Rhyme, to what reason?

How do you react to something like the horror of the Omagh bombing. How do you bring your faith into the confusion and anger and pain. Is it wrong to wrestle with God. Thankfully not. The Psalmists did. The Prophets did. Israel means "wrestling with God". This poem was written after my uncle died following a fall at work. It is honest and raw and I was allowed to be. So we all can be in these grieving days ahead. I thank God for his understanding. I am sure He is angry too.

TRAGEDIES
A second in eternity
Changing the circumstances of timer
Effects not of the Creator's wishes
But of humanity's crime
Knowing why things are as they are
Doesn't satisfy my mind
Blind faith gives glib solutions
Of a pious and sanitized kind
Today I hurt
Today I cry
Today I scream at God
Demanding why?
Yet in a flood of unanaswered questions
Faith stays safe and sound
Holding fraying threads of promises
Until reasons can be found
Tragedies are never real tragedies
Because they never happen to you
But the lesson of life I'm learning
Is that they do
And God never promised exemption
Or that immunity was mine
Be He did promise light in the darkness
That comfort might shine.

A dreams of a happy new year were turned to apprehension after the death of Billy Wright. I read an article in The Guardian by David Sharrock who had interviewed Wright and this poem is my reaction to some of the things that Wright was saying. The last lines are a direct quote from him. It says it all. It asks the right questions for everyone who will fight for a border or flag or political idea. I was also pointing the finger at my own disguised and hidden, but no less rotten, sins that were not sensationally flashed across front pages.

LOOKING HARD FOR HEROES
We're closing up the shops
You know they encouraged us to
There are no buses running
There would be no roads through
They say full of contradictions
He was just a complex man
In the end he lived by the sword
So I guess you can understand
And I'm lookin' hard for heroes
But I'm only finding victims here
Do you think brave is ever the killer
Or is the guilty always fear.

There lowering all the union jacks
Flying all flags at half mast
The media's being told where to be
Until the cortege has gone past
He said he was a backstreet boy
Ending up reluctant in the limelight
Torn between his God and country
Walking away from what was right
And I'm lookin' hard for heroes
But I'm only finding victims here
Domyou think brave is ever the killer
Or is the guilty always fear.

We'll all take secrets to our graves
And I'm sure we'll all take lies
Some of the decisions we end up making
Are more easily disguised
Do we make them laugh in heaven
Do they cower in fear in hell
What's the cost of our regrets
Only eternity will tell
Only eternity will tell.

You know I do not expect anything from the dark except darkness. From a
bunch of muderers I expect, sadly, murder. However over the Drumcree
weekend we were held to ransom by many who claimed to follow Jesus. I
believe that we prefer being Christians rather than followers of Jesus
because the latter is just a term that doesn't need radical and daily
choice making. Following Jesus puts our rights on a cross and demands that
we bow in humbly loving our neighbours. Any pious, cliche ridden doctrinal
soundness whether full of Biblical quotes or not is extcly what the
Pharisees wanted.

AS USUAL
It's business as usual
Rain falling on the wicked and the just
On the remnant and the anti Christ
On the suspicious and those who trust
And we're shopping as though nothing's happened
The tiniest bother making us irrate
It seems the demon of sectarianism
Incites oh so much more than hate
You can cross so easily these empty streets
Belfast literally is a ghost town
Everyone has rushed back home from work
Before the sin comes down
God I thank you I'm not like them
Is the prayer that the Pharisee dreamed
The Publican like a rogue confessed his part
And got up off his knees redeemed

We're a land of principles and statistics
And the curse of religious ideas
That distances us from responsible
And children's screams in a sectarian blaze
The blinkers that narrow our vision
Are as thick as these barricades
And seem to blind us from the truth
Of this obscene tragedy we've made
Will the flowers by the side of this blessed road
Be more coloured than a child's bright laugh
Will the birds in these precious hedges
Sounds sweeter than the fun he would've had
My heart is sobbing in my hopelessness
My soul is being visciously assaulted
If Jesus is who you say you follow
Then he's the one that the Pharisees wanted.

At Easter I was listening to so many Christians who were shouting off about The Good Friday Agreement. That weekend was soaked in so much religious imagery and I added more with this poem. I couldn't help thinking of Christ sacrificing his rights for the good of the future, giving up everything for his enemies, sacrificing his wishes (that this cup would pass from him) to change the order of things. We nned to look forward from the empty tomb and not back to the crucifixion. (Please do not misunderstand my belief in the cross from thsi sentence!). It became even more poiganant after the Omagh bombing again seemed to roll a stone across the tomb.

THOMAS I CAN HEAR YOU
Thomas I can hear you
Whispering across 2000 years
Heard in those who just like you
Are caught up in all their fears
Entrenched in your paranoia
Not believing what others will say
Frightened of taking up that wooden cross
In case the stone won't roll away.

Thomas I can hear you
Ensnared in how it's always been
Dragging us down in your unbelief
Refusing the promise of new dreams
Oh your doubt it springs eternal
Fights to keep us in this dark despair
And light can never shine an answer
From your hopeless loveless prayers.

I wish you'd reach out a finger of faith
To touch the bloody scar of sacrifice
Waken from the nightmare of the past
To see a new dream being realised
There's a future precariously perched I know
In the midst of our implicit imperfection
So will we leave salvation buried
Or rise to a new day of resurrection.

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