Baptism

 

Haiku for a calling

In the wilderness,

beyond the civil, polite,

and respectable.

Camel-hair jacket,

belt of leather, dining on

locusts, wild honey.

John the enigma,

known as baptiser, calling

people to repent.

I am nobody,

John declared. One is coming

far greater than I.

Jesus came to John

from Nazareth in the North;

Baptise me, he said.

Jesus emerges

from the Jordan to the dove

and to heaven’s voice.

Jesus is baptised

in God’s Spirit, and confirmed

in his ministry.

Baptised in water,

he will baptise his friends with

the Holy Spirit

This is the moment

and this is the man, says John.

He of whom I spoke.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Not belonging

The one we follow
steps away from the constraints
of earthly contentment and desire
to listen more closely to the words of grace,
love and delight that whisper insistently
in the calling that shapes him.
With freed arms he offers
his liberating embrace
to the ones he calls friends.
They are to walk his own awkward,
earth-traced trails, and many more;
experiencing the challenge of the landscape,
feeling the sadness of its breaking,
and uncovering hopeful nuggets
and other surprising life-gems
hidden beneath layers of dust.
Born of that same dust,
they see beyond their parentage,
knowing that they are neither
children nor slaves,
but sisters and brothers of one,
who, for something more beautiful,
refused his world’s comfortable
and seductive encumbrances.
Belonging most completely,
yet not tethered by that belonging,
they refuse the gravity pull
of everything that would rob them
of the true freedom and joy
that is their inheritance.
Climbing love’s thermal currents,
recklessly they soar, rising and diving;
passionate,
with determined wings.

Some poems are works in progress. I post them anyway in the hope that others might find them helpful. I think this is OK, but I may revisit. 
© Ken Rookes 2012

What do you want me to do?

Gospel writer Mark

is a man of few details;

he invites us to employ our imaginations.

He gives us a wilderness Jesus,

no longer under pressure

from demands of family or carpenter’s shop.

Perhaps he left the trade behind,

as well as the family,

when he moved to Capernaum.

Time to think; to weigh his options.

I picture him as a frugal man,

of independent means, at least in the short term,

with a modest sum set aside

for the purpose of taking a bride

and embracing family life;

he had certainly reached the age.

Still single at thirtyish, the mid-life crisis

had been nagging away for some time,

and the recent changes in his life

showed that its course was far from fixed.

Since childhood he had felt a persistent

sense of mystery, of a divine something

that seemed not to disturb others

in quite the same way.

He had often asked questions of this spirit,

and sensed it interrogating him;

his head shouting silently

through the sounds of hammer, saw and plane.

The answers were elusive

and the questions persistent.

Now, driven into the wilderness

after the baptism event with John,

the debate increases in tempo

as the shoutings move outside his head

to echo in the desert night,

“What do you want me to do?”

© Ken Rookes 2012