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ANNUNCIATION

Why choose to sing your song in me?
Humility’s too proud a word to utter
Or to breathe.
My whole being’s exploding –
Animated by a heartbeat not my own.
The seed of becoming is bursting within me;
A kicking in the deep
My heart can’t help but leap!
Sheer undeservedness and disbelief;
Who am I that you are soulful of me?
My song is love made known.

BEYOND
Or ‘New Ways of Seeing’

What’s out there?
Waiting to engulf
And stultify
Restrain and terrify
Suppress and harm if I
Go and peep?

But hey, from another slant,
Like the one I can’t
Envisage,
I’m ‘out there’!
Waiting to engulf and stultify,
Restrain and terrify,
Suppress and harm if they
Come and peep!

What they need’s a new horizon;
‘Put new eyes on!’
See me?
I won’t bite!
Come and find me!
Don’t stare blindly –
Fly a kite!

Push the boat out!
Put the goat out,
I don’t mind!
I’m here to find!

Yes, you come to me;
Touch and view me . . .
Thought you knew me?
Come and see.

Butterflying

Crabbing gets there sideways,
Not looking where you’re going,
Scuttling through a crowded life.

Spidering takes too long—
All those webs to weave,
To trap others in your world,
Of which you are the centre.

Centipeding has too many feet
On the ground,
Too many shoes to clean,
And too many toes to be trodden on.

But butterflying sets the spirit free,
Unfurls the wings
Held tight by binding shell of chrysalis.
Butterflying is faith let loose
With colour
And freedom in its wings.

Paul Booth
Manresa SDE 2008

ENTOMBED

From the echoing tomb reverberates the tingle of life
The short-forgotten Christ a passing phase
Remembered only by the faithful emotionals
How dare the tomb breathe life?
Lifeless, death was sealed there,
As it is in many cavities of human frame:
Life forgotten as meagre existence is reluctantly resumed after sadness or
disaster seals its death deep in the sap of being,
Cold and stony – who will roll the stone away?

How dare the world keep turning, relentlessly turning?
It stopped in that moment of hell –
When did it start to turn again?
Why didn’t it stop, as a sign of respect for my loss?
How dare life pretend nothing happened
When all was changed for me?
Voices should be veiled in silence
Laughter has no business laughing
All in silent black should pass.

It’s cold in here. So cold.
And dark. Pitch ebony.
Impenetrable hardness blocks the arteries of my soul
And no light squeezes through cracks of hope;
I dare not let it.
Entombed, I push darkness into those light-threatened crevices
And shiver in the security of darkened death
Where none can hurt nor feel nor see
Nor be.

The stone is firmly fastened.
Can’t you see I’m safely locked in here?
Hiding from the pain
Excruciating pain.
Tightly balled like an armoured Charlie-pig
Nothing else can reach me now to harm.
Nothing need.
All wrapped up in these dark-swaddling bands
The hurt is tightly held within.

Only one who hurts as much as this
Could roll the stone away.

HARD PRESSED

The olive grove had long since ceased to be fruitful.
Gnarled branches on old stumps
With a barren beauty all their own.
An attractive place of solitude,
Though once the hub of toil;
Of industry, hard-pressed to make a living
From extraction.
Oil from olives? Now there’s a joke!

Yet in this very place with tears, sweat and blood,
A harvest was ground from the fruit of the grove
That gave livelihood and worth
To those who tilled the earth.

Enough nostalgia!
The hour has come
For crushing of another kind.
Of sweat from a brow,
Not from those crushing,
But from one being crushed.
Pushed to the limits of expected agony
Anticipated pain.
Not only sweat
But blood.

Pacing to and fro with impatience - or was it patience? -
With those who watched and waited
And slept.
Whilst he kept
The Father’s will,
As we must still,
Through anguish, pain and torment.

Oil from olives?
Or blood from a stone?

HERE

Here I stand
In awe of One
Who made the stuff that even awe is made of.
He made mountains,
Music, moles,
And me.

Here I sit
With toes dipped in the ripples of the stream,
Whiling away time
In which to dream
Of unimaginable joy,
And adventure yet to be.

Here I lie
Gazing nonchalantly up
At twinkling giants of life and light
Dancing to the song that nature sings:
The silent sound of vibrating strings.

LABYRINTH

Tears wash my soul with guilt and bewilderment;
What should I have done, Lord?
Which way should I go, Lord?

Keep on.

