Delightful familiarity of resurrection

Moll’s Garden

 

Salvaged from

the garden of the house

of emptiness and former things;

taken hastily with insufficient care

and far more hope than expertise;

pot-bound for a day short of too long;

thrust with speed and the dregs

of time into the broken earth.

 

A winter passed;

then, with lengthening days,

Japanese anemone,

perennial blue daisy,

border pinks

and everlasting sweet pea

drew sufficiently and deep

within the sparse ground

to live and thrive again

 

suggesting, thereby, that

resurrection is a miracle indeed;

the perpetuating miracle of

every Spring.

 

Travelling through the Passion Story

 

The Road

So, this is it;

the moment when the waiting ends

and a kingdom of the Father’s love begins;

and yet -  how strange ….

 

among the cheers

and waving branches

I hear a voice,

remembered, dream-like,

in my mind:

“Here are some stones for bread;

and here is a high place,

and here, the kingdoms of this world”.

 

That voice invades

the rhythm of their adulation,

insidiously,

becomes a potent throb

which might inflate me

to a grandness made of air,

not love.

 

I smile;

I thank them for their praise,

and yearn to find a place,

some space where I can hear and see,

and tightly hold your hand.

The Table

The meals we shared

in different ways and places

on our journey,

have all been special, sacramental,

you might say.

 

This meal, no less,

and infiltrated by

a prowling sense of

expectation – anxious, tense

yet eager,

 

longing for the

entry of a kingdom,

of God not men;

embodied in his look and knowing

quietness.

 

The talk turns sour;

‘betrayal’ is the word,

though, having said,

a smile as if was seen dawn breaking,

distantly.

 

The meal proceeds:

past liberation is

recalled, but now

weaves, patterned, into hope and future

seamlessly.

 

The plates are cleared,

the cups likewise, and lives

that we had led

are left as we step lightly into

the garden.

 

 

 

The Garden

A crowd,

a group,

a few,

now me;

so close to you my Father,

yet so alone.

How good tonight

if I could be like them,

asleep -

too tired to face

the always searching, probing Word:

‘This is how it is,

how better this,

for which the world was made’.

 

How enviable their sleep.

Would that I might step backwards

from this fence and dream until

Your morning breaks.

Instead the moonlight catches on the razor-wire,

glints and sparks a brutal invitation:

“Come, try me”.

My flesh contracts,

my spirit sees too clearly

what is beautiful and good and promised

on the other side.

 

Now up

and stretch,

embrace the cruel wire

for those asleep:

my hour has come.

 

 

 

 

 

The Trial

You question me,

but who and where are you?

And which of us the Prisoner

enclosed by lattice bars,

imprisoned by tradition,

status and the Law?

And where is life and death

within your universe;

does living God have place?

 

I see the face which frames

your accusation,

wizened, drained of sweetness

as an apple stored too long,

bitter and regretful,

soured by fear.

 

I am, “I AM”,

but by your say-so,

defined by anger

and hatred of the truth

which lives to set you free

if you might weep,

lay down your parchment

and clenched fist,

clenched mind,

clenched heart.

 

Be born again,

not by the Law,

but by the Father’s gracious love.

 

The Cross

Departure and arrival

and waiting ….

waiting  as a wheel spins

within a wheel;

the outer, raw, worldly pain,

betrayal and desertion;

the inner, small, tight,

spinning with intense light

and tuneful hum

which is the song of all creation

and the Father’s love.

 

This inner wheel spins faster still,

the outer, loose upon its bearings,

takes on irregularities and lurches

between heaven and earth, shakes

within its mounting as steel might bend

and concrete crack, draws in

torn flesh, warm blood for lubricant

until, with crack of sickness

the wheel breaks, frees

into a million pieces, flies

to every corner of the earth:

and all the tearing, grinding,

slicing  sounds of earth

condense into a single human cry;

 

“It is accomplished!”

The inner wheel spins on,

humming unperceived,

until it might perform

for those who are not deaf

within a garden  auditorium.

