An Evening of Encouragement

I confess that I’m not a person who easily joins in things. I put it down to a childhood of never being picked for teams. I figured then that if they don’t want me, well, I don’t want them either.  I can manage all by myself.

Last night I went to “An Evening of Encouragement” at one of the local churches. It was a inter-church event tapping into the not-so-traditional gifts of the Spirit. I was in need of encouragement. It had been a rough previous week and there were one or two spiritual bruises I was nursing. One or two grudges too it turned out!

I was offered a list of options to make appointments for, steered towards selecting a couple to start with.  I could add to the list if I wanted to later.

I hadn’t had any interesting dreams so I didn’t feel the need to opt for dream interpretation. I have a young friend who has very vivid dreams that involve ghosts and zombies but didn’t really know enough detail to ask on his behalf.  Anything involving nails, nail art and hand massages were also out because at this time of the year, under stress, I don’t have nails, just chewed stubs of nails.  A week or two into the summer hols and I will I have a decent set of nails to decorate and massage.  I was left with a word of encouragement and responsive art.

I should just lay it down on the table from the outset – I’m a little bit cynical. I know it isn’t like horoscopes which can be vague enough to fit the circumstances of lots of people, or people can snip at their circumstances to make them fit the word given so I go into these things hesitantly.  There is an element of thinking that God could just tell me without resorting to a third party. Throughout scripture God uses third party messengers all the time. It was kind of arrogant of me to think that I has a special inside track and didn’t need anyone else to speak into my life.

The people giving the word of encouragement were people I knew.  I hate that initial silence at the beginning. Perhaps they had nothing to say.

The word given was Ephesians 5:1-2- “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” There was an almost apologetic shrug and a run-with-it-if-you-want-to body language thing going on. I am a person that likes to be told. “God says” has me jumping to attention.  Take it or leave it doesn’t. God did say, despite the shrug. I struggle to be like Jesus.  Don’t we all? I’m surrounded so often by people who don’t walk in the way of love and I allow myself to be dragged along. I don’t always stand my ground. The “giving myself up” part is really hard as I can be very assertive at times.  God doesn’t ask us to do the impossible without first equipping us and pouring into our lives all the resources we need. Following God, walking in the way of love, giving myself up – all possible.

The second word was in picture form.  Avril saw a candle burning strongly in the dark. The strong wind blows and it feels as if the candle will be extinguished. There’s always oxygen, always the Holy Spirit enabling the candle to burn brightly. She talked about direction and light, and making a difference, and lighting up a room.

I knew all about strong winds and candles almost going out. Hadn’t I lived through the strong winds of someone’s hot anger the previous week? I would like to say that it was uncalled for – the intensity certainly was – but I hadn’t acted wisely. I hadn’t been given any benefit of the doubt. The anvil of anger fell and I was underneath and felt crushed.

I talked a little about the incident. God and I had raked over the embers for most of the weekend. He called me to forgive myself for being so unwise in the first place. I kind of felt I deserved the woman’s anger.  However, she knew a just single moment of my work life and had painted the rest of it in a matching colour. She didn’t know me at all. Forgiving her hadn’t really occurred to me. I was beating myself up with her words. It was nice to put down the stick.

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry but I did. That’s another reason I try to avoid these things. I am sometimes so tightly strung up that I can’t afford to fall apart – but I can’t really afford not to. I’m not designed to live as wound up as I get.

They prayed with me and I was collected and moved on to my next appointment – responsive art. I could have gone home at this point. I was feeling fragile. I didn’t need another spiritual poke in the ribs.

The lady on one side of me got a wonderful picture of a blazing fire in a forest. The lady on the other side of me got a glorious overflowing well. I liked those pictures. I wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop on the words that were spoken about the pictures. My artist drew a picture of an open door. An open door didn’t feel very creative or interesting. But not more than a month ago I had drawn the very same picture at a prayer meeting. I had a man dancing before my door, but it was the same kind of thing. An open door and a hesitation to step through. Another poke it the ribs? Another kick up the backside to shift me?

Not at all. Her door was one I wanted to step through. She talked about God taking me further in my creative journey with Him and a sense of fulfilment and joy. I love writing. Poetry is the one thing that really floats my boat. It’s my sweet spot. God, not just giving me permission to do it, or approval, but saying He is with me in my writing journey is very encouraging. To glorify Him through my poetry makes me want to write better poetry!

There are poetry adventures where I have not been able to whip out the swash and buckle and gut the enemy.  It was encouraging that God was not looking for another poet to do the work instead. He knows what is inside of me and is determined that I should know too. I like that.

The evening did what it said on the tin. I was encouraged.

Cornerstone

See now - God’s precious, treasured living stone

Tossed aside by men who too blind to see

Their feet are caught, they stumble, skin the bone

They glance but never see eternity

See now – the stones He chooses for His own

His living stones that move to do His will

Assembled as a house for Him alone

With praise His holy priests His temple fill

See now – the cornerstone He puts in place

For those who cast their lives, on Him depend

They look and know forgiveness, no disgrace

And own Him, Saviour, Shepherd, Friend

See now – the stone that holds in place the world

Tossed it is, into hungry hearts it's hurled

1 Peter 2:4-8

A Tale of Two Gardeners

Let’s suppose you need a gardener.

Actually, let’s not suppose at all. You do need a gardener. The shed is full of dead electric mowers. No one knows what killed them. They just stopped working. The last mower you purchased was not electric. It was a push-along-cylinder mower. Perhaps it brought back old memories of childhood and long summer days, short grass and a lilac bush in the corner of the garden – leaning at a slight angle where your older sister backed into it one driving lesson.

This mower, the push-along  one, is also dead now. You’ve tinkered with a spanner and fed it oil in its deep recesses – but it’s dead. No one knows exactly what killed it.  It just stopped working.

So, you decide not to buy another mower. It would be cruel to the mower to assign it an early death, just like the others and you are probably not as young as you were. Kneeling down is possible.  Getting back up again, less so.

The mower might be dead but the grass isn’t. It grows. A balance of spring to summer sun, lots of rain and no working mower conspire.  Ankle high.  Knee high.  Thigh high.  The grass grows.

The neighbours frown. You wish you had the courage to invite them to cut your grass for you, and weed the borders while they are at it, if they have such strong objections. You actually think your neighbour did have strong objections to living next door to your wilderness. You think they moved house in the middle of the night. You were greeted the other day by a stranger across the wall introducing herself.

Hiring a gardener is the answer.  There’s a list in the local paper. So you choose one. He doesn’t call back.  You choose another and he or she doesn’t call back. The man that lives around the corner is a gardener. He says he will call round about six. But he doesn’t.

