DRIFTWOOD
Unaware that the tide is making us beautiful...
Monday 25 October 2010
Buenos Aires Poem
The humid sun stands back and looks on behind the hopeful breeze of autumn.
The old glory of Buenos Aires curls up to sleep like the dogs on the street;
Fading like the old people in cafes;
Waiting like a rainbow under the poverty.
The flow of life drones on through the habitual dust.
Hear the accustomed cry of the street vendor and the train vendor and the trained child vendor and the ill-fated families who watch TV
Two blocks behind the tourist shops with their ponchos and their tango shows
And the rusty smell of the asados
Hear the cry of truth that has stumbled on the streets where no one goes.
Truth? I think I saw her once, old and worn, trying to rest in a doorway
While I waited for a bus home.
I paid her attention with a peso and she gave me a mate stained smile
And a few words about providence…
Saturday 2 October 2010
White Page
Sunday 22 August 2010
The Day Metallica Came to Church
At the end of the last post I ventured to suggest that church and the kingdom (domain) of God are not the same thing. This has got me thinking...
Thursday 12 August 2010
A Break in the Clouds
Wednesday 4 August 2010
The Underground Church of the West
The church through history has hurt more people than it has loved and won more wars than hearts. It's painful to think about; but it's history, right? We can't change it. What then do we do if we realise that today is tomorrow's history? That maybe there's still time to change it? Will the war in Iraq be viewed as we now see the Vietnam war in future years? Will the errors of the modern church become more evident in a couple of centuries?
Monday 28 June 2010
Something I wrote 10 years ago...
“I woke last night, slipping from one reality into a greater one. Dream logic so solid dissolved. Still, metaphors enlarge the conscious like life sometimes gives glimpses of a distant plane; looking back from which the logic of this world seems further removed than a dream from waking.
I had a dream once in which I knew I was dreaming.
All too few are these moments of awareness. More often now I sense these bubbles, wormholes to an overlapping reality, star-shaped windows to the other side of the universe. I try to catch one, but the process of study destroys it and the thin image never burns deep enough for memory or display. I therefore cannot relay these insights to others, or make them see, for they can only be known first hand.
The regret of not being able to hold them individually in the palm of my hand is relieved by knowing that these truths are not rare, but hiding in everyday. Invisible to earth-bound eyes they blanket the dusty ground we walk on and reflect the sunlight from our tears.”
Sunday 27 June 2010
My Last Great Epiphany...
I stand alone in the centre of a vast courtyard surrounded by ancient thick-hewn stone walls that tower up forever. I feel like a snail in an amphitheatre. There’s a tremor in the distance. The ground shakes as it comes closer. Rumbling turns to roaring; thick dust billows heavenwards as one by one the great walls scream down to the earth.
I awoke aware of the nearness of divinity. A nearness which quickly receded with the advancement of the days activities: It was 2004 and I was working for YWAM in Buenos Aires, one of dozens running around like mice in a poorly lit building in the city centre. During a prayer meeting that afternoon two individuals approached me. The first said she had seen a vision of my independence falling like a wall. The second saw an earthquake tear down the old temple walls, to make way for the new, the more glorious. These bible verses came to mind:
Haggai 2:6-9 In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth…..
……..The future glory of this temple will be greater than its former glory.
Hebrews 12: 27-28 Once more I will shake not only the earth but the heavens. The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken – that is created things – so that what cannot be shaken will remain.
As if in confirmation the previous week three people had prayed for me independently, each declaring in turn their belief that God had new things in store for me.
Well, of course, you can imagine how I felt: I thought I’d hit a spiritual jackpot. I was going to enter the inner circle of the truly spiritual. I had been chosen for a celestial make-over and I was going to be glorious, I was going to be the next big thing. Noah, Elijah, Saint Paul, ME. Truth is; the opposite happened.
When the dust settled I was a snail without its shell; a bird without its feathers; an actor without her lines. God’s idea of glorious is gloriously different to yours and mine. His aim was never to deck me out as a diamond studded super Christian. He wanted only to strip away layers of falsity to find the real me amongst the rubble. I was left shivering and dumb with nothing to hide behind. The exposure hurt, five years later I’m still hurting, my skin raw as if I’ve been turned inside out.
The mountain of certainty I’d spent years climbing is still nowhere to be seen. All I can see for miles around is dust. But when I stop and I kneel down and the sun comes out, I slowly become aware that the powdered reminder of my failed attempts at sainthood isn’t dust at all. It’s Gold. Then, inevitably, the sun slips behind a cloud of dust and I convince myself that that’s all there ever was.
Tolstoy wrote in his book Ana Karenina, “These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but gold.”