 

The Cliff

 

For more than thirty years

I’ve climbed. At first

the cliff had not appeared so high;

in any case, the way was clearly marked.

But as I gained in height

companionship deferred to solitude

and, higher still, loose pitons,

rope ends frayed  bore witness

to other’s failed attempts.

Sometimes the chosen way has led

to gullies, blind,

or else to murderous overhangs

which might have been traversed

were not for those I carry on my back.

 

False summits have racked-out my mind,

and resolution would have failed

but that your voice, spoke softly

from the cliff top, drew me on:

and times when tiredness overwhelmed,

and peace seemed only in the letting go

and falling to uncertain, certainty below,

you held me to the rock, refreshed my soul.

 

How awesome  now

to see the dawn fringe pink

the grassy top, almost

in reach  and yet eternity away

for one whose strength is gone

and lifeblood drained.

 

Reach down your Father’s, lover’s arms,

and lift me home!

 

 

  

 

 

 

Resurrection

 

Mysteriously real and present,

exceeding all experience:

encountered in a garden, room,

or roadway; unmistakably

alive.

 

Whatever else has changed

his way of paradox  remains,

and offers unexpected hope

where conflict and dis-ease

know none.

 

And thus it is that

Juliana, Dietrich, you and me,

who know him most

when pain is raw and nights are long,

may with him rise.

 

Notes on the poems

 

In the early 1990’s a series of Lent talks given by Brian Thorne, a psychotherapist and head of student counselling at the University of East Anglia, was published as a book entitled: ‘Behold the Man’.  This combination of professional insight, honest reflection upon his own life’s experience, and a careful reading of  the Gospel story revealed to me, firstly, that imagination is a valuable interpretive tool, and secondly, that the closer we come to Jesus the man the more richly may we understand God’s presence and purpose for ourselves.  The poems in this book are a fruit of that discovery.

The road  I have long believed that Jesus was not an actor following a script but a person confronted by countless choices, struggling recognisably with the options,  yet fully open to the Father’s  leading and utterly dependent upon His loving purpose.

 

The table  An attempt to capture something of the tension but also the  promise of the Last Supper.

 

The garden  …. pictures Jesus leaving the uneven support of his followers for solitary themes of obedience, integrity,  and the costly choice of love.

 

The trial  Jesus poses the questions, ‘Which of us is the prisoner?’  and, ‘Who is being judged?’

 

The cross  There is a limit to how far imagination decently may go with this part of the story. Instead the image of a wheel within a wheel suggested itself. The outer wheel, like some enormous contraption, breaks loose from its mounting and embarks on a path of indiscriminate destruction. The inner wheel, such as you might scarcely notice at the heart of an intricate clock mechanism -  tiny, precise yet keeping time for the whole.

 

 

The cliff  Again, it would be hard for the imagination to be let loose between death and resurrection without slipping into the macabre or the absurd, and so another analogy is used. The New Testament writers were clear that it is God who ‘on the third day raised Jesus to life’ , and so this poem explores the paradox of how dependence and independence (the climber and the rescuer) belong together in our relationship with God.

 

Resurrection (on the final page)  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed for his opposition to the Nazis in April 1945. 600 years earlier Lady Julian ofNorwich discerned the true power of God in Jesus’ suffering.

After the show … and Remembering Robert

Women’s talk ….

 

Here’s another Ferini Gallery inspired piece – this time written in response to John Reay’s painting for July. Hopefully there is enough self-deprecation included to keep me out of trouble.

 

 

 

Women’s Talk

Truth to tell,

I cannot handle ‘Women’s Talk’:

Some of  my earliest recollection

are those endless pauses

among the puzzling lingerie

of Bromley’s Army and Navy Stores,

or dawdling on the pavement

outside David Grieg’s

as friendship was enthusiastically

renewed and news exchanged and

on and on and on …

 

Truth to tell,

I cannot handle ‘Women’s Talk’;

and being old enough

(by fifty years and more)

to leave the safety of her lap

I’ve kept my distance,

respectfully out of range,

choosing instead places of

solitude and quiet.

