Tag: faith

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Left onto Stoke Lane

The sun shone brightly,
it’s warmth tempered by a deep cooling breeze.
The days weren’t as long as they had been,
the grasses were browning from summer’s green,
And I could see, as I drove in,
that the leaves were desperately clinging to the trees,
Soon all would fall and a new thing would begin.

It had been a quiet drive,
Serene and subtle deep,
The slower speed now meant I could perceive
the acorns and conker seeds
knocking in the wheel arches.

Left onto Saville Road from Parry’s Lane,
then right onto Stoke Road down the hill,
I’m sure its here I should turn in.

There are indeed some scenes that stick
like the big rocks at the bottom of clear streams,
or words vividly spoken mid-winter dreams,
that lay claim to a past and form the present’s meaning
while conquering future schemes,

She was one of these,
The tree’s – like her veil – did peel,
her brick work sealed by the gardens (Big up Dave Snell).

Intimidating, her beauty was to me,
Shyly I walked into her open arms
and within her embrace I blinked.

Then with a blade, dipped in love she touched me
Hurting to heal, healing to teach,
teaching to give me more than I had dreamed

There are indeed some scenes that stick,
like the big rocks at the bottom of clear streams,
or words vividly spoken mid-winter dreams
that lay claim to a past and form the presents meaning
while conquering the future’s schemes.

How indeed, will I now with eyes open
Full of hope release the grip of her embrace?
Even though the grasses are green,
and the flowers pristine,
And the trees themselves in bloom,
And my real calling is to serve her groom,
How will I, without tears, this very long journey resume?

Well, I must bid these faces adieu,
Treasure the spaces and rooms,
The calories burnt and consumed,
The songs sung in and out of tune,
The comedians, The d.j’s,
and the tears shed in the old swimming pool.
As they go from present meaning to past anchor,
securing my future schemes
as I turn left one last time onto Stoke Road,
and up the hill.

The light brightly shines through the clouds,
the sun they slightly shroud in drizzles will win,
His warmth, seeping in through the slight chill
will bless the new leaves and fill the trees,
And lay claim to a past, form the present’s meaning,
and conquer the future – once a dream.

© Denis Adide 2016

PS: All mistakes are on purpose, they frustrate those who notice. Those who notice… know!!

 

https://www.trinitycollegebristol.ac.uk/blog/kingdom-living/left-onto-stoke-lane-a-poem-from-one-of-our-leavers/

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Notes from the death star

 הָֽאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ

And so the curse prevailed un-curtailed.
I, for my own desires, continued in failing
maintaining that blasted work
of stitching leaves into garments
Even when dried skin sufficed to unify.
Where hands failed, I made new ones to fit,
and covered the blood that soaked them;
Where feet had come unstuck,
cracked from the toil and sweat,
I fashioned boots to hide the bones
fleshed by scars upon scars;
Where my eyes resisted my heart’s covenants
dark glasses over the spaces in the mask,
the same that covered the mind
whos banner self had turned
from usurpations of benevolence
to tyranny’s reign.

“Words I chained in Hymns
and winds to whom once in song I’d yield
rose I and tamed.”

But I hear it,
resounding like the distant echo
of a thousand drums;
a thousand shakers attached to dancer’s heels,
peering over the hills that form the surrounding horizon –
my prison of deeds.
Like the sweetness I once recalled
from the days before the banishing,
before the knowing that couldn’t be unknown;
before the seeing that couldn’t be unseen;
the blaming that couldn’t be undone;
the hiding that couldn’t by my hand be uncovered;
the betrayal to which i’m here unstuck –
like the sweetness of before it rests,
tethered to the memory deep behind
what I’ve hidden;
from the spaces that dream of beyond
bonding to the things the blasted hills deny.
Ahh it is a crying only I can hear, I think,
teased into being by the thoughts that this wind whispers

“there is still good left in him”

I hope for it’s truth
but live out the lie.
walking in the undoable denying of the third crow;
living at the end of the sixth hour,
and the death that is now known as end.

For words I failed to attend,
and actions i’d never commend,
its neither me nor pretence.

“I call out to you, again and again,
Yet you linger.”

From whence cometh my help?

© Denis Adide 2015

 

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Lifted eyes: From whence cometh help?

Dust from fleeing horses
as they leap into the shadow
of the hills I have looked to for help

A thief this night forced
open my stable doors
and to the ground brought my walls and fences

Now with empty words
my lips turn to silence
It wasn’t fire but my own hands that had encompassed me.

“Did the nails,
stained by your blood;
still holding bits of your flesh;
sounding notes from hammer blows;
ever rust?

Did the rough cut wood,
bed for your final rest;
cradle for the crucified;
once soaked for mercy,
ever succumb to rot?

Did the rocks,
hewen out to carry someone else,
rejoice as they laid your body –
their sculptor broken –
awaiting his awakening,
erode?”

I busied myself with a measuring line;
chiseling stones for the wall.
high and thick I made it,
then sitting silently within,
I missed the wind.

Plundered I look to you:
My fortress and shield.

© Denis Adide 2015

….

“Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help
and who rely on horses,
who trust in chariots because they are many
and in horsemen because they are very strong,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel
or consult the Lord!
…
The Egyptians are human, and not God;
their horses are flesh, and not spirit.
When the Lord stretches out his hand,
the helper will stumble, and the one helped will fall,
and they will all perish together.”

