Here With Us

How is it that the world keeps going when your heart stopped?  How does the sun rise and shed warmth  and the earth spin on and my chest rise and fall with breath,  when yours is gone?  How strange that as you left,  stepping out of the fabric of all we see and feel and…

Facade

Facade Grief hides in the corners of smiles and anguish in sighs unseen by the sigher I’m fine thanks. How are you? If only we all had permission  not to hide but to cry loud and wailing-long and let the ocean wash us through to relationship  and truth

A Poem For My Mother

Your’s the first heart beat I heard Your’s the voice in foetal ears Your’s the face that my eyes sought Your’s the eyes that calmed my fear. You held me close when I first breathed  My tiny body heaving air You woke to all my frantic cries  You sang your songs, You held my tears….

I Wish I Could Have Said Thank You in the Dark

I wish I could have said thank you in the dark

It would have been more heroic 

I wish I could have stood my ground in courage

and planted my feet, fearless in the fog

Instead, I fell long and deep and slow…

In the Stillness

In the stillness

the steam from my cup 

rises with a cymbal crash

In the stillness 

the clock ticks 

like a time bomb on the wall…

Joy

I heard your spirit singing 

through the cage of your skin…

A New Life

Something died

and fell long 

and slow and deep

into darkness…

A Gift For You This Christmas…

I’ve been working on something fun for you for Christmas this year over at my story site  ‘The Long Walk’ and I didn’t want you to miss out… so here it is!

Dust and Breath

Breath, it can feel so light, so frail in these days that steal our breath away. We know it now too much. This fight to hold onto breath in a world that chokes it out of us…

Beginning…(Shrove Tuesday)

Because Easter. In the end. It’s always been a story. The truest of stories. The longest of stories. The one true story that began before we began, the living story that has yet to reach its full conclusion. This story about Jesus- not the religious one, but the real one; the one with Galilean dust in His sandals and the depth of a thousand galaxies in His eyes….

You Came: Emmanuel

You Came: Emmanuel   Into the darkness, into the dim into the coldness closing in into our stress and whirring fear into our lonely empty tears You came.   Into the hopeless stretching grey into the sickness scraping days into this world brinking despair into our greed that set it there You came.   Into…

On Losing You.

On losing you.  Strange how air can be so emptied out like a hole opening up where you once laughed like a gash and an ache in that space in me the space where you  had always been. And now are not.  It is not really a loss I tell myself. not a losing, not…

Breathe

It was always going to be this way, this walk, this path, this cross. From before all time began His grace was there waiting for us, because the cross was there waiting for Him. Waiting for the Creator of the Universe to die for the creatures He created. He became our ransom so He could then become our peace.

Exodus Part One: Scars

Exodus Part One: Scars ‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,     because the Lord has anointed me     to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,     to proclaim freedom for the captives     and release from darkness for the prisoners’ Isaiah 61:1 We all know that feeling,…

Betrayed

She would run,  face to the sun all shiny eyed,  arms spread wide, wrapt in childhood mirth  on this beautiful spinning Earth. Brimming deep inside the joy of being alive, being human being a child; Innocent, free, alive. On this beautiful spinning earth.   Now she sits  and stares, pain throbbing there, in all the…

A Carol for 2020

When all our breath is gone what have we left? When weakness after weakness drags us down When deaths are heaped in numbers on our screens  And our ‘leaders’ wrangle each other for the crown. When a virus born of greed stalks in the night and Christmas revives the pain of all we’ve lost When…

With.

  With. ‘“Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him …’ Acts 7:9-10 ‘“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).’ Matthew 1:23 We don’t always see it coming, the hatred…

Vapour in Our Eyes…

What if strength isn’t real strength What if might isn’t true might? What if all the things we reach for Are just vapour in our eyes? What if success on the grand stage is failure in our core? What if wealth that you can touch is poverty in our heart? What if the small things…

Messages

  There are some days where you just need to go To let your body feel the kiss of nature To find your feet firmly on the ground To feel the dappled sunlight’s warm anointing To breath in the rich concoctions on the breeze God has left His fingerprints splashed around us The birds, the…

Babel

Babel   ‘Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.’ E.F. Schumacher I’ve heard it said that small is beautiful. But I don’t think this is a statement has often had much uptake…

Truth, Trust and Intimacy…Lost

‘Truth, Trust and Intimacy…Lost’   ‘For the word of the Lord is right and true;     he is faithful in all he does.  The Lord loves righteousness and justice;     the earth is full of his unfailing love. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,     their starry host by the breath of his mouth….

Mary’s Heartbeat

Mary’s Heartbeat       Words written for a mother after the death of her child too soon.   Hollowed out From the inside, Arms cradling air Over a vacuum where Your heart once beat close to mine, My heart now beating out of time Missing one small beat, Disorientated by grief A grief never…

To My Mother

Your’s the first heart beat I heard Your’s the voice in foetal ears Your’s the face that my eyes sought Your’s the eyes that calmed my fear. You held me close when I first breathed  My tiny body heaving air You woke to all my frantic cries  You sang your songs, You held my tears….

Freedom and Choice.

Freedom and Choice. ‘Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…’  Deuteronomy 30:19-20 Read: Genesis 2:8-17  So we have eight year olds smashing the faces of twelve year…

Dust and Breath

‘Dust and Breath’   ‘The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life’Job 33:4 Read Genesis 2:7 and Job 33:4 Standing on the edge of our own mortality can be the strangest place to be. Yet it is a place every one of us will stand one day. Every…

The Road Home

Epilogue The Road Home ‘Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.’ Psalm 119:18 Read  Luke 24:13-35 There are roads sometimes that go nowhere, nowhere but away, nowhere but far from all we want to leave behind us, far from all we fear and cannot face. Wandering roads, retreating roads, roads…

Incarnation

Incarnation ‘We think of him as safe beneath the steeple, Or cosy in a crib beside the font, But he is with a million displaced people On the long road of weariness and want. For even as we sing our final carol His family is up and on that road, Fleeing the wrath of someone…

My Two Favourite Poets…

Some blogs share the work of other authors, so I thought I would follow suit this month with a little of the work of my two favourite poets…  William Blake: 18th century poet, painter and print maker… ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower  Hold Infinity in…