'Wrapped warm in love' - a wee poem

I enjoy trying to rise to the challenge of a villanelle - the form and structure can be a little maddening, but it's fun.

Here's one I wrote for Christmas:

Wrapped warm in love
The new-born child in her embrace
Sleeps softly now this first Yuletide,
Wrapped warm in love: God’s act of grace.

Born to save the human race,
In wholly humble dwelling bides
The new-born child in her embrace.

And angel-song fills heavenly space,
And God, on earth, is glorified,
Wrapped warm in love: God’s act of grace.

Shocked shepherds leave their flocks, make haste,
To see the One long-prophesied:
The new-born child in her embrace.

The holy in the commonplace –
The Word with humans now resides
Wrapped warm in love: God’s act of grace.

All gathered, look upon the face;
Enfleshed, God’s love is signified -
The new-born child in her embrace,
Wrapped warm in love: God’s act of grace.
   [c.Nik Mac]

'Have yourself an edgy little Christmas': a memory

Remembering a Christmas from long ago...  

She had wanted to be edgy, a wee bit trendy;
to deconstruct tired Christmas tree traditions.
Day by day, she walked the beach
eyes scanning shells and sand,
dismissing plastic bottles with peeling, faded labels,
ignoring soft pink jellyfish splayed out in hot summer sun.
Among the seaweed hummocks
she found what she was looking for,
felt the smoothness of sea-washed wood in her hand.
She nodded, pleased, gave a ‘this will do nicely’ smile.
Once dried and cleaned,
rustic natural charm was replaced –
overlaid by spray of glossy white paint.
Slung between two wall lamps by fishing line,
hung with assorted baubles, shining red,
driftwood that had once been part of something bigger
seemed to make the season strangely small.
There were presents, wrapped and stacked against the wall
but firm: ‘no room for a tree this year.’
It seemed oddly fitting:
in this deconstructed Christmas
there was little room for Jesus.

When the child grew up
and made her own way in the world,
she reconstructed what felt to her like Christmas.
No matter where she lived, 
how big or small her home,
there was always a tree to lay wrapped presents under –
room enough to remind her of that other gift:
of the babe wrapped in bands of cloth and laid within the manger.
   [c.Nik Mac]

'This year of cancelled things...' - Advent 1, yrB

Based on Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
'This year of cancelled things...'

Watching and waiting,
wary,
and weary with it.
Even so:
'Keep awake!'
comes the prophet's cry,
ringing out 
this year of cancelled things:
concerts and carnivals,
chit-chat and dreams crushed;
losses, collected like unwanted trophies.
Time, suspended,
turns hours into eternities
of fretful forgetfulness;
blue regret
paints our days.
'Stay alert,'
the prophet whispers,
as if we were not already in a state of hyper-vigilance.
Yet, beneath the whispered warning,
something else:
a sliver of light,
a shiver of encouragement 
in one small, wondered 'why?'
To keep awake,
to stay alert 
means
that there is more.
These are watchwords of hopefulness.
Dawn follows dark.
All will fade, and all will be made new.
In starlight's glimmer we glimpse
a pathway to a stable
full of promise
and hear, in the near,
footsteps
pregnant with possibility.
     c.Nik Mac 11/2020

Labels

Noodling about with the idea of identity in this week's reading from the RCL:

Matt 16:13-20, I was reminded of an old sketch by Rikki Fulton, in his persona of the 

Rev. I. M. Jolly, commenting on a baptism and forgetting the child's name.

'Spindonna Jaiket' comes the reply from the father.

The Rev. is bemused by these strange new names that people feel the need to come up with...

he begins the baptism 'I baptise thee, Spindonna, in the name of...'

and is interrupted hastily by same parent, pointing to the label on the wee one's gown upon

which the child's name has been pinned -

'No you fool, there! There! Spindonna jaiket!'

[which in a good Weegie accent = It's pinned on her jacket]

From that ridiculously silly sketch, I began thinking about labels and identity and the questions 

Jesus poses to his disciples -

'Who do people say I am?'

and

'Who do you say I am?'

Anyway, from my noodling and silly dialect sketches came the following:

Labels/

Labels: 

John, the baptiser;
Elijah, ravens’ friend
(and occasional flame thrower);
weeping Jeremiah, perhaps,
in an echoing well?
A prophet –
just a random
one for any occasion?
The expectations of the people
are pinned on Jesus’ jacket
but cannot
pin him down.

