December & January : Polaroids

We may be the same, we may be changed, when the current moves us on.

Ocean Swimming

The breeze conducts the ocean like a million orchestras. My skin submerges to its beat.

The sand stretches beyond my eye-line. Perth, The Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, The Bay of Biscay then the English Channel; I know the way home from here.

The song of an ancient king washes over me with the waves of each stroke, “Your thoughts, O God, are precious and uncountable, like grains of sand.” We cannot sift them through our fingertips. We cannot see them with our eyes. Maybe we are not supposed to try. Have we seen too much?

The sprawling ocean floor is clicking and scratching and bustling in softer tunes. Less than twenty percent of the seafloor has been mapped by modern technology. We have only seen a fraction of the visible.

Much-Afraid (in the allegorical tale, Hind’s Feet on High Places) asks her companion about the hidden mysteries of earth. “Sometimes I have wondered about the wild flowers,” she says to the Shepherd. “It seems strange that they should grow in places like this where the goats and cattle walk all over them. They have so much beauty and sweetness to give, and hardly anyone sees them.”

The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. “Nothing that My Father and I have made is ever wasted,” He said quietly, “and the wildflowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. Many people live a quiet, ordinary life…Some of My servants have won great respect from other people…but always their greatest victories are like the wildflowers, those which no one knows about….”

I pass over a shoal of silvery, blue fish and expect them to dart timidly away from me. I am surprised that neither I, nor they, flinch. Our bones are held buoyant by the oxygen visiting our lungs; each breath keeps us close to the sun. I feel a little lighter – a single breath more weightless – at the fact that we have not displaced each other.

No one saw but us. And while the orchestra played, we were unafraid.

A haircut.

I breathed deeply as the wheels of the salon chair rolled over cut hair.

“Why does someone just wake up and decided they want to bomb another country?” she asked me, her scissor blades poised. I was unsure if she wanted an answer.

I could reply in a hundred ways. I could tell her that even when you see bullet holes in the walls of homes and meet hungry families sheltering under tarpaulins you’re further from any kind of answer. I could tell her about my belief in original sin, human power without accountability and unforgiven hurt and bitterness. I could tell her about how easily we dehumanise each other (just put me in a traffic jam when I’m exhausted, with a sick, crying child in the car) and the language that springs from hearts under threat or in fear. We carry prejudice in our pockets far more easily than we will admit.

Instead, I opened my mouth and stuttered. The hairdryer next to me roared.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and for a split second, a stranger sat before me, another’s eyes looking into my own.

Three Words.

Moon, 

hold, 

heavy:

our son spoke a poem while his fingertips skimmed the sky, reaching for the half moon. I sighed. I will not write another poem about the moon today; our feet are on the ground, I’ve burned the omelette and the forests are on fire. 

What is there left to say about the moon when the earth is rippling with terror?

Words have left wounds where silence should be. Images have been weapons wielded. I don’t know where to turn or what or who needs my attention. We have a universe of knowledge at our fingertips but lasting wisdom escapes us.  

We are tired; but this is nothing compared to the weariness of those living in the land of the dead. 

The words of Topi* from Burma circle my mind again, a few years after interviewing her, recounting the day she fled her country as a child. She remembers asking her mum to hold her in the warmth of her arms one last time before she thought she was going to die. “Such a morbid thing for a child to think,” she shook, weeping. 

Where is God in all of this? Where are the leaders that we need? Where is wisdom? Is it hiding in the eyes of a child? 

A colleague reminded me of a scripture she thought about while she was sitting in a meeting with some government leaders recently:

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are.

My colleague said questions and thoughts and more circled her mind, unanswered, until the Abdullah family stood up and spoke. 

Danny and Leila Abdallah's three children - Antony, 13, Angelina, 12, and Sienna, eight and their 11-year-old cousin - were walking to get ice-cream when they were struck and killed by a car in Oatlands, Australia in February 2020. The driver was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The family have openly shared about their journey of grief and forgiveness as they processed the loss of their three children and the father recently spoke about his visit to the driver of the car in prison.

We can learn to forgive because we are forgiven, the Abdallah family say.

Forgiveness got us through that valley of grief, said the Dad. Forgiveness opened my lips, said the mum. “People would keep asking me to explain why I forgave. I forgave because I am a Christian.”

Moon, Hold, Heavy.

Love, hold, heavy.

Forgiven, heavy, hold -

Forgive, heavy, hold.

Our son is small enough to think he can clutch a planet or pluck a star from a dark night sky, but big enough to stamp on insects and to turn away when we ask him to listen. He is learning what is his to touch or not touch, to take care of or to give away.

Wisdom, be his, we pray. 

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A Poem for the New Year*

Kneel and sip
the surface, travellers
distracted, restless, worn
 - the source runs on and on.

This ordinary water
asks nothing of you,
humming
over rough stones,
and tired toes,
rinsing away
unwritten poems and
the little that we know.

We lift water to lips.
We whisper to storms.
We let sky’s heartache
slip through open palms.

Still the river
carries what it cannot own,
shares what it cannot possess,
surrenders to the unrepeatable,
bubbling laughter,
as the sun hurries home.

We may still be the same
we may all be changed
when the current moves
us on.

*edited from 2022

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Other things I’ve loved this month:

• The Winterage, by Max Jones who writes at Up There The Last. A stunning essay about traditional pastoralism and cattle herding known as transhumance, which has sculpted the landscape of the Burren in Ireland for thousands of years.

• A poem called ‘For The Unknown Enemy by William Stafford recently shared by Nate and Lore Wilbert

• An Article in the New Yorker, How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith.

• Logging off Instagram for a few months to start 2024.

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