Hermeneutics

Bring meaning to my text
Oh Word of God

The daily tasks
The minute, hour, day

Page upon page
Life upon life

You were there
In the beginning

You shall be there
At my end

Book of Life
Inscribe your text on me

Poem

Lord, on mornings like this one
It's hard to believe you exist

The birds splutter out joyous song
Light shutters through the window

And my heart crashes
Shipwrecked and ripped at sea

My soul a tea strainer of tiredness
Squeezed out into a chipped cup

Joy does not come in the morning
And I find that dreary night is more preferable

In darkness at least we can hope
Uncertainties leading to leaps of imagination

In blinding sunlight
Our dreams are revealed for mirage

Chiasma which do not hold water
And reality bursts upon the brain

Are you there, Lord?
Are you true, Lord?

It's me.

You are too far for me to reach
My arms go only to trunk of bark

Then you must hold onto me, Master
Breathe fire and life into cold bones

Tree of Life!
Feed me with your healing leaf

Wrap me in splintering shadows
My faith is but gossamer thin

Your love is warp and weft
You mend and make sufficient

Succour me, sustain me, carry me Lord
Into the blithe continuum of joy

Fiction

These days, everyone is writing. Everyone wants to be a writer. Everyone has things to say: advice, profundities, rants, opinions, stories: a personal, individual take on life, the world, the bigness out there. To some extent I shouldn't be complaining - I'm part of this herd. And it's great! What a wonderful gift, being able to see the world through someone else's eyes. But what is a writer anyway? Why are we so precious about it, giving it a title, a role? Defining ourselves by it? It's something that everyone does! Literacy gives everyone a chance, language belongs to the hoi polloi, and the blogosphere makes it all the more easy.

What makes one person a published writer, another an itinerant blogger, a third a sometime letter writer? Does it all matter? I know some writers. Quite a few are self-absorbed. Brilliant, to be sure, but anxious for fame, for self-expression, defining oneself against others. Hoping to be better. Is there merit in this?

Maybe. Sometimes one's vision is such that others might revel in it. Laugh, cry, be shattered, become expansive. See by its beacon something else in the world, and beyond this earth.

And I understand the need for creativity. Or better, for making. In being makers, we reflect God's creativity. The great, only real creator, who made all things from nothing, ex nihilo. While we merely play with the lego blocks that God has already provided.

Writing should be like breathing. Words to sustain one's passage through the world. Walking. Looking. Listening. In, out, along the edges of the world. Moving beneath the superficialities, and grasping the mundanity - seeing it for the beauty and brokenness. Writing should be about other people. Should be about transcendence. Moving beyond the scope of oneself.

Guess I'll never be a writer. Le shrug.

3-D People

I am starting to really appreciate blogs. Not my own, but other people's. I am learning all sorts of things about my friends that I didn't know before, and hearing their writing 'voices' - which is so often different from their normal selves. I am discovering their passions and ambitions, daily reflections, witticisms, aspects of themselves that I guess are often lost in the everyday, or don't necessarily come to the fore.

We are all so multi-faceted. There is so much more under the surface that we'll ever know, even of ourselves.

Oh, to know, and be fully known! Who of us can truly say we know a friend so well? What is true friendship but this? To be like God in this! Glory.