Between the lines

"The time came for her to be delivered.
And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes
and laid him in a manger."

What was it like for you, Mary, between the lines.
In the long, dark night
and the waiting.
Mother of God-with-us, what did you feel
in your delivery, our deliverance?
The birth of a different child in the birth that all of us have.

"Birth is a time of joy, but also of pain.
The swollen belly, aching back, dragging pull like an iron band.
The stretching, impossible stretching,
and pushing that is pain and joy in the same cry.

Birth is a time of wonder, and yet despair.
Through a dark tunnel to a new world.
Will you ever be born?
Will the pain get better or worse?
Can I live, can I keep control?
At the end, will you be all right?

Birth is a time of hope, and yet of fear.
What will you be?
Will you bring me sorrow or joy?
Will I spoil your life with my wrong?
The shadow of death, of the world I give to you, child,
among children downtrodden, pushed away, scarred by neglect,
lies mixed in my mind with my bright hopes.
You who are born to die, will you wish you had never been born?
Will it be my fault if you fail?"

And suddenly, breaking your broken thou.ghts,
there was your first-born son.
Like mine,
small, weak, crying for food,
God-with-us then,
and now,
in the least of our children.


Christmas 87

Hymn: Come maker of the starlit sky

 This is a hymn, rather than a poem, written to be sung to the tune of Amazing Grace.

Come, maker of the starlit sky

Whose hands hold time and space.

Be found among your people here

Who dare to seek your face.

 

Come, Lord of love, who on the cross

Knew all this sad world’s pain.

Within our darkness move and heal

Bring life from death again.

 

Come, Holy Spirit, burning flame,

Who fires each loving heart.

O warm our coldness, melt the ice

Which keeps your folk apart.

 

Come, Trinity whose dance of love

Weaves through the years and days.

Encircle now this gathering

And fill our hearts with praise.

 

 Anne Le Bas

Tune: Amazing Grace

You and I

You, startled in your fishbowl crib,*

and I,

washed down and lain between cool sheets

after the sweat and blood of your arrival

watch each other.

Left alone,

(- we were the only ones last night

committing miracles -)

we find ourselves fixed in conspiratorial surprise,

gazing, as if,

for all that we shared

nine months swelling expectation

this was somehow not what we expected.

Most of all,

(and strange!)

we never thought

the world would now be

quite so different.

I,

transformed from isolated independence

find I am become the wellspring of the future,

tied through time and over oceans to the whole of life. 

You,

opening a space, and love and grief, where there were none,

forcing your way into the fabric of existence

have enlarged the universe

with your small, growing self,

Your dreams did not encompass change

and mine were limited to tiny hands and nappies

yet between us

we have changed the world.

  

July 92

For Michael

*In case you aren’t familiar with maternity wards , the cribs are made of transparent plastic – easy to see the baby, and easy to clean I suppose. But they really look like fishbowls!

Winter song

A bird calls

in the winter darkness

just before the grey dawn.

Not some joyful springtime song

but one note

repeated

saying I am here

anyway.

Dec 15

Winter's depth

Finally

the last leaf falls

and there is nothing

but the ghostly tangle 

of old man’s beard

draped across the hedgerows.

Finally 

the colours fade

to silent greys

and the land at last

sinks into sleep.

Finally 

we stop our striving

and lie peaceful 

in the arms of love.

Dec 05

Weekend

On Friday night
creation howled
as sorrow's needles snagged the earth's loose woven cloth,
and pulled its sinew threads together
tight against the pain.

On Friday night
the world, round mouthed with horror, echoed
wood to nails, rope to stone
"life killed
love lost ;
fire quenched
hope disappointed."
And our God was silent
as the lights went out.

On Saturday
we listened, hearing noises in the darkness.
But it was nothing.
Just the rattling of our fears.

But on Sunday, though we'd stopped our ears,
a wondering whisper crept beneath the door,
tossed on the gleeful winds.

"A strange man
newly come to town
found loitering,
by the roadsides,
in the graveyard,
half known in the firelight
spinning stories."

