Pep talk for a fearful heart

Have you noticed that you've flat-lined?

Where are the troughs and peaks?

You'll never live in fullness

if comfort's what you seek.

Where's your sense of adventure?

Where's your appetite for more?

You've wrapped yourself in cotton wool

and can't work out why you still feel sore.

You can avoid the disappointment

and you can keep building that wall

but deep inside you know that playing safe

really isn't "playing" at all.

You'll never find true happiness

settling for the "happy medium",

so jump down off that tired fence

and exercise your freedom.

Decide to live your life in technicolour

every single day

abandon fear, take the leap and stop

living life in shades of grey.

From poetry to light pollution

I feel I have broken through a structural wall when it comes to my ponders on poetry. I have discovered that content and form can indeed help each other out - it can be about both things! Hurrah! All is not lost!

I have found in the past week that using structure and form can actually help me to organise my thoughts. For example my poem, Train Journey, that I posted the other day was birthed out of both conviction on a subject and the use of the acrostic form. I had a huge mindmap of ideas, but it wasn't until I laid down the form I was going to use that I found I was able to arrange those thoughts into a coherent form. Having discovered this I had a look back through some of my previous pieces (many of which were posted on facebook before I took the plunge and started this blog) and discovered that perhaps I would rearrange where I have placed the line breaks in light of what I have been learning in class... a task that may take some time and that I may never get around to doing, we'll see!

My huge mindmap of ideas that pre-existed Train Journey is really focussed around Matthew 25:31-46 where Jesus is teaching about the final judgement. He talks about how when the Son of Man returns He will separate the sheep from the goats - those who have fulfilled what was asked and those who have not, what it boils down to are the following six points:

• Feeding the hungry
• Giving the thristy something to drink
• Inviting strangers into our home
• Clothing the naked
• Caring for the sick
• Visiting those in prison

Jesus says that those of us who do not do these things for the least of the people amongst us, have not done the same for Him, the penalty is eternity in hell. Wow... this stuff isn't optional, this is bare minimum expectation. But how many of us feel we have a personal relationship with Jesus and ignore most, if not all, of these points and yet still expect to be greeted as good and faithful servants when we meet our Maker? Of course, can we be achieving these commissions in less obvious ways, for example, visiting someone who is, in essence, a prisoner in their own home because they are unable to get out in bad weather, or cooking dinner for our flatmates, or inviting a new person from church or at work round for the evening... does it blatantly have to be the homeless, the starving and those on their deathbed...? Do we take it seriously enough to make sure that we are achieving it at whatever level? Are we convicted about it?

I've been thinking a lot about "the least" too. I'm reading "The Irresistable Revolution - Living as an Ordinary Radical" by Shane Claiborne and it is for sure challenging me on my perceptions of poverty and lifestyle. Like in any book by any author I find some parts massively inspiring stuff but also find I don't necessarily agree with other parts.I have, however, taken a couple of things in particular to heart. The first is a conviction that our lives should look incredibly different to the lives of those around us who do not follow Jesus. Jesus told us he is The Way. He really meant that! His way of living was massively different to those around Him, it was a way that brought life and freedom and it's a way still accessible for us today if we dare to stand out and look different, if we dare to be set apart.

My other conviction from reading Shane's book is that in order to have a real and lasting impact in a community we have to become a part of that community, we have to become one of them. You can't just minister to the poor, you have to become poor. You can't just minister to people, you have to get on their level and experience life through their eyes, in their shoes. For me this is a very timely discovery as I begin to look ahead to what comes next in my life. I feel sure that God is calling me to be a part of a community (not a town or a church or a household, but a place of work). He is calling me to be on the same level as those my ministry will be to (or perhaps "with" would be a better word to use?) He is making me one of them.

We are called to shine light in the darkness, but if we are too afraid of the darkness to get in amongst it, what hope have we got? We are promised that the darkness can not overcome the light, what more do we need to get out there and start polluting the world with Jesus' light?

Train Journey

Hurrying to find another seat away from
your stench, your sickness of heart and
physical distress, I choose
only a label and reject its accompanying
commission - I'd rather walk on by than
risk getting my hands dirty - so, having
ignored Jesus in you, I bury my head in my bible and
tell myself I'm a good and faithful servant,
eternally saved by grace - grace that I just made cheap.

A homework haiku

Lost in Translation

Jane, Jean or Gina
Everything but my actual
Name - never my name.

Loss Changes Everything

I've been experimenting a bit with line breaks and stanza breaks based on some of what we've been taught in the poetry class I'm taking. I'm trying at the moment to write what I feel and then see where I can use the "rules" to make it more structured rather than let structure and form get in the way of what I want to say. I'm not sure what the result is here, or if I've got the point that was being taught, it just seemed more interesting than writing plain old couplets. What do you think?

Loss Changes Everything

You sing "Love Changes Everything"
but respectfully I disagree
see, I'd say
loss
changes everything;
loss has changed
everything
for me.

Your voice was a perpetual soundtrack
underscoring our lives
everyday.
Your endless covers and warbley vibrato
brought me nothing
but
endless
dismay.

But I find myself
strangely missing that soundtrack
that we switched off
in two-thousand-and-seven,
when we left her
alone
in the graveyard
and went home in the car she had driven

the CD player unusually
silent,
a great sadness
fell
on us all
A huge elephant travelling with us -
the foundations
of a mighty, great wall

From then,
nothing
could be the same,
there was no way to
turn
the clock back
I never imagined I'd say it,
but I miss that perpetual soundtrack.

I miss the one who insisted on playing it
and the way I expected our lives to be.
Yes, I'd say
loss
changes everything;
loss has changed
everything
for me.

The trouble with studying poetry

So, clearly I've been writing a lot less frequently lately. Ironic really when I am now taking two writing classes a week. Interestingly, I believe it is probably one of those classes that has contributed to my recent dearth of writing. I am undertaking a beginners level poetry class and I can't deny that I am struggling with it. I've always written poetry, I used to churn out pages and pages as a teenager, much of which was disposed of in an attempt to put teen angst to bed and move on into adulthood; something which I now regret - the disposing of the work, not the growing up! But this class has me feeling like I'm back in a high school English lesson. I'm confused about the point. It seems to me that as soon as we start to study poetry we lose its very essence. When we over-analyse every word and comma and syllable, do we forget about the raw emotion that birthed the need to write in the first place? I find myself asking why I am writing at all. Am I writing for me or for those who might read what I write - can it be both? And does my reason dictate the form and content of what I write? I hate the idea of writing in a certain way purely to please others, to me, that holds an element of selling out, but then is writing purely to suit myself just being self-indulgent?

Thoughts on a postcard...