Archive

Love can handle them

I’m in my garden in the spring sun, warm in the cool air like Irish coffee.  There are bees humming in the mahonia flowers that spill their perfume in eruptions of yellow.  Some tulips are tasting the cool air like morning tea, proper and erect; others have no discretion and have peeled back their petals to reveal all.
 read more »

Jesus, the bread of life (John 6.25-59 & Exodus 16)

Because I believe,
you are my bread.
You are my food,
my diet of heaven.

You are the manna in my mornings,
the fleeting flakes
that feed me with your life,  read more »

The day of Easter

God of the glowing and the knowing and the growing, break forth within me as I breast this day.  Break forth from all the stony wastelands, the dead dreams, the ancient aches, for this is the day of Easter and the breaking of the grave.  This is the day of your body burning anew in the quick pulse of life that is now synchronised with eternity  read more »

Easter Saturday

Easter Saturday and all is quiet, the clouds holding the sky like a muffler.  The colours of the flowers are dimmed, there is a snail sitting on a leaf of the wallflower and gulls fill the interstices of the silence with their warnings.  It is the waiting day, the day when the broken egg of dreams has seeped away and all hope seems hidden.   read more »

Good Friday

Oh, what a thing that Jesus should die, for me, for us, for all who were slate-grey stone towards him, to die for hardness, for sticky selfishness, for hate and desire and fear and all the cocktail of emotions we use to abuse the paths of peace.  How could he make such a dirty thing come clean, what is this strength of love that can hold evil and death and be transformed not tarnished?   read more »

Spring will be good

Spring will be so good this year, breaking open the heavy pall of winter that weighs its grey cold on the landscape, on the soul.  It will call awake the greens from their hidden palette, and the daffodil flushes of gold that mimic and foreshadow the warm waters of sun.  It will shake and awaken the somnolence of roots, of buds, of earth that have been stilled by the chilled blanket of winter  read more »

Feather bed

Give me a feather bed
to lounge the winter in
and a down duvet
to snuggle to my ear.

I hear the snow
will be deep this year  read more »

Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert

This book is now well-known and loved but if you haven’t read it yet I do recommend it.  It is her journey from a painful divorce to finding healing through pleasure and food in Italy, through the discipline of an Ashram in India, and through love in Indonesia.  I like the way it is written – personal, light and funny yet informative and facing hard issues head on. 

See also her follow-up book ‘Commitment’ which has a wealth of interesting material on marriage.

Lighting fires

It is light now when I rise, a pearly haze of pre-dawn glimmer that lets me see shapes without needing a lamp.  By the time I come down into the garden the day has broken fully, but no sun to be seen, just a blanket of grey filling the sky and the lattice of trees.  It is so wet everywhere, puddles and pools on any surface that will hold them, and drops lining every branch.   read more »

Little things

I have warm slippers
to slip my feet in
as I pad to the dark kitchen.
There is a slice of lemon
in my glug of sparkling water.
The house hums its night song  read more »