Pure Light September 9, 2009

Creative light,
Speaking all into nothing,
Pillar of fire guiding,
So the journey could continue through the night.

Bright star,
Capturing attention,
Inspiring ancient hopes.
Bursting forth from silent skies.

Dramatic shining,
Searing purity,
Blinding in an instant,
Revelation piercing the hardest of hearts.

You, the Light for those who had lost their way,
Who’d mislaid hope in history,
Forgotten your promise in the bleakness of their present.

You, weaving light into lives darkened with despair,
Despised by the masses, rejected by those closest:
Warmth touching the untouchables and thawing frozen hearts.

Your light: darkness could not hide it,
Shrouded yet undimmed,
Unquenchable, untamed.
‘The light shines in the darkness,
But the darkness has not understood it.’

Pure light: Glowing unashamed,
Through all our fluorescent falsity,
Outshining every neon façade
With unblinking honesty,
Righteously radiant.

Brave light: shining in the darkest places,
Unfaltering in the blackest night,
Brilliance that doesn’t fear the gloom,
But enters in and rescues us.

Hosanna when heaven is silent April 5, 2009

I didn’t understand what all the shouting was about at first. I’d gone for a walk to try and clear my head, to get a change of scenery, to try and calm my nerves and get some space from the clamour and head noise.

I thought perhaps it was a riot, or that there was a demonstration. My head, tired as it was, spun through potentialities of terrorist bombs or maybe an accident. There were sirens, and police in protective gear, and there were many, many people, all ignoring the repeated ‘there’s nothing here to see” ’s.

I was tempted to turn around and walk in the other direction. This was not what I needed right now. Living in the city had its perks, but mass hysteria was not one of them, and the bustle and excitement of the crowds was doing nothing for my jarred nerves.

Something didn’t make sense. If there had been a disaster, why was everyone so enthiastic? Why were people fighting to get a view? Shouldn’t they be running, or screaming, or at least poised to back off if their curiousity looked like it would prove mortally dangerous? Then I wondered if they were watching out for some film star, making an impromptu appearance in our small South London borough. or maybe it was the Queen’s car or something? but would that really cause all this furore?

I gave up on my hope for a peaceful wander and stood at the back of the crowd, trying to get an idea of what was happening. I wondered how many other people had just been going about the busyness of a weekend and got caught up in the excitement. I heard snatches of conversation – apparently some religious figure was marching into the city, straight up the A3, and right into town. I still didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, never having gone in for that religious stuff much. To be honest I thought it caused more problems then it solved.

I waited for what felt like an hour. More people thronged in behind, and I couldn’t have retreated then even if I’d wanted to. People were saying that this was Jesus, that he was going to march in and change everything. Rumours that he was going to overthrow the Government abounded, helicopters circled overhead, clearly expecting chaos. The tension in the waiting ranks of police was tangible.

And then, there he was. I think I’d expected some sort of cavalcade, maybe some horses, maybe an open topped car, or one of those glass things the Pope rides in. I’d expected armoured protective glass; surely if you were going to march on a city you’d need that kind of thing. I expected him to be shouting about hell and damnation and stuff, or at least decrying the government and the state of the nation. As it was, the whole thing messed with my head.

Firstly, he was riding on a donkey. Just imagine with me for a minute what that looked like – a lone figure, riding the wrong way up the A3. Riding slowly, deliberately, past Barclays sat on a donkey. The other thing was that he wasn’t saying anything – no shouting, no hell and damnation, no whipping up the crowds into fury and violence. Everyone started shouting stuff – calling his name and welcoming him – I think they were hoping that would make him do something, do anything except keep riding at that slow and maddening pace, without saying a word.

Many thoughts circled in my mind as I watched the scene. The confusion I’d been trying to distract myself from was still there and still clamouring. If this man was God, why the bizarre set up, why the weird donkey thing? Surely it was a missed opportunity – if I was God and I had all these people watching me, I wouldn’t miss the chance to show off some of my powers! And surely that was the whole thing about religion – it promised a lot but delievered little. If he was marching on London to bring about transformation and change, he wasn’t going about it in a very logical way.

I tried to be angry with this Jesus man, as he walked on, out of my view, up the hill towards the town hall. I tried to heap all the rage I was feeling about the world onto his shoulders. I wanted to scream at him for doing nothing, saying nothing, for not answering the prayers I had whispered late in the night when there was noone else to hear, he made no sense to me.

