Category: Poetry

The Prophet

Easter is the high season of sorts for Christians. It is the hope of a new future marked by healing and flourishing for all people. It’s a time of sacrifice and an offering of new life to those who believe. It comes after the lowest and darkest day for Christians. Good Friday is upon us this week and as a tradition Christians enter the passion week of Jesus’ suffering to catch a small glimpse of the sorrow, pain, and despair Jesus felt in following through with his ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the world.

I’ve had this crazy idea to write music recently. I am not entirely sure why, but I just write and try to arrange and express what is trying to get out if me. It is as if something from outside of me is making sense of that which is stirring in me and teasing it out of me in the form of song. The followings a song about Jesus, a prophet, but at the same time so much more.

Have a listen….

 

What winter means to me….

The Winter has a way of bringing us to a place of deep reflection. Curious inquisitiveness and a longing for home; the home our hearts desire past our mortal years. That’s what Winter does to me. It is my favorite time of year in all it’s coldness and warm celebrations of incarnation. Winter has a way of stripping the veneer that builds up like brooding thicket around our hearts. Winter is desperate and violent in it’s chill. A time of death for creation and a time of reckoning for the soul. Winter a tool used to lovingly whittle us to utter dependence on the one who holds us up. In Winter, death is as near as the hope of Spring.

 

Remember the Grace that is your life…

…and the God that holds you in his hand.

Remember the way in which you were spared,

from the slavery of Pharaoh in Egypt’s land.

Remember the hope lavished upon you at Sinai,

of God’s provision and abundance,

his leadership and care, his dream.

Remember that God made you alive,

and shook you awake from the empire’s lull.

To behold the newness of tomorrow, and a new beginning,

of the common good for all

In God’s Kingdom coming. 

 

From our family to yours, we pray these words for you. Have a blessed new year and remember the grace that is your life and the hope you are called to. Happy New Year

 

 

My favourite telling of the Christmas story….

This is my favourite Christmas Story video. The kids are adorable and the message is clear and full of wonder. As we approach Christmas, eagerly waiting for the coming of the King, let’s remember the story and how it serves as the genesis for transformation in us and through us.

Easter Beautiful

I was trying to explain Easter to my 3 year old daughter today and when I asked her what was significant about Easter Sunday, she said: “Jesus died on the cross for us.”

“Ok, Anna, that was on Friday and that is true, but what about today, Sunday?.

“Um, um…”

“Today, Anna”, I said, “is the day Jesus rose from the dead. You see, jesus died for our sins and for the whole world. And what is remarkable about his death is that he did not stay dead. He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday to give us life and make all things new and beautiful.”

She replied…”Easter Beautiful?”

“Yes, Anna, Easter Beautiful…that is an excellent way to put it. God is making all things Easter beautiful by rising from the dead and giving us new life.”

Needless to say, I was touched and reminded that from the lips of infants and children…

So I thought about “Easter Beautiful” and was inspired out of blog silence with the following words…

Easter Beautiful! People, nature, the whole realm, of all we know. Is being made, Easter Beautiful!

Could beauty be better? Can people change? from the grip of evil’s derange? Brought back to life, from death’s corruption, Sins forgiven by Love’s Easter eruption. Making blossoms bloom in lives of gloom.


Without hope no more! And living breath bestowed. Hearts now better, now full. For God is making everything, Easter Beautiful!

Merry Christmas

If they were mine alone to tell, the blessings of abound.
I would surely cast one across to you.
But what good is that which comes by way,
Of human folly and conjecture.
If not the breath of divine life,
Then emptiness rests behind words.

But instead I bow down and allow the one,
Who’s day is here to stay.
Who’s humility is my foiled aim.
To cast his favor upon you.
To cast his joy into you.
This Christmas day.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest…
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

~Luci Shaw

 

HT Len

If…

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,

If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

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Quote of the week – Annie Dillard

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”



Annie Dillard,

Teaching a Stone to Talk

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The Spiritual Discipline of Writing

I’ve been blogging for a few months now and am realizing that my love for the written word is growing. Creativity and new ideas are flowing and I am perceiving that writing is more than words on paper in a Christian context: it’s a spiritual discipline that can have an impact for the Kingdom of God. I am loving the journey.

Stephen Shields has linked up to a great article that explores spiritual side of writing and how it can be an important ministry. Have a read. If you find writing to be the least bit intriguing, you’re sure to be inspired to consider this art in a more meaningful way. [HT to Bill Kinnon].

"The Doctor of Ministry Team at AGTS spends many hours helping our participants become better writers. After five years of trying to sort out the issue of academic writing we have developed resources, tools, teams of editors, training experiences and a host of other aids.

This month I tried something new suggesting to our participants that they ask someone to lay hands on them believing that the Holy Spirit would pour the grace of written expression into their lives and ministries.

Some of the strain of writing comes from the idea that it involves only technique applied by arduous effort. Where is the grace in that? Where is the power of the Spirit?

The most important thing to happen this week for me was a change in my perspective on writing that developed out of a conversation with one of our participants. We need to think of writing as a spiritual discipline, not just a professional practice.