The grass grows – waist high? Not quite.

You get lucky.  The next gardener you phone comes around and gives an estimate. It’s a bit steep – but the grass is high and you think you saw a lion, a tiger and a bear the other night. You agree to the price and tick off on your fingers exactly what is required. He’s not allowed to touch the bluebells and he’s not allowed to spray pesticides anywhere – think about the bees!

You look at the finished garden. Maybe you weren’t lucky at all.  Maybe the man could come to do it because he did such a bad job on other people’s gardens that he was never invited back. You have maybe had a bad hair- cut once upon a time and thought about wearing a paper bag over your head for a while. Paper bags don’t come lawn sized. It’s not good. There are no trim edges and the thistles at the back have been left to threaten the rhubarb. The conifers have been trimmed but my new neighbour mumbles as she sweeps up the mess he leaves on her side of the wall. No, it’s not good. You take a pair of scissors to his business card.

Meanwhile back around the corner, where the other gardener lives with his mother, he mows her lawn, trims the edges and weeds her borders.  She doesn’t have conifers to trim but you imagine he would to a good job and tidy up afterwards. He takes his time. He takes a few days. He pours love onto every blade of grass. He practically serenades the brown soil of the borders.  The garden sighs with happiness.

Now.  A quick change of direction. Suppose you want to be a gardener. Yes, there is a definite tinge of green on the fingers. So, you apprentice yourself out to one of our two gardeners.

Who do you choose?  Go on.  It’s not a trick question. If you are looking for a quick buck or a hundred and the fingers are not that green at all – maybe you will go with gardener number 1.  He is only going to teach you bad habits and he will never nurture your love of grass and ground and grubby worms.

No, you will go with the gardener around the corner. You have watched him work and you have seen the results. The garden loves him and gazes at him with adoration.

Another quick change of direction. Suppose you want to be a Christian. You don’t exactly apprentice yourself out.  Even you know it doesn’t work that way.  But you do have a good look at a couple of Christians.  Maybe there’s one that lives just around the corner. You want to know if being a Christian works! Do these people seem to have the inside track on troubles? Do they know something you don’t know? Are they happy? So you look at their lives.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  God doesn’t wrap his people in cotton wool or clean them up with antiseptic wipes. There is no vaccine against life. But how they deal with life – that tells you whether faith works or not.

Christians! No one is watching in anticipation and glee for you to fall. They are watching with baited breath for you to keep standing.  Only then will they begin to believe that faith in God works.

30 Days Wild

I signed up with the Wildlife Trust to do their “30 Days Wild” challenge. Each day I am being challenged to do a random act of wildness.  I am one week into the challenge and have discovered that wildness, random or otherwise, is hard work.  It doesn’t just happen but has to be planned into my day.

Day One – a thirty minute walk in a nearby forest. It was a quiet walk. I met a man and his dog.  The dog was willing to be friendly but the man wasn’t.

The thing about forest walks is I inevitably end up feeling guilty. I feel bad that I don’t know the names of the different trees.  I can’t identify the different birds by their songs. It’s like gate-crashing a party and not knowing any of the people there!  

Many years ago I taught for a while in a country primary school.  I arrived very early each day and spent the first half an hour in the company of the canteen staff. They spent their first hour drinking tea and gazing out of the kitchen window onto the school playing field. They pointed out various birds by name and talked about nesting pairs and all things wildlife. I knew what venn diagrams looked like and could draw the outline of the island of Australia. I wished I had their knowledge.

Day Two – closer to home this time. I filled up the bird feeders with new stuff. The peanuts had not gone down so well. The suet balls were gone. It has rained quite a bit previously and I could tell that I hadn’t changed the seeds in a while – the seeds had sprouted in the bottom of the feeder, sending up green shoots around the edge of the plastic.

Day Three – nothing to report.  It was a Friday.  I had planned to arrive early at my husband’s work to pick him up.  There was a meal to be eaten and then we were off to a race night raising school funds. I’m not a joiner-in and felt really out of place when all the ladies turned up dressed for Ascot in summer dresses and hats.

I discovered that when it comes to picking winners, I can’t do it without looking at the form – the horses' past race placements. Race nights don’t include that kind of information.  I thought that my husband, being a man who knows horses and horse racing, might actually be able to identify the races for real, but it wasn’t to be.  Everyone on our table won money except for us, although we did win two bottles of wine in the raffle.

As I say, I planned to turn up early to pick my husband and take a walk around the duck pond at his work.  I could have ticked my box but I was delayed.

Day Four – Another “I planned to do…” but it didn’t happen.  It was our monthly creative writing morning.  I planned to leave early and drive further down the road to a spot that looks out over the Beauly Firth. I have no idea why I was delayed – ah, yes, I wrote a poem instead. I’d looked over last month’s meeting notes.  What we wrote then was notes, lines, first drafts that I hadn’t done anything with. I needed to remedy that. What’s the point of creative writing workshops is you never polish up those first drafts.

I went along to the firth later on in the day. The day was glorious. The sky was very big and very blue. The tide was coming in. A few gulls were gliding on air currents. I tried to breathe the peace and tranquillity.

Someone was having a party and the throbbing beat of music and the drifting smoke from a barbeque didn’t do much to promote peace and harmony – though the neighbours seemed to have having a good time. More friendly dogs and unfriendly dog owners!

Day Five – I had witnessed forty four young people being confirmed at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church. It wasn’t my usual place of worship, but I have a young friend who was one of the candidates and I wanted to be there to witness the event.

“Who’s St Harvey?” I whispered to my husband as my finger went down the list of candidates and their confirmation names. 

“He’s the patron saint of invisible rabbits,” was the reply.

This is not true, by the way. Harvey was a bishop in the very early church who was blind. He is a patron saint of bards and troubadours, and the man to pray to for eye infections.

Afterwards, I went to sit beside the River Ness. The last flakes of blossom were falling. I wasn’t watching the river or the trees but indulging in people watching. I loved seeing some couples walk in perfect synchronicity. I remembered my school days and how my best friend and I were matched for walking together.

Day Six – there are just some very busy days and fitting in something wild just isn’t possible. It was poetry at Eden Court. The topic was “Tea”. The poetry group can sometimes feel like that party crashing moment when you know they know lots of poets and poems and you don’t. One man, however, despairing of ever finding a “tea” poem resorted to writing his own. It was a wonderful comparison of men and women drinking tea. I suppose it was stereotyping – the ladies with the delicate tea cups and Earl Grey, and the men with the mugs and PG Tips doing DIY.

