‘I wonder sometimes if the teacher is not the real student and beneficiary’ (George Steiner)
… Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
From ‘The Bright Field’ by R. S. Thomas
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes
From ‘Aurora Leigh’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
To quote Malcom Guite one more time, here’s an excerpt from his poem ‘Maundy Thursday’, also published in The Word in the Wilderness:
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.
Impulsive master of misunderstanding,
You comfort me with all your big mistakes;
Jumping the ship before you make the landing,
Placing the bet before you know the stakes.
I love the way you step out without knowing,
The way you sometimes speak before you think,
The way your broken faith is always growing,
The way he holds you even when you sink.
Born to a world that always tries to shame you,
Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame,
I love the way that Jesus chose to name you,
Before you knew how to deserve that name.
And in the end your Saviour let you prove
That each denial is undone by love.
From: Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year
Hate has no world.
The people of hate must try
to possess the world of love,
for it is the only world;
it is Heaven and Earth.
But as lonely, eager hate
possesses it, it disappears;
it never did exist,
and hate must seek another
world that love has made.
From Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
… there was an extra-ness in the air, as if a gate had been left open in the usual life, as if something might get in or get out.
From Seamus Heaney’s book District and Circle
In her poem ‘The Lord’s Prayer from Guatemala’ (1979), also published in Threatened with Resurrection/Amenazado de resurrección, Julia Esquivel envisages that:
churches abandon their structures of power and domination
and become instead a source of life and service
for all humankind.…
For yours is the kingdom
belonging to no usurper,
yours is the power
belonging to no structure or organization,
and yours is the glory,
for you are the only God and Father
forever and ever, AMEN.
Karl Möller 