The Jesus Prayer

Yesterday, I spent much of the day saying the Jesus Prayer, running the olive beads of a rosary through my fingers. I'd expected quietness, a plain kind of solace. What I got was a nervous energy and a compulsion overlaid with a subtle fear.

Usually, I would read this a signs of the Bad Spirit at work but this didn't quite do as an explanation. I remembered the scriptural root (Luke 18:10-14); such words begin with our insecurity, the memory of the hurt we have done, looking to the love of God and shivering in our skin.

When serenity is not at hand, we're still called to pray. We just start from our uncertainty and our sense of culpability, face to face with the most fearful thing of all: His love.

Mister Crow

                   flies gather
                               at the dead weight of him      
                                                                                 quietly
                                 they touch with tenderness                (black feathers)
                    they shade the Sun's bruises
                                           they make preparation

             while the still eyes                 for all that
                     are wide open                                                   
                                    scanning the space he criss-crossed
                                                           and wrote over

                                      black pearls
                                        mirrors to fall in

                                      they fix on nothing
                                        they take it all in
             
         and turn to                           
                                 the bright dark
                                 the swallowed breath

                                 held before      the question
                                                            was shaped
                                                    and thrown

Sonnet 003

You and I are talking in the park
about the future reeling on its pins
to fall wet eyed and drunk on all our thoughts:
We think therefore we work hard to forget
the stitches stretching, giving way to truth,
and Spider Death's silver thin lullabies.
Hear the trumpets now as stars fall down

To the ground that shifts with every step.
Such bright new blooms, you say with red fists clenched.
As sure as gravity, we kill the smiles
That flit about the air, ready to stick
to all that passes for a human face.
Nothing should distract from all these wounds.
Their beauty shows in Love's inhuman light.

Sonnet 002

Walking inbetween the heathen trees
That coax the dark to fatten up thin fears
I throw about these prayers like amulets.
What credulous blood slinks through these dumb veins!
Leaning to some prehistoric voice,
It trembles, picks up pace and rushes on
To the fleshdark hollows of the heart

Where reason - paper thin - is flushed away
and the pulse makes music: brash, unschooled
but teaching nonetheless your tongue to stir
and sing aloud the scorn of gravity.
This is a world's end; you know the score.
Faith in the shapeless dirt is fading fast
and giving way to ghosts and hope and fire.

March against the cuts, Sunday 18th September

Here are some images of a march and rally held to coincide with the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham.

DFEI/Arms Fair Protest, September 13th

Here are some photos taken during a day of protest in London. They begin with a die-in, move to an arrest and then record some lively conversation with the police. There are also some images of the lobby outside parliament.

If you're an activist, supporter or fellow traveller, please feel free to make use of these images.

Here are more photographs of the lobby outside the houses of parliament.

Strike Day, June 30th, 2011

This is a photographic record beginning with a picket in the morning and a march and rally at 1pm. The only low point of the day for me was the appearance of gnarled folk singers on the stage in Victoria Square.

The atmosphere was great: a real sense of solidarity; enough numbers to really make it matter.

If you're a trade unionist or a strike supporter please feel free to use any of the images.