Oh little heart
What mountains will you climb?
What vistas will you take in?
What heights will you tumble down from?
What snakes will you uncover?
What rock will hold firm, and
What sand will crumble below?
What blades will you cross?
What wings will shelter you?
What misty frontiers will you push?
What great and terrible things,
What horrors inside and out
Will spur you and haunt you?
But earn your scars and stories and tears
And come home safely
Wherever that is.
William Wallace is one of the great names of Scottish history, quite possibly the country’s George Washington (though unlike Washington he didn’t survive his War of Independence to rule the new country — that would fall to Robert the Bruce). Like Washington, Wallace’s ghost has been periodically called up to support this or that cause. This essay will briefly explore how Wallace’s legacy has been handled and manipulated in the centuries after his death. Continue reading “on William Wallace’s ghost”
Behold my first(ish) book! Bug Eyed Roman Soldiers now available on Kindle, a visual odyssey featuring all your favourite magnificently chunky and only slightly dodgy caricatures kitted out in the finest weapons and armour.
“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the LORD has punished her twice over for all her sins.”
Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the LORD! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The LORD has spoken!”
A voice said, “Shout!”
I asked, “What should I shout?”
“Shout that people are like the grass. Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the LORD. And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”
O Zion, messenger of good news, shout from the mountaintops! Shout it louder, O Jerusalem. Shout, and do not be afraid. Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!”
Yes, the Sovereign LORD is coming in power. He will rule with a powerful arm. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young. — Isaiah 40:1-11
“Dear Granddaughter
It’s strange writing this to you right now, because you’re just a little kid. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll probably be gone. But I want you to remember what I’m now telling you. Continue reading “on Isaiah 40”
I’ve heard a story from the mouths of men, of a stretch of sand where two sets of footprints become one – the child is carried by the Lord Jesus in the darkest times, one set of prints instead of two.
But I’ve heard other stories. Harder stories. Mightier stories. Continue reading “on footprints in the sand”
Achilles is the best of the Greeks in the Iliad: the fastest, the strongest, the most warlike. He fights like a god (Zeus is his great-grandfather, after all), he excels at winning, he excels at taking – men’s lives and their booty. He is the best his world has to offer.
But he cannot handle loss. When robbed of his spear-won prize Briseis, the best he can do is cry out to his goddess mother, and sulk, hopefully robbing Agamemnon of his victory. And when he loses the great love of his life Patroclus, he flies into murderous rage: he slays horse-breaker Hector in revenge (fair enough), but also horribly abuses the corpse, and even burns alive 12 Trojan boys in his bereavement. When he loses, when things are taken from him, he responds the only way he knows how: double down and take right back. Continue reading “on give and take”
It ends at the old airfield. I fall down and I bawl my eyes out, because it’s all gone and I can’t get it back. Then it starts raining and I have to get to the boat.
But no, that’s not right. That’s not how it ends at all. Continue reading “on the old airfield”
As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. And Pilate issued an order to release it to him. Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left. Both Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting across from the tomb and watching.
The next day, on the Sabbath, the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate. They told him, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise from the dead.’ So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling everyone he was raised from the dead! If that happens, we’ll be worse off than we were at first.” Pilate replied, “Take guards and secure it the best you can.” So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it. —Matt 27:57-66
There’s a scene from the the second Lord of the Rings film, The Two Towers: the heroes are trapped inside a castle, surrounded by the bad guys. The bad guys, called the Uruk Hai, are these big, monstrous warriors, there’s an army of them, and they’re all six feet tall. They bellow and roar like wild animals, oh and they eat people. The good guys are three heroes: a man, an elf, and a dwarf, and they’re trying to help a bunch of farmers defend their castle. You gotta feel sorry for the farmers too, because they’re clearly no match for their enemies, and we the audience have spent, oh I don’t know, the past 10 hours watching the Uruk Hai slaughter and butcher them like pigs. And you know, if the bad guys break into the castle, not only will the heroes die, all the farmers’ wives and kids will also die. Continue reading “on waiting for the fifth day”
A poem for an old English teacher of mine, Mrs Stevens. As I understand it she passed away in the first week of May 2016.
When I heard you’d gone, the sky was blue.
Just that morning it was a rainstorm,
Mayhem, parents calling,
Observatory be damned –
Kids sulking, tempers strained
We want to go home!
Focus! Sit down!
Why are they only telling us now?
Then I heard you’d gone.
How many times did you have to do this?
How many years since you’d heard us sulk?
I wrote a quick eulogy for you,
To my kids –
A pang of guilt – why should I gain from your death?
But the kids are home now, the staff room’s quiet
I’m tired, I think about you
I go to the window and look out
And I remember
The sky was blue when I heard you’d gone.
I was at the busy port of Halicarnassus one day, when I stopped at the city square to listen to a storyteller. He told grand tales of the magnificent kings of Persia who dwelt in gleaming palaces, who demanded tribute from thousands of kinds of people: gold from the Indians, warhorses from the Medes, jewels from the Aghans, silver from the Egyptians, soldiers from the wildmen of the north. These great kings never showed their faces to the common people, and even the princes and nobles at his court could not laugh or spit in his presence. They had to cover their mouths when they were around him, in order not to pollute the air that the Great King breathed. Now I myself take these fairytales lightly. If no one has ever seen the king, where do these stories come from? But one particular story struck my fancy. Continue reading “fate epilogue: tradition is the king of all”
Remember, My Lord 