It was late. I dug out a nature magazine when I got home. I lusted after a decent camera so I could take good pictures of wildlife. I learned a lot about soil and how it takes 500 years to get good top soil and then a week of wet weather and it’s washed away, or a week of dry weather and it’s blown away. I discovered there are lots of species of bees beyond “bumble” and “honey”. I intend to be a more informed forest walker!

Day Seven – that’s today! My random wildness today was drinking a cup of herbal tea. I admit that it’s not so random. I have quite a collection of boxes with various “use by” and “best before” dates. Today’s selection was peppermint and nettle – Twinings, not homemade. 

The Dandelion Clock and the Hour for Letting Go

Finally.  Yes, finally I have got someone to come around and mow the lawn and clear the borders of weeds. They arrive tomorrow with rakes and spades, mowers and strimmers – but not weed killer. I gave the man strict instruction to spray nothing.  I may not have a liking for insects but birds do.  Enough that so many gardens are paved and pebbled over, not mine, I say, not mine!

I have been saying a last farewell to the long grass and the dandelion clocks. The grass has got to that interesting stage with vertical lines from the tall grass.  There is always movement and the grass seeds are ready to be tossed on the wind. A cloud of tiny winged things scatter everywhere I place my feet and the lawn is dotted with forget-me-nots and buttercups. What’s not to love? I’m not sure that I like the manicured look but my neighbours will stop frowning at me.

I know I should wage war on dandelions and dig down to the roots to get rid of them – but I like them. I am glad that God doesn’t rank flowers according to garden centre pedigree.  I like their persistence. I like their deep shade of yellow.  I like their clocks. I like their mechanism for reproducing. It’s a perfect strategy.  Over a hundred and fifty seeds, equipped with parachutes, just waiting to be loose enough to take to the air.

In our weekly prayer meeting I drew a picture of a dandelion clock with a few seeds sailing away. If the dandelion clock held on to its seeds and refused to surrender them to the breeze they would go nowhere. They would just shrivel on the end of the stalk. They would not be allowed to find a bit of soil and send down roots. I suspect that some gardeners, the lawn manicurists and the border patrol types would not object. There are plenty of out-of-the-garden places they could go – let them go there! But the breeze doesn’t discriminate.

I would like to have more of a dandelion mentality. The truth about Jesus I have learned over the years should be like the dandelion seeds loose and ready to take to the air.  The Holy Spirit blows where it wills, but I stubbornly hold on. My truth I would like to pass on to someone who is worthy of it, who won’t brush it aside, or smirk at it.  I want to know, before I pass it on, that it will germinate in a ready-to-listen heart and it will be bear fruit. It’s not as if it’s the only seed I possess. There is a lot of truth in me.  But it’s not for staying in me.  It’s for giving away.

A wise friend of mine suggested that the world, not always embracing the spiritual or the Christian, has of late become quite hostile. Humanists and atheists alike are not content to live and let live. It’s hunting season all year round and the prey is the man, woman or child of faith. Calling us idiots and fools they want to skin us of our faith and present us as naked, stripped-of-all-superstition life forms that finally face up to the real world.  They insist we will be happier knowing the truth. They are doing us a favour! Tough love!

We stay silent and hold onto our seeds of truth because we don’t want to be called idiots and fools. How the world labels us matter too much. We should not let the world dictate to us about truth and the real world. Their's is a looking at the world with only one eye barely open.

The breeze doesn’t discriminate – it blows on field and garden alike. The dandelion clock strikes the hour for letting go. The breeze comes and it holds nothing back.  The poet in me would like the hear the inner dandelion wishing every seed the longest of journeys, the brownness of soil, the warm touch of sunshine and the absence of trowels and green fingered gardeners.

The Christian in me knows about the path, and the rocky soil. Knows too about the choking weeds and thistles. But right at the forefront the Christian in me remembers the good soil and the harvest.

I pray for every seed of truth the best of journeys, readiness of spirit and soul to embrace God’s truth, the transforming touch of Holy Spirit and the resilience to flourish despite the enemy’s trowel.

Spiritual Blessings in the Heavenly Realms

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." (Ephesians 1:3)

I read this verse earlier this week. I wasn't feeling very blessed at all - not on earth. I sat for a while and wondered about the blessings in the heavenly realms.

I was reminded of a poem I wrote many years ago. We had a worship workshop.  The theme might have been something like "less is more" and involved learning how not to have everyone playing every note and to not have everyone singing every word.

We were asked to bring along a few lines that we could use in worship - the spirit-led part when we came to the end of a song and moved into something more spontaneous. The fledgling poet in me couldn't stick at two or three lines and a poem emerged. As the musicians played a sequence of chords I sought out a melody and launched into singing the lyrics of the poem. It worked for a verse before I began laughing. It felt so awkward trying to mould the words into a melody. It was a poem that wasn't looking for a tune. The man leading the workshop also laughed. He commended me for my bravery in rising to the occasion, but agreed the poem was too strong, too structured and wouldn't bend to music.

I think the words emerged from my personal Brethren Church experience.  The hymns we sang were strong and repetitive. We sang them with a spirit that marched rather than soared. I loved songs that were full of doctrine and had a melody and meter that lent itself to singing.

Written in every line are the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms.

All this is mine

No longer bound, for You’ve set me free

No longer blind, for my eyes can see

No longer lost, I'm a lamb that's been found

No longer sinking - I'm on solid ground.

No longer in darkness, I stand in the light

No longer defeated, for I've won the fight

No longer silent, my lips sing Your praise

No longer aimless, I walk in Your ways

No longer broken, in You, I'm made whole

No longer at war, Your peace floods my soul

No longer a stranger, for You call me 'Friend'

No other allegiance, I'm yours to the end.

No longer in Adam, but in Christ I stand

Salvation secured, I'm safe in Your Hand

All this is mine, through Your Grace alone

Through Jesus...My Saviour... Redeemer...My Own.

Shaking Off the Dust

“Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck.  Daughter Zion, now a captive.” Isaiah 52:2

How much does dust weight? I ask because I have done a clean-up this morning and pulled out things from walls and moved boxes.  After an hour and a half of dusting the long undisturbed corners of my house I am sweating. I am not glowing.  I know glowing and I know sweating – come to think of it, I almost always sweat. I swear I have more than my share of sweat glands.  I don’t know how to look cool.

How big the dust particles are and where they came from makes a difference. Particles of dust from a stone weigh heavier than particles of dust from old clothes.

How much might the dust of forgotten dreams weigh? Or disappointed hopes? Or the dust of last year’s successes? The dust from neglected friendships?

