I fell in love with cockatoos – head over heels, too moved to choose. A chord was struck, connections made: it felt as though a duet played. For several weeks I saw the blacks’ impressive wings and arrow backs, the stripe of gold beneath the tail. Their flight would snare my soul to sail. My time would halt to watch them eat with clicking beaks and grasping feet. Their yellow patch was a surprise – a clown-like touch below their eyes. But when they raised their regal crowns or flared their tails, forget the clowns; and when the pair embrace the sky, “O beautiful!” I call, and cry. One evening in the fading light, they passed above in low, slow flight, and something in me said “Farewell!” The seeds are gone and they depart, and I am left with longing heart. Then came a white with sulphur crest and raucous call. Soon four abreast on small bird bath, they bowed and drank. I laughed with joy, and prayed to thank.
Joy after Pain
Joy after Pain Easter 6, John 16:16-24, John 13 - 17 They didn’t know that supper was the last. He washed their feet, a sign they had arrived from those shared journeys that he knew were past. He taught in hopes his loving words survived. He spoke of joy that follows after pain, as when a woman labours to give birth, for that new life is worth the fear and strain, the primal surges, strong as quaking earth. His loss would pierce their souls as spear his side, but he assured them that he would return. He died betrayed, abandoned and denied, yet that last night he taught so we might learn that tomb and womb are both a sacred space from which new life emerges, gift of grace.
God is love
God is love (Easter 5 John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21) All people who use language are second-hand word-mongers: we mangle words or varnish by buying into meanings to suit rival agendas. We fumble in our juggling, and truth becomes entangled with hurts to which we’re subject, and what one hears, another would never have imagined. So “God is love” gets twisted for some who hear “Our Father”. They might have had a parent, unreasonably controlling, whose harshness warps the nature of their resistant children. Then “God” and “love” seem hollow, and protest shapes a cynic whose love is sparse and godless. Yet “God is love” is speaking of wisdom sourced in wonder at what we see in Jesus – a God more than Creator, a wise and gracious parent: compassionate and caring for all that is becoming, forgiving finite creatures their limited awareness, their fear for their survival that warps their best intentions. When we abide in Jesus, it helps refine our loving. Our “me-first” competition for limited resources transforms into the service we base on his example. We give from our abundance, so grateful for receiving, and sometimes try to offer self-sacrificial caring not just to those we value, but enemies and strangers. When Jesus speaks of pruning, it’s not an angry stripping, but shaping for our fruiting with stronger upright branches that show the vine’s true nature. What falls away enhances resilience and balance. Since God is love, and Jesus embodies what such love is, when they abide within us our love will bear their image.
Anzac Day Sonnet
Anzac Day Sonnet for Sunday 25 April, Micah 4:1-4, John 15:9-17 To act in love entails some sacrifice when others’ needs outweigh our hopes for self. Then we may feel we’ve paid a heavy price, and seen what we could be put on a shelf. To act in nations’ conflict may require the risk of death, or flesh and mind in pain. Yet selfless acts of people under fire show some prepared to pay that price again. Now though we pray that war should be no more, and money spent on armaments be turned to save the planet and sustain the poor, yet genocide and terror must be spurned. Remember those who die at duty’s call, who in their love, like Jesus, give up all.
Jesus Appears to his Disciples
Jesus Appears to his Disciples Luke 36b-48, Easter 3
They felt a surge of joy to see him there,
but they were disbelieving, wondering still.
What contradictory creatures humans are!
We dare not enter fully into joy
for fear of the relapse, the dismal clunk
that brings us back to earth and dust to dust.
We’d rather shrink to temper joy with doubt,
anticipating cynical retorts,
than welcome, like a child, this glad belief.
“Why are you frightened, why do doubts arise?”
so said the one who never would grow old,
who had fulfilled what he had come to be.
The ones that he would leave would need the gift
for which they waited, vagrant spirit power,
as unpredictable as fire and wind.
Observe them posturing to grasp control
that Jesus in humility refused.
Though New Creation comes, in pride they erred,
and cast a shadow reaching to our feet,
where race and gender still find prejudice.
He opened minds to understand the Word –
such openness will bring us wisdom now,
though stuck in fear, some want to lock the doors,
and strengthen walls to keep them safe within.
He ate among them, as all flesh must eat,
for round that table all alike are one.
He let them see and touch the proof of wounds,
for God incarnate shares our finite flesh,
the pain which we inflict, and that which comes
at random, and the death that meets us all.
No wonder that our joy at risen life
is mingled with the ash of mortal fear,
and doubts arise in hearts that quail at death,
however joyful risen life may be.
“Look at my hands and feet, yes, touch and see,”
he said to reassure them in their doubt.
“You see, it’s I myself, in flesh and bone,
yet not constrained to finite time and space.
Live into death like birth, and follow me,
both here and where I wait for you beyond.”
