Family reunion brings us here,where gum trees open onto two eternal flamessmoking up suburban Sunday sky.Our park – the edge of our travel limits, sitsbeside quiet street and underthe refinery’s steady shadow.Two swings, two slides, ancient eucalypts,and where houses fence the park’s perimeter, a hidden gateopens while we picnic and outpops a man’s head, thenContinue reading “Refinery Shadow”
Tag Archives: healing
Sight (Lent 33)
Spring Cleaning
There are many lurkingplaces in the mind and many nooks… The old man is covered up in a thousand wrappings. (Lancelot Andrewes, Preces Privatae) Open the door. Let sun expose dust, moth-eaten wool and mould around cornices. Years of grime collect on window frames; you forgot that the sideboard had an underneath. And there tooContinue reading “Spring Cleaning”
No Ghosts This Year Concludes, and a Christmas Gift
Well, today is the last day of Advent, and so it is time for me to wrap up my Advent story for the year. If you’ve been following the story so far, you can read the last instalment below. But, if you’re new to this year’s story you can read the rest of it, plusContinue reading “No Ghosts This Year Concludes, and a Christmas Gift”
Krateo
While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s… (Acts 3:11) Why cling? Fear, perhaps. The crowd, after all, lunged and lurched about, amazed hands raised, indignant, astonished; how might this seem to eyes which had beheld, rejected, hands which had held andContinue reading “Krateo”
Lent: Man of Sorrows 6
And keep – keep me, keep watch, keep hope. The pains that crush me are like pricks beside Your agony, and yet You hold arms out as though to gather in more pain, more shame, and thus more me. Man of sorrows, what a name, what a scheme thatContinue reading “Lent: Man of Sorrows 6”
Nazarene
“We can only silence the guns of hatred with the guns of love.” – Nigerian church leader, quoted in Open Doors prayer letter I am broken in my love: I cry, I steal, I hurt, I hate. My heart has guns which fire and kill and I am daily killed. I do not understand my friend;Continue reading “Nazarene”
Apology
If perhaps in sullen days I might slide back to where I fell, a child, into the dark, please wait with me as slowly I am brought again into the light. Your love has brought the truth to bear in silent corners, back- rooms where thick lies have festered in the dark. AlthoughContinue reading “Apology”
Family Tree
…and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:2) What a father did once when an apple looked sweet sent tremors shaking through the earth, breaking roots, severing limbs, Continue reading “Family Tree”
From Ashes: No glitch
No glitch in the creation plan and yet my mind skips and repeats over old tracks as though, as though in early days a scratch a fleck of dust crept in, crept in, upset the balance of it all. With every beat the tension in these ancient grooves – this wax – threatens now toContinue reading “From Ashes: No glitch”
The Consolations of Writing 