The chattering of a splintered mind

The chattering of a splintered mind makes my head spin, ‘take not your Holy Spirit from me!’ I am encompassed about by the carapace of a beetle, like a chocolate egg I burst out of myself, hedged up with thorns and no way out. The chocolate melts! Do you like sweets, I do, I love chocolate but it makes my sugar a high flyer. Wrapped around the post in Oxford Street, they are messy, ugly and they advertise rubbish – I would love the job of tearing them off!

Like streams in a dry land, the brown rivulet runs through the land of Havilah out by the scion and into the bowl where Icing is making. By the river of Babylon there we sat, we hung up our harps there by the side of the altar. Didn’t like the harp anymore. Cake’s ready.

So many images and voices, I cannot concentrate, cannot empty my mind to take in the silence, the peacefulness of the time away from the world. I slam the side doors of my mind and think of a nun wearing a wimple, keeping custody of the eyes.

Staring straight ahead of attempt to close the chest on the splinters of my mind that stick into me, pierce my hands and my legs and me I draw my mind in. When the Blessed Sacrament is veiled it returns to the sukka, leaves the monstrance, the monster cookie monster eating into the tunnels of my mind until I am Swiss cheese.

A nonconformist place of the worship, the Tabernacle, a niche for an icon, the Black Madonna holding her Holy Child Horus to her shoulder; nearly 500 in Europe, mostly in France, Italia miraculous powers.

The Holy Communion, the Eucharist, in the Mass amanuensis tells me that there cannot be the sacrifice of the Mass because Christ cannot be crucified anew. A memory meal, he said to have it every time we come together in his name. It is the Bread of Life, which came down from heaven; my Father gave you Manner from heaven because the desert didn’t bloom. You didn’t like quail either – so many things divide my Body and none of them matter because I love you, I love you, I wanted only that you love me. Yet you have torn every scrap of clothing from my back repeatedly have argued my birth date, whether I wrote, except in the sand. I wrote upon the skies when I drew forth the sun and from his brightness, I made the rain. One drop water, just add sun, no that can’t be right can it?

If I want it to, need it to, anything goes and anything happens, will you risk that?

A sandwich is in time, saves nine; hypostasis, my veins stand out on my legs and they ache and I cannot feel my toes.

(C) Br Andrew edited 18th October 2007

The Tapestry of Life.

This brownish corner of Tapestry, see, hear

Hangs next my bed on the wall with no cheer

Swinging in the breeze that slips under the door.

Telling me stories I’ve heard all before.

The tapped estuarine of the lacklustre river

dripped morosely into the cup of negation,

drop by drop, hour by hour,

until my cup was full.

O life is dull! And I am pale,

dusty, tired of waiting,

for the minutes to tick by

until there are no flies on my nose anymore.

Whether more shall I find me beside

Water so dirty and thick,

Flowing like treacle,

The flies all a buzzing my nose in their sights,

I sit with the spider and await hunger

To lift her legs high and sink her fangs deep

In the flies that bother my nose.

The estuary is dry, river no more

Sand sliding slowly, its grainy way down

Into the bottle of high expectations

Half full or half empty – answer me now!

Grass green is the corner I see

As the tapestry swells in the sweet summer breeze,

Water wells gently, lapping my feet,

Springing so spritely into china so fine

As any that seraphim protected from me.

Our angels protect us when

Careless we grow, going to the water

With grandma’s good china to bear home the bounty

That water which rushes, our cup flowing over.

My broken cup is full again that’s optimism!

Yet why has the water run away from my lips?

And why has the china become dust on the carpet?

For I have opened the floodgates of Eden

And the Lord God is ready to make Adam again.

The snake is in the garden so lush and so green,

The apples hang red on the tree growing there

In the middle of the Garden,

Lushly forbidden

Look! Eve is a-coming to begin all over again.

And gold was found in Havilah

(C) Br Andrew EFO

 19th November 2006

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When sometimes

When sometimes times I doubt there is a Lord, is it Faith that is the loser, Christ, or me?

Does Faith exist merely because we have it or is it a thing with its own life, its own stories?

Once upon a time, says Faith, there was no need for me, men and women walked in Paradise with God, face to face and had no need of me to tell them they were there with God.

"No need for me, no need for me…"

Shut out and unbeknown to them; I followed them about the garden and through the orchards, down beside the river Pison and into Havilah, Gold was there. I took note of all things good.

I was there in the coolest evenings when God and human walked side by side; I was there when God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil lest they die.

I was there when they died!

How I grieved for them – no I rejoiced at my birthing for I am become the Memory that once, all things were not as hopeless as they seem now. And I am long and deep, not something to be grasped as once you took the fruit from the tree to learn of death and forgetfulness. Within me, I hold all your memories of wars and drought and fire and flood and pestilence and sweet Eden’s fields.

Come lean on me, embrace me, dare to leap into the darkness for unless you embrace me you will never know those secrets I hold within me, such secrets as the vine and the branches. The vine as old as old, that brushed against the feet of Faithless humanity as they walked beside their creator.

"For I am the vine and you my branches are."

Embrace me and know God, leave me and wonder if thou ever wert?

© Br Andrew EFO 17th August 2007

Burning yet unconsumed.

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