He is here

He is here,
blood-streaked from his mother's womb,
slippery purple with rage
- ejected from comfort -
helplessly beating the cold air
in the powerless protest of childhood.

He is here
in voiceless pain,
naked,
debased,
unnamed with the dead of the killing fields.

He is here
in the commonest things of life.
In rough wine, acid on the tongue
and the crumbling bread of the poor.

He is here
unremarked,
in the eyes which ask for help.

He is here, this Lord of Heaven.
He has slipped, unnoticed, into the thread of life.
He is here, this God of holy splendour.
Commonplace and ordinary,
he has soaked himself into all that is overlooked,
saying,
"Touch me,
  break me
  eat me."

He is here,
he is here,
he is here.

May 89

What gift? - a brief apology to my friends

A poem written to accompany my inadequate Christmas presents to my friends. 

I longed to give you gifts that spoke the tumbling darkness
and the still beyond.
I longed to give you gifts that said
"The best things in the world have happened,
  new-made, in the sharing of our dreams."
I longed to give you gifts that said,
"We have brought in the tides together.
  With each word offered we have swept the beaches
  sculpted sand,
  and washed up flotsam,
  jetsam,
  and the drowning sailors."

But, though I did my best,
the shops, filled with dream-hungry people,
shouted empty platitudes,
and come what may,
a foil-wrapped parcel is a clumsy substitute
for heartbeats and a hand's touch.

So, without the words we still must wait
while this expectant world enwombs its God
and moulds his body in the pulsing darkness
wrapping white bones with the stretched flesh of our cares.
And still we wait,
while he swims through the salt sea
learning length of leg and reach of flailing arm.
And still we wait.

And after all this...what then shall we find?
What gift deliver?
What new child, wet, wriggling, bear in blood and tears,
when shoppers all have wrapped their dreams in sleep,
and God, for you, into my cobweb net  of hopes
himself, at last, is born?


Dec 89

Royal birth

Pretty stupid for wise men, weren't we?
Without us Herod might never have known.

And now,
the slaughtered babies, cradled on pillows of blood
rebuke our wisdom,
staggering forward on their new found legs,
round faced toddlers greet the swords with their soft bellies.
And mothers, mothers, mothers,
hollow faces turned to an empty sky
and eyes like dark pits, filled with tearless grief
- "Rachel, crying for her children" they call it -
that howl , which the pitiless hills throw on from mouth to mouth.

One wild scream stands shivering in the still air.

And all because we assumed.
We assumed that a king would be welcomed,
born in a palace with fine clothes and comfort,
a happy event for all his people,
greeted with fanfares and celebration -
like all royal babies.

Pretty stupid for wise men, weren't we?

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

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.