Manacled
Could I endure
being sold,
having manacles on my legs,
my arms and my neck;
Being beaten,
and then forgive?
I think I could not.
Yet Jesus bore for me,
being sold, nails through the feet,
pierced hands,
a crown of thorns,
being beaten to within an inch of life
and biting scorn;
and still forgives me.
One of a collection of meditations, poems and music for Lent which can be found HERE
Original introduction read
This week I have the privilege to be on a Mixed media painting and prayer retreat organized by the Creative Arts Retreat Movement (link below), splendidly led by Esther Aronsfield and Hope Allen in the delightfully located Launde Abbey (link below). Some of what I have done/am doing will, I feel pretty certain, appear on this blog in due course.
Later, with more freedom and more time than I usually have, I was revisiting some things I wrote a little while back - and this short poem called ‘Manacled’ chimed with my thoughts as you can see. It reflects another impotence in which I know myself to be implicated and as with those above, I know I can do little other than pray - for forgiveness and mighty change.
One of a collection of meditations, poems and music for Lent which can be found HERE
Original introduction read
This week I have the privilege to be on a Mixed media painting and prayer retreat organized by the Creative Arts Retreat Movement (link below), splendidly led by Esther Aronsfield and Hope Allen in the delightfully located Launde Abbey (link below). Some of what I have done/am doing will, I feel pretty certain, appear on this blog in due course.
But my mind was, in our free time, taken elsewhere - because whether to engage with the activities or just rest is entirely up to us, the retreatants: we have a very relaxed and complete freedom. Walking pensively around the grounds of Launde, revelling in that freedom, I was unexpectedly struck by a notion of the sheer awfulness of slavery, the very antithesis of that freedom I was enjoying. Perhaps it was, .I had heard somewhere that two hundred and eighty years ago last Monday, William Wilberforce died and that 279 years ago last Thursday slavery was abolished in most of the British Empire of the time: I really don’t know
But against this history, it is startling to read that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimate there are today 20.9 million men, women and children across the world still in the thrall of slavery. What a scandal! It is yet another of those terrifying situations which leaves me feeling impotent, as does the appalling widening gap between the wealthy and the poor right here in the UK, right NOW.
Later, with more freedom and more time than I usually have, I was revisiting some things I wrote a little while back - and this short poem called ‘Manacled’ chimed with my thoughts as you can see. It reflects another impotence in which I know myself to be implicated and as with those above, I know I can do little other than pray - for forgiveness and mighty change.
