The kingdom

Haiku of emerging abundance.

The kingdom of God!

A diff’rent reality,

strange, unexpected.

The seeds are scattered.

The sower gets on with life;

the seeds sprout and grow.

First the stalk, the head,

then the grain swells full and ripe,

and the harvest comes!

Take a mustard seed,

the tiniest of them all;

grows big for the birds.

The kingdom of God;

growing fruitful love, justice;

though we may not see.

Many parables,

riddles to confuse and hide;

his friends understand.

The kingdom of God;

when God rules in hearts and minds,

grace and love abound.

© Ken Rookes 2018

The true vine

The true vine, so called,
offers some awkward metaphors
for entering into a fruitful life.
Cleansing and pruning;
not the most comfortable of procedures.
His words did not merely cleanse.
They were intended more to create chaos
than comfort, upheaval rather than ease.
It was all about discipleship, and fruitfulness.
The teacher from Galilee came to seek
fools who would join him in his outrageous quest;
be joined to him.
The vine may be a metaphor
but the discipleship has weight and form.
He works hard
to balance the pruning with the abiding;
the sacrifice and pain
with the friendship and love.
And in the end there are the fruits;
the grapes, and the wine.
Along with the struggle, the tears, the anger
and the hope.
 

 

© Ken Rookes 2015

Making a Profit

Across the centuries many have hailed

the Parable of the Talents, so called,

as a divine endorsement of commercial enterprise.

The worshippers at mammon’s various temples:

the merchant bankers,

the stock brokers,

the importers, the exporters,

the buyers and traders,

the investors and actuaries;

must all love this yarn.

Central to the tale is buying and selling

and making a profit,

all of which become the means

by which the nerve, ingenuity and commitment

of three servants are tested by their master.

Sits a bit awkwardly, though,

with the “eye of a needle” line delivered elsewhere;

among the teacher’s more usual misgivings

about riches and possessions.

Unique among the yarns

recounted by the master story-teller,

this one assesses fruitfulness

in terms of astuteness and monetary gain;

more commonly it is gauged by acts of love,

forgiveness and peace-making.

Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong

with making a modest profit.

© Ken Rookes 2014 

I posted another poem about this parable last week, getting ahead of myself. It is called 'Reckoning.'

Came looking

Came looking

God the failed gardener;
sleeves rolled up,
hands roughened and calloused
from clearing the stones
and building them into walls and tower.
Blistered with digging and hoeing,
skin darkened from all the pruning
and all the sun,
came looking;
but the vineyard is unfruitful.

Came looking
among the empty branches;
among the fear and the voting
and the credit cards,
among the accumulators, the manipulators
and the gate-keepers
among the networks and the systems
and the tent-cities,
among the indices and the vaults
and the shock-jocks,
among the editorials and the card-gamers
and the judgement-sitters,
among the candidates and the slogans
and the low denominators,
among the investors and the magnates
and the number-gatherers,
among the light-thieves, the chance-dealers
and the hope-stealers.
Came looking.

God, the failed gardener
came looking
among the sad empty branches
for some generosity, some love
and some mercy;
but the vineyard is unfruitful.

© Ken Rookes 2013

Fig tree fruits

If you repent,
the much-loved doctrine declares,
you will be forgiven.
A simple-enough transaction,
with the reception of forgiveness transmuted,
by divine alchemy, into the golden currency
of paradisiacal admittance.

With much tears and wailing, repentance is enacted,
souls are pronounced saved,
and heaven’s host, we are told, prepares another room.

But what if repentance is no mere turning point,
arrived at once and finally?
What if it is an attitude that grows, develops,
and manifests itself in actions;
many and uncounted, small and large;
with an impetus towards sharing and justice
and generosity and peace?
And what if the second chance grace
is all about such fruitfulness?

Fig tree fruits from plants worth their place
in the garden.

© Ken Rookes 2013

From within the human heart

The human heart, vulnerable and doubting,

is the place where everything begins.

It covers itself with light,

it shrouds itself in shadows;

and from seasons bright and seasons dark

produces its fruits.

From fearful seeds

the heart grows thorny brambles

of hate, deceit and greed.

