Author: gideonheugh

May this be a year
in which we slow down,
pay close attention,
pause, breathe, be still.

May this be a year
in which we reconnect with nature,
use all of our senses
and re-tune our souls to wonder.

May this be a year
in which we are kinder
to the Earth, to each other
and to ourselves.

May this be a year
in which we say no:
no to busyness, no to more stuff,
no to anger and hatred and despair.

May this be a year
in which we say yes:
yes to stargazing, yes to birdsong,
yes to hope and forgiveness and love.

May this be a year
in which our minds are open,
our arms wide,
our hearts full.

Gideon Heugh

A Christmas poem

Stop. Do you not know?
Life doesn’t have to be this way;
something new can be born in your heart today.

Listen. Have you not heard?
Your whole being sings the love song of Christ;
this world is drenched in the wonder of his light.

Breathe. Will you accept it?
You can let your striving fall away;
let it dissolve into beauty and grace.

Open your eyes. Can you see it?
You have nothing to prove, nothing to fear;
God is with us, heaven is here.

Gideon Heugh

Lord, help me to love myself
in the same way that I love
the sunbeam
and the scent of fallen leaves.

Help to hold myself
in the same way I am held
by the Autumn morning
stretching its golden arms
around my heart.

And help me to believe
increasingly
in this world of aching wonder,
which somehow
includes me.

Gideon Heugh

How to be more alive

First, open your arms
to your own humanity;
give the gorgeous mess
of your entirety
a warm welcome, remembering
that all of you is loved,
free from limit or condition.

Second, drop your heart
into a pool of wonder –
the sacred, healing healing water
found wherever there are trees
or birds or streams or hills
or the opulence of an unfiltered sky.
Do not let the screens hem you in;
seek instead the heaven-wrought,
the Spirit-woven –
all that brightly sings
of the Abundance.

Third, let your love travel
beyond all bounds,
let the curtains tear before it
so that nothing is left unadored –
including your brokenness
and the failings of the world.
Every soul walks with a limp,
and not one is unworthy
of compassion’s warm embrace.

 

Gideon Heugh

It’s easy to look at the news these days and feel hopeless. Politicians are dragging democracy through the dirt, xenophobia and racism keep rearing their ugly heads, and all the while the poor and the marginalised are ignored.

But there is hope. History is littered with the bones of empires. Power is powerless against love, which is the only thing that lasts forever. If you tread all over other people for your own gain, you are setting yourself against the truest and deepest forces in the universe.

God is a direction. We are moving forward. We always have been and we always will be. And the power-grabbers and money-snatchers will always get left behind.

‘Empire’

The fall of every empire
is pre-ordained,
the fires of oppression
cannot be sustained.

The cry for deliverance
will always be heard –
liberation never fails:
hope has the final word.

So do not despair
at the empires around you,
even though power and greed
and corruption surround you;

lift up your heart,
lift it to the light,
for the Spirit of the Ages
bends to our plight.

Peace,
Gideon Heugh x

Night will fall on you. Of course it will.

You will find yourself alone one day
wandering the desert
of your failures.

You will stand by the deathbed
of your dreams,
helpless and afraid.

What hope do we have then?

My friend, when the Spirit
wrapped itself in the Rabbi’s flesh,
it declared that we are to have life
in all its fullness,

yet we have forgotten
that half of life is death,
that God was hammered
into the corpse of a tree,
that decay is the fertile ground
from which the stems
of existence grow.

We have forgotten that night
is simply an opportunity
to anticipate
another sunrise.

 

Gideon x

It’s been a whole year since I let my little book out into the world. Where does the time go? I’m still overwhelmed/humbled by the love it received. You guys are awesome.

The book was born out of love, grief and hope. Love for this gorgeous world we live in; grief for the way we treat it; and hope because… well, there’s always hope.

Poetry is a kind of therapy for me. Words are a map through my emotions. The last few years have been both some of the most wonderful and difficult of my life. Joy and heartbreak; new life and deep loss. That’s often how it goes, isn’t it? I’ve tried to pour as much of this onto the page as I can – a lot of which I’ve shared with you online as well.

I’m just getting started with this whole poetry journey, and I’m glad I get to bring you all along for the ride.

Peace,
Gideon Xxx

‘Smarter, faster, slimmer, stronger, wealthier…’ Yeeeaaah no.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for personal growth. I’m all for staying healthy – physically and spiritually. But part of being healthy is not putting pressure on yourself. You don’t need to conform to anyone else’s standards. You’re fine the way you are. In fact, you’re better than fine. Your you-ness is unimprovable.

Our society’s obsession with outward success, with constantly striving for more, is unhealthy on every level. If you want something to strive for, make it kindness. More love. More peace. More patience. But again, there’s no need to put pressure on that. Growth is a journey – one that takes a lifetime.

Trees aren’t in a hurry to grow. And they don’t waste energy trying to be something they’re not. Go ahead and try to push one over.

Gideon x

Life is about presence, not productivity.

The writer Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the Sabbath is ‘a cathedral in time’. Sadly, most of our Sabbaths seem to have done a Notre Dame and burned down (too soon?).

It’s time to rebuild.

I’ve always found it fascinating that ‘keep the Sabbath holy’ makes it onto the ten commandments. On the same list that says ‘do not kill’ and ‘do not steal’, God says ‘make sure you take time every week to unwind properly.’

God must have seen consumerism coming, and given us a weapon to fight it with.

Sabbath is a declaration that we are human beings, not human doings.

Sabbath is a protest against over-consumption.

Sabbath says that life is about presence, not productivity.

In a world that keeps shouting ‘more’, Sabbath says ‘less’. In a world that keeps shouting ‘work’, Sabbath says ‘rest’.

So how do we keep the Sabbath holy in 2019? It’s not going to happen by accident. You’ve got to be deliberate and purposeful – aggressively breaking free from the grip of busyness. You can decide for yourself exactly what that looks like, but here are five suggestions:

1) Unplug. Human civilisation survived ten thousand years without phones. You can manage for a day – you’ll be amazed at how liberating it can feel! Ditto TV/Netflix.

2) Do something that makes your soul sing. Go for a walk. Read a book. Listen to your favourite music. Cook good food with good friends. Spend quality time (see point 1) with the people you love.

3) Buy nothing. Step off the consumer treadmill.

4) Be still. Embrace quietness. Pray. Meditate. Be.

5) Relax. Rest. Revel in being as unproductive as you can.

Heschel again: ‘The seventh day is an armistice in our struggle for existence. It is a truce in all conflicts, personal and social. It is the exodus from tension, and the liberation of humanity from our own muddiness.’ Sounds pretty good to me.

Gideon x

‘A world that seems divided can be remade by love,
this fight is one-sided – the universe was built by love
and it was made for us to come together.’

Easter weekend is about the triumph of love over all. However fierce hatred may seem, love is fiercer. However deep our divisions may seem, love runs deeper. However strong despair and even death may seem, love is stronger.