Category Archives: poetry

Grief

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There are people in my life at the moment carry loss – deep loss, unexpected loss, unfair loss, wave after wave of losses and change. I find myself standing on the edges of it, breath held I fill up like a balloon holding the pressure of these things and hoping they will make a companion of grief when she calls. Hoping that they will be tender with themselves. This is the poem I have written for them.

…

she will come to you

of this I am sure

insistent, intense, quiet

…

and you will raise your voice

and your pace

and make snide comments in her presence

about people who wallow

instead of getting on

making the best of things

tough things happen to everyone

…

you will silently pat yourself on the back

even as your palms tingle

breath shortens

heart beats as a bird unwillingly caged

you feel her waiting

her breath hot upon your collar

…

she will not breach the high walls of your hard work

your effort

your white knuckled cheerful determination

…

as a friend I bid you welcome her

I do not deny it will be painful

for a time

all your fortifications knocked down

the city of your emotions ravaged

…

you will hate her

but

if you will finally raise the ragged flag of your surrender

you will find her not a tyrant

but a handmaid

…

she has not caused the wound

but she will undress and re-dress it

she will tend to its realities

gentle, she will offer you rest as a prescription

she will speak aloud the names you have forbidden

…

after a time she will whisper you lullabies

and hold you while you weep

collecting every tear

as evidence of

your courage to see and bear

and let your heart keep limping in its beating

…

friend

I bid you welcome grief

she is a tender companion

to accompany you

to the other side of this great wound

…

Miriam Jessie x

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Holy Week

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It is not Holy Week without

the heralds shouting hosannas and hallelujahs

without beginning

with an imagination that all is well,

will be well,

that the Messiah is come.

Holy Week involves the turn

from joy to lament

from hosanna to horror

from orientation to disorientation

imagined triumph to witnessed terrors

we sing and celebrate

our feet are washed

our passover transformed

we fall asleep while our saviour weeps alone

we deny even knowing him

even as we have imagined ruling with him

Holy Week reminds us that we have no imagination

for what might be

what will come

the pathways we’d never choose

Holy Week reminds us

in the great disorientations of our own lives

to wait in the darkness

for a dawn that transforms

———-

It’s been a while but I am on the other side of my thesis, on the other side of poetry written for a specific purpose. I am back to the shallow ground that has hardened from neglect. Looking to find my way back.

I am so taken with this turn from the triumphant start of Holy Week – the Palm Sunday hosannas, to a total disorientation, when everything is confused and makes no sense. How much this week encapsulates what it is to be a person on a faith journey where the one you follow refuses to give you all the powerful happy endings you think the story requires.

Holy Week reminds me of the women who set out in the dark – not with any hope for a different narrative, disoriented in grief and were offered a complete reorientation. It feels like a worthy meditation for this season.

Miriam Jessie x

Poetry … more from lockdown

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Lockdown, locked in, isolated.

Physical distance, social distance, zoom fatigue.

So has been and continues to be the experience of many this strange year.

This is the second piece of poetry I had published in Stimulus magazine earlier in the year.

It is called 19/20 (as in Covid19 in 2020)

may we all carry the weight and wonder of being incarnate for others.

Miriam Jessie x

Poetry and Covid

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I’m so thrilled and honoured to have my first piece of peer-reviewed poetry published in a special edition of Stimulus Journal.

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My piece is called telos (which means goal, the ending point of things). I wrote it in response to an experience I had while making the quilt top in the photo.

I hope it encourages you.

Miriam x

 

 

Led Reflection – Easter Saturday Vigil

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Culturally I feel like I am ill equipped for grief. Grief and death are events to be wrapped by professionals and delivered in a short period of time before everyone is encouraged to get on with it.

I look at some of the beautiful cultures around me and how they enter into grief and death, how they sit in ashes (metaphorically) and how their community of loved ones enters with them.

This Easter I am trying to hold space for the grief of Saturday better. To not avoid the grief but to be present to it and in doing so to be more human.

These strange times we find ourselves in confront us with many emotions that have been able to be ignored in our usual busyness.

Below is a reflection to participate in – holding space for grief and for Jesus on this Easter Saturday.

Led Reflection – Good Friday

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I am always undone by Good Friday.  Every year there seems to be something new to engage with and explore.

I pray this reflection will help you to come to the cross again with a new sense of holy awe and wonder.

May we never rush past what Jesus did for us and for the cosmos.

Led Reflections – Maundy Thursday

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In their final evening together Jesus knelt before his friends and washed their feet. Though he was about to go to the cross he still loved and served his friends. May we too have strength to love those near to us in these difficult days.

A quiet meditation for Maundy Thursday.