Announcement

 

Haiku of surprise

Angel Gabriel

finds himself in Nazareth

talking to a girl.

Her name was Mary,

engaged to marry Joseph

of King David’s line.

Greetings, favoured one,

said the messenger from God.

The Lord is with you.

Do not be afraid.

You will conceive, bear a son,

and call him Jesus.

Destined for greatness,

he’ll sit upon David’s throne,

he’ll reign forever

This cannot happen;

I’ve never been with a man.

The Lord will do it.

What say you, Mary?

It’s a most daunting prospect;

are you up for it?

I’m here, said Mary,

God’s servant. Let it happen

to me as you say.

© Ken Rookes 2023

The birth

Haiku of wonder

When a king is born

the stories must reflect it

with wonder and awe.

Apart from angels,

this narrative is humble,

with a common cast.

Comes to Bethlehen,

the tradie with his girl-bride,

about to give birth.

A shed out the back

of a packed-out small-town pub.

Nothing flash in that!

A son is born, wrapped

in cloth strips and put to bed

in a feeding trough.

Shepherds get the news:

the Messiah has been born,

look for a baby.

This will be the sign:

a baby in a manger,

in David’s city.

The shepherds decamped

to see for themselves the child,

as they had been told.

They told ev’ryone

about the child, the one born

to save his people.

© Ken Rookes. 2018

The new place of Christians at Christmas

This echoes my sentiments and the whole article is worth a read.

"There's no doubting the church has been a mixed bag over the centuries. My own experience as "the son of a preacher man" was one where I saw up close the best and the worst of the church community — the charlatans, the crazies and, yes, the ones you knew to avoid as a kid. But I also saw lives of undeniable beauty and grace and joy. These were unheralded, and in many ways unspectacular, lives of women and men whose commitment to caring for others, especially the unfortunate, left a lasting impression.

That's not everyone's experience of course. But it's with that memory that I will recall the baby born in a stable this year, with all the mystery and profound promise that he carries. To my mind that remains the best antidote around to Christmas-induced anxiety, stress and disappointment"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-24/can-the-christmas-story-counter-anxiety-sadness-disenchantment/9275328

When the song of the Angels is stilled

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The Work of Christmas begins: To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers and sisters,
To make music in the heart.
Then indeed we shall be blessed!  

Howard Thurman:

A subeversive gift of Peace

​In the Christ child born in poverty in a stable the divine brings a subversive gift; 
The gift of a powerless baby where the world demanded a king, 
the gift of vulnerability and innocence where the world wanted a warrior and justice, 
the gift of peace where the world was preparing for war.

And what I like in this story is the presumption that the gift of peacemaking is ordinary 

and in all of us. We are all princes/princess of peace, 

we all have the divine child of hope within, 

and the gift of Christmas becomes the turning of swords into ploughshares.

(Rev G Bannon)

Census

haiku for losing control

As the story goes

Augustus and his minions

decreed the counting.

A census gives us

the needed information

to order our world.

Numbering people,

keeping control and power,

imposing taxes.

The count brings the man,

along with his pregnant bride

south to Bethlehem.

But in this baby

God upends all creation;

here is the promise.

Humble mum and dad,

common tradesman and his wife;

folk the same as us.

Find them a stable,

a shelter for giving birth.

How appropriate.

No fancy cradle;

he can sleep in a feed trough,

there among the straw.

Invite some shepherds,

poor and lowly witnesses;

they’ll proclaim his birth.

Something about God

spurning grandeur and power;

these are good stories.

© Ken Rookes 2017.

Carol night

Carol Night.

Candles glow amidst the tumult;

everywhere there is noise and movement

wonderful noise, wonderful movement.

People joining voices

sharing food and blankets

And the Children, the children

they are just children?

They cry and scream,

laugh and tumble.

They are not angels are they?

One girl child, with glowing, stubby candle,

sits amidst the din;

stunned or dazzled,

amazed or distracted?

She sits,

an image of stillness

with a stare at times

almost vacant,

or perhaps focussed

on the infinite?

She moves at last

to stand before her mother

and exclaims with pure awe,

“ Mummy, they’re just like stars!”

then moves back

to her place of watching.

Her mother,

sensing more than most

the ‘other’ in her daughter’s words

weeps tears of joy and wonder

at the beauty in the child.

 G Bannon

The energy of joy

A different Nativity

And is it true?

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

John Betjeman (1906–1984)

The vulnerable Divine

We celebrate this child that is called the Christ but I wonder how much we understand it. When we find our hearts softened when we look at a child we are receiving a profound message about the nature of ourselves and the spiritual power of the child.
This Christmas many of us are feeling pretty vulnerable ourselves. The human race seems hell-bent on its own destruction and the destruction of the planet. As a Christian I continue to be horrified at the way our nation is treating asylum seekers and at the wars and cruelty that continue to plague our world. The church is also in a time of great vulnerability and uncertainty. As individuals I am sure there are many of you facing personal challenges that confront you with your own mortality and weakness.
In these times especially the subversive message of Christmas couldn’t be more significant. The message of love and vulnerability that this child is bringing is to transform the world. It is to bring a great light into the darkness. It is to tell that the power of the divine is not in powerful structures or domination, but that true power lies in vulnerability and love.
The way the Bible tells it, the baby worked a kind of magic on the surrounding world on the night of his birth. Here is a new image of this ‘God’ not as an all-powerful God but rather as a helpless, vulnerable infant. The magic that surrounded the baby lifted people above the misery, cold and darkness that surrounded them so that all they could think about was the birth of this child. But it did something far more powerful than that. It was a message of hope that God is present in the small, shy places of the world. Today, Jesus would be more likely to be born in Aleppo in Syria, or in an indigenous community in Central Australia, or in Palestine. This is a message of hope to the powerless of the world. Our God is not only on our side but lives with us. At the heart of this sacred time lies the message of a God that is Emmanuel - God-with-us!
Christmas is about an event that many believe changed the world but also one that continues to have the ability to do so. It is a day to celebrate. I urge you to pay attention to your inmost self sometime on the day. Take time to give honour to all that is vulnerable, innocent and holy within you and in the world around you. Christmas is a time of the heart. Allow the spirit of the child-Christ to lead you on a journey to the manger where the tender and vulnerable God lies.
And in this may you find blessing and hope this Christmas.
Rev Gordon Bannon