Wednesday it was when God drew attention to my dust.

He told me that I was carrying excess dust. My life had fallen into a pattern. Just as in a dusty house you might be able to trace the route someone took through the room by looking at the footsteps in the dust, God said he could see my comings and goings clearly.  There were just places that I had stopped going and the dust in those places had settled – places in worship, dancing places, singing in the spirit places, kneeling on the floor places.  The kneeling on the floor that I no longer do is down to a dodgy knee. Getting up afterwards is an issue. But, you get the picture. I have surrendered a lot of the things I used to do. I am comfortable.

Wednesday it was when Broken Walls came to town. I had every intention of going.  There are things where my heart really isn’t in it and I allow myself to talk myself out of going. This was not one of those events.

“But are you going to spectate, or to participate?” said God.

I didn’t know whether I was allowed to participate. Was it a concert? Broken Walls is a band made up of native North America Indians.  Some of them have Scottish connections. They communicate a message of freedom and respect told through music, songs, dance and storytelling.

They have a Mohawk water drum! They invited my friend, George, to take his seat round the drum and join in. I have seen my share of westerns and know about Indian drums and war dances. On Wednesday I was introduced to Healing dances, singing and dancing over a patch of ground before building a tepee and a Good Dance song that celebrates unity and friendship. Just for a while I was an eagle. Every step matters. I am sure that there are right steps and wrong steps as in any professional dance but what caught my heart on Wednesday was just dancing. It was a joy to fling arms and stamp feet and know that with each step I was making a stand against the enemy.  In the Healing Dance I knew that I was claiming healing – that dust that had been weighing me down was being shaken off.  The inner Mel that had slowly been pushed down by tiresome circumstances began to stand tall. The music offered me freedom and I took it. 

The band abandoned the big drum and picked up guitars. The volume was loud. The floor shook. I decided that I could do without my hearing aids. The ponytail of one of the Indians was shaken loose as he sat inside a normal drum set hammering away.  He did a drum solo. I wished I was fluent in drum-speak – the drums whispered to one another, they spoke, they listened and they responded.  There was a conversation happening and I wanted to tap into it. It was awesome.  Some people would have called it prophetic.

We were reminded that we were all created to be different, to be unique. We are created - I am created to do something that only I can do. I can never be satisfied when I am not doing what I was created to do. When I know my place in God’s Kingdom, and step into the role God has planned for me there is so much joy to be had.

Wednesday was followed by Thursday, Friday and the weekend. I might not be dancing on the outside, but on the inside?

Since then I’ve not stopped dancing

I’m not keen on sitting down

I love to feel beneath my feet

The firmness of the ground.

Strictly Forest Ballroom

Beneath the rays of the glitter ball sun

On a forest path a dance has begun

Two butterflies waltz on gossamer wings

A light leafy bough gently dips and swings

Lindy-hop birds lightly skip on a branch

Scattering blossom in a soft avalanche

A tuxedoed beetle all dapper in black

A bouncer watching the crowd from the back

A flush of flies in a frenzied display

Out of control and in everyone’s way

A fat drunken bee kissing flowers in blue

Humming a melody as he drifts through

A grey boulder clad in a thick moss cloak

Refuses to dance with a sprightly oak

Too soon it’s all over, they all drift away

But promise to gather some other day

Dem Laptop Blues

It was after the Easter holidays that the workplace replaced the desktop computers with laptops. It came with an untidy mess of cables.  At the end of each day it was to be carefully locked away in a filing cabinet or a cupboard. I made a diagram of which cable went where so I would be able to assemble it the next day. No one told me what each cable did but I worked it out.

As we moved from one desk to another, the laptop came with us. We were to detach it from the cables, carry it to the other desk and the plug into another set of cables. It was tedious, but like highly trained seals we caught on.

Docking stations began to pop up about the place. The untidy mess of cables was tidied up. The laptop clipped on to the top of it, lid closed down, and stand-alone monitors and keyboards would take away the need to squint at the small laptop screen.

On Thursday I took my laptop to a desk with a docking station – I didn’t have one yet. I clipped the laptop and hands hovered over the big keyboard and monitor. Nothing happened. Nothing kept happening. Eventually someone came over. Her advice was to remove my laptop and pull out the relevant leads from the docking station and plug them into my laptop. Hey presto…I had lift off! I did my stuff.

Back at my own desk, the one without a docking station, I plugged cables back in. Nothing happened.  Nothing kept happening. The blue ended cable that connected to the projector to the laptop wouldn’t do its stuff.  That’s not quite true – the laptop screen was blank, but the projector screen wasn’t. I could use the screen and the remote if I twisted my head and pointed it over my shoulder. It wasn’t ideal but I worked with it for a while. At the end of the day, despite knowing I had coffee appointment, I stayed to see if I couldn’t fathom it all out. Let’s just say that the cleaner and I gave up after him standing on a table and pushing buttons on the projector. The laptop screen was still black and the picture on the projector screen was now upside down.  I dashed off a memo to the workplace in general, sending out an SOS.

I was frazzled to say the least.  I was also late.  I spent five minutes reverse parking somewhere close.  It was private carpark happy to open the barrier after 5.00. It was 4.15 and the barrier was up. Notices in yellow warned me that CTV camera were operating. My dance with the car, in and out of a space had been recorded and it was just 4.15. I sensed the possibility of a fine and drove off.

I was also breaking in new shoes. This little detail tells you I had the promise of a blister on the back of my heel.

My coffee companion was a no show.  I ordered tea and a cake anyway. The tea was good, the cake was stale. Always be suspicious of a cake with lots of frosting.  My domestic science teacher’s words came back to me.

Thursday night is prayer meeting night. I seriously didn’t want to go. I knew I would end up crying over my bad afternoon.

I went. I picked up my Bible (one should never go into battle without one’s sword) – and grabbed my stiff upper lip from its dropped and quivering state and headed off.  I repeated the mantra “I will not cry!”

I didn’t cry. In the midst of worship and prayer, I didn’t want to cry. Being surrounded by church family, the angels in heaven and God in the midst of us – I didn’t want to cry. Tomorrow I would have to deal with the laptop and the projector and the upside down picture on the projector screen – but that was tomorrow.

There was a lot of love in the room – yeah, that old cliché! There was. I felt loved though no one told me I was loved. All the angst of the afternoon – the laptop horror, the parking CTV images, the no-show coffee friend, the stale cake and the sore heels – I knew myself to be deepy loved.

Isolation is the worst kind of strategy when things are not going well! Take it to the family. They may not have the solutions you want but they have what you really need!

