OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

  "He who sits in the heavens laughs" (Psalm 2) I’m not used to masculine violence – the sheer strength and force of it. It happened once before when I was about fifteen years old. A lad headbutted my face in the Community Centre under the church in Mervue, leaving me nicely bruised and I told the lie that I had banged my face off the countertop, ashamed to say what had actually happened. That was then and now, last week on the Monday before Christmas, I encountered the violence of men again. Accidentally. In the wrong place at the wrong time. Standing in the doorway of Iceland, two men went for each other with their fists, and I happened to be in the way. Stood between them. And for the space of a minute or less I was rattled back and forth like a rag doll. Another man entered the fray, and I suffered a severe blow to the left side of my lower back. The force of it shocked me. Then the fight ended and I limped away, dazed and in great pain. It was a rude awakening from t

A Voice cries   In the  Wild             Wilder Wilderness   The Voice of God             In the wilderness of war             In the desert desolation   Of many a human life   A Voice that speaks to the heart A Voice that speaks of peace   ‘Console my people Console them’   And no one hears at all             Bewild             Bewilder             Bewildered   ‘O that today you would listen to His Voice Harden not your hearts’   The voice in the wilderness, the unheard voice brought Neil Diamond’s ‘I Am, I Said’ to mind. This is not just my favourite song of all time but from the time of its release in 1971 when I was sixteen years old, it touched something nameless deep within me. It is the song that has power in it to send tears flowing down my face. Not tears of sadness but tears of resonance, recognition, as if the song knows something about me that I myself do not know. Something that is yet to be, that only God knows. That something that wi

 Recorded for St. Richard's Catholic College, December 13, 2023

“Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!” (Isaiah 64) This is the aching cry Of a single soul Plea of the people Groaning of creation Oh, that you would! I prayed this Word of God with great intensity as a young man’ prayed it for years. Yearned for Jesus to come decisively, definitively – to loosen the bonds of my clinging sins, the tenacious chains of addictions. That He would come down to this body seeking consummation. It is the prayer of Advent. Come! Come Lord Jesus! He came He is here He is yet to come My own need is not so great now, so I pray this Word for the person in distress, the world at war, the people who live in darkness. For the earth itself. I pray it for the heavily pregnant woman whose time is near, that she may have the support and strength of Mary, the blessedness of Jesus for her baby. The prayer of Advent. Maranatha, come Lord Jesus! It is the prayer of parents for the child who has left, the prayer of waiting for the return. It is the pra