There is love and there is love.
What would You call me into?
What is love that does not
arc towards wholeness?
What is love unlived, unfamiliar, unrecognisable?
A strangers face.
I have been here before.
How will you help me stranger?
How will you help me know you
and, in the knowing, know myself?
Let us walk on a little way together yet
and speak of love.
Talitha Fraser
I have believed
in things unseen
for as long as I
can remember
I remember fairies,
Borrowers, Father Christmas,
and more…
In the believing
one knows
the power of things unseen
to work to our good,
and the good of others,
whether they believed or not.
The seeds of faith were born here,
among flowers and thimbles,
cycles and stockings,
the seeds of faith were born.
Talitha Fraser
Ch 2, p8
Richard Rohr
God
I acknowledge my
inabilities,
my smallness,
my powerlessness
to affect any change
least of all
to myself
take me and make me
something beautiful
to You
take me and make me
something beautiful.
Amen.
Talitha Fraser
I like the word “collaborator” – it puts me in mind of a smarmily gleeful rubbing together of hands, maniaical laughter and petting long-haired white cats but, funnily enough, there was none of that taking place at the recent Australian Collaborators in Feminist Theologies Network Launch… this is a group of women and men who want to see something built up not taken over or taken apart.
I didn’t really take notes so much as quotable quotes – I’m tidying as I go so while this might not be exactly what people said it quite probably captures some of what they meant and we can’t let the truth get in the way of a good story…
Cath McKinney
Serene Jones
Trees planted by the river, drinking grace – bearing fruit in due course.
May the Source of All Life nourish us and bind us together,
May the Wisdom of the Holy One enlighten us and enable our sharing,
And may the Courage of Holy Fire inspire is as a network of love and freedom
today and always…
And we the people say: Amen
There was prayer, singing, dancing, dreaming, round table discussion, portrait pictures, sharing, storytelling, liturgy, affirmation, celebration and collaboration –
you can join in the journey on the Facebook page.
What Goes Unsaid
In each mind, even the most candid,
there are forests, where needled haze overshadows
the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen,
or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,
loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.
In these forests there live certain events, shards
of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations
once familiar – some painful, shameful, some
drably or laughably inconsequent, others
thoughts that the thinker
could never hold fast and begin to tell.
And some – a few – that are noble, tender,
and so complete in themselves, they had
no need of saying.
There they dwell,
no sky above them, resting
like dragonflies on the dense air, or nested
on inaccessible twigs.
It is right that there are these secrets
(even the weightless ones have perhaps
some part to play in the inconceivable whole)
and these forests; privacies
and the deep terrain to receive them.
Right that they rise at times to our ken,
and are acknowledged.
and other excerpts…
Primal speech
If there’s an Ur-language still among us…
then it’s the exclamation,
universal whatever the sound, the triumphant,
wondering, infant utterance, ‘This! This!’,
showing and proffering the thing, anything,
the affirmation even before the naming.
Primary Wonder
…once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the thong’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
The Servant Girl at Emmaus
…Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognise yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
God our creator, provider, and carer,
You are the best and fairest;
We are committed to searching out and living the way that you want us to.
Help us not to worry about the future,
and to share what we have with others.
Forgive us when we destroy life
and teach us to create life instead.
Give us courage to choose to
forgive those who hurt us.
Be with us in our time of need
and help us not to give up.
Our safety and life is in you.
Amen
– with Rowan Castle
Starting to read this together at Sunday Group – here are some teasers from the intro…
xvii When Christianity loses its material/physical/earthly interests, it has very little to say about how God actually loves the world into wholeness.
xxii Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality. The very fact we have to say this shows how much we are blinded inside of it. By definition you can never see or handle what you are addicted to. It is always hidden and disguised as something else. As Jesus did with the demons of gerasa, someone must say, “What is your name?”(Luke 8:30). The problem must be correctly named before the demon can be exorcised. You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge.
xxiv
This counterintuitive wisdom will forever be resisted as true, denied and avoided, until it is forced upon us – by some reality over which we are powerless – and if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality.
You can buy Breathing Under Water by Richard Rohr (or any of his other titles) from the Centre for Action and Contemplation website.
I am changed, am I not?
All glory be to You Life-Changer
I am not who I was
I am made new
All of who I am, in You
Ruined for anything else
And grateful, bone-deep, for that
If I am rendered fit for Your purpose
Let me not lament what is lost
But give voice to joy what has been found
You are the belonging
My heart has hungered for
Fill and spill from me
And I will know a life well-spent
I will know a life lived
I will know life
Not death, never death
But life with You
Talitha Fraser
itellyouarise 