In other words, writing forms me spiritually by…

1. Maximizing my influence: after our sermons have all disappeared into thin air the only thing that remains of our ministry is what we have written. Even our mp3’s do not have the impact of our books and articles. Realizing the potential of writing packs the exercise with missional implications and consequent responsibility.

2. Attracting the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: no one would want to preach without the feeling of both speaking for God and speaking in God’s power. But we seldom think of writing this way. As a gift of expression, the written word is just as eligible for the Spirit’s anointing as the spoken word. In fact, if the Bible is any indication, perhaps it is more eligible.

3. Bonding me to a community: all professional writers know that creating their product is a team sport. Our Team frequently reads each other’s articles or chapters to provide helpful feedback. All of our work passes through the hands of editors, managing editors, etc. In fact, Steven Liam says there is really no such thing as writing, only re-writing. Done correctly, then, the discipline of writing will make me vulnerable and accountable to other believers.

4. Bringing me to the end of myself: staring at a blank computer screen while a cup of coffee cools off on your desk is one of life’s really painful experiences. The shortage of time, energy, and words that haunts most writers has a way of making the composition process feel desperate and impossible. One of our graduates described putting her head down on the desk in a moment like this and just begging God for help and strength. She produced a brilliant paper for a D.Min. class which I am sure will be published as a journal article. When we decrease, God increases.

Continue reading this great article…

Sacred Reading and Creative Word

Let the word of God speak, be still, let the Word wash over your soul,

Let it fill your mind, fill your will,

Like rain filling the fields, in the cold Autumn chill

Will you prepare your soul to meet the King?

Or will you rush through the story overlooking important things,

While thinking of the possessions that steal your affection

Steal your heart and mind, wasting them on temporal things?

Slowly tune your ear…

Like an expert listener, waiting for the voice that can set you off

In a direction of life, not lost without meaning, but gleaning from the love

That loves, as much as love can,

Do you hear the invitation?

What is the word saying? …“Come, enter into the story?

Can you smell the stench of sickness in the dry air?

As the master heals the man and says “follow me, be free from despair”

Free from the stories that make you less than human; that make your whole life ache like the pain that comes from the yoke you weren’t meant to bear, weren’t meant to take.

Allow the word to pull you in, to form you from within your depths.

To shape your affections toward hope in the one who saves, redeems and loves,

Like no other can love in this life,

Will you receive the invitation, the invitation to be made new?

Like beautiful spring flowers coming up in bloom

Like a precious pearl that you stumbled upon while walking along a trail

Receive the gift of God, the gift that woos you from hell…oh, will you…?

Bury your life in these words, like you would bury priceless treasure in your own back yard…

Like you would bury tomato seeds in a dirt bed freshly plowed

Let this story give you meaning,

Let it take you places where you can live out healing

A life where the word covers your whole being,

Like the snow covers everything when it snows…are you dreaming…yet?

Dreaming of the possibilities yet unseen,

Perhaps a step closer to the colorful Patmos dream…you know the one, the dream of a new creation…the one John tells us about in the book of revelation.

Come and see…calls the word to us, come and see the beauty and use your imagination to envision new life beside the tree who’s leaves are for the healing of the nations….

Let the word of God speak, be still, let the words wash over your soul,

Let them fill your mind, fill your will,

Like rain filling the fields, in the cold Autumn chill

Will you listen to the word? Will you be still?

Let it place you at the feet of Jesus as he taught on the ‘sermon’ hill?

Will you come to live, will you come and hear,

Let the word of God speak, let it draw you near…

Will you let the Word speak?

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George MacDonald – Poetry

I said, "Let me walk in the fields."
He said, "No; walk in the town."
I said, "There are no flowers there."
He said, "No flowers, but a crown."

I said, "But the skies are black,
There is nothing but noise and din";
And He wept as he sent me back;
"There is more," he said, "there is sin."

I said, "But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun."
He answered, "Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone."

I said,"I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say."
He answered, "Choose tonight,
If I am to miss you, or they."

I pleaded for time to be given,
He said, "Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in heaven,
To have followed the steps of your guide."

I cast one look to the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said, "My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?"

Then into his hands went mine;
And into my heart came he;
And I walk in light divine,
The path I had feared to see.

~George MacDonald

A Poem About Vision

Old_omb_1Dream deeply my beloved,
Dream to see with eyes not your own.
What might the world be?
If hearts of stone became flesh
and love flourished,
Can you dream the Patmos dream?

Instead of despair, let hope be your eye’s fixture.
Still violence, make peace be real.
People flourishing as God-image bearers.
Let the door of trust swing open to heal hearts.
Allow the walls of anguish to diminish
To make room for Eden today.

Let the earth be made new!
The way made clear by the incarnate One
The way of love by the suffering Son
The community of three; remarkable!
A oneness to shape the essence of all
A ‘being’ of three, an invitation to believe
To see things yet unseen,
To dream deeply my bleoved
To evoke the Patmos dream.

The above poem rose up from within me while reflecting on the hope to come when all things are made new. It captures what I feel needs to occupy the imagination of the church.