I went home.  I hummed a tune as I drove.  Has I a tail, it would have been wagging.

The idea of a poem was in my head. The next morning I wrote this.

Mu baby got dem laptop blues…oh yeah

Mu baby got dem laptop blues

Dey took away her desktop

Now she’s hitting the booze

At work there was a docking station on my desk. The SOS memo had been effective. The boss had sent the IT man to solve it. The projector screen was the right way up. The laptop still wasn’t talking to the other technology. A maths teacher came by and pressed lots of buttons and the laptop fired into action. The IT man also came by to check I was up and running. A senior management lady visited to check I was fine.

I emailed my poem to everyone and all the laptop and docking station troubles surfaced from all the corners of the building. Perhaps the poem had given them permission to admit that they had their own laptop blues. Everyone had their own story to share over coffee in the staffroom. The IT man had been told to write a troubleshooting article. It felt like family – and we haven’t felt like that in a long time.

There was a lot of love in my workplace!

Altar Boy

There are some churches that have dispensed with so much that is traditional. So many celebrations along the way that punctuate the year have been passed over. So much of the ritual and the liturgy that frames many traditional church services just don’t happen any longer in many churches.

On Thursday I went to a mass celebrating the Day of Ascension – that part at the end of the gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts where Jesus is taken up into heaven. I had been invited by a young friend of mine. He told me that his confirmation class would be there and he would be taking an active role in the service.

He has plans to become a priest, my young friend. The teenage girl in me cries out for him not to enter the priesthood.  He would make someone a fine husband one day. He's a lovely boy! His mind is not quite made up but nearly there.

My husband is wrestling with the idea of going to confession so that he can participate in Holy Communion. It has been a while, years, since his last confession. He fell out with the church in his teenage years, as many teenagers do. He began wearing a beret and talked of Marx and socialism which the church didn’t encourage.  Confession was more of a negotiation rather than a flat acknowledgment of sin, and penance and absolution were skillfully worded.

My friend and my husband both love the Roman Catholic Church. They are both comfortable with the ritual.  It doesn’t replace God, or become the focus of their worship.  All the elements that make up mass are like stepping stones drawing them nearer to God’s throne. Where some might see meaningless actions, they don’t.

I have to admit that there is a bit of me that’s jealous.  I grew up in a Catholic home and went to mass.  I went through all the rites of passage.  I didn’t love it though.  It was what we did, a kind of external thing without the warm beating heart. I learned only that God was remote and I was far away from Him and would never measure up.

A friend reminded me today that a lack of ritual and the empty walls of a modern, non-Roman Catholic Church, for all its charismatic leanings, can be unsatisfying too. It can be hard to engage the spirit when there is nothing that appeals to any of the senses.  It makes for a bland feasting menu when it comes to worship.  We see only the danger of turning the objects into what we worship and fail to grasp that they can lead us to the throne of God.

I loved what the priest said during the service as he talked to the confirmation class.  He commented on the evening light shining through the stained glass windows and the patches of colour on the walls. He waved his hand at statues and candles, at the altar and the vestments. He reminded us that we were not there to merely look at all that stuff but to be drawn onto a higher path. As we sing the songs and speak the litany something of God’s way of living should filter into our soul and spirit and be seen in how we walk through our daily lives serving one another.

Altar Boy

A cloud of sweet fragrance

Purifying, sanctifying

An echo of another cloud

an encounter with God on

a holy mountain

He loves the smell of incense

A steady rhythm, a slow chant

Sounds and words on his tongue

Repentance expressed

Forgiveness embraced

Promises claimed

He loves the sound of the liturgy

Busy windows

Stain walls as evening light floods in

Stories told in rainbow colours

Dust motes transfigured

Beams of soft haze

He loves the play of light

Dry on his tongue

Melting wafer that bears so much

Wet on his tongue

Crimson fullness of wine

Transforms soul and spirit

He loves the intimacy of communion

Skin thin and fragile

Ink black and paper white

Crowded words

Their words, his heart in harmony

Read and consumed

He loves the feel of the prayer book in his hands

A priest’s graceful wave

At all this ritual

This isn’t the end of the journey, he says

These things are only lights along a path that

Leads to the Saviour

And lets us lean on Him

Doing the "Do"

Last night while watching Morgan Freeman explore ideas about the nature of evil from different religious and scientific perspectives, I did some ironing.  You might not be able to tell from the size of the ironing pile still there that I had made any inroads but I did!

A man in prison was interviewed about his history of serious crimes against women. His brain scan was picked over by a neuroscientist. The neuroscientist said that the man with his crimes was wired differently in his brain to most people. He had pathways missing and bits that didn’t light up. The neuroscientist declared the criminal unable to tell right from wrong, but did not excuse him from any responsibility,

I ironed a t-shirt belonging to my husband. Fastened on the T-shirt, somewhere in the vicinity of the heart was a pink ribbon – something to do with breast cancer. It was girly-pink, not boy-pink and, perhaps not something a boy would consent to wear.  I thought about the contrast between the man and his crimes and my husband and his pink ribbon and what they said about the two of them. Could the man and his crimes ever wear a pink ribbon?

My husband has a collection of ribbons, enamel pins and plastic bracelets for different causes. He doesn’t just put the money in the box and the ribbon in his pocket – he wears them long after the campaign has finished. He wears his heart, not on his sleeve, but on his wrist, or on his lapel or on his heart in a pink ribbon.

I was reading the story of the rich man stumbling up to Jesus. What could he do to inherit eternal life? If it was down to being justified by the law he might have scraped something together with his keeping from a boy some of the Ten Commandments.

“You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone. Honour your father and mother.” Mark 10:19

There are too many of the commandments are missing for the man to be that confident. None of the ones about God are listed, or the one about coveting the neighbour’s donkey. How easy it would be measure our qualification for inclusion in the kingdom on the basis of what we didn’t do. The man with his crimes – he did commit murder.  He has excluded himself through his actions from God’s Kingdom – or perhaps not depending on what he does later.

Murder is defined as “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Someone takes away the life of another and plans to do so. What would be the opposite of that? If murder is the “do not”, what would be the “do”. How might we restore life to someone? Maybe it’s a word of healing that restores their life.  Maybe it’s a word of encouragement that restores a broken spirit within.

To steal is to “take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.” Again with the taking, not a life this time but a person’s possessions. What would be the opposite of that? If stealing is the “do not” what would be the “do”? What should we be giving to someone rather than taking away?

The rich man perhaps never had the need to kill someone. He certainly never had the need to steal from someone. But he had the riches to give to someone and take away their need to steal. Maybe Jesus would never have challenged the rich man if he had been using his riches to bless other people.

