This year for Lent, I wrote a poem each day inspired by a word prompt. Here they are:
my hands scratch at the dust,
this crumbling ground.
they feel their way around this void,
try to fathom it, to make sense of it.
I dig in desperation
to work out what we are doing here
in the dust, when we are meant to be
sons and daughters.
but in the desert we need you,
we search for you,
because you must be even here.
and only then do I see it;
a curling stem,
the frailest shoot,
and I am done with my tears,
I am done with my rage,
because you are here,
even here, and your
green voice of hope
whispers,
against the dust,
the noise, this unchanging horizon.
it would be easy to think
that hope wouldn’t last,
that it could be stamped out,
that a little frail thing
like that shoot wouldn’t
be strong enough to last
through the droughts and storms.
tempting to imagine
that it was all in your own hands now,
that you had been left alone,
and you would have to find another way.
but now you stop,
now you realise that hope springs.
that it is all around you,
strong it it’s multitude,
that you couldn’t stop it
even if you tried.
Oh Lord,
sustain me
when I am weak
when I cannot carry on.
Give me food,
safety,
rest,
the knowledge that I am enough,
that my life matters to you,
that I am not just a product of chance,
a whim of the world,
but a living daughter,
dear to your heart,
that my dreams are dear to you,
and you long as I long
for them to come into being.
How much safety there is
in this place.
It is roomy and I realise that
I cannot stray from your presence.
You are here with me,
down here in this life with me,
messy and sad as it is,
happy and glorious as it is.
And I don’t have to worry
about where my next meal
is coming from,
or whether my life adds up to very much atall,
because you open your hand
and upon it I will dance,
because you are all I need,
and you have all I need.
Rich are those who cannot be stolen from.
(Psalm 145:16)
even today,
our lives circle around it;
the warm dough, it’s salt crust.
toast and marmalade,
dipped into soup,
mopping up sausage stew,
but it is not enough,
we hunger again,
and as essential as it is,
you say,
‘There is more.
Come.’
If I am weak,
then there is more room
for you to pour through,
water through my desert,
rain over the
dry riverbed of my soul,
and in its wake
the miracle of tiny buds,
blooming all over this desert,
hidden gifts bought to life
by water,
and it makes me think,
if I am weak,
then it is to my gain,
because why would I want
to live this life without you?
solo.
alone with a dream,
but listening,
always,
for a change in the plan.
learning to walk
at a steady pace,
one step
in front of the other,
in front of the other,
not wishing
any of this away.
peace in the way that I walk,
for, at the end of it all,
my life is my walk
and my walk is my life.
Here’s my response for solitude. I’m not saying I always live like this, but I want to! This is inspired by my frustrations at not being able to get much time to do anything creative at the mo and also the impatience for lockdown to end and for everything to be back to normal and also a quote from Maggie Hambling, who I find a very interesting character who said ‘my life is my art and my art is my life’. As christians, it’s about the way that we walk out our lives as much as what our lives are perceived to add up to isn’t it?
there was a lamb down the lane
lying on the cold grass,
its mother standing helplessly by.
we have seen the farmer before now,
lift a stiff lamb and hurl it
into the back of his truck.
it is survival of the fittest,
no time to care for the weakest ones.
if they make it, they make it.
but Jesus is the good shepherd,
a bruised reed he will not break,
a lost lamb he will search for,
and then finding it, he will
carry it home on his shoulders.
and just like that
he searches for us too,
when we wake in the morning,
when we wake in the night,
when we are lost and cold.
‘Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.’ Luke 15:4-6
each of us somewhere along the path.
scattered, some resting, some running.
some holding the hands of the very young,
and some, the very old.
but it isn’t a race, it is companionship.
it is pacing ourselves, walking well,
because this whole life is a journey,
from the time we first wake
until the moment we sleep again.
Sometimes
it feels as if all of this
could fall apart,
as if we are all hanging on
by a thread.
How often did it feel like that
to you, I wonder?
How often did you wonder if this
master plan would work?
With all the washing of feet,
the talking of forgiveness
and eating with tax collectors,
the undoing of all that was normal,
accepted.
Servant.
Give your life,
pour it out, you say.
Like today,
when you wake to a celebration,
a cacophony of noise in the valley.
The birds sing, their voices a rising chorus,
the sun is hot as it blazes its glory
all over the place,
and the sheep call out, loudly.
Does it not seem to you
that the whole earth is shouting out
in praise because it can’t keep it in?
‘If they keep quiet, even the stones will cry out.’ Luke 19:40
I think of washing something
so hot and so thoroughly
that it comes out like new.
I think of the white lambs
down the lane again,
untarnished by this muddy life,
(all except for their bony knees,
for they must kneel to find
their mother’s milk).
