Autumn

Crisp apple smell with a subtle hint of decay,cool wind, yellow leaves, grass wetwith last night's rain.The copper sun is bright and fleeting;a momentof autumnal perfection as clouds slowly raceacross the horizon.

Earl Grey

Earl.Noble. Substance and station. Elegance, respect, history. Well-spoken assurance, quietly calming authority.Grey.Not the liquid, for this begins life as clear lakes of possibility, poured and captured, meandering through the delicate ti...

Scars

When you’ve been through the struggle of reevaluation and looked back on it with a newfound perspective, it’s easy to feel that it is over and done – behind, in the past, safely finished with. But, ah, naive self-congratulation, the past ca...

Beginnings

Unsettled space ebbs and flows around meas I sink into finding my feet among the waveswashed in newness, fluctuations of time,learning names, process, and what I might bringto this place at this time in this nowwhich is ever changing, mergi...

The Gift

I have a gift, I’ve been told, of tears. But it is a gift most strange and unwanted. To feel in such vivid technicolour the pain, the heartache that belongs to another – to call this gift? A gift of burden, a guilty knife within, a gift of...

The Drip

It drips, the tap.It drips and it drops.So I sit, and I watch.If it drips, I might catch it with paw or with tongue.So I sits in the sink for all the day long, and I wait for the drip.I sits in the daylight. I sits in the dark.I sits and I...

A Priest

I am a priest.​Hands laid upon my head, pressing gently downwards, the pressure of solemnity and significance. Oil dripped from my crossed forehead, blessings running down my face along with the tears.​I am a priest.​Seven years since that...

Good Friday Lament

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?Forgotten me, abandoned me?Turned aside and shut your eyes,withdrawn your guiding hand? My God why have you left me? Alone in pain and blood,surrounded on all sides by those who mock me,spurn my crie...

Dear Soul

When frustrated with yourself, dear soul, remember to be kind. Remember to be generous, and proud. And pay no mind to that voice which cries out ‘useless!’ ‘needs more work’ and leaves behind the truth that your innate gentleness is gift, a...

Praise Be

Praise be to God for dappled things,for light through trees, for moonlit wingsof birds flitting their way through night,for the smooth and speckled skin of pearson the windowsill, now ripe. Praise be to God for fragile things,small eggs in...

Tombstones

I read once that silence is always present. Even underneath the roar of a passing jet engine, stillness is there. You can’t always hear it, but that doesn’t alter the reality of its being.Standing in the graveyard that evening, the mumble o...

Loss

Finitude lends beauty to the fleeting natureof our conscious experience,for if unfettered what is so precious would somehow loseits wonder and become staid, drearin unending repetition.Yet endings bring pain, surprise, rebellion, wounds,a s...

A Psalm before Ordination

O Lord you are full of wonder and majesty. Your creation is glorious, a glimpse of the outpouring of your goodness.​As the wind moves through the grass but cannot itself be seen, so you are present, moving among us in ways we cannot tell. A...

Tannoy

Have you ever wondered why supermarkets seem so ominous when you are little?The long cold aisles stretch into the distance, and the metal trolley you are holding onto could be the trolley of anyone, followed quite by mistake as you are dist...

Turquoise

I keep wavering. Quivering, as if a querulous child has taken up residence within. It doesn’t seem to matter how much assurance I am given, it only takes the blink of an eye, and I’m right back where I was, facing a grey corridor with no en...

Fairy Songs

Do you know what a raindrop is? A raindrop is a note sung by a fairy.​Fairies are fond of frolics and mischief, but they are very serious about some things, and one of those things is their songs.​When it is gloomy and grey, they like to go...

Resolutions

It is new year’s day. The first day. Poignancy is in the air. The early setting sun to one side of me casts golden light onto the underside of scudding clouds, misting the sky with a mellow buttery gleam. The dazzling glory of the sinking b...

Caring

Shrinking and twisting with the pain of disease, she was vanishing before your eyes as the edges of life drew in. Her husband was kind in a gruff way, tersely particular about her food. Tears shone through the quiet conversation about the o...

This is my body

A moment of curious holiness.Juxtaposition of beauty and brokenness.As the melody of the Agnus Dei surrounds my soul with calm, the wafer is cracked.A sharp cut of sound against a softness of voices.And as we sing to the Lamb, the altar aga...

The Valley of the Shadow

Today I knelt in church. I’ve never done that before. It felt a little odd, a little uncomfortable, the cushion not quite right and the edge of my seat pressing into my spine. Yet at the same time, it surprisingly seemed right, natural, per...

Going Home

‘They’ve given me ten days’, he said. Large eyes looked out from a drawn and discoloured face, but the hands were calm, resting on the bed covers. ‘I would have liked longer with the grandchildren. They’re so young. But I’ve been very bless...

Unity

Intimacy of gathering.​The unfathomable mystery of the other in a moment of vulnerability and pause, each unknowable soul brought together by unique impulse.​How strange that individuals can be so connected, sharing communion with one anoth...

Looking for God

God is everywhere. I never hear her, but sometimes it’s like she has reached down and pointed at something – gone ‘ta daa!’ or ‘just look at this’, or ‘I love you’. ​ God is in everything. In the person who I struggle to get on with, the on...

Gifted

‘Are those wings?’ you ask, looking over my shoulder.‘What?’ Caught off guard the question surprises me. Someone asked me that once before, a long time ago. ‘I dream of flying sometimes, but I don’t have wings!’ I laugh.Your smile is quizzi...