Month of Mary and other poems

Lovingly in soft
Arms encircled. Life and Light
Long promised firstborn 


Mother of the Lamb


Rejoice O Mother
Of the Lamb. Be glad in Him
He will delight you


Mary's Mantle


Mantle of Mary
Shielding her children, praying
Gracious advocate


Woman of the Apocalypse


Mary, clothed with clear
light, crowned with stars. Radiant.
Handmaid of the Lord


Psalm 50/51 Miserere


Let the bones you have 
Crushed rejoice with your gladsome 
Spirit. Contrite joy.


Carthusian Night Office


Deep night. Monks slow chant.
Sonorous praise. Light and shade
Meditative hour 

Psalm 33/34 Benedicam Dominum


Look upon Him and
Be radiant. Reflect His
Light. Be ye transformed.


They looked to him and
were radiant. Reflecting
Light. Transformed by light



John 20:15


Jesus whom we seek
Desires to be found. In this 
There is hope. And love.


Luke 10:39


Pure, tranquil and deep
Reflecting what is above.
Serene mountain lake

Song of Songs 1:1


Kisses sweeter than
Wine. His tender hand, His strong
Arm. Glad submission.


St Catherine of Siena


The one who loves would 
ever be one with what he 
loves. Christ Crucified.


Heart Harbour


Our Lady of Still
Waters. Restful calm haven.
Prayerful, peaceful heart


Catholic Scot has postural hypotension (Psalm 83/84)


My soul longs for you.
My flesh faints. You make me to
Swoon, your breath revives

The Seven Questions of Pontius Pilate

Are you the King of the Jews?

Am I a Jew?

What have you done?

So you are a king?

What is truth?

Where are you from?

Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?

(John 18 and 19 RSV)

In his account of the dialogue between our Lord and his judge St John the Theologian puts a number of questions into the mouth of Pilate. The Roman Governor is, in fact, one of the very few gentiles with an extended role in the Gospel accounts. Here, perhaps, St John conscious that most of his audience were also gentiles makes Pilate their representative. The questions he asks are important not simply in the context of the Passion but also they are important for us. They go the the heart of who Jesus is and why He matters to the world.

Is Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed one of God, for whom the Jews had long been waiting in in whom they vested such high hopes? If He was then it would follow that Jewish prophecy was founded on the truth that there was, and is, One God who intervenes in human history and has revealed Himself through a covenant relationship with the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus did not answer Pilate directly but readers of the Theologian would recall His dialogue with another gentile in Samaria-

²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4

Does this matter to non-Jews? Very much so. If there is but one God, Father, Creator and sustainer of all that is, then His interventions into human history have a purpose which we would do well to heed. In a sense we are all Jews now. The Messiah has opened the doors into the people of God to all who are the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by faith and not simply by blood. Or, more precisely, we are children through the blood of Christ rather than the blood of Abraham. And being made members of God's household we obtain new privileges and duties.

What had Jesus done? Speaking to a household of gentiles St Peter described His actions in this way-

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him
 Acts 10

But the High Priestly party described them very differently-

⁴⁷ So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. ⁴⁸ If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
John 11

The key difference was that the Apostles saw the power of God acting through our Lord guaranteeing the success of His mission. albeit in ways they did not foresee. The Jerusalem authorities saw the power but doubted the source. For them He was only a man and Rome was greater than Him. In Him the Apostles hoped and because of Him the Sanhedrin feared.

Was Jesus a King? He was, and is, the author of all kingship yet His own authority is both vastly more and vastly less than that which we usually attribute to our earthly rulers be they Princes or Presidents. Less because He is the one who washes our feet and takes our stripes for us. More because-

²⁵ Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
²⁶ They will perish, but thou dost endure;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
Thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away;
²⁷     but thou art the same, and thy years have no end.
Psalm 102

The interesting thing about the question "What is truth?" is that having asked it Pilate left without waiting for an answer. In that, surely, he is a representative figure for all of us. He knew that this was perhaps the most important question of all. He knew also that he was in the presence of one who could answer that question. Yet the pressures of the world and its demands upon him took priority. He left Jesus in order to stop being ignorant in the presence of knowledge and start being powerful in the presence of those subject to him. God reveals Himself to those who listen. Some listen not at all, some but seldom and very few listen with all their being all the time. In this Pilate reveals what we are and the Blessed Virgin Mary shows what we should be.