And just like this,
life has a way of sullying, doesn’t it,
of tiring, dirtying, and distracting us,
when all we really want
is to come out of the wash
like new, pure of heart,
like the lambs down the lane,
untired of this life,
gambolling their way
through the days.
‘My life is the light
that pierces the world’s darkness’,
he said,
as he spat on the ground.
He knelt to scoop up a handful
of spittle and mud
and rubbed it in his palm to make a paste.
He smeared it gently on the man’s eyes.
‘Blind from birth’,
we whispered between ourselves,
‘his eyes didn’t even form in the womb.’
But he went to wash in the pool of Siloam,
like Jesus said to,
and as he blinked away the water
from his eyes, there was colour,
there was light.
And then, a piercing shout,
‘I can see!’
And he wept,
because it was impossible.
And here we were
in the presence of the impossible.
He waded, trembling, back towards us,
marvelling in the light,
the trees, the clouds,
seeing for the first time,
the faces of the ones he loved,
seeing the one who pierced his darkness;
Jesus.
We spit for disrespect, for disgust,
and here he was,
bringing eyes back to life,
healing and restoring with mud and spittle,
mixing earth and heaven
in the palm of his hand.
the simple act
of putting one foot in front
of another,
even if you are not sure
where you are going,
and the truth
that you are not alone,
there is another
who walks
alongside,
or even carrying.
Follow,
not as the sheep follows,
unthinking and mindless.
Follow rather as a listener
on foot in a vast and lonely hill country,
paying attention only
to the placing of the feet,
one in front of the other,
on the soft and craggy ground,
listening to the small voice that speaks,
that says, this way, this way,
call it intuition or God.
Or follow as the fox,
who tracks by staying alert,
ready to change course at once,
his nose twitching
with the new scent
on the air.
The little tree,
(I don’t even know it’s name)
knows the promise.
It’s buds push out,
they are ready to bloom with pops of colour
because it holds within its DNA
the promise of spring.
Though it tarries, wait for it.
And I wonder what we carry
to show
that spring is coming, and
how the promise of heaven
is held in the very fibre of our being.
‘For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it.’ Hab 2:3 KJV
I know what it is like to mourn a friendship,
a seismic shift that leaves nothing unaltered.
you can’t see the whole of it,
only this part now, where it hurts,
and it undoes and remakes you,
like any common tragedy.
you are knocked back to the bare bones
and you try to build yourself again.
and you will stand,
and become the very you-ness of you again,
because that is who you are
and you are a force that cannot be stopped
no matter how they come and go.
the very word itself
is leaning in, touching:
the way that k pushes up close to that i;
a close and personal thing.
I think of the way I kiss my baby
in the morning; I breathe her in
and my lips meet her warm brow
with a burst of endorphins.
and I remember too
how your friend came to you;
in the garden, in the night,
his eyes avoiding yours.
he came close to your face,
beloved brother,
close enough to whisper,
but he didn’t even speak.
no need; his kiss alone
sentenced you to death.
the sacrifice of a lamb
could not carry away the people’s sin,
however much they tried.
It was not strong enough
to smash the weight of it, nothing was.
And then Jesus came,
who was led meekly but not weakly
to the cross,
for he knew that in his quiet death,
he would lift the weight
of an entire world of sin,
lift it as an anchor from the sea floor,
and allow his precious world
to b r e a t h e
for the first time,
without the weight of sin.
‘Look! There he is—God’s Lamb! He takes away the sin of the entire world!’
John 1:29
Footnote to ‘takes away’ in The Passion translation: Or “lift off” (the burden). The Greek word used here is often used for “lifting up and away” an anchor from off the ocean floor.
He said to wait and so we waited.
For what?
For him again,
for the light to come back
and show us what to do next,
and how to live.
And so we waited,
the eleven of us,
in the room,
small and cramped,
filled with a thin kind of emptiness –
what were we to do now?
And then it came,
the roaring wind,
tearing us up from the inside.
And then it came,
the holy fire;
burning the sadness away,
filling the empty rooms
of ourselves
with a new way of living.
I tried to write about yesterday’s prompt but with the news of Sarah Everard yesterday, everything I wrote came back to her. And this is what I ended up writing.
For Sarah
I too, have walked home
faster than normal,
with a raised heart beat
and the sound of my own footsteps
loud in my ears.
I too, have run back to the parked car,
and only felt safe when I sat in it
and pulled away.
I have been twitchy
and looked over my shoulder
when someone was coming up behind me
and jumped when I saw them so close.
I have wished myself invisible,
have wished also that this body
had been made a little stronger.
Two days after international women’s day,
where we said we could do anything,
we realise too
that she is all of us
and that any one of us could be her.