And hearth to hearth told small, domestic tales of resurrection.

On Sunday, when we listened, and heard at last,
our Christ strolled laughing, back from Hell
with all our ransomed lives
stuffed in his knapsack.


Easter 1990

Traveller

He was bedraggled

mud-dust-grime bespattered clothes and tangled hair.

- No one had smoothed it for a while -

But often on his weather scoured face

a flash of joy exploded

at some old joke , or some last laugh or some unexpected triumph.

He had no home, except the next step on the road,

and all he owned he carried in a battered bag slung on his back

- one flask of oil

- one jar of wine

- one loaf of bread

- some water in a bottle

- and a small reed pipe to play on at the end of day.

And what tunes he could spin!

Laments by firelight for our flowing tears

and jigs and reels for dancing on our blisters. 

And when night came what tales he could tell!

To make the fire leap and the trees laugh

and to break your heart, and mend it.

He had joined my journey where the road divided,

I suppose,

for thinking back, I didn't see him coming.

When I asked his destination he just smiled and answered,

“Mine to know and yours to find!”

But I can tell you where he'd been –

for each foot had a red raw hole

and, as he travelled,

walking on his wounds,

his steps left bloody footprints on the road behind.

Aug 90

When I wrote this I lived near Glastonbury, a place which attracts many people, for all sorts of reasons. Many of them seemed to have been battered by life in some way. It was common to find a traveller on the doorstep, homeless and penniless, and to be rustling up a cheese sandwich and a mug of tea to keep them going. Who knows who those travellers were, underneath the inevitable grime and scars their lives had left them with? I was always aware that I might be meeting Christ in the guise of a stranger, just as the two disciples making their way back to Emmaus did on the first Easter Sunday.

“the rain is over and gone…” *

“the rain is over and gone…” *

You and I

have both weathered the storms.

In our separate arks

on distant oceans

we have listened to the lash of rain

and waited in the darkness

as the engulfing waters rose.

But now,

miraculously,

we have made landfall

on the same shore

and together,

wondering,

we step through the flotsam

in a bird-sung dawn.

  

*(Song 2.10-12)

For my husband, Philip, as we prepared to get married. We had this reading from the Song of Songs at our wedding.

Oct 30, 2003  

The peacock takes his place in heaven

In India the gods ride on a peacock's back,

and yet outside the gates of Heaven he waited,

unconvinced that here within these shining barricades

there was a place where he might find a home.

He watched the other birds

- drab greys and sober browns –

settle smugly in the mustard tree,

spreading out their wings.

No room for peacocks there.

But God had seen him hiding just beyond the wall,

and wept,

and went outside.

“Come in.  What better place for you than here ? 

Come in. 

Who made your plumage, who, your crested head?

Who practised blue and green and purple on your silky tail?

Come in.  For who but I created you to tell the solemn world

that heaven does not happen only here behind these jewelled walls

but everywhere you spread your God-reflecting feathers.”

Slowly, with a wary hope,

the peacock lifted up his head

and looked into the iridescent eyes of God

"Climb on my back, “the peacock softly cried,

"we'll go together through these gates,

and I shall be a fitting bearer for the King of kings.”

  

4th Dec 97

I wrote this for a friend who was discovering his colourful nature. 

In Hindu belief one of the sons of Shiva, Kumari – also known as Skanda – who is the God of war, rides on a peacock.

Sentinel

My soul waits for the Lord, more than the watchman waits for the morning” Ps 130:6 .

I've often said to new recruits,

(stamping their frozen feet along the ramparts

on their first night watch)

"It's wrong to think that night is only darkness.'

"See ! A thousand stars,

like tiny pinpricks in the velvet of the sky,

and the moon's cold glow,

texture the land with shadow

You can see more than you think!

Night vision is the skill

of telling apart a million shades of grey.”

"The task’s important,”

I remind them,

“One of you at least, must spot

the unexpected enemy or welcome guest

- the bane or blessing -

and, with clarion call,

draw sleepers from their beds and chase away their dreams.

This is a job for heroes!”

