An Affirming Call to Communion

 There’s a whisper on God’s lips 

And the whisper is your name. 

Come to me…
Meet me in the place where stuff and soul are one. 
Where I am in you and you are in me. 
Come, share in this historic tradition that has been handed on, 

that calls to us through communities across millennia 

and that the Spirit reclaims and re-infuses. 

Come, join the table of friends and betrayers, of friends that are also betrayers. 
Come to the table that is not without its confrontations and pain; 

but at which we all have a seat and a name and a hand that gives to us in knowing grace. 

[Pause/Silence]

We have before this meal, a moment for confession. 

This is a moment in which we may bring before God those private things that weigh heavily on our own hearts; but it is also one of humble solidarity with each other and in our warring world, recognising our varying but shared woundedness and ability to wound; yet doing so around a table that nourishes us with its resonance of liberation and its offer of redeeming grace.

Ode to a Rainbow

Written earlier this year, for my bright and brilliant, rainbow-loving 

colleague and friend: Anne-Marie.

You’ve rainbow clothes, and rainbow kids;

All manner of rainbow bobs and bits;

Had rainbow hair, get rainbow cards, and

Made a rainbow fairy garden;

There’s rainbow art in your loo;

You’re cute as a button:

Yay! To you!

But what I’ve heard, what I’ve seen

In you, the woman opposite me?

So much more than kitsch-bitch bland -

The shit's been real that built your brand;

Dark storms that split your soul’s white light

Dark brutal storms, lightning-spiked;

But through that all your light has stayed -

Now broken into full array;

Red, orange, yellow, blue and green;

The happy hopeful bounce I’ve seen,

With righteous rage, and courage too -

A vibrant spectrum makes up you.

Thank you, beautiful, for the show;

My prayers are with you as I go. 

Capel St Non, February 2022

 

    Pressing ahead on lonely path

I make my retreat; 

make my advance.

In gusts of wind and driving rain

I face the storm 

to feel again.

Ahead some crumbling, broken walls

a Temple, not unlike mine - She calls

me in, out here;

welcomes without cheapening cheer.

We cry;

affirm each-other's worth.

She tells her tale of pain;

the holy, birthed.

Then round her cross 

painted names on stones I see;

And join them, crying out my praise

in faithful weathered community. 

A Christmas Hospital Prayer

Loving God, 

In this season we wonder again

at the story that speaks of God, 

the One who is beyond anything and everything that we can imagine,

beyond our understanding,

beyond anything we are capable of, 

choosing to be limited to the vulnerable human body

of a helpless little baby;

Entirely dependent on the care of others

and at the mercy of their willingness to respond.

And in this season 

our hearts are warmed

by a story that tells of

the readiness of human hearts to answer in love;

To give their care,

and to find a way, 

even with circumstances stacked against them.

In this season, 

In this story,

We find hope,

And wonder,

And joy.

 

Here at this hospital, we are well-familiar 

with the wonders, needs, frailties and limits of our human bodies.  

We are familiar too, with hearts that want to care,

that keep trying to find a way, 

even when resources and reserves are pushed.

 

Oh God who understands, 

Be with us here we pray.

At the beginning of lives, and at their end;

When we are strong, and when we are weak;

When our needs make us dependent on the care of others,

And as we do our best to respond. 

In this season, 

and in our hearts,

May you bring forth hope, 

And wonder,

And joy. 

 

Amen.

Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

On the Ward

I met God today.

In a whispery voice

From a failing body 

He spoke.

I couldn’t understand him.

With a twinkling eye

He smiled at me even so,

And in the only words that I DID understand 

He thanked me for showing up 

And making him laugh with my efforts.

Intimate Strangers

A ward full of bleeps,

Your weary, half-formed mumbles,

A different faith;

It was hard work to hear your soul.

AlI I heard were snatches, really -

The best we could manage.

But in that wasteland place

Even snatches count for something.

And your snatches touched my soul.

Thank you.

Rest in peace.

Struggle/Dance/Blessing

For reference: Jacob Wrestles at Peniel Genesis 32:22-31

Libertango by Astor Piazzola, performed by Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, accompanied by dancers Inna Svechnikova, Dmitry Chernysh: https://youtu.be/kdhTodxH7Gw 

 ***

When the securities we hide in leave us, and we wait, exposed, in the terrible intimacy of 'alone';

When we find ourselves wrestling with night-time phantoms that seem to come from nowhere;

In all the clumsy rough-and-tumble of our encounters with others;

And when our tenacity in the struggle is costly, and leaves us with a limp;

Let us hold on.

Let us hear the rising swell of your rhythms of grace

in the dance that IS the struggle

Let us hold on 'til the daybreak

That when the light comes and the struggle is done 

Even limping, we may continue on

with new revelations of ourselves,

new revelations of God,

and new revelations of how we are blessed

Into the next chapter,

Into the next dance,

Into the next struggle, 

Into the next blessing.