The choice

Haiku of testing

Forty days and nights

in the wilderness, driven

by the wild Spirit.

A time of testing,

hunger and doubt. Who am I,

what am I to do?

The testing man comes

with his tempting offers: Turn

these stones into bread!

You can have it all;

the power and the glory.

Worship me; it’s yours!

Make a big display!

Throw yourself from this tower.

Angels will catch you!

No. I will not take

the easy road. Love’s pathway

is not without pain.

My course is from God;

I choose it, it chooses me;

and the suffering.

The tester departs.

leaves him alone with his thoughts.

At least, for a time.

© Ken Rookes 2022

Testing Time

Haiku for the start of Lent

Immediately:

baptism to temptation.

Mark gives no details.

In the wilderness,

tempted; forty days, Satan,

wild beasts, and angels.

Satan the tester,

doing what God asks of him;

checking out Jesus.

How was he tested?

Mark has no answers, leaving

us to speculate.

Jesus commences;

he will not be diverted

from his Father’s will.

Comes to Galilee

with God’s message of good news:

The day has arrived!

The kingdom is near,

the age of love is revealed;

believe it and live!

© Ken Rookes 2021

A lot of testing

He’s been doing a lot of testing

this devil fella.

Tried it on with Jesus.

What do you want? We can sort it for you.

Comfort? Wealth!

We’ll put you into the top ten percentile,

(that’s half of the nation’s wealth),

you won’t ever need to work again.

We can arrange some good tax breaks, too;

we’ve got some top-shelf accountants on our lists.

Celebrity?

The film crew will be around in the morning.

You can relax, it’s been a long time since fame

was a function of achievement.

A small team of spin -doctors;

should be able to provide

the fifteen-second witticisms

needed to satisfy the media.

Twitter works well.

Power? Influence?

Bit too late to choose your school,

but you’ll find that your hitherto mentioned wealth

will go a fair way towards compensating

for your parents’ oversight.

Just a couple of principles; commit them to memory

and roll them off the tongue when called upon.

You’ve worked hard and deserve everything you’ve got.

You are a generous person,

but you can’t be held responsible

for other people’s failures.

It’s people like you who keep the economy ticking over;

they should be grateful.

There you go! What more could you want?

We’ll go ahead, then?

Did you say, No?

Really?

What’s God got to do with it?

© Ken Rookes 2019

Beginnings

Haiku of commencement

Mark takes up his pen

to write upon the parchment:

Jesus makes a start.

Departs Nazareth,

leaves the family behind.

South to the Jordan.

Finds the Baptiser,

raises his hand, comes on down;

Baptise me too, John.

As he emerges

dripping wet from the water

the Spirit descends.

Does the voice boom loud,

or is it a mere whisper:

My beloved son.

The Spirit takes charge,

drives him into wilderness;

a place for testing.

A time for praying.

Forty days of questioning;

forty days of doubts.

The days pass. He comes,

back to his people, convinced,

now, of his calling.

The time is fulfilled,

God’s kingdom is drawing near.

Good news: trust in it.

© Ken Rookes 2018

Out into the wilderness.

Haiku for considering

The Spirit led him

out into the wilderness.

Time to think and pray.

Fasting forty days,

the pangs gnaw at the belly,

the mind becomes sharp.

The tempter comes by

to clarify the issues

and offer advice.

If you are the one,

the Son that God is sending,

make bread from these stones.

I could use some food.

There's so much more to living;

I'll take the hunger.

Look at the city!

Throw yourself from its towers;

angels will catch you!

It's there in the book,

if you make demands on God

you're missing the point.

Power and riches!

Trust me, you can have it all;

simply worship me.

Enough! says Jesus.

Life is real, becomes worthwhile,

when you're serving God

The tempter decamps,

leaving Jesus by himself

to weigh his options.

© Ken Rookes 2017.

In the wilderness

There must be a thousand temptations,

any dozen of which assail us

in any given twenty-four hour period.

Each one is subtly different,

but when we collect them

and place them under a microscope

we find that they all share the same essential DNA;

that they have all evolved from the one stem.

Power, wealth, comfort,

(I must have that!)

To be left alone to enjoy a peaceful existence,

(somebody else's problem, not mine /

I've done my bit / am I my brother's keeper?)