Another label:
the One,
the Son
not just any old son...
this One
is of the Living God.
Not wood,
not stone
but flesh and blood
and bone.

Somehow,
in the mystery,
God has put skin on
trying on ‘human’
for size:
becoming
a waymarker
pointing us
to life
less wooden,
to hearts
less stony;
showing,
in who He is,
whose we are
and what it means
to fully live.

Our expectations of the Promised Messiah
are pinned on Jesus' jacket...
while we

are pinned as Jesus’ own.

c.Nik Mac 2020

The quality of mercy...

Crumbs...

A wee thing I wrote for a resource I'm involved with - which works for this week's RCL gospel passage.

The quality of mercy

Mercy:
doesn’t need to be pristine,
nor need to be huge.
It doesn’t need to be protected,
nor kept in a pot
with a lid
and a lock –
and oh-so-carefully
parcelled out
to those deemed ‘deserving’.
Just
a
crumb
will
do.

Mercy:
is not like pie,
nor is it mealy-mouthed or stingy.
It can’t be measured,
can not help itself
can’t be contained.
No matter how some try,
still, it overspills
the tables of power and privilege,
subversively escaping in
scraps
and crumbs
that are limitless,
boundary-breaking.
Just
a
crumb
will
do.

Mercy:
is subversive,
spilling out for all,
even those deemed (by some) as:
‘undeserving’,
‘different’,
‘not one of us’.
It re draws the circle
wider than the edges
of our imagination.
Just
a
crumb
contains
more grace and love
than we
will ever need...
so:
just
a
crumb
will
do.

c.Nik Macdonald, 2020

Questions to a swift, returning

Just a wee bit of writing practice, emerging from a writing workshop the other day...
Asking a question of a swift, returning to nest - possibly undertones of COVID lockdown at play...

Questions to a swift, returning

Did Sahara's rising heat
thrill you
                        as you
                      soared and spilled above –
blazing a trail
                      tracing the yearly path?
                                     Such grace.
What did you spy
           upon your travels?
                      What smells
                       and sights
            and sounds
                       did you collect
                                  and revel in?
How was the journey,
             little one?
                    And are you happy here
                   nestling in such homely eaves,
           chill Upland winds ruffling such
                                    long-wending feathers?

I long to see and be where you have been.

c. Nik Mac 2020

Imago Dei

Imago Dei 

We bear the marks
of grace upon our face,
carry within us God’s DNA:
God-made.
Sparks of divinity
course through our veins;
our warp and weft,
the stuff of stars.
God shaped...
and so,
we are.

Heaven-made creatures,
birthed from earth,
we dance between the world and universe:
God’s own.
Flesh and blood
and soul and bone
combined in
holy mystery.
God loved...
and we,
God’s mastery.
                    c. Nik Mac 2020

Emerging

Emerging from blog hibernation...
Emerging from lockdown...
and, trying to emerge from the bleakness...

I always set out with the best of intentions when it comes to journal or blog-keeping.
What I continually discover, is that what is consistent is my ad-hoc randomness.
Perhaps I work best to deadlines.
Perhaps I'm not one for finding a profound thought every day and proclaiming it;
sending it half-cocked, and not quite formed, out into the world.
Perhaps I lack ambition, perhaps I just get tired, and often, I just get distracted -
the joy and the curse of a butterfly mind...
As the great emergence from lockdown begins, its effects, for me, seem to be more tiredness, even more butterfly mind.
We all of us have our different reactions and coping mechanisms:
clearly, one of mine is napping and it's hard to focus when you've nodded off unexpectedly in the office chair.

Thinking of lockdown, of COVID-19, and of coping:
I've been curious to see how others have been affected, and their particular coping mechanisms and reactions. I listen to folk on the phone, or watch interactions in yet another 'zoom' meeting, or dig under the walls of dogma and political ideology that passes for news to try and find what the reality might be.
There is talk of collective trauma, lots of rage against 'the machine' of the Establishment.
There has been corresponding amounts of bluster and deflection by the Establishment.
There have been deaths, too many deaths.
When our PM talks of 'success', I think of the line from 'The Princess Bride': 'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.'
Perhaps the toxic combination of the old British sense of exceptionalism and a Brexit-induced nostalgia for the glory of Empire is perverting something that has been so utterly devastating into something to cheer about.
Double-think and newspeak live, and Orwell was a prophet.

I yearn for government with conscience, that seeks the commonweal.
May your kingdom come, Lord...