The Last Line

I know my story

and how this chapter ends

I watched as the pen seemed to

weigh heavy in Your hand and

the words struggled to be written

Other words fell like laughter

from your lips as they shaped an empty void

I, the Living Word

with overflowing joy

sculpted mountains and carved out seas

This day, this last line is upon me

The ink smears as tears fall

Final words will tear my skin and unhinge my bones and

place sorrow on my shoulders

A felon’s death I can bear

But Your silence?

How can I endure that?

(Psalm 139:16; Isaiah 53:5; Mark 16:34)

The Heart's Time

I suppose I could make this into a book review but I choose not to.  Ever the one looking for stimuli to stretch my imagination I noticed a book posted on the CLC Facebook page.  The post was all about Lent resources. 

Last year for Lent Joe and I successfully gave up chocolate.  Long car journeys where a Bounty bar had been a strong feature, Bassett’s Jelly Babies had taken centre stage.  With the phrase “Jelly me!” Joe would slip one jelly baby into an outstretched palm when the road was straight or when queue of cars and lorries was particularly slow.  “Uber jelly me!” was for two jelly babies.  Ah…we thrive on these lovely little routines of ours.  This year the Lent intention was to use the car on only essential journeys.  The definition of “essential” changed with the weather conditions.

I went to the bookshop to have a look at the book – “The Heart’s Time” by Janet Morley.  Packed with poetry and reflective commentaries for each day of Lent and Easter it had caught my interest.  The shop didn’t have the book.  It was assumed that I wanted it to be ordered and a couple of days later I was informed “my book” had arrived.  I have a thrifty gene somewhere in my string of chromosomes.  It takes a lot for me to open the purse and splash out on something but I splashed anyway.  I am a sucker for poetry. 

Because I hadn’t had the chance to ready any blurb about the book I had assumed that it was Janet’s poetry and he commentary about when, where and why it was written.  It was a collection taken from many different poets. 

I read the final poem today – “And that will be heaven” by Evangeline Paterson.  I have checked the rest of the pages to see if there are any more but there is just a long list of poets.

Things that come to mind on finishing the book:-

• I finished the book!  I am a great starter of things – knitting projects, crocheting projects, gardening projects and reading books.  I am not always a great finisher.  It wasn’t a hardship to keep reading day by day. I love poetry.  That’s not to say that I loved every poem in the book.

• I now know more poets that I used to.  There have been times, since my book was published last year, when I think about teaching a poetry or creative writing class.  What has always stopped me has been my general ignorance of the subject.  I am a teacher and I am a writer and you would think it was a no-brainer – and it probably is – but the teacher in me and the poet in me are not entirely convinced.  Steps of faith don’t require me to be entirely convinced!  I still like Roger MCGough.  I’ve discovered I like R S Thomas.  Carol Ann Duffy remains a mystery to me.

• I know less about poetry in general than I used to. A review of my poetry led to a comment, made to me personally, that my poetry was simple and was not meaty enough for serious debate.  Basically, had Janet Morley known that I even existed, my poetry wouldn’t have made it into her book. T didn’t react or take offence as I had never thought they would be debated and discussed. Having read the poems Janet selected – I see what the reviewer meant.   I am not sure that I want someone to have to wade through metaphors and similes, to have to speculate on what I wanted to say. But I confess that I am starting to stretch myself on that score.  Reading through the lists of poets at the back of the book I think I might have been thrilled if my name had been there.

• I know more about the structure of poetry than I used to.  Janet slings around the technical terms like the pro she is. I came to the book with a smattering of poetic jargon.  I learned from Stephen Fry how to form iambic pentameters.   I had a vague notion of sonnets and haiku. Now I know much more.

•  I should have followed through with the task at the end of each meditation.  Writers are always looking for things to write about and I didn’t really write that much.  Sometimes the act of writing something down makes it more real and obliges you to do something else – to change something or demonstrate what you have learned in what you do.  I know myself well enough to know how challenging I find that.

• I underlined things.  I felt that some kind of acknowledgement that I had the read the chapters was required.  I felt that I was breaking some unwritten law but equally compelled that it was necessary.  I guess that it makes the book really and truly mine

•  The book was just the right thing for me to be reading through Lent and Easter.  It was like peering through windows at what other people were thinking and experiencing about Easter.

I feel like I have been introduced to a roomful of new friends!  We shall try hard to keep in regular touch.

Resurrection

Longing for home

I’m dressed in flesh for

A little while longer

Patient with its limitations

Its hunger and its hurts

Soon will come the time

When I will dismantle

This framework of bones and

Step out of this canvas of skin

Gently will I smooth them out and

Fold them away

Then clothed in my immortality

I will walk again among the stars

"Love. Loss. Hope: The Art of Easter 2014"

It was the final hour of the "Love. Loss. Hope: The Art of Easter 2014" Exhibition at King’s Fellowship. I was minding the quiet room.  

It wasn’t quite the same quiet room it had been the day before, or the day before that, when I had visited with friends and family.  The walls were in the same place and no one had moved the door but the contents had changed somewhat. 

For just a few days the Breathe Chapel in Merkinch had moved into the quiet room with its benches, wood stump tables and ceramic pathway.  The artwork that usually hung on the walls of the chapel, or littered the bookshelves and window ledges was also there breathing peace and rest into the room.

They were moved back to the chapel and a couple of soft sofas, a round glass table and a lamp took their place.  It wasn’t the same quiet room and no one really stopped and sat down on their way through the exhibition.   The room might have maintained its quietness but without the Breathe Chapel breathing their peace it was just another room.  There was no invitation to linger that had been present then.  I might have hurried through like everyone else in that last hour.

Most of the time, I don’t really get art.  I get the obvious stuff – the still life stuff that looks like it’s supposed to look.  It’s the symbolic stuff that escapes me.  It was enlightening to hear the artists explain their ideas as I listened to the commentary on a MP3 player. 

I really liked a painting by Dot Walker entitled “Gethsemane”.  It was at the very start of the exhibition.  I also thought the screen presentation of the work of Nicholas Mynheer was very moving.

Artists use colour and shape and shade where I would use carefully chosen words and meter and rhyme to put across a message about God.  They use paint or clay or wood where I use words. We are creative creatures and mirror God’s love of variety. 

A lot of work went into the exhibition.  So many people contributed – not just the artists and the poets, but also the huge variety of people who recorded parts of the Easter story so that we could listen as we walked around the exhibition.  Lots of people manned the welcome desk or minded different rooms.  The exhibition was a real demonstration of unity among the individual Christians and different churches here in Inverness.

A lot of prayer also went into the exhibition – my own prayers as I minded the quiet room were that people would reflect on the artwork they had seen and allow it to touch the deepest part of them.

It was a touching testimony to Jesus’ journey from death to life. 

Plaudits must go to Heather Greig, the organiser and curator of the project.  She told me at the end of the day that “next year will be better…” This year was really good.

Inspired by all that art I dug out paper, coloured pencils and a box of soft pastels to create my own piece of art. I don't pretend to have any skill and the recycling bin is full of first, second and third attempts. What I had in mind, but no way of doing it that way, was one of those 3D plastic pictures.  You see two different images when you tilt the picture in different ways. What the enemy might have seen as Jesus' defeat on the cross was always a victory.