Lifelines

Carla Grosch-Miller

Description

After the deaths of her brother, father and mother, the poet and writer Carla Grosch Miller felt that her world and faith had fallen apart. Lifelines is the fruit of what followed. These searingly honest yet hopeful poems reflect on the mystery at the heart of Christian faith and the journey through death to resurrection.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786222367
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lifelines:
Wrestling the Word,
Gathering Up Grace
Carla A. Grosch-Miller







© Carla A. Grosch-Miller 2020
First published in 2020 by the Canterbury Press Norwich
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 1 78622 234 3
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd





For David
whose steadiness keeps me standing and whose encouragement enables me to soar





Contents
To the Reader
Genesis
Part 1. Wrestling the Word
Lectionary Poems
Advent
The Waiting
The Tender Shoot
The Call to Repent
Leaping
The Joseph Cycle
Meditation on Rembrandt’s The Holy Family by Night
Expectant
Christmas
Christmas Eve
Christmas Morn
The Slaughter of Innocence
Song of a Mother
Epiphany
Star of Wisdom
Baptism of Jesus
The Tree
The Call
Make Peace
Becoming
In the Footsteps of Elijah
Holy
The Radiance!
Lent
Wild Beasts
For the Leader (Nicodemus)
Sarah Speaks
Temptation
Ode to Moses’ Mum
There is a time
Hidden Depths
Dying to life
Passion Sunday
Maundy Thursday
Maundy Thursday 2 – We rise
Good Friday
Holy Saturday
Easter
Raised to life
Heartlock
The Pruning
To love
Ordinary Time
Daybreak
Firstborn
From the mouth
Enough
Moses on Sinai
On Pisgah
The Prophet I
The Prophet II
’Til death us do part
Amidst the Ruins
Scorched lips
Offence
Wordless
The Prophet III
And you shall lose your life to find it
Blessed are those who mourn
Rock to sand
The table heaves
Who has not suffered an impediment of speech?
See these stones
Like Bartimeus, I want to see
The clutch for meaning
The one thing, the better part
Bent over
Lost and Found
Confidence misplaced
Outsiders
Some yearnings are so deep
The grateful eye
Am I lost?
I stand

Word Becomes Flesh
Part 2. Gathering Up Grace
The Geography of Grief
The Tom Cycle
Organ Failure
Things my father gave to me
Weather Talk (for my father)
The most beautiful thing
Last rites
Death’s undoing
Grief’s Pool
For my mother
Stardust
On the Road
The Storm
Go to your cell
The Vow
Sea Wind
Blood Donation
What if?
Breathe
It slips between my fingers
Earthing
I am not satisfied
On the road
Kintsugi (Gathering the Fragments)
Beginner’s Mind
Redemption Road
Vocation Prayer
Endurance
Sunday morning
The Sea
Grace is Grace. It comes.
Walking with Sophia
Coming Home
Now
Meditation on Tarn Beck Falls in Winter Spate
In wonder
New Psalms and Prayers
Psalm for the Newly Born
Psalm for the Seed
Harvest Psalm
Woodland Wedding Psalm
Psalm for the Dead
Psalm of Praise
Psalm of Lament
Psalm of Rest
Ode to Courage
Prayer for Awakening I
Prayer for Awakening II
Prayer for the start of a new week
Prayer of Thanksgiving for Enduring Love
Mother’s Day Prayer
Strong Prayer
Divine Sex
Song for Petticoe Wick
The Way of St Cuthbert – poems and prayers
A prayer for beginning a journey
Prayer for a long day
Prayer for ascent
A prayer to enter the wilderness
Prayer among the Cheviots
A pilgrim prayer
A prayer for journey’s end (a new beginning)



To the Reader
I write to save my life. The drama of that statement startles me. But there have been times when it has felt literally true. The lectionary poems in Part 1 Wrestling the Word and the poems in On the Road and The Geography of Grief in Part 2 Gathering Up Grace are those kinds of poems. They are poems that I started writing as and when my life fell apart. The violent death of my brother, followed by the quick death of my father and the more prolonged of my mother (they said Tom’s death would kill them) – all accompanied by an increasingly confusing and assumption-shattering few years in my work – left my brain in pieces. The world as I knew it became threatening and frightening. Nothing measured up. I couldn’t do numbers (as I discovered when I later tried to find documents I had filed by date). I couldn’t do people, couldn’t even look them in the eye. I couldn’t continue the work I had always found life-giving even when challenging. So I left ministry and swapped the pulpit for the pew or a Sunday morning walk.
Truth be told, I was tempted to leave the church too. Having lost my compassion and discovered the limitations and shadow side of some Christian traditions, what was left? The first few months after I left ministry, I could scarcely bear to hear of God’s love or God’s desire that we love. I was too traumatized to receive or to give anything. I did not understand what had happened to me and could neither seek nor find comfort or guidance. A few things were clear: I needed to be in my body – moving, singing, dancing, walking, swimming. I needed to be outdoors, beneath a big sky. And I needed, sometimes, to write.
What the poems reveal is that, although I felt myself to be leaving a past life, the Holy had no intention of leaving me. Grace kept leaking under the lintel and seeping over the sill of my closed heart-door, presenting itself in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways: an invitation to learn and teach about trauma, the welcome of wild women singers, the hearty company of North Sea swimmers and, as ever, the steadfast love of family and friends.
I am happy to report that my compassion came back as I walked, danced, sang, swam, studied and especially as I cared for my mother as she died. Judy Grosch was a love; just about everyone took to her. I adored her. My natural compassion came from her, and it started to come back to me as I lived in her world for two months to accompany her Home. It took a few more years for a full recovery, years during which I learned to listen in new ways to the Holy and to my bodyself. As with most things, I learn the hard way. I regret that when others are involved.
So Lifelines is about the mystery at the heart of Christian faith: that a seed falls into the earth and dies in order for new life to rise up. Summed up in a sentence it appears palatable, almost trite. But the journey can be arduous and take longer than one cycle of seasons.
This book is in two parts. Wrestling the Word roots the reality of the journey in the sacred stories that have shaped Christian life for centuries. Gathering Up Grace is the worthy effort to name and claim the presence of the ineffable even amid the ruins, ultimately celebrating the triumph of resilient love.
The Parts
Wrestling the Word does what it says on the tin. These poems explore and celebrate the struggling and striving endeavour of reading the Bible in the context of twenty-first-century Britain. In my reading of the text I am always seeking the deeper truths, divine and human, that transcend the cultures in which the Bible came into existence. In the seventeenth century Francis Bacon observed that God revealed Godself in the Word (the Bible) and in the created World. While he warned against mingling these two unwisely, I find that both are essential to make sense of where we find ourselves today and what God – the cohering power that holds the universe together and strives towards the flourishing of all life – may be desiring for us.
The first poem Genesis speaks to the origin of my writing, that it is a longing and an offering.
What follows this poem is a collection of poems and prayers that arise from wrangling the Sunday lectionary. When I swapped the pulpit for the pew, I found myself using the sermon time – ear half-cocked to the preacher – to discover where the Word was landing in my life. For decades walking into the church on Sunday morning has been an encounter with who and how I really am. Standing before God strips one of defences; there is nowhere to hide. The witness of these poems is of a soul searching for an earthed faith that makes sense of life.
The lengthy prose poem that ends Part 1 is best performed. Entitled Word Becomes Flesh , it is a rendering of the Bible in narrative form t