drawn

the sting sucked out
and swallowed
deep-throated love
deep darkness
born in the bearing
of sin in one body
crowned with thorns
where, o death, is your victory?
where, o death, is your sting?
it is drawn
sucked out
swallowed
deep-throated love
in the deep darkness
expressed in the descent
down and down
to where
I am
found

pierced

rain piercing night's darkness
like giant tears expressing heaven's remorse
hard, dry hearts beat down
so much of the earth's great potential
someone's blood stains the grey city stone
and I sit alone within walls of my own making
silence and sun, doors and a waiting world
stepping out, hands to wring out every wrong
today the wind blows across my face
and it is enough, the piercing drives me on

Arts and the Church - interview with SCF

What is it that most excites you as a Christian in the arts at the moment?

Before I answer that question, I would want to say that being involved in the arts is not an easy thing. People may look at the end work and think 'wow, that's so deep' or 'so beautiful', but there is often a lot of pain, as well as joy, that goes into creating. I also think that an artist who is a Christian has certain challenges regarding church ...

Click here for full interview

Love's First Look

My words were fading from me as the light diminished

Reduced to thought encapsulated within the living organ that played and played night and day

Day and night I called out within myself for love to match the hunger of my starving world

The collapse of childhood, the rising from the ashes

Tell me now, where is the fire, where has it gone?

The heat dissipating into my darkness and I was frozen again within memory - but somehow embedded within sun and moon and sky

What had changed me? Who was it who had called out from beyond me? What was their name? How did they know me?

The protective film covering my heart pierced by love’s many losses, as I was swept away by sorrow’s undercurrent to another place

O far shore, in the waters my shoulders shed the burden of the years, as I coated my own heart - for you, this time

Gift wrapped, shielded from the war raging at battle’s edge

It is for you, my darling – O how you dazzled me

It was such a sudden appearing within the inner sanctum

God and man in colour, contour and content to peel away the concrete forms of day

Encoding the silence of the present moment in which formation advances upwards

And downwards I cast my bread upon the waters of my consciousness

Downwards I fell, staying so still upon the stone, eyes closed – only listening left

Who comes? For whom am I awaiting in this solitary place?

Footfalls longed for - such measured steps, I hardly dare look up

Lifted up, taken in, as I receive a piece of the mystery within the circle of your gaze

And beholding and beheld - O how you wounded me, but I was wounded already – so far from complete

Beloved, thinking on in swift movements of the hand – dreaming still

The first light of the first day has dawned upon the firstborn as I whisper - I will

What is truth?

all the wealth of your ingenuity

"Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves. Jesus Christ not only reveals God, but 'fully reveals man to man'. In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. All believers are called to bear witness to this; but it is up to you, men and women who have given your lives to art, to declare with all the wealth of your ingenuity that in Christ the world is redeemed: the human person is redeemed, the human body is redeemed, and the whole creation which, according to Saint Paul, 'awaits impatiently the revelation of the children of God' (Rom 8:19), is redeemed. The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny."

from Letter to Artists - Pope John Paull 11

John, the Beheaded

What did we go out to see?
A reed bending and bowing in the wind of God’s change
Billowing words from one stripped so bare
Marked by the desert and a message to pierce
Tyranny’s rage, the oppression of a people
And a nation straining to see the dawning of humanity’s final age

What did we go out to see?
A wilderness voice come home within the wildness of man’s heart
Stirring the waters beneath in breathless anticipation of heaven’s mighty waterfall
Dripping wet in a dry land, glistening golden in the noonday heat
Mercy making right, making straight the crooked way
For the Man, the Lamb, the taker of sin

What did we go out to see?
A man of fire who spoke of a greater burning to come
A man with a gaze to implant steel in the weakened backbone
Of a people waiting, whispering God’s age-old promises
Of chosen-ness, closeness and covenant
Eyes fixed on the horizon to glimpse the appearing of the Father’s only Son

What did we go out to see?
You knew who you were, recognised, prophesied, perceived the necessary increase and decrease
Felt your heart leap in greeting at last the sinless Saviour
Filled by the Holy Spirit in your mother’s womb, now standing face to face with your mother’s cousin’s beloved Son
His beginning, the dove descending, did you know to herald your doom?

What did we go out to see?
A man cowed in prison, head in hands wondering how it came to this
Sunken in the pit of the king’s darkened heart
Trampled under the sure-footed death dance of a hating queen
To be no more heard, thought severed, silence served up on that platter
An arm raised to fell the strong, tall prophet, who had so violently laid hold

What did we go out to see?
After everything, you asked your disciples to find out, was it He?
The blind now seeing, the deaf hearing, the dumb shouting praises, the poor lifted up; was it He?
What did you pray when you closed your eyes in that deep-down dark hell?
What did you hear? Did you speak as your executioner entered your cell?
John, the Baptiser, no less the voice of one crying in the wilderness as the blade rose, and then, so swiftly, fell