This is a piece I designed and painted quite a few years ago and I wanted to share it again for today’s prompt. The words are song lyrics and poems which represent the suffering and day to day lives of us all as humans and then the words scapegoat and lifeblood are Jesus, who gave his life to save us, and his blood running through everything which gives us forgiveness and new life.
‘See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?’
Could you imagine being fully God
and fully man, asking your friends
to stay a while with you,
to keep watch with you,
even though you knew
they would fail, and even though
you knew you would have to walk alone
the path that was laid out before you?
A death sentence
that would unleash
freedom in its wake.
Spinner of stars,
watcher in the dark,
you wondered if your father
could not have found another way.
But his way was you, beloved son,
diving into the heart of death
to break its power from within.
The one who flipped the switch
from dark to light.
Underpinner,
the one in whom
all of this hangs together,
the rhythms and reasons of this planet,
the migrations and moons,
all the tides of time,
and all the souls
who come and go.
But still your friends
couldn’t keep watch with you,
they let you down,
king of the universe,
trembling in the garden.
What would it have been like,
being fully god and fully man,
and to feel that your father
had abandoned you?
Maybe that is why Jesus trembled
in the garden;
he knew the price
of walking this path.
All the world’s sin,
hurled upon his back,
the weight of it, unthinkable.
But in that darkest of moments,
where God, even God had left him,
where the sky turned black
and the thunder roared,
peace was making it highway among us.
The life of his,
lamb-white,
laid down,
so we could cast our sin upon him
and make our unsteady way
to the father.
Broken-down,
trampled over,
weeping.
Alone,
heart-broken,
spat upon.
Does this make a King?
Spending himself freely on all
who came to him.
Present to all the hundreds
who pressed in to him,
wanting his healing,
his teaching,
or even just to look into his eyes.
Obedient to his Father’s plan,
because he knew it was the only way.
Victorious in his diving
in to the deepest darkness for us,
making a way for all of humanity
to live at peace.
Now King,
above and beyond,
before all
and after all.
King, in all the ways we hadn’t known
to look for you.
King in the quietest and loudest of ways.
the pause
between that other world
and this.
the one
before the cross,
where the weight of sin
was too heavy to bear,
and the new one
that is about to dawn.
‘But now, with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children.’
Romans 8:21, TPT.
I was thinking in this poem about the moment of Jesus dying on the cross and all the things that it changed. Would anyone there at the time have realised the gravity of what was happening?
Because you said yes to the path
that would cost you greatly
but bring us all freedom,
a new power was unleashed
and a new kingdom began.
One of servanthood and love;
love that had power enough
to undo and remake
our whole world.
I went with the definition of majesty that meant authority. Then went with the idea of Jesus being the servant King who God exalted above everything else.
‘He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient.He was a perfect example, even in his death—a criminal’s death by crucifixion!
Because of that obedience, God exalted him and multiplied his greatness! He has now been given the greatest of all names!
The authority of the name of Jesus causes every knee to bow in reverence! Everything and everyone will one day submit to this name—in the heavenly realm, in the earthly realm, and in the demonic realm.’
Phillipians 2:8 TPT
the thorny crown,
a bead of blood spills,
shame falls.
he carries, then,
all the weight of sin,
and the mark of it
on his body.
And so we crown you
over and over,
in the small ways of our lives,
and in the quietness of our hearts.
But perhaps it matters more, then,
because you are the only one who sees it,
and you are the only one it’s for.
But I can’t put it any better than Frederick Buechner in this wonderful extract: Great Laughter — Frederick Buechner
these gifts
we hold lightly,
their warp and weft,
their stretch and sway
as they wend their way
through our lives,
threading them with
just a touch
of heaven’s fire.
we live through them,
and through them
make sense of this world.
we see you, God,
we even draw you,
in green and grace,
in white and gold,
in ink and pencil,
because we are trying,
always,
to make sense of this.
here is the sacrifice:
of time and devotion,
instead of promotion
and the sensible way.
here instead,
a different way of living:
a fractured and colourful life,
an imperfect offering
on an outstretched palm.
may this seed grow,
shooting and green,
vivid and life giving,
until it reaches
all the fullness
it was made for.
This is a poem about the creative life and is inspired by this from Frederick Buechner:
‘And deep in my heart I do believe that we will overcome some day… by God’s grace, by helping the kingdom grow in ourselves and in each other until finally in all of us it becomes a tree where the birds of the air can come and make their nests in our branches. That is all that matters really.
there are the secret sorrows,
that we carry with us;
the unanswered prayers,
the quiet longings that have
never been spoken,
but we are told our King
is a man of sorrows
and well acquainted with suffering.
he knows it well, this life,
the way it twists and turns,
blesses and then breaks us
under the weight
of its pounding waves
and knowing it well,
he walks it with us,
and in the end,
he will take it from us,
and lift the weight
from our shoulders.
all sorrow,
all the tears,
all the pain.
