I Couldn’t Go to Jerusalem or Good Friday

I Couldn’t Go to Jerusalem or Good Friday

For Christians, Good Friday is a day to remember a life lived, and given away for others, even in suffering. This is for those who want to remember, but are not able to join others in Churches.

I couldn’t go to Jerusalem –

My mother-in-law just

Died

And we are mourning as

Burial is prepared.

 

I couldn’t go to Good Friday –

I’m a nurse

But

I saw the arms of the cross

In the open arms

Of a man

Reaching from the chair

As I moved him

To his bed.

 

I couldn’t go to Good Friday –

I’m at Lifeline

Taking calls

But

I heard the cry

“My God, why have you abandoned me!”

In the tone of a caller

Still reeling from abuse

By one once trusted.

 

I couldn’t go to Good Friday –

I’m old and

My days of driving

Are in the yesterdays of my life.

Family staying here

Won’t take me to Church

It means nothing to them

I wait in the

Tomb of my gloom

Longing to be

Raised to a new life.

 

They couldn’t go to Good Friday –

But we bring them there

If we go

And hold them there in prayer.

 

 

Simon C.J. Falk 19 April 2019

 

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Out on the Pier

We all know people who feel alone in the plight of their pain. Some are beset by tragedy.  Some tortured by their own struggle within.  This is dedicated to those people we all know.  It is particularly for those who feel they ‘must keep it together’.  Or, for those who, because of their role, struggle to find the forum where their vulnerability is allowed to be tended.  May they find someone to sit with them ‘on the pier’ and listen to their voice with the honesty of accepting them as they are. 

Out on the Pier

Out

On the pier

Sitting,

Hunched over knees,

Hugging the shins,

As windy rain seethes

Upon the skin,

Smarting, like the rasp of wet sandpaper.

Bottom,

Tensely perched

On the damp, weathered timbers.

The fading light

Of dusk slowly settles

As if taunting a small hope

But washed to a slow fade.

The painful alone,

The unreachable

It wears down

Who can listen?

Who can companion?

On this bleak verge,

This precipice above the foaming frenzy

Of ever blackening waters.

Driven from the inner sanctum,

Away from the competent,

The cocky and the compliant.

Weakness is not appropriate

Except in clinical mode

To designated ‘professional ears’.

Watched by the umm-ing and arrh-ing of superiors.

Can peers perch with us

On this perilous pier?

Logic and decency says they could

But existentially

Can we let them in?

Do we risk weakening them more?

Letting the side down?

Not ‘taking one for the team’?

So,

We sit upon the pier,

Waiting for the weather to change,

Willing the weather to change.

The sun will rise tomorrow.

 

Simon C.J. Falk 11 April 2014