But for the rest of the afternoon, and that night, when darkness fell again, the thing I remembered most about the strange procession was Jesus’ face. I guessed I’d expected superiority, power, judgement; but what I’d seen was humility, compassion, sadness even. His face was set on the path set before him, but even in his passing it felt like he’d seen every person in that crowd, and communicated something individually to each of us. Instead of looking into the face of an authoritarian conqueror, it felt like I’d seen the expression of a sorrowful lover, a man heartbroken and longing for reconciliation, and his humanity had done something to soothe my own doubt and pain and loss.

Creativity March 21, 2009

  

Today dawned bright and sunny but I was squirreled away working on creative projects. First these- cherry and choc chip hot cross buns (which involved the fun challenge of oiling cling film and learning what to do with yeast).

After that I spent a good couple of hours transforming a fabric remnant into a cushion cover. I didn’t excel in my textiles GCSE, but I was rather proud of my sewing efforts today! I love creative days!

 

Across the Room February 21, 2009

These are just some thoughts I scribbled after spending some time with some of our Sunday Guests – people in the local community who struggle with addiction, homelessness or other social issues.

Across The Room

I saw you across the room,
And I couldn’t call you Father,
The words stuck in my throat,
I kept you at arms length.

I braced myself for your turning,
‘cause they always walk away,
I pretended it wouldn’t matter,
And I wasn’t fascinated by your face.

But you knew:
I was the girl on the swing,
Wanting to go higher,
With no one to push her.

I was the little boy,
Whose Daddy never showed him how to ride a bike,
Who told himself he didn’t want to learn
anyway.

I was the teenager,
Pregnant and alone,
Pushing the truth from her mind,
Volatile and scared.

I was the young man,
Trying to find a way,
to provide for him and his girl,
Uncertain behind the bravado.

I saw you across the room,
Truth for all my lies.
Hope for all my disappointments
Love for all that I’ve lost.

One Stubborn Wall January 21, 2009

It wasn’t in keeping with their plans for the place at all. Months and months of strenuous decor had turned the rest of the pre-nineteenth century hand-me-down home into something clean, streamlined and modern. No awkward corners, no low mantles where scullery maids once paused to whisper furtively, no more pencil marks, smudged and forgotten, on the back of a door, marking the height of some long matured son or daughter.

Minimalist, the word they banded around at the ‘right kind’ of parties, while the neighbours peeked through the dusty windows and thought bleak. The icy white paint was a couple of shades too cold, the stripped back walls causing them to rub imaginary goosebumps from their skin. There was something skeletal about it.

This room had been left to last, purposefully of course. It couldn’t be seen from the windows, and they’d kept it locked, for fear of giving the wrong impression to some marauding dinner guest. At last, however, the transformation had begun.

They’d set out with aplomb, and a tantalising drive for completion, that would have concerned even the most efficient expert in the field. There was abandon in his destruction of the antique dresser, now dismembered at the bottom of a skip. She had fragmented the ageing china they had found within, creating an impossible jigsaw, an irrevocable porcelain mosaic. They had decimated a dusty old desk, overlooking the seal on its base speaking of true value. They’d splintered masterpieces and, in their haste, crushed crystal that had once served refreshments to royalty.

But they hadn’t counted on this. On one stubborn wall. 

Manual tools had failed, as had the steam stripper that boasted speed and success. Peeling and scraping and scrubbing repeatedly had got them nowhere. And it seemed like the rich brown wallpaper, with it’s regal and yet unassuming gold leaf, was taunting them with its persistence, its enthusiastic refusal to budge. You would have called it magnificent, breathless at the sense of depth and movement its design communicated. You would have marvelled at the texture, reaching out as if to find comfort from its welcoming warmth. You would have questioned their obsession with removal.

And when they gave up on removal, you would question their purchase of the cheap white paint, the kind that comes in large quantity but with only watery quality, where one coat hardly shows at all. They slapped it on, layer after layer, longing for the safety of cool, sheer space. And the wall fought back. Small golden blooms blinked through the weak milky glaze, the rich chocolate hues glowed undaunted. Six, seven coats, and it shone through brighter than ever. Eight, nine and they gave up, despondent.

They walked out of the room and shut the door behind them, missing the shaft of sunlight streaming through the side window, shining straight onto the wall and bringing its colours to life.

Apelai For Sure January 16, 2009

She was Apelai for sure, a fact clear from the blue shawl tight round her small frame. They clung on to the Old, spoke of the days when blue meant peace, but we were more than they, and we shook our heads at their daft stance, and we made sure they knew their place.

