This Child

(for Gabby - the love and pain of bringing a child into a fallen world and a broken family)

A child should be
In innocence speaking
Love, and of fear
Tender, crushing
Leaves of soul
Hands to moulding
Hearts to forge

A child is
In innocence shaping
Teasing spirit free
Guilt in making?
Pride in guiding?
A child should be...
A child is...
This child will be...
Dreaming, bending - like me?

This child will be
All and nothing
Gleaning something
From the torn and withered leaves.
Innocence speaking - No child should be...?
Innocence shaping - No child is...?
All and nothing -
This child could be...

Stillness

Stillness,
Cries out serene.
And a distant lament craves for peace.
Breath and do not disturb the air
     For it will not be disturbed.
Too deep to comprehend,
     Immeasurable and awesome,
Love gives silence and blesses his blessed.
Each second long and pure
     Cleansing and calming
     Passing evenly into evening
And the lament carries and ripples
     Melody and tears,
     Healing

Beware

(Bit gloomy, but I think there is something of this in all of us sometimes)

Beware! Lest I should rise
     Like some false prophet from the swamp of my own backyard
     Driven by inane apocalyptic visions
     Drawn from some dark recess in my ego

A craving to be right
     beats my war drums
     And they echo -
Down through dreams and fantasies
     Luring and betraying
     Lonely and longing for blood.

Beware! Lest I should fall
     Like some rampant fool
     Stumbling off my self-erected stage
     Lost in senseless ravings
     Drawn from some dark recess in my ego

Dissection

I shall write
And you shall see
All my heart laid bare,
Dissected by my own
(but mostly others) insights.
I will bleed over the page,
Smear the blood
And supply the microscope.

Tears may dilute the blood
Laughter may drown the tears


  I may cry for you,
  I may laugh for you,
   - at you
   - with you
   - because of you
   - without you...

May I see your blood
May I feel your tears
May our hearts bleed together
And our laughter heal the scar.

Schiz

(for an old friend - or was it for me?)


I see eyes

That hide in fear

I see love

That hides in guilt

I see trust

That holds to guilt and fear.

Tormented soul

Feigning time’s release

Person within person

Battling to be king

One must abdicate

Or none will survive.

Fragile

I sometimes exist in a dream-time -

Withdrawing.

I’ll reach out with a piece of dream,

Held tenderly,

Offering to those who would see it’s worth -

To be returned shattered,

It’s value lost in the taking.

I stand exposed - a fool bearing fools gold.

But I still dream,

And if just one accepts

and offers their dream in return,

We can be fools together, with our gold!

Assumptions

I have been a christian for some 35 years and have been through just about every “flavour” it comes in. Converted as a traditional Anglican and moved on to “charismatic”, pentecostal, fundamental, hyperfaith…. and sort of ooozed out the other end with my own ideas on what christianity is and how to live it.

There are some key points that I have had to keep coming back to over the years:

• The Old Testament is just that – the old agreement (covenant) between God and man.
• The New Testament is also just that – a brand new agreement between God and man.

Therefore, the lessons we learn learn from the OT must be viewed through the lens of that old covenant and the culture of the people it was made with (I’ll expand on that another time). The NT says “hey, the old arangement only proved the point that no matter how hard you try you are going to end up turning everything into a system of rules (legalism, religion… and all the nasty stuff that comes out of that).

The NT radically changed that – so radically that if you can still see rules and legalities and imposed values etc you have probably missed the point of the new agreement.

What’s the difference then? Man can’t use any system of laws and regulations to get to God (have a meaningful relationship with Him). We are just consistantly “sinful” no matter what. We can’t get close enough to Him to allow Him to change us for the better – from the inside – to see God in such a way that we are inspired by a deep passion to please Him (like you do when you are in love!). So God sent Jesus to take all our sinfulness on himself. That means that all that gets in the way of seeing God for who he is, is gone – God doesn’t see it anymore; he sees us as perfect! This is pretty radical stuff – we don’t have to “do” anything (no religious activities whatsoever). And this is not a once off deal, it’s for every moment of every day. And even better is there are no strings attached – meaning we are free to totally abuse the offer.

I guess God took a big risk in making this new deal, but the point is, he did it so we can get to know Him – because when we know Him we fall in love with Him and wouldn’t want to do anything that would stuff up the relationship.

Now that is the key point – Jesus came so that we can be free to love God – not so that we can follow the ten commandments; why do you think Jesus said that the only “law” we need is “love God with all your heart, soul, body etc”.

The other thing is the danger of looking at the writings of the NT as a set of legal regulations too!! All God is doing in all the NT books is showing people some tips on how to apply his new arangement in their particular situations (thus the apparent contradictions).

The only thing we need to worry about is getting to the point where we have fallen hopelessly in love with God and are very happy to do whatever he asks of us. Our life will change just because we love him – not because we are trying to struggle with sticking to a set of laws.

Just Like a Bag...

In some ways our character – who we are – is like a big bag. It could be made from lots of different things, colours, textures, but it holds all the things that make up what/who we are. All those things can be any shape or size, beautiful or ugly but when they go into the bag they start to determine it’s overall shape/appearance. you can’t see the individaul things from the outside – just the overall unique shape. Sometimes you might be able to tell what one item is from it’s outline on the bag – but that depends on the things around it so you could get totally the wrong idea.

If you open up the bag and have a look you’ll see the last things that went in, but it’s a bit of a task to dig around and find out what all those big lumpy things in the bottom are. You could always tip everything out but what a mess and it could be too difficult to get them all back in. And it’s not a pretty sight if the bag rips and stuff falls out everywhere!

So I guess we are the sum of all the things that have influenced us, good and bad, and that makes us look/behave in our own unique ways. I think God loves it when we give him permission to shuffle the contents around, patch up the rips, and even put some new things in that sort of make it look a whole lot nicer.