Living life according to “do not”, when we probably “would not” anyway seems to give us an advantage. It is a different story when we work out what the “do” is in each case and make steps to do it, not to earn our way into the kingdom, but to show that we are participators in it.

Poetry in Motion

Taketh the temperature of

the fools above ground and

compareth it with that of the dead beneath

the sloping graves

Verily, art they not the same?

Scorneth they the warm fireside hearth and

the red wine that stirreth their words

Cold, cold and thrice cold was

the burial ground at Kiltearn

More life, methinks in fallen stones than

In the wits of the living

Exit and entrance there was but one –

an unkissed and sighing gate

Players? In truth a happy band of three –

nay, four if thou countest the angry moon

mayhaps four hundred if thou countest

the awakened dead

Did e’er Shakespeare cometh to this lonely ruin

to glimpse the sea through these trees

to stand upon this grass, this moss

This day – this cold, cold day, verily he cameth

Not him, but an echo of his words

proclaimed through other men’s lips

Fat crows standeth still on winter trees

The eye of heaven shineth not as

the rough wind whistleth round the church

Draw hither, fair Titania

Oberon, bloweth away thy contagious fog

Thou art not forgotten

Thy story lives this day resurrected

by your new lovers

The event was “Poetry in Motion”, organised by Creativity in Care. It was the 400^th anniversary of William Shakespeare. Poets and writers all, we met not on some blasted heath, but at Kiltearn Burial Ground to walk a while and listen to some of his famous speeches. Not a sunny day, not a warm day, we sat on picnic chairs nestled in blankets while our hosts acted out Romeo and Juliet and tested our knowledge of Hamlet and Macbeth.

Of course, we all had our parts to play.  Fat crows, frozen roses and the angry moon dragged us from our seats into the world of “let’s pretend”.

It seemed almost obscene to laugh as loud as we did, in such a quiet and tranquil place. Pranksters and players on a patch of sloping ground, we chanted our way through Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 11 Scene 1, striking a fat crow pose when the moment came.

 It wasn’t a day for being outdoors too long and we found shelter in a café. We compiled a list of words describing our outing – COLD was there in capital letters.  Free to use the words or not, and encouraged to mimic Shakespeare we set about writing something.

I could tell by the banter that they were a group that knew each other well. I’d met some of them before at other events organised by Creativity in Care. They laughed together.

It won’t be the cold cemetery that I will remember today, or the words of Shakespeare spoken among the gravestones. It won’t be the picnic chairs or the fat crows we pretended to be. It won’t even be the poetry.

The laughter among good friends – that’s what I’ll take from the day.

Yes, laughter.

I think Shakespeare would have laughed too.

"As One" - Pray for Scotland

Remember Jesus’ story where the certain man prepared a great banquet and sent out the invitations? The guests come out with excuses why they can’t attend, yes? And the servants are sent to collect the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame from the streets and alleys?

I got an invitation to a prayer meeting on Monday.  It was organised by “Pray for Scotland”. A member of the team had a picture of a shield.  The Romans used a ‘shield’ formation where they would stand together and click shields, front, back and sides.  The soldiers in the middle would hold their shields above their heads and the whole group would be shielded from the enemy’s arrow. , To get them into at formation the Roman Officer would say ‘As One!’ The formation was only as good as the unity demonstrated by the soldiers.  It was a powerful image and a shield was made and the group took the shield on a tour of Scotland, encouraging churches to pray together calling on God to give help to the nation of Scotland.

Back to the invitation. I hadn’t just bought a field, or a pair of oxen that I need to try out. I haven’t just got married either. I had, however, had a long day, ending in a series of meetings that stretched into early evening. Then came my list – I was tired, very tired. It was raining. Finding a parking space near enough to the venue was going to be tough. There were interesting programmes on the TV and a pile of ironing.

“I’m going,” said God. 

I’m a sucker for the presence of God. If He was going, then I was going too. When God went to prayer meetings extraordinary things happened and I didn’t want to miss out on any of His extraordinary things. I had enough time to slam something into the microwave before heading off.

The shield was there – a lovely piece of workmanship, but also a focus to remind us of what we were doing and why.

Worship was led by a trio of musicians – a guitarist, a violin player and a cellist. They created a wonderful atmosphere for worship taking a Celtic theme of music and song. Awesome stuff.  Very stirring.

God was sitting next to me.

“Remember those days when the church did times of refreshing?” He said.

It was a phase we went through.  The midweek meeting moved out of people’s homes and into the local community centre. There was no structure to the meeting – just a man, or woman, with a guitar and a few chord sequences and the church people standing, or sitting, or kneeling, or lying flat on the floor – whatever a person felt led to do. We sang. We prayed. We danced. We wept. We laughed – as the Spirit directed.

“Remember you, in those meetings?

I was always near the front and I was always there, in the presence of God.  Most times I could have been in an empty room for all I noticed what others were doing.

“I saw you then.  Where are you now?”

At the forefront of my mind over the last few weeks has been my application for voluntary redundancy. I’m a couple of years off retirement. I think of myself as not young any longer and I suppose I have clothed myself in an older person’s mind set. Worship has become quiet serenity rather than wild dancing.

God left the seat and headed to a bit of empty space in the room, nodding his head for me to follow. I unravelled the scarf from around my neck and together we began to find the flag-waver in me.

I had a sense of the throne room of God, much the same as what Isaiah saw.  I just had a sense of it. I didn’t see it. It was just a sense of it. In Isaiah 6 he was there.  He saw the seraphim and heard them calling to one another and had the hot coal placed on his tongue. My sense was as if my heart had been ripped out of me and thrown into the fire. I had a sense of it catching fire, being retrieved – this burning object – and placed back inside of me. It was just a sense of it. I wasn’t there in the throne room.

“Better now, are we?” said God.

And I was.

In This Together?

“I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.” Isaiah 45:3

I read this Bible verse sometime last week. I will leave you to read it in context, but the lines captured my imagination. What are God’s hidden treasures?  Where are these secret places where His riches are stored? I confess not to know.

I brought the word in church this morning. I have, not just a bee, but a whole hive of bees in my bonnet about being the body of Christ. We read the Bible not as a story about God’s people and the love He shows towards them, but as a story about God’s person – me.  The Bible is written not to me but to us. OK salvation is an individual surrender of a person to God but then God plants us into a church, a local expression of the body of Christ. Being a Christian and not being a part of a church is an impossibility. People might choose not to go to church, but that’s never God’s choice for them.