I have tried to sound convincing.

The night watch need a platitude or two

to prop their eyelids open.

But, if truth be known,

the sight I've longed for most in these cold hours

appears, not on the road, but in the sky,

as sunrise inches colour through the grey

and melts the icy stars

and drowns the moon in light.

Anne Le Bas. 23rd Dec 96

An Inarticulate Poem

This was written for my spiritual director at the time, after a session in which I had struggled to find the words to express what I meant! Click on the image for a larger version.

One Carol Service too many. (A reflection on getting involved)

The church is full of angels.

Tinsel slivers moult onto the tiles,

straying into every corner.

Glittering,

they will be discovered

long after the heavenly host have disappeared

 - wings furled beneath their coats.

Mary and Joseph (yet again) have made the long

journey up the aisle to worship at the crib

I see them hovering, undecided, on the chancel steps. 

Stranded in confusion,

looking for Grandma in the crowd,

they have forgotten why they came.

Meanwhile the unaccustomed congregation sings,

- almost inaudibly  - ­the praises of the Christ child.

Huddled,

- as if fearful that the words they never meant to utter

might be taken down and used in evidence against them -

­fighting shy,

they stand

ready to hurry these holy storytellers out into the night.

And anger surges

unexpectedly ,

as I recoil from their reluctant presence.

Shocked by myself,

I find I am as frightened of their cold indifference

as they are of the threat of this dream-shattering tale.

And yet,

despite our crucifying fears,

the God who melded his own being

nerve by nerve with humankind

who shot his glory through our births and deaths and resurrections

still,

amidst the tinsel,

comes to us with painful mercy.

Christmas 93.

Lost Lessons

Put it behind you, they said

meaning well .

Put it behind you,

leave it and move on

Toss it over your shoulder

extravagantly like a bride’s bouquet,

no longer needed.

Drop it ,

like a surreptitious wrapper,

with a faint sense of guilt.

Let the kind wind catch it,

like a faded flower or a dead leaf,

not worth chasing .

Do as you please, they said,

meaning well ,

but put it behind you

Leave it rotting

where the bones can only

whisper their lost lessons

to the earth and the empty air.

Ascension?

Of course they all thought he'd gone up.

They would.

But then, they didn't see what I saw.

I was late,

still struggling up the hill

long after the excitement started

(someone had to stay behind to wash the dishes).

That's how I saw what the others missed.

Angels?

Trumpets?

Heavenly choirs?

No. When the cloud came down

he simply stepped out backwards

sliding quietly through the fog.

(Knowing of their fondly held belief

that Up is Good

he guessed they'd all be standing

with their faces turned towards the sky.)

So no one noticed.

When he passed me, halfway down the hill,

he put his finger to his lips.

"Don't tell," he whispered.

"Never fear," I shrugged,

"They haven't listened yet to anything I've said."

I've sometimes seen him since

- a glimpse or two,

a shadow disappearing round a corner,

but it's always seemed a good idea to leave him to his own devices.

Where ?

Not telling !

You can think of better things to do

than trailing after heroes

can't you ?

 A fragment from a non-canonical Gospel by an unnamed female disciple.

8th May 93

This was inspired by a priest friend who commented that Ascension was his favourite time of the year because it was the time when "Jesus got out of the way". That might sound surprising, but there is a danger that we focus so much on the person of Jesus that we lose sight of what we are called to do ourselves as his sisters and brothers. 

Dragonlands: A temporary valediction to a friend on his way to China at a time of personal challenge

My friend is travelling into dragonlands –

almost as far as he can be from where he was.

My friend is travelling into dragonlands

like St. George!

The only difference is

he goes without

the lance,

the horse,

and all the fine protective gear.

Defences would be cheating.

Dragons are not fooled by shining armour.

They look down their fiery noses

with aloof disdain

at those who come to face them

fortified with any more than terror

and the faith of friends.

But when he comes back

with the dragon slain

or turned into a wild companion,

when he comes back

- scorched perhaps –

I shall be glad to hear his stories.

15^th Sept 91.