Tag: Poetry
Liturgy is praxis where Beth-el recurs.
The ladder is always there, Emmanu-el.
Angels are always around us, enfolding us,
watching over God’s little ones.
Today, the burnt red leaves fallen from the Norway maples
sear the earth with their lifeblood, to nurture the future.
‘God’s grandeur’ always around our misted vision.
Gill Henwood
Anne and Joachim knew you were gift, precious,
a blessing to be blessed.
Gifted back to God,
waiting for the opportune time.
God waited for you,
readying you, shaping your womb,
carefully.
You would carry not only His child
but His dreams:
vision for a world He formed, brooded over, loved and despaired of.
You would bring into the world not just a child but a hope.
‘I’m counting on you’, breathed God expectantly, apprehensively,
scarily.
God waited,
knowing the power of rejection,
knowing what He was asking:
well aware that your child would be destined
for the rising and falling of many
and would know the power of rejection.
He too would burden some with His hope and love
and they would turn
as we might turn.
‘It is too hard for us.’
It was hard for you too.
Prophecy sent a sword straight into your heart.
Yet you bore it as you bore everything because you were God-bearer –
Theotokos – carrying the child of God into the world.
Your ‘Yes’ always ‘Yes’.
And gently, beautifully, as you looked on Jesus,
you look on us:
on each theotokos
bearing God today.
GC – 8 September 2020
You came on the flow tide
blown in, full of hope and zeal.
You carried the milk of the Gospel
but in your satchel, the firm, solid Good News waited to be heard.
The waves revealed the pilgrim way to Lindisfarne,
for its first journeying companion of Christ.
Those waves, a sign of what your Lord achieved through you:
first, lapping the hearts of those aspiring to know God,
then rushing in, hurrying to swamp the land with love:
a sea boiling with joy and hope and message.
Milk, then meat.
Quiet ripples, then mighty waters of God’s love and grace.
You were sent, Apostle to the North.
You came: a gentle breeze inspiring others,
awakening in them the wind of the Spirit.
Because of you, they stormed the Gospel message,
opening others to grace and truth,
to joy and love.
GC | St Aidan’s Day, 2020
photo | Gill Henwood
‘When I am King
I’ll wear a robe of autumn gold
and deep blue sky
and tell my fierce red subjects ‘Hold
up your rich dying, do not die
for I’m your King.’
But they’ll reply
‘Such robes are only won by dying.’
This poem was composed by a young man who was diagnosed with an illness for which there was no cure. It was a powerful comment on his own impending death – but not in any morbid or fatalistic way – and it ends on a note of hope…
Mr G's Ponderings 