“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their work.  If they fall down one can help the other up.  But pity those who fall and have no one to help them up.  Also if two lie down together they will keep warm.  But how can one keep warm alone.  Though one may be overpowered two can defend themselves.  A chord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4v9-12}

I ran through the main points of what I was going to say with my husband.  Had I missed anything? Had I said too much, too little? Did I labour a point too long? Did my illustrations add to the message or were they a distraction?  He told me a story that featured in an episode of “The West Wing” – he is currently working his way through a boxed set.

A man was walking along a road and fell into a hole.  It was a deep hole, smooth sides, with no way out. He called out for help.  A doctor happened to be passing by.  The man in the hole shouted loudly, “Help me, please!” The doctor scribbled on a piece of paper and tossed the paper into the hole.  It was a prescription – tranquilisers or painkillers, nothing of any use to the man in the hole.  A priest came by and the man in the hole shouted, “Help me, please!” The priest scribbled on a piece of paper and tossed the paper into the hole. It was a prayer, eloquently written, but nothing of any use to the man in the whole. A friend, Joe, passed by. The man in the hole shouted loudly, “Hey, Joe! Help me, please!” Joe, without another thought jumped into the hole with him. Nice as it was to see Joe, the man was not happy. “Why did you do that? Now we are both stuck in the hole!” Joe tapped the side of his nose. “Ahh,” he said, “I have been in this hole before…and I know how to get out of it.”

Someone who had never been in the same hole I found myself in is of no use to me. We spend too much time looking for an easy life and avoiding the struggle. We want comfort. We want spring without the showers, or summer without the sunburn.

We have no comfort to offer others because we have skirted around the difficult times they are struggling with. I think that is the hidden treasure and the riches in secret places – the things we learn about God, about ourselves, about other people, about the enemy and about all the resources we have access to.  That’s the treasure. The dark places, the difficult places, the painful places – these are the hidden places and secret places – the very places we avoid. 

I’m not saying we take great pains to make our lives miserable just so we can access this treasure, but I think we need to stop avoiding the hard times, walk through them rather than around them, with God, whether we feel him close or not, and collect the treasure as we go.

In This Together?

I have no use for you today

You have no words of truth to say

My depth of pain you do not know

You have no scars or wounds to show

You tip toe round the pain in life

And glean no treasure from the strife

How sad, you cannot comfort me

Or wipe away the tears you see

My God allows both light and shade

I say to you “Be not afraid”

Through fire and storm He carries you

His faithful care will see you through

He tells you, “Go!” with broken heart

A healing touch to then impart

To lift the man who’s fallen down

And smooth away his troubled frown

What He Has Said...

“What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do.” Isaiah 46:11b

We are an inattentive people.  We have a short attention span and an even shorter memory – except for my husband who remembers everything! He quizzes me on dates and places of various films we have seen over the years and hands out points when I get it right! The points in this case don’t add up to prizes.

I have been reading through some chapters in Isaiah. Verse 4 of the same chapter made me smile:-

“Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

There are days when I feel older than I ought to. I am encourages that God hasn’t put me out to pasture but has new things for me to do.

I was thinking about what God has said to me over the last few weeks and what I have done with them. I’d like to say that I have built them into my prayers for myself and for other people but it’s stretching the truth somewhat.

During our church prayer meetings there is an opportunity to worship and to listen to God. There’s plenty of paper and pens for people to write things down or draw pictures.  And there’s a time to share with others what God is saying. I draw something, usually. I can’t draw as well as I write poetry but I think they have some merit.

Dancing on the Doorstep of Opportunity

OK so the man doesn’t look like he is dancing. He looks like he is freaking out.

I thought this might be the doorway into heaven and people dancing close but not yet making the commitment to cross the threshold. In the gospels it speaks of counting the cost – the king going out to war or the man building a tower and working out whether the task can be done. People tend to think about what they might lose by committing themselves to God, rather than what they might gain. They see the Christian life in terms of “thou shalt not”.

This speaks to me of my own doorways, not into heaven, but into the greater works that Jesus promised we would do. I skip around the steps hesitating to commit myself. The task is greater than I am – but I don’t do it by myself so it should not be a problem.

The Colour Grey

The other day I was reading an article in one of the Sunday papers. The most recent census answers were being compared with a census from fifty years ago. The conclusions they drew about religious faith were not encouraging. There were less people confessing faith in God, or attendance at church. “What are we doing wrong?” I asked God.

“You’re too grey!”

I had this idea of God going through a wardrobe and tossing out old clothes that were out of date and frumpy, the grey, the brown and the blacks. They represented prejudices, resentments and grudges that people hold on to.  They might also be habits, ruts in our thinking and reluctances to explore new ways of worship or prayer.

God began filling up the wardrobe with colourful attire. The robe of righteousness, He assured me, wasn’t grey.

Ask Me

 

In this picture someone was walking beside a river.  It looked as if a cloud of tiny flies swarmed around their head. Possibly one of my first encounters with Scottish midges occurred when a lassie from the church invited us out on a picnic.  There was a nice wood not far from the house.  We found a clearing, plenty of sunshine through the trees, and spread out the feast. Seconds only went by before the cloud of midges descended. I am sweet meat. I became bitten meat and itchy meat and driven-to-distraction meat.

In my picture, however, a closer look revealed not midges at all but questions. The person was plagued by questions.

Standing nearby was someone wearing a badge with the words “Ask Me”.  So often we think in terms of going out to people and witnessing or door knocking – taking the gospel to people. God was saying that we are coming into a season where people are going to come to us and ask their questions. We need to be ready with our answers, or with our honesty in saying we don’t know but we’ll find out and get back to them.

The Treasure in My Heart

 

When Jesus called His disciples it was firstly to be with Him, and then later to preach and minster to people.  The being with Him was to take priority.  It was in the times of being with Him that they gathered treasure, for want of a better word, the equipping and resourcing for the mission.

As much as spending time of Jesus is good for us, it’s also about taking what we have – the treasure in jars of clay – and giving it away.

A friend of mine way praying that she would talk about Jesus more confidently with her neighbours. The treasure she has to give away comes out of the time she spends with Jesus.

So, that, among other things is what God has been saying to me. It’s now recorded so I can read it again and again and let the words fire my prayers.

Feel free to pray with me.

Cry With Me

I added another book to the pile of quiet time fodder on the coffee table last week. My time with God in the morning is no longer a quick snack but becoming a five course banquet.

“A Prayer in the Life” by James Whitbourn came out of an invitation to 65 famous celebrities sharing a favourite prayer and a time in their life that it relates to. As ever with famous celebrities that are plenty of strangers among them. My own list of celebrities would be very different.

