Convictions

Going through material written and stored ages ago I found these personal declarations, that I'm not ashamed to own fourteen years on and many worlds of different experience away from where I was at that time, pastoring in the English West Midlands town of Halesowen

CREDO

I live in a universe
where nothing is seen as permanent
and everything understood as relative
to everything else, and yet
I am not insecure, uncertain
as well I might be -
(to judge by the reactions
of many fellow travellers).

But neither am I complacent,
insulated, or well defended
from the consequences and implications
of a shifting scene
that makes me what I am,
yet does not ultimately determine
who I am, or what I can be.

I dance along a tightrope of trust
in the sovereignty of loving purpose:
- agog with wonder at the baffling notion
of the uncreated source of all -
alone capable of providing
a frame of reference that embraces everything
yet, scandalously, finds embodiment in one man
- whose story calls forth from within its hearers,
(me included),
a sense of what it means to be human, finite,
to have a purpose
in this incomprehensible ocean of truth,
in a way nobody has,
before or since.

URBAN MOON

Somewhere behind the flats and houses
there is a new moon tinged with mist.
I know, because I saw it briefly
as I was parking the car.

For once, I noticed,
was not so absorbed in the moment's affairs
to see what was there beyond
quietly influencing, nurturing, cherishing
inward thoughts and feelings
whether we admit it or not.

JKK 1.3.92