Where have you come from? An important question for Jew and gentile alike.
Yet we know where this man comes from; and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.
John 7
To which He replied-
You know me, and you know where I come from? But I have not come of my own accord; he who sent me is true, and him you do not know.²⁹ I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.
John 7
To Pilate He gave no reply which conveyed precisely the same amount of information as His answer in the Temple did. He was called a Galilean and a Nazarene. We are told that He was born in Bethlehem. None of this tells us where He came from. Only Gabriel told this and only Mary heard it

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy,
the Son of God.
Luke 1

The seventh question is clear. Man tells God that we have power over Him. The same assumption made in Eden is now made in the Praetorium and, perhaps, within your heart and mine. We can take up and put down Jesus as and when we want in the measure that we want. The power is ours.Yet Pilate was mistaken, the High Priest was mistaken. And you? Are you in error too?

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Torrent of Haiku

Little things matter


Old woman dying
Pain etched face, gentle slow smile
Grandchild holds tea cup.


Swallow in Spring


Declining sun tints
With gold skeletal tree branch.
Swallow seeks Spring nest.

The need and blessing of prayer


Rubbled-over heart.
Give no real power to ruins
Beneath, life throbs, hopes.

Insight


Transcendent glimpse of
Clear beauty. Sunny upland
Within and without

The Rivulet


Tumbling fresh, crystal 
Clear, ice cold over rounded
Rocks. Spring stream runs home.

Autumn Tints


Colour of dead leaves
Faded browns, russets. Twilight.
Lost youth moonlight bathed

Sacred Heart


Heart of Jesus may
I abide within you. Dwell 
In your sweet abode 

Restless Heart


Immaculate Heart
Of Mary, be you within 
Me. Seat of Wisdom






Gulls cry


Smiling sun, biting
Wind. Kittiwake calling out.
Light spangled ocean.

Early Riser


Combing the little
Ones tangled hair. Sun laughing 
At window. Spring dawn.

Brief Lives


Cherry blossoming, 
Brief, frail, sun nurtured beauty- 
Lamb rests in shadow

Spring Blossom


Branches new laden
With blossom quiver, soft breeze.
Sweet scent tumbles free.

Easter Story


Spring frost slays new buds.
Hidden seeds, untouched, grow on.
Bright flowers bring joy.

Consuming Fire


Jesus, Saviour, Light
Of life. Mary's Son, God's Son
With light consume me.

Cosmos


Bejewelled night sky
Cold comfort, distant beauty.
Winter stream shines pale.

Passiontide haiku

Winter's last talon
Reaching into Spring. Bitter
Cold slays bright new bud

He annoys us- Holy Week reflections

                                                             Joseph thrown into a pit.

¹² Let us lay traps for the upright man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our sins against the Law, and accuses us of sins against our upbringing.
Wisdom 2

²⁵ Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

²⁶ Whoever serves me, must follow me

John 12

Humans, saints and sinners alike, can seldom honestly claim to commit any action for but one single motive. We bring the whole of our previous experience, our outlooks and our feelings, to bear upon each of our acts whether we are conscious of this or not. An artist when asked how long it took to make a particular sketch could honestly reply "five minutes and an entire lifetime." Those authorities of Church and State who conspired to bring about the trial and death of our Lord on the first Good Friday did so, they thought, to prevent Him fomenting a dangerous spirit of unrest which would bring down upon all Israel the avenging fury of Imperial Rome. In part that really was their motivation, and a very sensible one by worldly standards. The prophetic words from the Book of Wisdom, however, point us towards another reason, no less powerful but unacknowledged, which was at work in the conspiracy to kill Jesus.

Saintly people are intensely annoying. They irritate us. We think that we live good, moral, justifiable lives which could be a little bit better but not much. We are better than our neighbours, so we are within our rights to despise them, and not very far short of the best we could be. When we encounter (or hear about) those whose lives are massively more genuinely good than our own we are, as they say in Scotland, black affrontit. Their existence poses a fundamental challenge to how we understand ourselves and how we choose to live and move and have our being. They imply that we require a complete change of mind and heart if we are to be genuinely, absolutely, good and not just relatively so. Rather than doubting ourselves it is existentially much easier to doubt the saint. They are lying, they are hypocrites, they are bigots, they are dangerous. The fury against Jesus was not simply the result of an accurate political calculation. It was personal, truly, madly, deeply personal.