They were few these days. Most had fled in the Fourth War, on the day it was set in stone, the day the Old Laws met their end. They ran to the coast, pell mell in haste. Some hung on, in hope; some were lost in the Spring Purge, caught up in the crush and rage as we all ran to burn each sign of Old Rule.

But all that fuss was long done now, and one or two had just crept back, and we, well we had let them be. Too weak to pick a fight, we thought; they were all but mute, they could cause us no strain. And of course, we were sure of our stance:  The Old Laws just brought need. They kept us from our goal, taught that we should think and give and care; and this code cost us time, and had had small gain. We knew best.

She was gone too soon for me to see her face, no doubt wise to the fact she must be home by noon, home and safe and out of sight by then. And I thought, who would choose that life? who would pick the path of that old code? We had long learnt not to feel by now, but what of her?

We learnt the new rules fast, which were, in a nut shell, that there were no rules. We ran free, our lives wild and loud, we flung off the tight hold of Old Thought, the codes of love and grace and good will that had long held fun in check. We laid down all these, saw them as dead and drab, codes which could add no gleam and have no say in our lives now.

 But what of her, and those like her? We thought they would die out, but still they kept on. What could be done about the tough grip held by this group who would not tow the line, a group which even in name chose to shun the New? If war could not stop them, nor the harsh acts of a world with no rules, how could they be taught? How could they be shown the dead end fruits of their choice? What would make them finally give up?

She was gone, with her flash of bold blue, but then I saw it in the sky, and I saw it in the bold stream.

And I was left to think, through the long day of Free Rein, as I took, and stole, and broke, that the gloss from the loot I made off with had been made dull. And I had no clue how or why.

Provoking her with mauve January 14, 2009

She could have got away with it, potentially, had it not been for an unfortunate incident involving a technology project and several shades of purple.
She was new to the school, with a name that was complex to pronounce and harder to spell. Her eyes, expressionless; we put it down to a inter-continental house move. She hid at the back of the class, merging into the sombre slate of a borrowed blazer. She seemed perpetually nervous but, self-absorbed in adolescence, we permitted this.
Having never grappled with the complexities of plum, violet, indigo, and mulberry myself, I was stunned at the furore, at the flurry of panic emanating from the back row. Sitting nearby, I watched as bewilderment bent her impassive features into something that could only be defined as terror, and we flinched in uniform, as she flung her chair back with a crash, and tore from the room.
I heard later, a tale tangled in the way that playground gossip only ever can be, of the reason for her fright, the fuel behind her flight. They told me of a childhood lived pristine in black and white. And that she’d really never known it any other way, become accustomed to familiar shades of grey, and found a safety there. And there were we, provoking her with mauve, shaking all the rules from which she understood her world.
She’d assumed, until that hour, that everybody lived in monochrome. And we all whispered in assembly seats and dinner queues, how could this have crept by unseen?
And, just what would it be like?
We wondered how maths could be identified, save for the angry red textbook, and science for the murky green. But we didn’t ask her, presuming she found comfort in charcoal and cloud, that she was safe in the shadows of silver and smoke. She never said a word and, self-absorbed in adolescence, we permitted this.

The Orphan & the Sweet Shop January 13, 2009

It was his shoes I noticed first: Leather once, perhaps; yet now scuffed and threadbare. There was a suggestion of colour – the bright hues that every small boy’s shoes should shout, yet now their faded tones whispered neglect. I winced at  their thin soles and split seams,  bulging in mute protest against the  winter weather and two summers of growth.

His outfit testified the same: all drab, all corroborating lack. From my vantage point a few feet away I knew he had no choice. He stood, face pressed close to the window, his small child fingers – too thin - tantalisingly close to their prize. The lights from the shop danced in his eyes, yet hope’s reflection was already dimmed in return. 

Lovingly created chocolates taunted him, with their golden gleam, from behind the thick glass. Cherished sugar-craft, nurtured in privileged safety, awaited transportation to another warm home, another brightly lit abode where childrens shoes shone and treats abounded.

Quickly he turned away, dejected, the proximity of luxury serving only as a stark reminder of his status. Wrenching resentful eyes from the scene, he scuttled off, depriving four other hungry senses their momentary escape. I lost sight of his scuffed shoes then, as he dissapeared swiftly into the anonymous crowds.

