Mary’s baby

This poem originally appeared here, where you can read the circumstances in which it was written.

It is time. From deep within
my inner dark a sudden
fierce tightening calls out.
Be still, I say. Be quiet.
This child will come
will find the light
will be the light
new in my life, but now
I want to keep him close
keep him mine alone.

A huge force squeezes me again
taking me beyond the lighted space
into the dark of inwardness
focussed only on the pain
forgetting self and any joy
to come from such gigantic toil.
Someone cries inside my head
and anxious faces swim and fade
and leave my eyes alone to look
and marvel at a miracle
as something infinitely huge and small
is born, and lifted to my arms.

My heart is broken and remade.

My son looks up. His black eyes gaze
on heaven one last lingering time
before they close against my breast.
We are alone, and all the world
shrinks to a tiny, distant speck
as swelling joy fills all my soul.

I hold him close. My son is born.

©C.M.M. 28/11/08

Advent Prose revisited

Rend the heavens, come quickly down –
Can we mean it? In the dark
to ask the God to come like this
would have us tremble at the presence
sought that Sunday as we sang.
Behold, thou wast angry and we sinned –
dear God, we try, we know our sin,
we see too clearly where we are.
The veiled women weep, the bomb
explodes on distant soil:
we worry lest our own are there,
care less about the ruined lives
among the debris of our wars.
All our deeds are like a polluted garment -
hung about us in the cold
as if we fear our nakedness,
would do anything to hide.
The child dies at the hands of those
whose task is care and love
while we, appalled, avert our eyes
from innocence betrayed.
We all fade like a leaf
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away –
light little things in the face of creation
and yet, and yet …
Lord, we continue. You have never
swept us from the face of earth.
We love and beget and children
lovely children, innocent and clean
come naked into the world
in your eternal promise of what can be.
Your Son will come, again, again
and we have hope, another chance
to use your world in precious ways
to hold your people to your face.
As tiny fingers clasp round ours
we reach into the dark and feel
the strength of love enfolding us.
The heavens are rent as if a cloud
were parted at the end of rain
and light will come too bright to tell –
we sing again. Come, Lord, and soon.

©C.M.M

Anticipation….of customer service

I know how the Inn Keeper felt, letting Joseph and Mary down by telling them there was no rooms free for the mother in anticipation.
Working in Customer Services for the past 3 Christmas’ I have become accustomed to letting people down gently.
“I’m sorry your delivery will be late”
“I’m sorry your turkey smelled off when you went to cook it on Christmas eve”

As Christmas draws closer, and especially as it become more commercial year on year, I pray for greater “Goodwill among all men” I think it’s the only thing that might keep me sane.

Continually one prayer comes to mind, attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

The Serenity Prayer:

O God and Heavenly Father,

Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed;
the courage to change that which can be changed,
and the wisdom to know the one from the other,
through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen

months back

The Messenger

There is some sentry at the rim of winter
Fed with the speech the wind makes
In the grand belfries of the sleepless timber.

He understands the lasting strife of tears,
And the way the world is strung;
He waits to warn all life with the tongue of March’s bugle,
Of the coming of the warrior sun.
When spring has garrisonned up her army of water,
A million grasses leave their tents, and stand in rows
To see their invincible brother.
Mending the winter’s ruins with their laughter,
The flowers go out to their undestructive wars.

Walk in the woods and be witnesses,
You the best of these poor children.

When Gabriel hit the bright shore of the world,
Yours were the eyes saw some
Star-sandalled stranger walk like lightening down the air,
The morning the Mother of God
Loved and dreaded the message of an angel.

Thomas Merton,
Selected Poems

Almost …

ADORING VIRGIN ADORING

The night we invaded the gallery
it rained and the snell wind
clawed through your clothes
and it wasn’t really night –
just late. ‘We close in
twenty minutes,’ said the man
and we chorused, variously,
‘We know’ ‘We’ve come to see
the Botticelli’ – as if he’d
painted only one – and then
we pounded up the spiral stair
under the glooming busts
and burst into the empty room.
And there she glowed
from a wall on our right
the pale face surrounded by
transparencies of flower
in pink. Floating. And we
stopped. The face was one
you might see reading on a bus -
not archaic or distant but
concerned, as if remembering
as she gazed, not at the child
but over, round and through.

Remembering or looking to
the piercing both of hands and soul?
Or was she seeing inwardly
the flaming eyes that greeted her
as problematically blessed
and hearing as she knelt to pray
the distant sound of snowy wings?
We stared in quiet until the room
was filled with unseen Gabriels
and then we heard approach not wings
but ordinary feet -‘It’s time’-
and smiled at this young messenger
and drifted into the wild rain
under a sky whose stars were dimmed
as lights and tinsel took their place.

© C.M.M.

and all creation waits

The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An awful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect–but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all–the clear eye
of Heaven, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.

–Wendell Berry
The Slip

The flocks

 

 

So, this bloke, this townie, says: ‘and how did you know they were your two ewes when you found them in old Sam’s flock?’  Well, you can’t say what springs to mind can you?  I mean he wasn’t to know better, I suppose, and ‘how do you find your bum with both hands?’ well,  it wasn’t going to help.  So I just said: ‘Well each sheep is different, isn’t it?  Each face?  And the body and the way the tail hangs.  But more than that, they didn’t look right at home in Sam’s flock – and of course when I called, they looked straight up and at me.’

Well, of course they did.  My sheep. 

Awkward little sods, sheep.  If they do go missing it is always in vile weather – too hot, too cold, the first really wet day for months.  And then they are always looking for an opportunity to die – get stuck, get tangled up, hurl themselves of a bit of rock,  anything will do.  And then they are always needing something – feet sorted, wool off, fed, something.  Endless ruddy work. 

But just call, and they will follow.  My sheep just follow me.  The hardest thing I need to do, each year, is to decide which animals go for cull.  Each year, we breed a few more than we need.  For the good of the flock, you need to pick out which are to go – to die.  Sacrificed, you might say.  One or two actually are, of course, sacrificed.  But each one that goes, it’s a sacrifice to make the rest stronger, healthier.  Poor ruddy sheep.

Advent Song

Look, God, look
in the vastness of your dark
hear this song
in the chorus of the world
where I sing
for the glory of your coming
held by love
as the music pours from me
a flame within
as the night falls around me
hear my prayer
and come through the darkness
hold me waiting
as you wait to be born.

C.M.M.

A Blessing

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

– James Wright

This poem may not be standard Advent fare, but I believe it holds much for us to ponder in this season of preparation. It speaks to me of vulnerability to love, the particularity of love, of transcience and eternity, of transformation.

Pregnant with hope

Now is a time of watching and waiting
a time pregnant with hope
a time to watch and pray.

Christ our advent hope,
bare brown trees,
etched dark across a winter sky,
leaves fallen, rustling,
ground hard and cold,
remind us to prepare for your coming;
remind us to prepare for the time
when the soles of your feet will touch the ground,
when you will become one of us
to be at one with us.

May we watch for the signs,
listen for the messenger,
wait for the good news to slip
into our world, our lives.
Christ our advent hope,
help us to clear the way for you;
to clear the clutter from our minds,
to sift the silt from our hearts,
to move the boulders that prevent us meeting you.

Help us to make straight the highways,
to unravel the deception that leads to war,
to release those in captivity.
May sorrow take flight,
and your people sing a song of peace
and hope be born again.

Kate McIlhagga, from Encompassing Presence: Prayer Handbook 1993