Peace Labyrinth
The 2008 Side Door Christmas Journey Peace Labyrinth is running in Latimer Square, Christchurch, this weekend, 24/7 until Monday morning. If you have Windows Media, apparently you can see a live webcam feed.
Poem: Happy Hour
Happy Hour
Evenin', sir. Been out on the town tonight, have we?
Just a routine checkpoint, sir. If you'd kindly whistle into this bag.
We need to establish your blood happiness levels, sir.
Yes, just a whistle is perfectly sufficient.
Or a yodel, yes.
A rousing chorus of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' would indeed do the trick, sir. If you truly feel it.
No sir, this is not an evidentiary happiness test. That is to say, it has no actual what you would call legal standing in court. But a failure would indicate sufficient cause for us to request you to accompany us to the local store for the full Seasonal Fitness examination and certificate.
His orders, sir. Our mutual friend. Him with the beard.
No, I'm sure neither of us wants that, sir. If you'd just whistle? Or hum if you prefer. It's the mirth that is the significant factor.
Involves candy canes and intubation, I believe. I've not witnessed the procedure myself. It's only my first night on the shift. Your lips go here. It may help to pucker.
There's no call for that sort of language, sir. This is for your own safety and protection during this extremely tolerant season. Once again I have to request that you perform the procedure and display visible jollity.
Sir, I'm afraid that is a fail result and I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to the store. You are not at this point under obligation to exchange gifts, but a card will be required, and possibly one phone call. Should a gift become mandatory, you have the right of access to a gift-wrap of your choice; if you do not have gift-wrap, a tasteful bag with store branding will be provided...
Poem: Absents
Christmas is a wonderful time. It's when you're powerfully reminded how many things exist that you don't need, and how many things you need that don't exist.
Absents
I looked everywhere
to find you a present
The only thing they didn't have in stock
was me
So I bought it for you
but then I remembered
The only thing I don't have
is you
Poem: Collision
Christmas is a northern hemisphere holiday. There should be a law against celebrating it in summer. Fake frost on your windows in 30 degree heat: no excuses, BOOM.
Collision
Christmas is a collision
white knuckle deadlines
multiple party damage
the smoke of burning bridges
one final accounting
of the year's sins and omissions
told, carried, spindled, posted
racked with the cards and wine
white crosses
on the new year's grave
resolutions
to live forever
Poem: Forgetting How To Fly
A poem for Christmas.
Forgetting How To Fly
Christmas and the smell of
haybales on the plains
and looking up at a sky
black and full of dust
through a tin-shed window
and bright in that star river
the Cross, a kite
for hanging dreams on.
It's been some years, now,
under white fluorescents
and I'm missing something
I've forgotten how to name
that space inside, to fly:
I need a holiday from me.
A Dilemma
The more I read about spirituality, after-life communication, and see glimpses of how all the things we believe as part of organised religion could actually make sense as descriptions of a wider universe in which our temporary physical world is embedded, the more I come up against this problem:
1. Christianity teaches that God is love; that we are all children of God, created by the Father's love; that what is not love is not God; that the Father delights to fulfil our prayers and knows what we want before we ask, so that even to desire something is to receive it; and that it is perfectly safe to ask anything because the Father will never give us anything that is against His wider purpose for our lives.
2. Christianity teaches that Jesus is the only Son of God, the only mediator between God and man; that believing this is the chief, perhaps only means of salvation; that 'no man comes to God except through Him'; that we must be exceedingly careful how and where we pray because there are many false Christs and false spirits who could lead astray 'even the very elect'; that opening our hearts and minds to the spiritual dimension through any methods except those sanctioned by the Church is very dangerous because the Father refuses to communicate with anybody except 'in the name of Christ'; that 'broad is the way that leads to destruction, but narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it', so we must be on guard the most fiercely against teachings which are the most similar to Christianity, because even if they teach in large measure what Jesus taught, if they do not speak His name then these could be wedges to drive us away from the Light.
The dilemma can be summed up as: Can a universal Christ, and a unique Christ, coexist in the one faith?
(I think the answer is yes, but I think there are many Christians who would disagree.)
Edit: Perhaps a clearer way of putting the dilemma is this: 1) God is love, so all we need to do to approach Him is to wish to do so in our heart; 2) Christ is the only way to God, so we cannot approach God without getting Jesus' permission first.
If I had to choose based on what I actually believe, I'd pick (1) and reject (2), but I'm not entirely sure how to justify that from the Bible.
Peace Labyrinth
This is what I'm doing this Christmas.
Glueing googly eyes onto driftwood sticks is surprisingly therapeutic.
Advent
I seem to be constantly running at the moment somehow, with little time to catch my breath. It is December; the rough beast of Southern Hemisphere Christmas shambles toward Bethlehem, with stress, gift-buying and end of year panic in its wake. I ended up going to three separate churches this Sunday: Anglican, Baptist alt-worship, and Catholic (ecumenical). It's 1am and I still haven't quite managed to finish the day.
The Urban Seed Advent in Art calendar inspires me. I'm still not used to the whole Advent thing; it's not something we used to do formally in the churches I've known previously. But it does provide a slightly more peaceful counterpoint to the rush and hassle of the season.
It frustrates me that I think in pictures yet I don't draw. An image has been haunting me for a while now: manga space Christmas. Whenever I see a 'stable and manger' painting I think not of animals but a grimy space garage, full of hulking machines. Mary wears a blue NASA jumpsuit. Joseph has a wrench for an arm. The Wise Men are aliens, their gifts a mystery of tangled wires.
In the baptism scene Jesus rises from a hydroponic pond, a ventilation duct fan turning slowly behind. John is startled by the arc of neon plasma in a light fitting overhead.
Good Friday is an explosion ripped through deck plating, a white hiss of oxygen dispersing into space. He lies broken on a gunship's prow. Yet it is the cyborg centurion who has flipped back his own helmet plate and kneels in surrender.
In the garden pod, a wrecked sleep capsule holds no body inside. Mary II turns, attention captured by the figure entering frame lower right with a living branch for a staff, whose face we cannot see.