Another corner. Endless corners.
Scrub out my corners, Lord!
Why don’t my tears clean my soul?
Why so messy? Why so cluttered?

Keep on.

One more corner.
Do I want to be there? At the centre?
At the hub of a square wheel?
I don’t yet feel unburdened.
Not ready. Got there too soon.
Should have walked slower, taken longer ……

Keep on!

Deep breath. What release!
To be accepted at the centre; touch the centre.
Clear, refreshing water.
Living water.
This is water that cleans thoroughly
Gently releasing the potency of its simplicity
Its clarity on my confusion
Its wonderful assurance of life beyond measure.
Lord! What a treasure!
Here I would stay!
Here, where it’s clean and fresh.

Keep on ……

Washed clean in the water of life
Which flows through you.
I love you ……

Go now.

Be a tap for others to drink from.
A conduit of oxygen and hydrogen gloriously become life
And life giving.

© PB May 2004
Inspired by a very ambivalent walking of the Labyrinth at The Hayes, Swanwick
during the NRA Conference ‘Faith Let Loose’.

LONGINGS

Don’t scream at me,
don’t scream.
My head is splitting with
desire
And desolation;
My heart is aching -
anticipating the upheaval
of change -
having to re-arrange
Patterns that have been
comfortable companions
of my being.

So comfortable that they
have absorbed the pain
of their discomfort;
Stifled the scream
of disenchanted unfulfilment
That has been echoing
in the deep.

So deep.

The buried deep; too deep to
dare to delve;
Unfathomed hopes hidden
in avoided fear of failure
Undiscovered parts of self
created by the One
Who longs for me to
lift the lid;
disturb the status quo
- the stifling status quo
, And listen to the scream
That is an amplified whisper
of Wounded Love
Who wants the best for me:
The best is yet to be.

MAGNIFICAT

Why choose to sing your song in me?
Humility’s too proud a word to utter
Or to breathe
My whole being is exploding –
Animated by a heartbeat not my own
The seed of becoming is bursting within me
- a kicking in the deep
My heart can’t help but leap!
Sheer unreservedness and disbelief
Who am I that you are soulful of me?
My song is love made known!

© 2002 Paul Booth
Inspired by an ‘Annunciation’ music meditation workshop led by Keely Hodgson at the Bradford Diocesan Spiritual Direction Course, with particular appreciation of ‘Magnificat’ by John Rutter

WELL HOW WOULD YOU HAVE COPED?

Elohim, my God!
Your even, endless ebbing now escapes into awesome activity.
Disgrace is violated by a niggling awareness of acceptance
and affirming grace
announced by an angel, appearing out of …
… what?
Darkness and drear? Not really.
Rather
ordinariness; disturbed routine.
How dare you! Whatever’s coming next?
Is this adventure or ordeal?
Why so telling?
What are you dumping onto me?
I’m the skivvy of the synagogue,
not the handmaid of the Lord!
Not yet!
I cannot bear this tender treatment
This tremendous wait of pain.
Too much effort – too dumfounded
All is torment once again.

© 2002 Paul Booth
From an exercise held at the Bradford Diocesan Spiritual Direction Course,
where the group ‘brainstormed’ words expressing Mary’s experience of the Annunciation,
and wondered about their own response to God

New Poems by Paul Booth

THE DANCING PRAYERS OF GOD

The pirouettes and pas de deux
The leaps, the grace
The stillness, poise
Now energy
Now stretched and tall
No static form
But bursting life;
The dancing prayers of God

Paul Booth, February 2009

This was inspired by the candles we lit as prayer during the Eucharist Without Words.
God prays in us The prayers are God's, not ours. We open our souls, revealing sores and aches, and God dances there.

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WINDOWS OF BROKENNESS

Clarity is not
An abundance of light rays
Penetrating glass

Clarity comes when
Light fights through crevices of
Grime and brokenness

Refracted shafts of
Wisdom, love and healing squeezed
Through fractured beauty

Grit, the stuff of glass
Becomes at once the friction
And the womb of pearl

Paul Booth, February 2009

Inspired by the windows in the Chapel at Arnold Janssen Klooster, Wahlwiller. The design of the windows was constructed from shattered glass and pieces of broken glass as well as having areas of clear glass.

Rev Paul Booth
TRUST MINISTRIES
Tel: 01274 551071
trustministries@tiscali.co.uk
3 Gilstead Court : Gilstead
BINGLEY : BD16 3LA
Part of The Annunciation Trust
www.annunciationtrust.org.uk