To be free from pain, suffering

(and therefore to forsake the work of love).

These, and the countless others,

all share in the same evolutionary taxonomy.

One, three or a thousand,

we all face our temptations,

every day.

Like Jesus in his forty-day wilderness struggle,

and through the years that followed.

Every day we face our temptations

and hope, like him,

that we can overcome.

© Ken Rookes 2016

the powers of this world

In the Gospel story of the temptations, Jesus is engaging the powers of this world--the underbelly of human existence, that is embodied for the purpose of telling the story in the figure of the devil. The powers of this world are the great resistant forces, largely uncontrollable, that hold people hostage, captive to the institutions and systems that carry us along, the forces that drive the spirit of the age promising life but leading to death. The powers of this world seek to render us powerless, before the immensity of the world's problems.

• These are the powers that say, "No one really wants war, but the bodies keep piling up."
• That say, "No one really wants homelessness, but we can't seem to do anything about it."
• That say, "No child needs to die of hunger anywhere, but especially in the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet they do."
• These are the powers that say, "I am not really living, but simply being driven along by forces beyond my control."

http://day1.org/2694-choose_life

the truth in the wilderness

A truth is always the truth with reference to something. Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. Not truth but reality is the object of love. To desire truth is to desire contact with a piece of reality. To desire contact with a piece of reality is to love. We desire truth only in order to love in truth. We desire to know the truth about what we love. Instead of talking about love of truth, it would be better to talk about the spirit of truth in love. -Simone Weil 1909-1943 The Need for Roots http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/lent1a.html

if you go to the desert

If you therefore go to the desert to be rid of all the dreadful people and all the awful problems in your life, you will be wasting your time. You should go to the desert for a total confrontation with yourself. For one goes to the desert to see more and to see better. One goes to the desert especially to take a closer look at the things and people one would rather not see, to face situations one would rather avoid, to answer questions one would rather forget.
-Alessandro Pronzato
Meditations on the Sand
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/lent1a.html

Be tempted

How like you, Jesus,
to claim the moral high ground.
You say you choose the better way
over the easier way;
do they have to be mutually exclusive?
Besides, in our opinion, least resistance
is generally under-rated.
If you have the power, why not use it?
Who cares? They’ll make you king, anyway;
it can be our little secret,
no one else need know.
Our little secret on the way to world peace;
you could make it happen,
if you wanted to.
What makes your way better?
Can you be sure,
and how do you measure the outcomes?
Compromise and pragmatic solutions
have always been the order of the day;
lofty ideals are all very well
but the economy surely can’t afford them.
It’s a low-percentage plan, Jesus;
won’t convince anybody.
Go on; be tempted.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Pinnacles

Jerusalem,
always Jerusalem.
Luke takes us there for the third temptation,
his lastt of three. (There will be others).
Offered an alternative path, Jesus refuses.
No surprises here.
He is offered a big, spectacular event
to establish his divine credentials for all time.
It would be in Jerusalem,
with the temple, sacred and glorious,
pressed into service as the setting.
The crowd will gasp, not daring to believe
the evidence of their eyes,
when, from the temple’s pinnacle
a suicidal swallow-dive is arrested, mid-descent
by the proverbial flight of angels
and the man is allowed to float gently to the earth.
But it will not happen;
the temple, and all that it represents,
is being sidelined, it has no future,
as the hungry man determines
that there will be no short-cuts.
Jerusalem, must be patient
as he turns aside from the sensational,
preferring the more humble way
of gentle and generous love;
the journey is just beginning.
In the end
Jerusalem’s demands will be satisfied.
At the time of fulfilment he will be taken
to another high place, and suspended for all to see;
the angels will not save him.
The choice will prove painful, and full of sorrow,
but we are told that he did not come to regret it.

© Ken Rookes 2013

defeating evil with love

There is no greater victory of evil than the reaction of guilt and despair which it arouses in those who have committed a sin, or of fear, anger and hate in those who have been wronged. Conversely, there is no greater victory over evil than to refuse to give in to these feelings, to refuse to act on them, to harbour them or justify them. We defeat evil - in ourselves, in others or in the world - when we refuse to react to it with more evil, but respond to it with repentance, forgiveness and love.
-Irma Zaleski
The Way of Repentance