God's door

 

The one thing Flora wants more than anything in the whole world is to be an altar boy. She studies them intently throughout mass, marvelling at their squeaky shoes as they process down the aisle like kings in borrowed robes. Gareth Mulvoney holding the banner; his face so solemn it’s as if he’s keeping it up with holy thoughts alone. Flora would hold that staff so straight; if they would only give her the chance. And Mark Leeson, with his poxy skin, clutching the bowl at collection time. She has practised that reverent nod in the mirror so many times she can do it better than him now.

Flora holds her breath as Father Eugene raises the host and Matthew Patterson rings the bell. Oh, what she would do to get her hands on that bell. A fact that Matthew has taken advantage of more than once. 'Touch it and I’ll let you see the bell. Just once. Go on. Don’t be soft.' Of course she knows now that Father Eugene locks it away after mass and Matthew is just a lying pervert. He did bring her a host to school one day, though. She hid it in a soap tin and it tasted of lavender as it melted on her tongue beneath the bed covers that night.

But the highlight of mass for Flora is when Christopher Rosendale carries up the water and the wine, and hands it to the priest with great Ceremony. Afterwards he has to wipe the chalice and fold the perfectly starched cloth neatly in four. It’s weird: everyone knows boys are slobs and girls would be better at this stuff. She has seen Christopher Rosendale’s bedroom and it’s a pit. He didn’t try to touch her at least because he doesn’t like girls. He says he’s going to be one when he grows up and that Father O’Leary once told him he has Fetching Ankles, and that he pressed his face so close he could feel his nose hairs twitch.

Sometimes she fantasises about being one of the Chosen Ones. She imagines the conversations she and God would have. She’d tell him her theory on dying being like holding your breath in the bath and ask him why some of the meanest people she knows are Christians. And why Mrs Hitchens who does the flowers goes to confession so much, and always comes out flushed. Father Eugene can barely look at her during mass, but when he leaves the confession box it’s as if they’ve shared a magnificent secret.

She thinks of all the secrets she would like to share in the confessional. Like the time Peter Hammond stuck his tongue in her ear. She wrote about it in her diary and her dad found it and clipped that very same ear and said that’ll teach you for being such a hussy. She looked up the word in the dictionary that night and her cheeks stung with shame.

That’s why God won’t have girls at the altar, because they’re hussies. But then she thinks about Mary and it doesn’t make sense. God chose her to have his baby and she didn’t even get a tongue in her ear and still she wasn’t invited to the last supper. And yet that mean one Judas was.

A woman would never have snitched on Jesus. She would have looked after him and protected him and told him not to be a hero. The way Ma does with Da. Not that there’s any chance of him being one, struck down as he is with the booze.

Maybe girls aren’t allowed because they’d make the boys look stupid. 'Men aren’t good at much so perhaps we should let them have the altar,' Gran once whispered in between rolling strands of sweet tobacco and licking a crinkled cigarette paper. Her mother laughed so hard she spat out her tea. But when Flora prays at night all she can think is, why did you create us if you were just going to slam the door in our faces? And that’s when her head spins with the injustice of it all, and she thinks God mustn’t exist – if he did he would surely strike her down for even having that thought. And yet she goes on breathing. And praying... that one day she’ll get to kneel by the altar at last. One pew closer to God. Her God.

By Beth 

Peach light

I saw peach light flow
Into sparkling silver brook
To run twinkling
Between earth and air
To nourish life there
With the fruit of the sun.

I saw clouds tumble roughly
Over rough hewn hill,
Drenching and quenching
With precious liquid,
Sustaining broker,
The source of life.

I saw limpid waves
Flow in silken grass,
To climb trees and rustle leaves
And dry the earth.
To lift the source
That it might fall again.

I saw flowers bloom of every hue.
Whose natural wisdom
Made one red and
The other one blue?
One living God comprising all.
Beauty, good and evil too.

I saw you there.
Of sun’s sweet nectar,
Earth’s rich texture
And sky’s cool moisture.
Stroked by the gentle hand of wind.
One living creature, one seamless creation.



David

Churchyard rainsound

I hear the dead whisper in the trees
As raindrops shatter on quivering leaves.

Dead buried beneath
Long probing roots in soft flesh earth,
Where the dead of man and plant
Merge in compound harmony,
Watered by the juice of clouds,
To rise skyward through woody sap
And raise their voices in sibilant rainsound
In praise of the God of life.



David

Faith

Poetry must test.
Faith gives us our wooded hills.
Reason clears a path.



David

Churchgoers

Watching through the dirty glass of my living room window,
The old people walking bowed and supporting each other
Towards the church that rings an appeal.

Some laughing youths ride the other way on their bicycles
As they go oblivious to the glares that scorn them.
A pigeon standing aloof on the opposite roof coos its disdain.

Then it begins to rain and like a slow motion film of flowers opening,
Umbrellas spring open wide to make a dancing parade of gaily coloured circles
Each swirling and moving as one towards the random rhythm of the ringing bells.

A dance of souls in faithful abeyance to the call of the profound.

