Behold, the moon…

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Chris Goan

A little bit of Rumi for my lovely wife…

There is a way from your heart to mine

And my heart knows it

Because yours is clean and pure like water

When the water is cool and still like a mirror

It can behold the moon

What we are not…

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Chris Goan

I read this on FB today- and loved it. I know it is easier, and even quite seductive to focus what we are NOT than to grapple with what we actually stand on, but even so, some things need saying, and Jim- you said it well…

“God is not a belief-system.
Jesus is not a religion.
The good news is not a ticket to Heaven.
Church is not an address.
The Bible is not a book of doctrines.
Transformation is not behavior modification.
Community is not a meeting.
Grace has no exceptions.
Ministry is not a program.
Art is not carnal.
Women are not inferior.
Our humanity is not the enemy.
Sinner is not our identity.
Love is not a theory.
Peace is not a circumstance.
Science is not secular.
Sex is not filthy.
The herelife is not a warm-up for the afterlife.
The world is not without hope.
There is no “us” and “them.”
Tattoos are not evil.
Loving the earth is not satanic.
Seeing the divine in all things is not heretical.
Self-actualization is not self-worship.
Feelings are not dangerous and unreliable.
The mind is not infallible.”

– Jim Palmer

Hadrian’s wall

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Chris Goan

Yesterday someone sideswiped my parked car

Scraped white scour marks over its shiny blue paint

Then drove off, without as much as a by-your-leave

So much for the video eye in the crowded sky

What is mine

Lies violated

So off we limped along the wall

Thrown up by Hadrian

To mark the ragged edge of Empire

Its stones stand still to mark the way

That ownership requires protection

At the point of a rusty spear

I am validated far too readily

By what is inside my walls

I am motivated far too often

By fear of what lies outside them

All that I own

Buries me

The old fortifications

Still lacing this landscape

Lie like the tracery of old wounds

That never quite healed

Clock…

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Chris Goan

I think this is the shortest poem I have ever written, on a lunch time walk up Gleniffer Braes, Paisley;

Fossil

Tick tock

Goes this rock

And I, pendulous

Larchlap…

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Chris Goan

Neighbours

When did ‘Hearts of Oak’

Turn to larchlap?

Our British empire shrank so much

That every inch of encroachment must

Set loose the legal shock troops-

For every privet leaf

Is sacred

I have rights

That prove you wrong

But this fence

(already skewed by weather)

Makes victims

Out of both of us

Rumours of deeper things…

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Chris Goan

I am heading off with a group of friends to a small Hebridean Island for one of our ‘wilderness retreats’ next weekend.

Spring is here. Yesterday we played our first cricket match of the year (both Will and I out for 0 on a wet sappy pitch) and the garden is full of shy colours. I yearn for wild places.

My awareness of the significance of the wild in understanding myself, as well as trying to understand God, is a constant work in progress. I can make few definitive statements in relation to either. All I can say is that experience is more important than definition. So I continue to place myself in places where I hear rumours of deeper things…

A few years ago I wrote a series of ‘dispatches’- short poems really- that I tied laminated onto bright card, then tagged to the top of canes. We have used them a few times, laid out along cliff tops or on circular routes around wild headlands. I was reviewing some material for this trip and decided not to use them again, but realised that the dispatches say almost everything about my own hopes and prayers for encounters with God. Here they are;

There are rumours-

Like smoke signals blurred in desert wind
They say

He is here

Not in metaphor
Not whipped up in the collective madness of charismata
Not just politely suggested by the high drama of religious ritual-

Here

Sweating
Breathing
With mud on his shoes
2.

Should I hide?

Should I stay in a fold of ground
And hope he does not walk my way?

I could never meet his eye
Knowing that the hidden parts of me will be
Wide open
3.

How do I prepare?

I have no fine things-
No fine words
My shield of sophistication
Is broken

I am soft flesh laid bare
I am a fanfare to repeated failure

I am herald only to this
Hopeless
Hope
4.

But this King wears no stately form
Wants no majesty

He walks gently
And has a humble heart

And he is-

Here
5.

Put down those things you carry
Sit with me a while
Stop making things so complicated
It is much simpler than that
6.

Start from where you are
Not where you would like to be
Not where others say you should be
There may come a time
When I will warm your heart towards a new thing

But right now
I just want to warm your heart
7.

It is not for you to cut a way into the undergrowth
Or make a road into the rocky places
Rather let us just walk
And see were this path will lead us
You and I

All around you is beauty
See it

Smell it

Feel it falling like manna
9.

Look for softness in your heart
There I am
Look for tenderness
And it will be my Spirit
Calling you to community
10.

My yoke rests easy
If you will wear it

And my burdens lie soft on the shoulders
If you will lift them
11.

You are wrapped up in me
And I am bound up in you

We are held together by soft bindings
Like tender shoot and stake
Like mud and gentle rain
Like worn shoe and weary foot
Like tea and pot

Like universe and stars
Like ocean and rolling wave
Like fields and each blade of grass

There is now
And there is our still-to-come

Coming

12.