Anxiety Anxiety hops like a toad in my guts: it swims in my stomach and climbs up my throat. Like seagulls, it splatters my hopes with its buts; it circles my living like wall or like moat. But if it’s like toad, should I kiss it and see if it will turn royal and make me a bride? Or if it’s a bird, should I watch it fly free, and let its harsh calling entice me outside? Or if it’s a moat, make a ditch to the sea to clean out its waters with tide and with salt, then lower a drawbridge to where help might be, or climb up the walls and cry; “Who goes there? Halt!” I’ll raise the portcullis and parley with flags, and find there are terms that can set aside fear, then offer a welcome to strangers with bags, and find when they stay awhile, all becomes clear.
Who then is this?
Who then is this? Pentecost 4, Mark 4:35-41 “Who then is this?” we ask. Do winds and waves obey a being set apart with words we dare not say, not even when we pray? “Who then is this?” we ask. A man so spent and worn he cannot help but sleep, although the skies are torn and there may be no dawn. “Who then is this?” we ask. A person steeped in trust who dares to stay at rest as wind and waters thrust, and fear burns fierce as lust. “Who then is this?” we ask. Though waking to distress as friends and storm wear out, he knows when more is less, and what he must address. “Who then is this?” we ask. He stands and says: “Be still!” The storm reverts to calm. His peace flows out to fill clear space beyond our will. Barbara Messner 15/06/2021
Changing our Point of View
Changing our Point of View Pentecost 3, 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17, Mark 4:26-34 For anyone in Christ a new creation calls in love that urges change: to walk by faith not sight, to live not for ourselves but with the risen Christ, to lift our blinkered gaze from human points of view. The old has passed away: the world no longer spins on axis of myself, my efforts and my worth, priorities and goals, achievements and control. The Lord looks on the heart; our preconceptions fail. So Jesse’s older sons were not anointed ones. Appearance, stature, age did not determine choice. The youngest shepherd boy would be the future king, endowed with Spirit power though shadows lurked within. For God can choose a child, or be a homeless babe. The smallest seed grows high so birds can nest in shade. We can’t control or know how earth will bring to bear the harvest that’s a gift to reap with thankful prayer.
Waking Up in Winter
Waking Up in Winter Well cocooned in winter blankets I cling on to skirts of sleeping, while uneasy dreams are shredded, gone before I grasp at meaning. Let me stay a little, hidden in this cozy muffled stillness, pulling up a layered muting over morning sounds and greyness. I admit that I’m delaying facing cold and morning muddle, stiffness and my fears of ageing, while I’m curled in this self-cuddle. Though I try to stay suspended, something swings me into rising: I remember impulse purchase, soft warm pants with stripes surprising. As I slip into their colour, I am heartened by such boldness, red to ward off melancholy, grey of clouds and winter coldness. Clown-like legs – can’t help but smiling as I stumble into morning! Coloured comical, I’m strengthened; I can picture wings are forming!
Home not Home
Home not Home Pentecost 2, Mark 3:19b-35 Then he went home; perhaps he hoped for quiet time with family, affection free of fresh demands, a sheltered space of privacy that might restore his energy. But crowds came, urgent in their need, and sought him out. The streets were lined, and villagers, resentful, said: “Young carpenter has lost his mind!” Familiarity is blind. Perhaps his brothers felt ashamed, or thought (for his own good!) they must restrain him, take him out of sight, and silence him until the dust had cleared, the town no longer fussed. I wonder what his mother thought? She’d be upset when scribes accused her son of using demon power, and fearful that he’d be abused by those whose status was misused. The Spirit that set spirits free they called “unclean” in jealous spite. He questioned whether they blasphemed to be so closed to Spirit sight while claiming they discerned the right. His family were left outside – he claimed instead a wider kin of those who heard with open mind, not limited by class or skin, but linked by Spirit born within.
Nicodemus at Night
Nicodemus at Night Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17 Then Nicodemus came by night – a man of law-trained, literal mind replete with Scripture he could cite. He knew his peers would be unkind, so sure of ways they thought were right, but he must see what he would find. Perhaps this Jesus came from God - some words rang true, he’d seen the signs, but what he heard this night was odd, and blurred the clarity of lines to which he’d always given the nod, assured by what the law defines. What might it mean to be reborn? His reason would not give that room, and challenged, he replied with scorn: “A second time in mother’s womb?” Yet hope was stirred like wind at dawn. If God is love, the world might bloom. “How can this be?” A longing doubt unsettles all he thought he knew. Sometimes like him we twist about, and try to test what might be true, but then God’s love will call us out, and Spirit birth a life made new.
Pentecost
Pentecost Acts 2:1-21 (written 2005) The flames still strike, though the walls we hide behind for fear of fear and fire are more opaque, the cracks papered over with copies of The Times, The Age, The Advertiser, and Sunday Mail. It’s hard to speak an unknown tongue in such a spate of foreign news. The flames still burn, the words still form, though our upper rooms are more distant from the pilgrims in the street, and we who try to wait and pray are seldom together, huddled in corners, clutching our separate books of rules and forms more dear to us than any unbridled tongue the Spirit speaks. We light our small safe candles in lieu of risky flame, and mute ecstatic experience into private devotion. The wind still blows, but to fill the entire house it must batter doors, tear down shutters, rip the headphones from our ears, and television sets from the walls to let us see and hear. We still wait for resurrection while the Risen One walks unheeded through our walls, and raises wounded hands, and waits to breathe on us, to stir the flame and speak through us the words that can be heard.
From Autumn to Winter
From Autumn to Winter In middle May the seasons shift and winter looms in one bleak week while leaves still fall and twirl and drift. The south wind chills my wrinkled cheek and stirs the leaves to swirl and lift. I stand to watch them sifting down: some join the scatter on the ground, their fading gold among the brown, while others ride the wind around, and some still cling to summer’s crown. I see myself at this life stage: a part still clinging to the tree, that burgeoning of middle age, while I have dropped some parts of me that held me in like outgrown cage. Come, storms and cuts that shape and prune, reducing my unbalanced spread. The song birds still unfurl their tune from branches bare, or dry and dead, and leafless twigs can frame the moon. So I must stand in that cold breeze and let it strip the growth that’s past. The winter frost works change in trees, and rich soil forms where leaves were cast, so now I wait for buds and bees.
Destined to be lost – and found?
Destined to be lost – and found? John 17:12, Acts 1:15-17,21-26, Matthew 27:3-10, Easter 7 If one or some are destined to be lost in order that your word might be fulfilled, are they not also yours, O Lord? What cost to Judas when his desperate hope was tossed upon the temple floor with silver spilled? For when he saw his friend condemned to die, he tried to change his choice and buy him back, but “What is that to us?” was their reply. The silver bought a field where strangers lie, and Judas took his life at mercy’s lack. Did Jesus find him then beyond the grave, and offer absolution in his need, restoring him to love he still must crave? Can there be those eternal Love won’t save, those destined to be lost, not found and freed? There may be some with evil so imbued, they set themselves upon a path apart from God and love in some unending feud that gives no space to turn to life renewed, no chance to soften to a change of heart. Yet God still wills that love should save us all, and Christ can heal the ills that warp the mind. Nailed on the cross, he raised us from the fall the world has suffered under evil’s pall, restoring hope to all of humankind.
Joy in Love of Birds
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.
Barb, poet priest 