The implication of our Lord's words that His followers must hate this life is that those who love this life must necessarily hate them not for what they say but for what they are. His life no less than His words are a constant reproach to those who find themselves more or less comfortable with themselves and the case is the same with His followers. We do not like being reproached. Still less do we like it if we are in the positions of teacher, leader and exemplar. If we cannot ignore the challenge, as the High Priestly party and the Pharisees could not, then our choices are to accept it and change ourselves, repudiating all that we are and all that we have been, or to silence it by whatever means come to hand. Passiontide was a conjunction of political expediency with personal angst. The boil which was to be lanced, and lanced it truly was, Jesus, stood as a thorn in the flesh of those for whom flesh was all that they considered to be important.

Those Christians of today who retrospectively stand on the side of Jesus and in condemnation of His condemners will do well to recall these words of His Whoever serves me, must follow me   Being considered annoying is not in itself a sign that we are following in our Royal Masters footsteps. Neither is being persecuted although both these things should be notes of the Christian life amidst the masses of the worldly. What following Jesus means here is just this, live the Good Life unselfconsciously. Do what comes unnaturally to us as if it came naturally because it comes supernaturally. Complete and humble surrender to the work of Grace within us is the only basis upon which we can do this. We must provoke annoyance not by being provocative but by being pure peace.

A Death Must Follow, Palm Sunday Reflections

¹⁵ Thus, through his intervention, a new covenant has been bequeathed to us; a death must follow, to atone for all our transgressions under the old covenant, and then the destined heirs were to obtain, for ever, their promised inheritance. ¹⁶ Where a bequest is concerned, the death of the testator must needs play its part; ¹⁷ a will has no force while the testator is alive, and only comes into force with death

Hebrews 9

For those joyful pilgrims to Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus with such exuberance there was no thought of death. They believed, and rightly believed, that the path before His feet and theirs was the fulfilment of the promises of God, the glory and triumph of the heir of King David over His deadliest and most intransigent foes. They were right in their choice of a Champion of their cause. They were wrong in assuming that they knew who the enemy was and what was the weapon that would defeat him.

It was not Rome or the High Priestly party at whom Jesus aimed. It was at death and the power of death. And His weapons were submission, defeat and an agonising passing into the shadow of destruction. The ending of life and with it the apparent dashing of His hopes and those of His followers, the joyful, exuberant, hopeful pilgrims scattered and despairing, sheep without a shepherd.

In the day of optimism all surely remembered the words of Zecariah See where thy king comes to greet thee, a trusty deliverer; see how lowly he rides, mounted on an ass, patient colt of patient dam! Our Lord knew, if no one else did, that lowliness was not a cloak which He was about to cast off as He gloriously led an army to victory. Lowliness, humility, was not with Him a state of mind which could come and go. It was an essence, not an accident, of His nature. And to be true to Himself it could only be in and through and with this essential characteristic that He would fight His battle, secure His triumph and bequeath His inheritance to those who believed in Him. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

Though these Palm Sunday crowds could not foresee the future nor as yet understand their Messiah and His purposes they were not wrong to rejoice. They thought that their case was that of the Psalm ¹² Word has come from the Lord, good news borne on a multitude of lips: ¹³ Routed their kings, routed the armies; they have left their spoils for housewives to carry away; ¹⁴ never shone silver so bright on a dove’s feathers, never gold so fair on a dove’s wings; and you, all the while, resting quiet among the sheep-folds! And so indeed it was. But they gained their share of the spoils as legatees, inheritors of a Testament, not as warriors and their camp followers.

It was the way then, as it often is now, that adherents of religion mix their material desires with their spiritual in a confusion of hopes and fancies not without a hint of greed for possession and prestige. Palm Sunday should teach us that if we hope in Jesus we do rightly especially when we recall that a death must follow. Upon that death we must stake our lives. And the Kingdom we shall enter into is not of this world.

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Pope Benedict resigns

Dear Pope Benedict,
I love you and much thank you.
Joy be yours through Christ.