Christmas Poem A bell

Had I the power
To cast a bell that should from some grand tower,
At the first Christmas hour,
Outring,
And fling
A jubilant message wide,
The forged metals should be thus allied:-
No iron Pride,
But soft Humility, and rich-veined Hope
Cleft from a sunny slope;
And there should be
White Charity,
And silvery Love, that knows not Doubt nor Fear,
To make the peal more clear;
And then to firmly fix the fine alloy,
There should be Joy! 

A Bell

Clinton Scollard

 

Singing for Hope

I found this very interesting sermon about Singing as an act of resistance. 

http://www.davidlose.net/2015/12/advent-4-c-singing-as-an-act-of-resistance/

What struck me most was the insight that singing is spread right throughout the Christmas story and i think it was as an act of Hope rather than just resistance.

Nativity Haiku

Shepherds and angels

conversing in the shadows,

illumined by hope.

Good news pronouncement;

Great joy! The one sent from God

breathes earth's air today.

Down in Bethlehem

while everyone sleeps; at last

something has happened!

No room at the inn;

so the man and the woman

had to improvise.

Why do you delay?

You should get yourselves moving

or you'll miss the show.

Entrusting their sheep

to the angelic choir,

they went to find him.

A baby is born.

It happens every day;

what's special this time?

This feed-box cradle

is offered as a sign. Strange,

but appropriate.

The shepherds returned,

sharing their wond'rous story;

couldn't keep silent.

© Ken Rookes 2015

The Holy Family

Linocut.by Ken Rookes

Blessed the fruit of your womb

The story begins with a girl,

fecund, mid-teens,

belly beginning to swell.

It will get much larger,

as, within her womb,

the miracle of life claims its space.

An unlikely sign, vulnerable,

yet outrageously defiant;

a sign to engender hope,

to confront earth's bondage

and futility.

A peasant girl,

pregnant with purpose and possibility;

the lowly are to be elevated to positions of significance

while kings, emperors, princesses

and other persons of power and plenty

will be asked to descend from their lofty seats

to begin their acquaintance with earth's dust.

The girl could be anyone;

any place on the planet,

any point in its history.

She is caught up in this common human tale;

the wonder,

the waiting,

the struggle,

the pain

and the joy.

A sign for eternity.

© Ken Rookes 2015

A moment of Christmas longing

A moment of Christmas longing                   Fay White

Christmas is loud percussion

in the symphony of my year,

discordant crass cash registers

beep beeping in my ears,

the tinny ding of tinsel decor

everywhere you go,

and clashing symbols, elf and angel,

songs that mention snow.

And everybody over-busy,

everybody tired,

and most of us  ambivalent

and many of us wired.

And I can hear the doof doof thump

of families in distress 

as Christmas seems to up the ante,

amplifies the mess.

I wish it was

a simple tune,

played on a flute,

or fiddle,

that could slip 

past my defences

and touch me

in my middle,

like the sweetness 

of a baby 

born 

all fresh 

and soft 

and whole,

to light a lamp of wonder

in the midnight of my soul

Witnesses

Two formerly obscure old people

become Luke’s surprising choice

as his final witnesses

to the Messiah’s birth.

In his historically improbable

but still entrancingly wondrous

natal narrative, he retrospectively presents us

with the excited pronouncements

of an elderly man and an aging widow.

Salvation for Israel,

light and hope for the foreigners,

redemption for Jerusalem;

here, in this infant.

Imagine if a pair of old people stood up

to deliver such outrageous observations

in our own time.

There probably wouldn’t be a camera crew

on hand to record the event

or interview the key players;

it would be unlikely to make the papers.

At best, there might be a few smiling selfies

with the old people, the mother and child.

Some, no doubt, would end up online;

maybe with a paragraph in someone’s blog,

to be reposted by a handful of friends,

or shared with a link.

Most likely we’d offer a patronising wink or a smile

and shake our collective heads

before joining in the joking dismissal.

Let’s face it, the elderly

probably weren’t taken seriously back then,

either. No one else seemed to notice,

or bothered to remember;

only Luke.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Interpreting the story

Gospel writers Matthew and Luke

are the approved suppliers

of the raw materials

from which we cobble together our Christmas stories;

faith being the thread that seeks,

gathers and ties the meaning.

The angels speak of the wonder

of the aching God who decides to take action

and to embrace uncertainty.

The girl-woman, Mary,

is a sign of human obedience

and willingness to let God’s perplexing purposes

take their unpredictable course.

Her carpenter husband, Joseph,

in determining to proceed with their marriage,

shows the persistence of human compassion

in the face of bewildering embarrassment.

And the baby, strange and vulnerable,

tells us of the mystery of divine love

found, unexpectedly and riskily,

among us.

So, what of the fat man in the red suit,

intruding uninvited into our neat nativity?

Perhaps he is God, laughing.

© 2009 Ken Rookes