 

Of course there will be times

when pints of beer and

deep consideration of the heavier

points of life and death and universe

might be reviewed – but oh so worthily

 

else-when,

if truth be told,

I really cannot handle ‘Women’s Talk’.

                                                            Ian Fosten

 

 

A shaft of winter sunlight ….

Last Friday at the Ferini Gallery here in Pakefield we held a ‘conversation’ between local poets and artists. On display were nearly 30 pieces of visual art created in response to Lynn Mummery’s winning entry and other commended pieces from the Two Valleys Poetry Competition. The main event though was the reading of twenty poems which had been written in response to the artwork produced for each month of the Ferini Calendar a couple of years back. Here is an example written in response to John Patchett’s atmospheric October painting of the sun breaking through clouds over the sea viewed from   Pakefield beach. As the title suggests, the poem also acknowledges the influence of RS Thomas’ sonnet, ‘The Bright Field’:

 

 

Fleeting moments : After RS Thomas

Let the coincidence of

cloud and sea and sun

root you to the cliff top

that you might purposefully

pause, savour, and deeply know

the questions posed:

 

what do you see

what do you hear

what will you understand

how will you receive

the gift of grace, held,

but only for a while?

 

The sun burst through the clouds and,

for the sake of love and life, I stayed.

 

You’re 23 … the future lies ahead of you … what’s to be said?

 

For Tom at 23 – the end of an apprenticeship

 

 

 

 

‘To love is always to leave yourself to go to another’. Michel Quoist : Prayers of Life

From birth

we embark upon a journey

of exploration, distinguishing

between what’s mine and what

to others truly may belong.

 

For some

the journey is short

concluding either with

a citadel built to house myself

or else a doormat capitulation:

‘Come on, walk over me.’

 

The wise, however,

will take time learning

who and what they are;

secure in that they will

share readily of their gifts

and, by God’s grace and

with a fair wind blowing,

will find another wise one

secure enough to wholly give:

 

of such a union

the Master Craftsman builds

his Kingdom plan.

Stones on the Beach

The Shree Wise men and other audio pieces ..

Telling the Christmas story for a local audience who may not wish to hear it – at least not in conventional forms -  was a challenge. Here is my attempt to meet this:

 

 

 

The Shree Wise Men (hic!)

The three wise men had no favour nor fear

as they searched for a king in lands far and near

and their journey to find him might well have been clear

but for one fatal weakness – their liking for beer.

 

After many a turning to left and to right

and as many ‘swift halves’ try as they might

they no longer distinguished their left from their right

so arrived on an easterly seashore one night.

 

At a local pub called the Marquis of Lorne

they enquired as to where the new king might be born.

The barmaid replied, ‘I have a  hunch,

why not try up the hill at the new Suffolk Punch?’

 

Once more a wrong turn in their search to adore

took them down to the Broad by the old Commodore.

After taking refreshment which rendered them merry

they set off but once more were detained at the Wherry.

 

They became quite upset and were crying so much, man,

that a kindly young landlord took them in at the Dutchman.

Then they set off again, warned, ‘Don’t stumble or trip

or you won’t find the king but end up in the Ship!’

 

So it was as they journeyed and stumbled and stammered

they fell through the door of the old Trowel and Hammer.

Said Sid, ‘Sorry, Lads, there’s no king here, hard luck …

but I did hear a commotion in the old stable block …

 

… and there in the beam of a borrowed torch light

lay a king and a saviour, safe and cosy that night.

Humbly, holy and beery they took in that sight;

as they worshipped the child smiled and said, ‘A’you’a’right?’

 

Whether fable or true you’ll find in this story

the truth that God chooses simple things to show glory;

that in Jesus God meets us wherever we are

at home in our house or propped up by the bar

 

and in offering His friendship he takes pure delight

and he means it when he asks of us, ‘A’you’a’right?’

You can hear an audio version of this poem here

The shree wise men

…and here are some other seasonal audio offerings …

Winter inoculations

Christmas charity e cards

Short story The Three Travellers

Advent in the precinct