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…

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   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.  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…

Some poems are best left wordless. Like wonder.

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.

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…

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…

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…

  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   ‘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’   ‘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       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…

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. ‘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…

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…

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…

Standing on the heights of things, Wrapt in beauty so profound, Peace and wholeness dwell unscathed, In this land I once was from. But mixed now is my every thought,  Haunted, guilty, angry, sad, For I have gone beyond this grace, and lived and breathed in other lands. Lands who live on your loose change…

There will always be those days, Those days when they fire the starting gun And you begin to fly, But your ankle twists and clips your wings and you fall with a thud to earth. Those days when you find yourself sprawled on the sidelines, blinking back hot tears while the backs of others fly…

I saw you today in the still hold of a raindrop on a curled fern frond, So small But I wasn’t fooled by the size I’ve seen your same design in the Whirlpool galaxy on high Your fingerprints there, Everywhere lazily left behind, for us to find. Did you think we wouldn’t catch you out?…

Frailty flailing in the breeze leaning, green into the light,  saturating cells with life. Flowers lean, Lean into light. Unfurling, stretching Reaching, knowing, Weather calm or gale blowing nothing nourishes growing Like leaning into Light. Flowers lean because they must Not just because they like the warmth, not for fancy or for mirth But for…

Originally posted on seeingbreathingliving:
I love Christmas. The carols, the wonder, the traditions, the too-much-food-only-eaten-once-a-year. It is the time of year I most miss being with my family, the time when living over seas is most costly, not in money but in feeling, the feeling that comes when you are surrounded by those who know…

The rain fell so hard today that the earth felt like it might wash away in one long flood of tears. But when the dark lifted and the thunder drum gave up it’s final roll, the last word belonged to the light. For in the wake of the tempest trailed a thousand fluid diamonds,  clinging fragile…