STONES THAT CRY OUT

How hard is this implacable
And unforgiving land.

Only the howling of the desert
Wind, or the swirling of
The southward flowing
Syrian springs can possibly erode
The harshness of this place
And sculpt an ever-deepening
Rift upon the landscape –
And upon her peoples.

Rocks of the wilderness:
Building-blocks of Temple,
Fortress, Mosque and Church -
All sourced alike and quarried
From the hills that separate
A river from a sea.

Stones hurling anger
And abuse; slabs for walls, and
Aggregate for roads that
Only some may travel;
Outcrops, shade for wearied sheep
Or mirrored sheen

Reflecting back the searing sun
While burning all that dares to grow;
Subduing armies trudging through
The centuries, upon their weary march
For destiny, for Christ, for
Jahweh, Allah or for power.

And then this other rock at Abu Gosh.
Chiselled to a miller’s stone for
Making bread; for baking bread,
For fellowship, encounter (and at Emmaus
Too), for breaking of that bread, for
Kneading all the pain and loss,
To forge again a friendship and
A burning hope that redefines

How hard is this implacable
And unforgiving land.

A millstone lies beside the church at Abu Gosh, one of the traditional sites
Associated with the Emmaus Road encounter after Jesus’ resurrection.
Conclusion of a Pilgrimage – May 2010

THIS IS ENOUGH

Galilee at dawn.
Pinks on the eastern horizon
cascade over the hills of Golan
and tumble, scattering shafts
of silver, gold and purple
across the snapshot-still
surface of the lake,

And there is silence.

Night gives way to unrelenting day.
But first the sun’s early rays
Awaken on the blackened rocks
(so recently bereft of water
Stolen for the cities far away)
The lichen, insects, moss and
Fragile lakeside flowers;

And I sit silent and entranced,

Then beckoned by the early warmth
This mother Hyrax comes and settles
On the rock, gathering to her breasts
Six little ones, eager to suckle,
Welcomed: as long ago upon this shore
A stranger stood in welcome calling
In the misted silence

“Come, have breakfast!”




A lakeside encounter,
Galilee, May 2010.
( A Hyrax is a Middle Eastern Rock Dassie)

AS IN A FERTILE VALLEY

From deep within the Syrian hills
Fresh water bubbles irrepressible
And clean, receiving from creation’s
Womb that greatest life-sustaining
Gift: this is the Jordan, gurgling in its
Infancy through sandstone channels -
And onward to the valley far below.
Here we step aside.

What right have we to taste this water
If we will not walk its winding course
Through fertile plain and arid wilderness?
What right do others claim, to seize this spring,
To steal her balm, to irrigate industrialised
Oppression? What rites are there, indeed
That call us to repent, to turn again?
Here we must choose.

And so with cameras, sunshades, hats
And tourist bags, tentative, we speak the
Words: “we choose to follow Christ!”, as
Pilgrims down the years have done,
And done again. But now with water
Sprinkled - Asperges me, Domine – we know
There is no turning back, no easy path.
Here is the via crucis.


On renewing baptismal vows at Banias,
one of the sources of the Jordan River
May 2010.

JUSTICE - WALL TO WALL?

I could not measure how
This wall belies its history.
I have no yardstick to explain
Its tragic thrall, no
Plumbline to define its angled
Reach to heaven, or to hell.

For in these stones, these
Massive slabs of rock by
Herod hewn, there is a welcome
And a cruel rebuff, a symbol
Of a wounded people crying “home”,
Where access is again denied.

Here at this Wailing Wall
Devotion of the faithful is assured
In longing for a temple not a tent:
But on the wind the swallows
Glide, and catch another wailing,
A distant lamentation of another people -

And another wall.




At Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall,
On Pilgrimage among the Palestinian hills.