Meandering Thoughts September 15, 2008

“Divorced from the brilliant light, we live in a type of exile from our true selves and from what is deepest in creation. Forgetful of our nobility we live in ignorance instead of wisdom, fear instead of love, fantasy instead of reality. The gospel is given to restore our memory of what lies deepest within us.” (Philip Newman)

This has to be one of my favourite quotes. I heard it in a teaching seminar years ago. Now it is tacked to the side of my pc screen. So, in theory, I see it every working day. But mostly, I don’t notice it. I’m used to it, you see. Just like I’m used to the post-it Bible verses stuck to the disk drive, the smattering of prophetic words pinned to the desk-divide, and the cut out songwords that reminded me of a once striking truth.

The irony of that amuses me. The quote speaks about how easy it is to forget who we are, how loved we are, the value of our existence, and there am I overlooking it, transfixed instead by fleeting words on an email or something.

It isn’t just the forgetting that strikes me as a problem. Sometimes life throws stuff at us which is expressly designed to cause us to forget who we really are. We get bogged down by guilt, regret, shame or condemnation. Some friends of mine have an older car. When you turn the windscreen wipers on they just smear the water around, until it’s harder to see than before you did it. Often we’re trying to see through a windscreen thats splattered and smeared and our visibility is restricted.

And then I lie awake at night thinking… But, what if we remembered? What if the windscreen got cleared? What if the scales fell off our eyes and we could truly see ourselves as God does? What if fear and fantasy fell away? if shame and secrecy became a thing of history? What if we woke up knowing? 

What lays deepest within us is not the decisions we have made. It is not the paths we have choosen or those we were led kicking and screaming down. It is not the smattering of skills we have managed to attain or the fragile relational structures we hide within. It is not the information we fill in neatly on census-forms, or the way we see ourselves when we gaze mutely into the mirror. It is not the mistakes we made and then franticly tried to cover-up. It is not the whispered fears that plague our sleepless moments.

What lies within us. All of us. Is good.

The image of a creator, treasure unmarred by circumstance, hope that will beat away unbreakable. It is the knowledge that this is temporary – this hurt, this struggle, this loneliness is not for keeps. It’s the capacity that grace awaits to fill. It’s forgiveness, that can clear a path through the thickest, most choking weeds, and find the garden blooming away unhindered behind secret doors. It is what it means to be a child of the Most High. He who never slumbers or sleeps, guarding every step, counting every tear. It’s the yearning for home, the pull towards redemption, the truth that who we are does not amount to what we have done. It is the capacity to love, even when all we have known is the opposite. It is the breath of I AM, bringing us to life.

Runaway September 10, 2008

Unsafe, she grabs a T-shirt and runs.
She doesn’t think where she is going, just away.
Away from the noise and tension and instability.
Away from rules she doesn’t understand and love that shifts like shadows.
Away from hope that rises up, only to be dashed again.
She is bold tonight, adrenalin making her brave as she bolts for freedom.
She has been waiting for this for so long, and nothing will stop her now.
Irrepressible from the start, her spark never could be shut out.
Maybe it was the gritty east-end DNA, or the fire of the spirit burning away unrecognised in her veins, but it burns defiant from her eyes.
And she keeps getting up; no matter how hard the knocks, she bounces right back, hopeful.
She doesn’t stop to lick her wounds but runs ahead, plumbing the depths of a future designed.
Now she is running through dark September streets.
She is frightened but there is no need to look over her shoulder now.
An angel army camps alongside her.
Promise beats steadily in her scarred heart speaking of life in fullness.
Abundance.
Joy.
Hope for captives in dark dungeons.
Beauty instead of ashes, and a garment of praise in place of heaviness.
She will take the chance.
She will push to see the transformation she has dreamed of for so long.
She won’t stay in the places where visions are locked behind iron bars, but will run till she finds ground where they can flourish.
She is dangerously optimistic.
Even the worst bruises fail to subdue her belief in a happy ending.
She does not advertise her misfortune or seek vengeance but holds tightly the hand of her Redeemer.
She gazes into His eyes, encountering tenderness.
Her guarded heart dares to peek around its barricades and begins to open up.
She looks up at the stars and focuses on their beauty.
Sleeping on friends floors she breathes safety in deeply.
Towers fall and it seems her world has crashed down too, but she is resolute.
She will hold on until spring comes again.
She will paint the watercolour of grace over the smudged pastels of despair.
She will compose symphony from the jangling discord of her loss.
There is an intimacy that will blossom up from this soil.
And she will look back and marvel at its tenacity.
The grace pulsating through the years since that cold night, unchanging.
Keeping her going as she learns to fall into her Saviour’s arms.
Loving her back when she chooses distance.
Speaking consistently as she bends to hear.
She revels in Him.
And He desires her.