The book kicks off with the Marchioness of Aberdeen, and Haddo House and the Haddo House Choral and Operatic Society – not a household name or place or society to me.

June talks about the death of her husband who she loved deeply.  She went for long walks and railed at God about the unfairness of it all. She reached a stage of acceptance and serenity. She went on to say that the face she presented to the world was “high hearted happiness and good courage”.  She believed it was important to show people that they could weather the storms and carry on in the face of difficulty.

“If I am feeling low, I shut myself away.  That’s always been my motto.  And right at the beginning, when I was totally devastated and the whole of my life was shattered, I never wept in public.  I used to go and cry alone, because I think tears are very private things.”

I am not sure that I agree with her, entirely. I am not sure that crying alone is the best thing to do, or even that tears are very private things.

As part of the Lent poems I was supposed to write a poem about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. I am on to it.

“And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19v41-44

Weeping in Jesus’ time was a social thing.  Tears were meant to be seen. Empathy and support were meant to be elicited from a watching crowd. Tears were expression of  attatchement and a confirmation of a social bond. You can work out what it meant to stay dry eyed.

People preparing for funeral of loved ones would hire keening women.  They were professional weepers whose job was to simply get people to cry.  It was a skill that older women passed on to the younger women. Perhaps that is what is wrong with our society today – we avoid weeping.  Like the Marchioness of Aberdeen “we never weep in public.”

In the Old Testament when God weeps it is more than empathy or support He is looking for. Some people don’t like the idea of God weeping at all – they want their God to be invulnerable.  Besides, it’s a poetic contrivance anyway to suggest that God weeps anyway as He is spirit.

In the book of Jeremiah, God weeps because He is on the verge of losing His son, Israel. He loves Israel and they are on the verge of exile. God weep because of His love, but He weeps too because He is agent of Israel’s exile. He cannot leave their idolatry unpunished, but it hurts Him to punish them. I wonder if this is what all parents feel – the need to discipline and the hurt it causes not just the child to punish, but also themselves. That’s probably why some children are left to run wild because their parents don’t want the pain that inflicting punishment brings.

When God weeps, He wasn’t to get more than sympathy and comfort.  He want people to realise that they are causing His tears. He wants people to acknowledge their part in His tears. He wishes to move people towards repentance and restoration. They should soothe His tears by changing their behaviour and taking away the exile that is coming.  There is a detachment of God from His people that came as He prepared to punish them, a withdrawing of his help and support. He is instructions for Jeremiah were to “not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy.”

Jesus, when He wept over Jerusalem, perhaps it was also more than a request for sympathy and soothing.  God in human flesh, He want people to acknowledge their part in His tears, to move towards repentance and restoration. He wanted them to weep with Him.

Jeremiah 8v18 reads “My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me” and later in v22 “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” Just as nation had no peace then, Jesus was saying that there would be no peace now. In putting to death the Prince of Peace, peace was hidden from their eyes. For Jesus it was not a taking away of peace, or love or of mercy. It was a restoring of all those things. People had chosen to turn away from them, convinced that their own brand was far better, less costly, distributed to others on their own terms.

I think we all need to cry a lot more in the presence of God – to cry with Him.  

Pilate

Sometime last week or the week before I was talking to a group of young people about the teleological argument – you know, the way you do. It’s the one about design, how an explosion, like the Big Bang, should create chaos rather than order - evidence for God, perhaps. Maybe there are chaotic parts of the universe, but Earth-wise we are precisely tuned for life.

The question that started it all began with “If you were God what parts of the universe would you keep/get rid of/like/not like. I mentioned wasps as my candidates for getting rid of.  They talked about religion.  It was days after Belgium.  Islamic State at their suicide bombing worst. It seemed easier to get rid of all religion rather than hold on to specific good bits.  I tried to bring Mother Teresa into the conversation and Gandhi and said that without their tireless work, we would be in a worse state. I also pointed out that non-religious people did as much bad as their religious counterparts. There was almost the gentle pat on the head and a concession for me personally because I was religious and perhaps a part of the good bits – but some kind of acknowledgement that  I wasn’t living in the real world.

Sometime during the last couple of weeks I have been confronted with Pontius Pilate. As was my usual habit before writing a poem, I read a few articles. He wasn’t the neutral man that people say he is, nor was he manipulated or afraid of Ciaphas and the religious leaders. Pilate wasn’t a governor struggling to keep control of a volatile country. He was a part of the elite of the Roman Empire, a part of Caesar’s extended family.  His aim was to protect the status of the elite – for that alone he would never have fitted in to the kingdom Jesus came to bring.

Pilate was responsible for the death of Jesus – because it suited his purpose.  In the process he had won a declaration from the religious leaders that Caesar was their only king. I felt Samuel turn in his tomb at this point – all his prophecies about Israel asking for a king way, way back coming to fruition.

I know that Jesus never said to Pilate, “Follow me.” In every encounter Jesus had there was an unasked invitation, perhaps. I imagined Pilate refusing the offer, explaining how there were aspects of the Kingdom that he found impossible to comply with. The elite, like Pilate, were unlikely to be the ones who will turn the other cheek.  In truth, the more I thought about it, the more Pilate seemed to take on a George Osbourne/David Cameron face – and elite maintaining the elite at the cost of despising the ones not elite.

The second stanza crawled out from beneath the woodwork and wrote itself into the poem. Men like Pilate, the men of power and cruelty, have found their way in to the hierarchy. They are not there to serve the community of faith but to be served. There is too much history of the abuse of the authority of the church, an elite maintaining an elite, to be able to say that we are always part of the good bit.

Men Like Me

there is no room in

Your kingdom for

men like me -

the ones who cannot see

their poverty of spirit and

refuse to shed tears

who wage war on meekness and

never really bend the knee

all other allegiances not unmade -

men of power and cruelty

yet they still find a way in and

make a place for themselves

hooking up, tapping in, syphoning off and

never for God’s sake

The Scars on My Heart

My ears ache
Dreading to hear the words
You will not say

My will demands
Your silence
And yet pain consumes all will

Just say the words
“Father, save Me..”
And I will rush to Your side

I will rip the nails
Dragging them bloodstained
From Your palms

Gently will I ease away
The twisted thorny crown
From Your brow

I will rock You in my arms
Bestow a tender kiss
And breathe new life into You

Just say the words
“Father, save me..”
And I will

But in saving You
I will condemn to death
A hundred generations of new sons

And so I turn away
And hear You cry
“Why have You forsaken me”

My heart breaks
Because I mustn’t answer
And then it is finished

The scars on Your palms
Are there for all to see
But no one sees the scars on My heart