Musings on faith and real life
Often poetry – musings on current experience
Lots of Christian friends I meet have not gone back to church yet, and I’m wondering why. What is it? What is it that has so disturbed our souls in this pandemic that means the previous ways will no longer do? What are we reaching for? In what ways are in-person worship services now failing […]
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Treehouse Suspended between reality and dreams, cedar walls breathe out their warm welcome – a scent from some Other place. Spider’s webs and dust motes allow a relieved settling into unsophistication. A garden chair, softly padded, receives me quietly. A match scratches, flares. A candle flame finds its balance. I settle to awareness. Leaves flutter, […]
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As a child, I was always a bit horrified by my great aunt’s shoes. Dark brown, functional, but lumpy in all the wrong places. No-nonsense shoes for a no-nonsense person. Shoes that reflected her strictness. I wondered whether I would like to be one of her piano pupils, as I’m sure they were scolded regularly […]
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stars hidden silent snowfall subduing all stirring procrastination visits with this sunrise stirring curtains a shiver of expectation: arrested enchantment transfigures lockdown stupor a doorway opens: childhood relived! squirming with suppressed excitement, restrained – set free! stamping on pristine precipitation a thump of snowball a shriek of retaliation soft war slipping off sledges sussuration of […]
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I’ve had odd Christmases before. There was the Christmas day in Uganda when we emerged from a morning church service to the sight of a young man parading down the street. As he turned his head towards me, four eyes caught mine, not two. Slowly I realised he had an inverted cow’s head balanced on […]
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A shiver runs through me when I recall you, street preacher: you stand there, politely dressed, in a neat space between market stalls, a small black book in hand externally polite, respectable, friendly even but with a stream of horror pouring out of your mouth. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ you ask the passers-by. ‘If you […]
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I chop and sweat vegetables for soup, an alchemist invoking the art of pulling together a family. Fragrant steam diffuses through the house Curling around the stairway Stealing under the door of my children’s rooms, Silently letting my husband know he’s loved, Soon drawing my family to the heart of our home, To sit round […]
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As lockdown began, I had a very strong sense that it was important not to come to conclusions about what it all meant too soon. The wisdom times of difficulty bring takes time to make itself known. Busy the sun, the wind, the birds, the spring greening But my heart’s sound is silence, a dampening […]
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A candle in my treehouse 