Isaiah 31:1 & 3

“This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

Isaiah 29:13

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Revisiting Talitha

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
See, your house is left to you.
And I tell you, you will not see me
until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’

I had scoffed at my wife when she spoke of aches and pains following her personal training sessions. Scoffed because my distance from fitness was not as clear to me as it perhaps should have been. As it transpired, I would have to take up some of her sessions as she was unavailable for a few weeks.

Confidently I strolled into the gym,  a slight tinge of fear but confidence none-the-less. Realistically I limped out the gym. Dripping sweat and shattered illusions in equal measure. The days since the end of the football season had quickly rolled into weeks and months and regardless of my regular swim sessions, whatever fitness I had was evidently no more. #R.I.P

My older brother told me a while back that you loose fitness faster than you gain it. Interesting thought eh! The task of maintaining fitness is less difficult than the task of gaining it. “No Pain No Gain’ the old saying goes. It had crept up behind the decisions driven by indiscipline.

What’s that got to do with Jerusalem?

A strange thing happens when a response gets turned into a ritual. The assumption over the outcome really affects the heart of the act and eventually even the vision of which the act is a response. Somewhere in the process of obedience to the law, in the turning to scriptures to discover more from them, the sight and sound of the living – active and moving – God whose Word dictated their deeds was replaced by the ritual itself. There he stood amongst them, unknown to them and lamenting their self blinkered hearts.

I suppose the days since the red sea; since the manna; since the walls of Jericho; those days had turned to centuries of sacrifices; incarnations of the temple; graceless hierarchies and worst of all, rules that drowned love.

Priests had become pharisees. Condemning instead of mediating. The watchmen became the evictors.

“Go” He said. With weighted measure we
Obeyed. With sword, bow and scepter our siege
We laid. In decadence we hewed out our footholds
In the foothills of grace’s dismay. With hands,
By architecture tainted, this earthen town we laid.
In thick steel our gates we made; their outward
Arrows sharp as gazes. So high the walls
We chose erect that the early breeze, once
Composed abated. The mighty streams, whom
Once in spring we bathed, in anxious zeal
Rose we and tamed; life we chained in hymns,
And winds to whom once in song we’d yield,
Chose we assail.

What’s freely given, if not valued is easily lost.

© Denis Adide 2015

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John 19:28-30

But am I thirsty?
Yearning for the cup of obedience,
For the sour wine of humility
And the salvation it brings?

Am I thirsty?
To endure with you and not to reign,
To stay faithful through the pain,
To praise in chains,
Or when blood stains my imperfect garments?

Am I thirsty?
Knowing that nothing else satisfies
No food for this desire,
Wood for this dying fire?
Or am I mourning my death while waiting
For it all to dry up!

No!

Give me thirst,
Give me hunger.
March me into the wilderness,
Into the desert where you are.

Give me stones
Destroy my thrones
Shake these bones and make me re-membered.

The beds are dry, the clouds long departed:
Dust reigns.

Give me thirst,
Give me the name to call
Give me the knees upon which to fall.

In deed I rage against mercy,
Refusing the first.
Oh Lord!

Give me thirst

© Denis Adide 2015

Before he dies Jesus drinks the ‘Cup’ after saying he thirsts. This the same cup he asks be taken away in Gethsemane. On the cross he thirsts. Is it a thirst for something to drink or is it a desire to be obedient even unto death: death on a cross. He desires to take upon himself the work of salvation.

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me”.

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Lines composed while contemplating John 19:16-30

They were bare hands that sharp nails received
Bare lips that with a kiss revealed
Sealed with bare stone and silver a heart deceived.

Love seamless as His royal robe
Untouched but taken whole
Given whole.

And as they take your robes, you take mine.

Filthy rags.

I resist for a fear of shame
But you shame my fear by clothing me
Clothing me with that seamless love

I’m touched and overtaken whole
Given whole.

© Denis Adide 2015

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Symbiot

12.01.2015

I found the spot I thought you might like
And diligently dug the grave, like you asked.
Then went and purchased the blade, like you suggested:
I left it on the window pane.

Looking upon it, I caught the glisten of raindrops
Shining like diamonds,
Like diamonds stuck onto the empty, interwoven, web-like, branches
Of trees that postpone their dying though winter calls.

But the grey pouring out of the covered sky
Continued to fall onto the sharpened iron
Turning it black, like the grip,
Like the empty, sub-optimal, bowels of the ship.

That was when it dawned on me,
Like the false winter morning I was now overlooking,
You are my greatest pain, my deepest sorrow, my darkest undying
Because the thought you implant, that you can die,

Is naught but a lie.

Any blood you spill is mine
And though the life you claim to take is your own,
Until I hold you, it is mine.
(But simultaneously also not mine.)

© Denis Adide 2015

“For my yoke is easy and my burden is light!” #4Real?

Yours not mine!
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One Stone!

Bones upon bones, upon bones, upon bones,
Strewn across the land
where swords unsheathed have sprouted –
are sprouting – like flowers

‘Not one stone will be left a top of another
all will be thrown down’

Blindness, upon the hour of thy visitation.

When the earth laments
it spews up limbs
like slowly dropping, stubborn, thick, viscous tears.

‘Not one stone.’

What, one stone?

These are not the dead
They are the dying
They are our dying
Covered in dust but refusing submersion

They are the flesh you ask us to leave
That with fine sinews cleave onto our resurrecting
emerging from our tarrying
unclothed and Spirit-less.

‘All will be thrown down’

Bones upon bones indeed,
Bones upon bones in need
Called away but staying slain
With spades harvesting the swords
Harvesting death from death.

‘Not one stone’

‘One Stone!’

© Denis Adide 2014

 

“Let the dead bury their own dead…”

 

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