my eyelids
draw downwards
shutters over grief
the senselessness
drops away
like a well within me
i try to get to the bottom of it
but i do not know
how far down it goes
my eyes open
just before i drown
Talitha Fraser
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the tray of
daffodil bulbs from the dumpster
was mostly empty
but imagine
some day
at the tip
messy, smelly, unwanted things
the green shoots first
then golden trumpeting glory
in a unlikely place
Talitha Fraser (photo credit to Duncan Toms)
breathe
one breath
that’s it
now another
now you’re getting the hang of it
breathe out
that’s the way
and again
that’s the way
to life
Talitha Fraser
This months Spiritual Reading group looked at the written works of Dag Hammerskjold – particularly Markings, you can read the notes here.
I found myself thinking in the session, ‘How did I not hear of Dag Hammerskjold before today?’ The book Markings is a fascinating insight to the work of God in someones life and the privilege of private insight into the struggle and conflict within ourselves from who we are to whom You intend for us to become. Dag Hammerskjold was known as a diplomat and economist – predominantly for his role as Secretary-General at the UN. it was only when Markings was published posthumously that we discover he was also a theologian – vocationally a secular monastic – he didn’t join an order or marry but found his own way ‘what makes loneliness an anguish in not that I have no one to share my burden, But this: I have only my burden to bear…’ Dag seems to have lived a selfless life. I am certain he was not perfect and would lay honest claim to his own hard-headed mistakes but he sought and he found something and I think that is the best of what any of us can hope for.
Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
Meltwater trickles
Down the rocks,
The fingers are numb,
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now that you must not give in.
On the path of the others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet.
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now that you must not fail.
Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you –
And you must be thankful.
Last Friday the Indigenous Church community hosted an evening of celebration to mark the anniversary of Kevin Rudds apology. Welcome to Country then heard stories of several First Nation people – their life experience and where they were when they heard the apology (heard their ‘whole truth’) – stolen generation, called “filthy abbos”, told parents/family were dead, turfed out at 16 with next to nothing… humbling faith in the face of damage done in the name of “mission”. Representatives of each First Nation family group given a box: tea bags, Tim Tams, bible passage, Whittakers peanut slab (gold, because you are a teasure to us). Watched a video re-play of the apology, then seed shapes handed out to everyone and we were encouraged to reflect on K Rudds speech and everything else we had heard that night and write a response – mine said things like:
Some of these were read aloud then we were asked to give these seeds to a First Nations person sitting near us to put in their box.
How humbling! How arrogant are my words! How vulnerable am I made by giving away these innermost thoughts/prayers of confession? …not as vulnerable as a child – taken from its parents/family, taken from the only home they has ever known, to have language and culture stripped away – made white.
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