, nothing much makes any sense, for the rubbish awaits in noisome piles, the bills are due and so’s the tax and the laundry measures its depth in miles and theContinue reading “A Mindlessness Prayer”
Unexpected Grace: Ten conversion novels you should read
Sadly, literature that brings faith authentically to bear on the world is a rare thing. But here are ten novels that use the narrative of conversion to show faith and grace colliding with the ordinary, the sordid and the plain broken. Not all are by professing believers. Not all are orthodox. But all are compellingContinue reading “Unexpected Grace: Ten conversion novels you should read”
Miracles of Grass
A devout gardener, my eldest comes out hereeach day, to inspect, to water.Sometimes he waters the concrete, sometimesthe soil. Most of itis sapped up by unseasonal sun,some soaks in. Butas we persist, he and I, we seethis transformation, likea renewing mind: creeper grassstretching outgreen tendrils into a former wastelandand I am mindful to watchthe miracleContinue reading “Miracles of Grass”
They knew Him too at breakfast
where, on the shore, He hadalready assembled, as a table,prepared for expected guests,a charcoal fire, some fish laid out,and, being himself the bread,a loaf laid for good measure. No need, of course, for the fish they brought.No need, either, for that excess in their boats.To feed seven mouths plus His,that net-bursting horn of plenty was,asContinue reading “They knew Him too at breakfast”
The dishes you will always have with you
and the laundry, piled upin crevices and corridors as though to say,“You can hide me, but you cannot do without me.”Toys underfoot and books scattered wideamongst other toddler treasures:a measuring cup, a rooster,a brochure considered la mode beforesome other fancy flitted through the growing mind.Some things are permanent, likedishes, some new –an Amen! after grace.UnsettledContinue reading “The dishes you will always have with you”
Poema
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”
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”
The Consolations of Writing 