2 Sonnets for Easter 2
The Need for Personal Experience John 20:19-31, Easter 2 “I won’t believe unless I see and touch,” says Thomas and the sceptics of today. No insight counts as real, no vision stirs: without the proof of facts, they turn away. Like Thomas, are they blinded by despair, and choose to grieve apart while others meet? Though friends say how they’ve seen the Risen Lord, no word he hears shifts Thomas from defeat; and yet perhaps he can’t resist the hope that what he doubts he yet may touch and see, and when those wounded hands reach out to him, he has no need to grasp what sets him free: his doubt is set aside in joyous prayer. God, let the sceptics see and touch him there. Wounds First version 14/7/2016, revised version 7/04/2021; John 20:19-31 Easter 2 So even in new life the wounds remain; for suffering shapes the truth of who we are. Reach out and touch the evidence of pain: the tracks of nail and spear may seem to mar his resurrected body, but they show perfection is no longer proof of worth; and though our souls are blind, our insight slow, reluctant to accept the signs of birth, he comes to us through walls and locks and cries: “If you still doubt, reach out and touch my hands!” In blood and body we may recognize he shares our wounds and always understands. In broken bread we dare to touch his pain. In wine poured out, we see forgiveness plain.
Easter Morning
Easter Morning John 20:1-18 You know there are times that we drag our feet to a tomb of sorts. Our hopes have died, perhaps our love. We come to grieve, embalm the corpse, or touch the stone that seals in death and shuts us out. The tomb gapes wide and cracks our hearts. There’s no excuse to turn away and stumble off to find what’s left. Courage demands we enter in, wonder at bindings laid aside. Somehow that absence shocks our soul more than the dead requiring care. Out we go crying to vacant air. Tears and anger blur our eyes. A stranger comes and we accuse: “What have you done with what I loved! Give me remains that I need to tend, so I’ll spend my tears to some good end.” We may hear a voice that we thought was stilled whisper our name. The stranger becomes our closest kin. We turn to this teacher and try to cling. We cannot hold on to the one who ascends, but we are like Mary, commissioned to say that we have encountered the Risen Lord. The tomb is open and life is beyond.
Voices from Good Friday
Lament of Judas Didn’t the others hear him say I was the one, do what I must. That was my signal to obey all I had dreamed of on the way. “He is our king,” the crowds had cried. He looked at me. He named the hour. He could have said the sovereign word calling to arms the angel horde. We would have raised him to the throne with hand-made spears and angel swords; Judas the leader in the fight – that’s what I dreamed of on that night. “Rabbi,” I said and kissed his cheek. “Would you betray me with a kiss?” Hearing his sorrow, doubts began, tearing the guts from life and plan. Nothing was changed by my remorse, flinging the silver back at them. “What is that to us?” they said, leaving his death upon my head. “It is accomplished!” was his cry when all he’d done was fail and die. So I betrayed; I dreamed a lie – now I will die. O Jesus, why? Peter’s Tears No wonder that I whined and howled like some abandoned whelp, and thought myself beyond all hope and him beyond all help. I would have fought for him to death, but, clumsy with a sword, I chopped off someone’s ear and he must have the ear restored. So who could fight for such a one who’d set his face to die; when death was talked of on our way I tried to put it by. Indeed, I did not know the man – I did not know myself. I wept for days until he came and dried my tears himself. Pilate’s Defence I can’t say I sleep well, but that’s a small sum to pay for advancement. In sleep, nightmares come. I try not to think of that man and his eyes: he courted his fate with his cryptic replies. It’s Herod I blame or that council of Jews, refusing to act and then making me choose. I gave him some honour; I named him a king; whatever you think that was no minor thing. Mary’s Lament The worst of it was I knew that such a hard death would come: I knew from the day that he downed his tools and left his fine craft at home. He left me to make his way – yet somehow I seemed to hear the shock of a hammer blow striking nails though no carpenter was near. I followed him when I could – I knew that he would not stay. He walked to his death with a loving heart and all I could do was pray. I stood there beside the cross surrendering him to death; and all I could utter was “Help him, God!” I shook to each anguished breath. So hard not to hate and blame or ask “Did he have to die?” “O God, though he told us that he would rise, will we ever hug and cry?”
Lord of the Breaking Times
Prayer in a Dark Garden
Prayer in a Dark Garden - Mark 14:32-42, Holy Week There comes a desperate time for those of us who pray when, thrown upon the ground, we share his gut-wrenched cry: “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible: remove this cup from me!” Perhaps it’s not our death or fear of coming pain (not yet at least) we taste and long to tip away. Yet something in our cup has bitterness like his: perhaps a cruel loss, abandoned or betrayed, a grief that strikes like nails, or circling piercing thoughts that bind like crown of thorns, or blows that bruise our souls, make mock of who we are, a weight that bears us down, too weak to stumble on towards the dreaded hill. At such a time of prayer, it seems the garden grows but we are frosted bare; it seems our sacred space is stripped, no comfort there; it seems that friends will sleep and on the day be gone; it seems that in the crowd we are the most alone; it seems that any kiss might threaten to betray. Is spirit willing then, though flesh may still be weak? Can we find truth to say the climax of his prayer? “Not what I want, O God, but what you want will be.” Acceptance such as that may not be in our scope. We bargain and accuse. “How can a loving God expect us to face pain and death in such a way?”: our anger makes refrain. But if we could accept, and hope that what we face brings something that transforms, would we find grace to drink the cup of suffering down held hand in hand with him, and find the blood we shed becomes reviving wine, and see our brokenness becomes his body shared, and both walk from the tomb to greet the coming dawn?
Barb, poet priest 