But the youths are back and whirling like dervishes on their bikes
Between the baffled faithful they hurl their foul mouthed scorn.
And even the pigeon falls quiet.

Then they’re gone like a small wind that passed and stoic people
Brace themselves and reform their appreciation of their truths
And the swirling march of the giant coloured flowers resumes.

And in the distance is heard bright laughter
Of young people yet to be constrained by anything so fixed
That could be called by mere bells.

And the rain still fell slowly.
Ignoring it all.
And the pigeon resumed its call.



David.

Doors

I suppose it is a cliché, but it is said – and not just in The Sound of Music – that when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.  I guess your view on this rather depends on your view on God, but that was last month’s topic…

With the exception of a bare chested image of Jim Morrison and portals into other worlds, not much else springs to mind when confronted with the subject matter of doors.  Science Fiction not really being my thing and unsure whether to peer into the smoke filled rooms of my sometimes misspent youth, I decide Julie Andrews is a safer venture.

So the sound of slamming doors reverberates around my head and all of a sudden my life seems like the opening credits of Porridge.  Not that I’ve ever been incarcerated please understand, but thinking of all those missed opportunities, failed relationships, endings and goodbyes makes me wish the subject matter had been windows instead.

Actually I’ve got pretty good at opening my own windows and doing a bunk into the sunshine when necessary, but  what if one of those doors hadn’t closed?  Which one would I choose?  And all of a sudden I’m back in the realms of science fiction.

There was a rather good film several years ago – well, I liked it, but then I like Gwynneth Paltrow and John Hannah – when Gwynnie’s life splits at the point of missing a tube.  Quite literally, how her life may have been different if that particular door hadn’t closed.  I like the concept, and it was a popular film – I’m not alone.  At times we all wonder what would have happened if things had been different.  But to choose a door, just one, which one would I choose?

Would I choose one I had closed of my own accord or one that had been slammed in my face?  And having made my choice would I edge it open gingerly or fling it wide and embrace the life I now don’t have?

And do I want to have the option to return to the safety of behind the closed door if I don’t  much like what I find? What if the me on the other side of the door doesn’t laugh as much or sing as much?  What if she can’t stand on her own two feet, support herself, isn’t a mother?  What if she has never travelled to the other side of the world, ridden an elephant, done a parachute jump, been in a hot air balloon or stood on top of one of the twin towers?

Would I like my life more or less if I hadn’t barely slept in a rat infested hole in Bangkok or vomited into a squat toilet shared with cockroaches while feeling so ill I would happily have curled up and died?  If the door of that particular establishment had been closed would my life be different now?  Well, I might be afraid of cockroaches…

Having chosen my door, will I know what I have done or does stepping over the threshold mean another closed door behind me?  Another life unknown.

Will I still know how to open a window?

 

 

Sharon.

She was six years old when, at a family dinner in a local restaurant, her father introduced her to the theory of evolution by telling her that God did not create the world in six days.  She could not remember whether he had gone so far as to say that God did not exist, but there was certainly diatribe rather than dialogue – this was not a gentle education in looking at alternative points of view.

Four years of Church school and the odd bout of Sunday School later, this view had certainly been balanced.  Daily prayers, hymn singing and regular church visits had made her familiar with the cultural undertone of her country. 

In her teens, in Drama class, she and some friends had written a dialogue piece exploring whether God and the Devil were in fact female.  A little controversial at the time perhaps, funny certainly – the very idea!

University with various modules in Feminist thinking fleshed out this background with images of Gaia, and what God means to women and the Church’s general misogyny.

She was married in church, had had her children Christened, liked Midnight Mass at Christmas but accepted Darwin’s theory, and was now in her early – ok mid – forties, no longer sure what she believed about God.  Most days she didn’t even give her much thought.

She couldn’t help thinking that the very idea of the Trinity had been formulated by a desperate early Church seeking to unify those members they wanted to keep whilst denouncing as heretics the troublemakers they wanted to expel.  If the Gnostics had had more clout, would we believe what we now believe about the nature of God?  she wondered, or at least would we have been taught what we had been taught about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.

But that was the Church, and did what they teach bear any relation to God?  Well they taught that the Bible was the revelation of God – so the Church at least would argue that it very much did.

The one problem she had was that she definitely believed that if Jesus truly was the son of God, he would not exclude someone because they had not accepted the message of Christianity.  She could not shift her belief that if a supreme and caring being existed, that supreme and caring being would not exclude an individual from its everlasting supremacy and care because the image of the dancing Shiva resonated more than that of a dying man on a cross.   Did that mean she wasn’t really a Christian?

But such theological internal dialogue occupied little of her time.  Her life was packed with the daily routines of lunchboxes and water bottles, ferrying children where they needed to be when they needed to be there, work, the endless laundry and the general moving of stuff from one place to another, whether that be dust, groceries, dishes, toys or the bloody endless laundry.  She’d have more time for God if he would put a pinny on now and then and push the hoover round.

Her mind raced ahead with lists and menus and bills and birthdays, and God lingered on the periphery, making an appearance at Easter and Christmas and Remembrance Sunday Services shivering in the cold.

And yet…

That last cry of a dying man haunted her.  “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”  “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?”