Inspired by Isaiah 53
‘Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.’
a single seed lay down in the soil,
and from it sprang life,
a tree, reaching to the heavens.
a single tree, cut down,
fashioned into planks
and then a cross
bearing the weight
of the blameless King,
a man, who was a tree of life himself,
who walked the path into death
and then out the other side,
so that his death, his planting,
would reap blessing
for generation
after generation;
a tree of life,
his branches spreading wide,
his roots reaching deep
for all who come.
and every drop of life from him,
another seed,
and every breath of life from him,
a seed bearer.
With a bit on inspiration pinched from The Three Trees story if anyone has read this or seen the play.
‘Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’
John 12:24
he made a way,
his body a bridge,
his death and awakening
a doorway
between this lowly land
and the pathways of heaven.
way-maker,
future-forger,
eye-opener,
the veil was torn in two,
the sea split apart,
death was undone
and the separation
was finished, finally,
once and for all.
so we could come boldly,
as children do,
no fears about their past,
no worries about their future,
their popularity, their fame,
they just come.
Their very presence speaks
to what is no longer there;
the way that they fall, or are folded.
There is the dance of life about them;
the way they move themselves aside,
lift themselves up, to let Life take its first breath.
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is no longer here’
Luke 24:5
Sometimes, we too, bury our hope in darkness,
shove it beneath the soil with a hollow heart,
but even death itself was no match for my King;
life-giver, death-defier.
The truth of spring coming, though we saw only black mud,
truth of the blazing heat of the sun, though we felt only the chill.
Out of the darkest darkness,
out of nothing, came
first breath,
green shoot;
Life itself, reborn.
you were hidden
in death, in grave clothes,
waiting for the right time
to take your first breath
of rebirth.
and now I am hidden in you,
safe as houses,
where moth and rust
cannot break in and destroy,
because all my treasure is in you
and you are all my treasure.
I’ve always loved Thomas,
the way he acts like
a petulant school boy.
‘Show me then’, he says,
‘I won’t believe unless I see it.’
And then a week later,
Jesus is there,
and all of his undoing
is there too;
‘My Lord and My God’, he says.
Better to be true like he was;
transformed to the core,
than false,
going with the flow,
wearing your emotions
like a mask.
Mary, bowed by grief,
goes early to the tomb
and finds it empty.
Her tears spill
as her mind races;
‘Where have they taken
my Lord?’
But her tears
have left her blind,
for as she turns
in the garden,
she can’t even make out
the figure in front of her,
alive and breathing,
her ‘Rabboni’,
the very one she is mourning.
I see God bowed and brooding,
his arms falling around his dear earth,
after cruel jeers
condemned his son to death.
Doubled up with grief,
he came close to the jagged earth,
his arms around, almost touching.
And it reminds me of this year;
of all the loneliness,
the people in their boxes,
staying safe by staying alone,
perhaps God is bent
and broken by our grief,
by our struggles too,
perhaps he comes close
when the darkness is too dark
to see by.
The two men
on the road to Emmaus
had forgotten how to wait,
they had moved on too quickly
to despair;
‘We had hoped that he
was the one who was going to
redeem Israel’, they said.
They had already given up hope,
had tossed it by the wayside,
in favour of despair;
perhaps it comes quicker,
is easier to hold.
But there is strength in waiting,
in hearing a promise
and planting it deep in your heart.
There were those who lived like this,
staring down old age and infertility
with God’s promise,
believing for something
as wild and outlandish as this:
a child from a lifeless womb,
a screaming mass of bone and flesh,
but it came, it came,
and like Abraham,
we must learn to live our lives this way;
waiting for the third day,
holding on to hope,
and the words that have been spoken,
no matter how barren or broken
things seem:
the story isn’t over yet,
though it tarries, wait for it.
Hope
is that quiet shining thing,
hidden at the very centre of us.
It might be forgotten sometimes,
or covered in dust and debris,
it may be looked at
with cynicism by others,
by ourselves, even,
but it remains;
a coin, glinting in the soil,
catching the light,
catching your eye again,
reminding you of
the heart-bursting promise
that is coming.
It starts off
as the slightest lightening
in the colourless dark,
almost imperceptible at first
and then,
a little bolder,
and soon enough
the rose-gold glow
colours the sky
from east to west.
It starts out so small,
just a scratch of light
against the darkness,
but you know the might of the sun,
and you keep watching
as the dark is dissolved in to light.
elisabeth pike 