Blessed are those, but what about me? Epiphany 4; Matthew 5:1-12 Ah! the Beatitudes! Why do I read them with unease? Do I flinch from the suffering, dare not claim the virtues? Can I see them as be-attitudes, sometimes experienced, often not, seldom attained by will and effort, their blessings paradoxical? Consider my poverty of spirit. It’s not a chosen humility, but an unstable mix of insecure self-blame and acceptance of my gifts and confidence. Chaotic emotions have always been close to my surface, soon exposed when problems multiply. Then I teeter on the edge of darkness with tears slippery underfoot. Perhaps it is the kingdom of heaven that baptizes me with weeping and sets me upright again. Of course I mourn, who does not? Life brings losses, deaths and failure. I seek the illusion of comfort in distraction, though I know only sitting with grief and sharing it bring the blessing of real comfort. Meekness is not a state I trust. I have been mild too often when I wanted to stand up and speak out. Then perhaps I might have been blessed with hunger and thirst for righteousness which earn the right to be filled. Mercy I desire but don’t often dispense: annual donations, some time as a chaplain, this ongoing domestic caring, minor but sometimes onerous. Perhaps there are patches of pure heartedness, or at least a grateful awareness where I do see God in a bird and a tree, a word and worship. I want to be a peacemaker, but more often I’m an accommodator who longs to avoid conflict. God still loves that child in me. As for being reviled and persecuted, given the world’s history of cruelty, what’s the small suffering of being bullied, receiving criticism, being pressured to conform? I acknowledge the pettiness of such pain, but don’t manage to rejoice. Though I try to write honestly when prophetic words come, I don’t relish a prophet’s fate. Yet blessings have come to me through grief and struggle, humiliation and failure, and my all too human vulnerability. Like Job hearing God in the whirlwind, I have received the blessing of God’s bracing presence. Barbara Messner 24/01/2023
Out of the Blue
1. Lord, yes, I know the call goes on past these arrivals and beyond all that I know of who I am: I shall keep striving to respond. Here I am claimed, wrestled and named. Dark turns to light; grant me the sight. 2. Nothing as simple as one “yes” answers the urging that I hear. Nevertheless I celebrate all the assents despite the fear. How I am wooed, tracked and pursued. Losing I find me in your mind. 3. Here I have come to be your priest: here is my future for your own. Holding your life within my hands, let me embrace the grace I’m shown. Here I am heard, speaking your word, lifted above self in your love. Barbara Messner 2000
The Question of Call
The Question of Call Epiphany 3; Matthew 4:12-25 This inner urge, this outer nudge called “call” is hard to quantify or demonstrate, and having once said “yes”, that’s far from all. At times I do resist or remonstrate, pressed out and cut like pasta on a board, or wound around with tangled skeins of thread supposed to mark the way to this heart’s hoard within the labyrinth of paths my feet might tread. “Just call, I’ll follow,” I naively said, but he sets out on ways obscure and dark, and sometimes I am blundering with dread, not trusting in his words to find their mark. It’s hard to leave your nets upon the shore, let go of all the goals you had before. Barbara Messner written? altered 26/11/2022
Poet’s Dilemma
Poet’s Dilemma I try to draw the searching word in sight to speak a truth I hardly know is there, or name a feeling that disturbs my night, or bring a smothered fear into the air. Sometimes I wake as words begin to cling – it’s best to get a pen and let them out, or they may circle ‘til I let them sing. If I ignore them, they may leave, or shout! I make a web of rhythm and of rhyme: sometimes the strands will capture what I need, or if I let the words, unbidden, climb to fall in random heaps, what might I read? Sometimes I wonder if too neat a verse is just a box to keep truth in control lest it affect my life. I am perverse resisting what I guess might heal my soul. Revealing truth in word’s a two-edged sword, and Jesus must have known that as God’s Word. There’s only so much truth we can afford. God’s word still speaks. Can my words make it heard? Barbara Messner 12/01/2023
What Are You Looking For?
What are you looking for? Epiphany 2; John 1:29-42 When Jesus saw me following, he said, “What are you looking for?” I walked on slowly, pondering, and tried to reach for meaning’s core. “You are a chord to which I sing, a resonance most rich and true. You give imagination wing, show colours fresh with morning dew. You seem to wake the best of me, the gifts I had not learnt to trust, a wider, finer way to be, more caring, understanding, just. So teacher, let me stay a while wherever you have found to rest. He answered me with warmth and smile, “Yes, come and see and be my guest.” Barbara Messner 26/11/2022
Jesus’ Baptism
Jesus’ Baptism
The Baptism of our Lord; Matthew 3:13-17
Just as he chose the waters of the womb,
immersed himself in fragile life on earth,
was formed in Mary’s body, cramped for room,
then cried for air in dark and cold of birth,
so now he answers to the Baptist’s call:
the Jordan does not part, but takes him down,
kneeling in mud, he feels his body crawl
with need for air and fear that he might drown.