These entwine with other frightened souls,

multiplying their sad despair

to deny life and its possibilities.

From hopeful seeds

the heart grows trees of compassion,

love and peace. With delight and celebration,

they urge other hearts to set aside their fears

to dance exultantly, to live defiantly;

to let go.

Fear and hope;

the human heart, fragile and uncertain,

is the place where everything begins.

© Ken Rookes

Germination

Way back behind the jar

of rusty screws

we find the dust-covered

seed pack: Yates, Grosse Lisse,

plant before December1995.

Might be a bit late.

At the centre

of the created universe,

deep within each living molecule

a seed has been planted.

Buried in the cold darkness

a tiny parcel of potential

holding its divine dna,

splendid and auriferous, quietly

anticipating the promised rain

and the word of assent

that will permit it to sprout.

The smallest gesture of warmth

may be enough.

Then will come a burst

of hope-saturated life

to break through indifferent soil;

becoming,

growing and becoming.

With time, care and steadfast striving

much long-sought fruit can be produced.

Within each soul, a seed, scattered,

sown by the one who creates;

the rain is gifted by the Spirit,

but the word of assent

must come from ourselves.

Never too late.

© Ken Rookes 2012

Blooming

For four years we took pleasure

in the rose bush growing near the front porch

of the white painted house

planted next to the church

in northern Tasmania.

A dark and velvety red,

its perfume was as deep

and as beautiful as its colour.

We tended it with care,

and, though it had been planted

long before our residency,

we took much pride in it, and joy.

We thought of those

who had also experienced its blessing

in years long past, some of whom we knew;

and we enjoyed our connection of delight.

Some years later we walked past that house,

and, being that time of the year,

we paused to look down the driveway

to see if our rose was in bloom.

Yes, there it was,

covered in the small white flowers

of the all-conquering rootstock.

Every three years we read the story

of the true vine,

and of us branches

who have been grafted into the vine;

and I am reminded of the importance

of the pruning, the pain,

and the sap that is spilled

in the process of being made fruitful.

© Ken Rookes 2012

Fruitfulness

Love is a seed,

its deep-hidden dna

a blueprint carrying the hope for a harvest

of compassion and truth,

comradeship and care,

along with glorious defiant acts

of justice and grace.

Gospel-teller John,

in common with those who wrote before him,

calls his readers to emulate his hero

by joining his company of disciples.

A metaphor enthusiast of the highest order,

he writes of Jesus as a vine

into which the follower has been grafted.

The disciple is expected to be fruitful,

he assures us,

and identifies the pruning shears

as an essential means

by which that fruit is produced.

Ouch.

In another part of his story

Jesus appears as a lonely grain of wheat;

a seed that, to be made fruitful,

must be transformed so completely

and painfully, that its planting / burial

is described as death.

Returning to the subject of discipleship,

he insists that this loss of life

characterizes the process by which

his followers are to bear their own fruit.

Ouch, again.

These are, of course, mere metaphors.

and modern-day disciples have no need

to take them literally.

They are, however,

expected to take them seriously

and produce the multi-coloured fruits of love.

© Ken Rookes 2012

The Joy of Metaphors

The Joy of Metaphors

1 Corinthians 3:1 - 9

Knowing a good metaphor

when he saw one, the apostle

managed to cram two of them

into a fairly small space. He fed his

infant children, (is that a third?)

on milk rather than solid meat,

because that is as far as they had reached

in their journeyings of faith. (There,

I’ve introduced one of my own;

making a total of four.)

Even now, presumably some years

after the apostle’s Corinthian sojourn,

the children are still not ready

for the meat of discipleship.

You will be ready

when you learn to live in harmony,

he tells them. He then takes up

the gardening image, ever-popular

and much-employed by his own master.

Planting and watering

and growing to maturity;

his readers are purposed to bear the fruits

of which he is wont to write:

love, joy, peace, faith and hope,

but mostly love.

Unable to restrain himself, the apostle

grabs hold of few more metaphors;

and enthusiastically throws them into the mix

to drive the point home, (sorry!)

or else for the sheer joy of it.

© 2011 Ken Rookes