weep not for me, mother,
although the world’s weight
rests on my shoulders
along with your parting embrace,
the dark shadow of the cross
behind us now
and the box below waiting
to transport me to the tomb.
Weep not, for what is finished
is but the conception
of the great beginning,
a birth you never knew
you had laboured for,
and this pain tearing
your motherhood in two
will rend the curtains of eternity
and from the darkness
deliver captives drawn out
by the forceps, by the forcefield
of sacrificial love.
This Caesarian section
is the wonder-wound
that separates for ever
evil from good.
Weep not, for the grief is nearly over.
It is almost time to celebrate
the new life born eternal
over which death
shall never more exercise dominion.
‘Crossword’
Joanne Tulloch
Alongside my mind’s terrors of what might be the results of an encounter which brings revelation, it suddenly occurs to me to be frightened that much may also be demanded of me physically. Living with chronic illness, often in bed for days, can mean I often live in my head; but what if this time, God is making specific demands on my body? I cringe, because I already feel at the bottom of the tank – what else is there left to give? Aren’t I already answering those demands physically by merely continuing to endure?
And yet, all around me, in both the natural and human world, I see that ‘birthing the Kingdom’ is not a theoretical exercise. There is a process that must be undergone; and one which inevitably includes dying to something too, if ‘only’ to my idea of myself. If to effect an eternal kind of change? I gulp. I suspect that means there will be an impact even on the laws of physics themselves.
At the very least, I needs must be stripped bare, ready to relinquish all my leaves of accomplishment, all my loveliness of image; my true shape cannot be revealed unless I allow the God-Light to shine through my most bare and barren outlines.
The wood brings together
time past and time to come,
the hour-glass pivot-point
of shifting sand;
this moment where I stand
eyes closed, letting time fuse.
A meeting place of roots and feet
where Autumn roars its fury,
drowning out all sound
save for itself and the hoarse
kaahr kaahr of rooks;
black rags that swirl and dive
and make the wind their own.
I am caught in this apex,
crossed-road of time and space
where all things meet and meld
where all befores and afters disappear,
become this now, this moment,
this herein of being.
‘Being’
Jane Harland
wounded by wonder. iPhone image.
image into ikon 
“Hello” by Sean Hill
She, being the midwife
and your mother’s
longtime friend, said
I see a heart; can you
see it? And on the grey
display of the ultrasound
there you were as you were,
our nugget, in that moment
becoming a shrimp
or a comma punctuating
the whole of my life, separating
its parts—before and after—,
a shrimp in the sea
of your mother, and I couldn’t
help but see the fast
beating of your heart
translated on that screen
and think and say to her,
to the room, to your mother,
to myself It looks like
a twinkling star.
I imagine I’m not
the first to say that either.
Unlike the first moments
of my every day,
the new of seeing you was the first
—deserving of the definite article—
moment I saw a star
at once so small and so
big, so close and getting closer
every day, I pray.
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Abigail, thank you so much for this. I want to reply ‘Amen!’. I don’t really know Sean Hill’s work so I will have to put him on my reading list – thank you for the connection and the introduction. All blessings, Kate
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