Three times he sets himself the ritual test,
letting the waters close above his head,
foretaste of death. He surfaces distressed,
gulping at air before the water’s shed.
Open to heaven, he feels the Spirit dart,
and words of love expand and brand his heart.
Barbara Messner January 2017
Girl on the Trampoline
Girl on the Trampoline The girl on the trampoline next door bounced up above the shielding fence that makes good neighbours scarcely known. She bounded up and into sight, yelled, “Hey, old lady!” Who was that? At first, I thought it wasn’t me, but there was no-one else to see. I heard her laugh in boasting glee with some less vocal, hidden friend, then, “Hey, old lady!” – one more shout this time struck home and left me mute. Some snarly, childish part of me would like to voice a harsh rebuke. How did that impulse bounce in sight above the fences I thought high? I know I’m seventy – that’s old, but still I baulk – that isn’t me, and “lady” I think might imply attachment to some dignity. To status I do not aspire – a woman, earthy, unaligned to powers that be (or wish they were). Yet indignation reared its head, and wanted to use adult power to quell the boldness of this child. Thank God I held my traitor tongue, and questioned what rose up in me, set it once more behind my fence; but there I had to look at me, and try to live the grace of old, seek Wisdom Woman, elder soul. Barbara Messner 6/01/2023
Song for Epiphany
Song for Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12 (written to fit the Irish traditional tune Columcille, as arranged by John Bell, Iona Community, for his song No wind at the window, Together in Song 287) What star can I follow to kneel in that place? How far will I journey? What doubts dare erase? And if I can find him what vision might glow? What fulfilment? What belonging? To be known and to know? Though traps of the powerful might lure me astray, the star at my heart’s core will show me the way. My arrival is joyful, my homage sincere. Are there gifts for me to offer? I have little, I fear. But giving that little, I find there is more: all learnt from the past now becomes a fresh store. What I thought was failure is now a resource. There is nothing that is wasted when renewed at the source. Returning, I follow a dream-guided way, and see the familiar become a new day. Though far I have travelled, I know he is near, and my gifts and search for wisdom will in him become clear. Barbara Messner 5/01/2022
Treasuring and Pondering
Treasuring and Pondering The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus; Luke 2:15-21 “But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” She knew that’s how the Spirit flames from sacred truth. Does the Spirit guide the wary mind assigning scholarly ticks to what might be historical? Isn’t that a form of arrogance, an excuse for many footnotes making display of learning? Does the Spirit demand certainty that every scriptural word reports the literal facts? Isn’t that a form of idolatry, trying to make mystery, poetry and transcendence into material representations? Jesus was born of Mary, and people were drawn to see him, but there’s no birth story in John’s gospel or Mark’s, and Luke’s and Matthew’s differ. Are their nativity stories not true, or are they sacred truth treasured and pondered? Matthew tells of wise men from the East, and then the family’s flight to Egypt. Luke speaks of shepherds from the hills, and shows us Jesus the devout Jew, initiated from birth by rites required by sacred law. Perhaps Matthew pondered in his heart, and the treasure the Spirit showed him was Jesus as universal Wisdom, recognized by foreign astrologers, persecuted by a jealous king, forced into exile in Egypt, like Joseph in Genesis, sold by jealous brothers. Luke also treasured and pondered, saw Jesus as the fulfilment of Hebrew Scripture, born in the city of David, welcomed by shepherds, named by angel messenger, circumcised according to the law, presented in the temple and greeted by prophets. I wonder what dimensions of sacred truth were shown to Mary as she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart? Barbara Messner 28/12/2022
The Flight to Egypt
The Flight to Egypt Holy Innocents; Matthew 2:13-23 We keep our dreaming shuttered in our sleep, but Joseph was a man who trusted dreams. They fled into the night. Their loss was deep, but not as great as woe from Herod’s schemes. Behind them, parents wept for children dead. In Egypt, they at least still had their son, though home was lost, and work and often bread, and speech and common knowledge were undone. As refugees, no kin would offer aid; no roof, no meal, no job to ease their way.. I wonder in their plight were bargains made with wise men’s gifts, on some dark, hopeless day. Then angel dreams urged Jesus to return, What wisdom from that time did Jesus learn? Barbara Messner 27/12/2022
Barb, poet priest 