Poetry | Ecology | Liturgy
Naming God
Spring is becoming,
and the sap is on the move.
Thoughts acquire new muscle of green;
forget-me-nots are blooming –
the infinite made urgent.
Let us kneel before the primroses
and think of death. Without it,
where all this life?
Winter is no tyrant. It is the mother
laying herself down for her child.
Gideon Heugh
Adoration for Imbolc
Hail the quickening of the year;
Hail the growing curve showing
On the belly of the earth;
Hail the awakening, the light returning,
The heart-brightening restoration
Of Spirit’s hunger for the new.
Hail snowdrops and spring cleaning;
Hail the dawnful farmers looking
To the arrival of the lambs;
Hail the beginning, the blackbird singing,
The gorgeous expectancy that the ground
Will say amen to renewal.
Imbolc is a Gaelic festival celebrating the coming of spring. It originates from an Old Irish word meaning ‘in the belly’. At this time of year, the pregnancy of nature begins to show.
It is also known as ‘Feile Brighde’ – the quickening of the year. Halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox, the promise of new life can be felt.
For Christians, it is Candlemas – a festival of light.
This year, it happily happens to coincide with the Lunar New Year.
A blessed Imbolc and Candlemas to you, and a happy New Year!
Gideon Heugh
Rumours of Light, my second collection of poetry, is out now.
It’s about
wonder
longing
grief
hope
despair
beauty
and love.
It’s about opening yourself to the immensity of your own soul; finding the divine waiting in the darkness; and collapsing into the gorgeousness of the world around us.
It’s a love letter to the world; a lament for what we have lost; and a reminder of what it means to be alive.
My prayer is that the book will sit with you within the heavy times that we’re living in. That it will whisper to you whatever it is that you need to hear. And that it will be an open window; a glimmer of dawn; a rumour of light for you.
Love and gratitude,
Gideon Heugh
What does God want with me?
I used to believe it was something grand –
seismic, even. It would probably,
almost certainly, involve success,
and acclaim.
How wonderfully wrong I was.
All I have to do
to satisfy heaven’s desire
is to go and pick blackberries
in the rain.
Gideon Heugh
Love is strong because it is vulnerable; it overcomes because it serves; it is powerful because it rejects power.
Love doesn’t climb ladders to get ahead, it gets to work at ground level.
Love doesn’t wait for daylight, it sets up camp in the dark night of the soul and builds a fire.
Love doesn’t dominate, segregate or accumulate; it would rather get nailed to a cross in a posture of inclusion than take up a sword to conquer.
Love wins because it is willing to lose.
Gideon Heugh
‘Sometimes you can’t make it on your own’. Bono had it right, apart from for that first bit. There’s no ‘sometimes’ about it.
Our culture worships the individual. The self-made. The self-sufficient. Self-help. Self-care. Do-it-yourself.
Cue an explosion of loneliness.
No one is self-sufficient. You alone cannot entirely care for yourself. It’s about time we embraced that fact, and surrendered full-heartedly into the one-ness, the inter-connectedness, the relationality of existence.
We are not simply individuals. We are part of this world; and this world is part of us.
We need the air.
We need the soil.
We need the insects and the worms.
We need the sun and the rain.
We need the mass of our planet.
We need the bacteria that fill our guts.
We need the trees and the grass and the plants.
We need friendship.
We need community.
We need helping hands and shoulders to cry on
We need each other.
We need each other.
We need each other.
And each other needs you.
Gideon Heugh
You can step away
from the treadmill now.
We both know how tired
you have become;
we both know how the noise
has been driving you mad.
I won’t blame you for getting on
in the first place. We were all lied to.
We were all told
that it led somewhere.
Look how many increase the speed
hoping to get there faster;
see how inevitably
they fall.
I am glad to have reached you.
Come away now. Come out into the sun,
into the wind and the rain.
Here is a path.
I cannot tell you how long it is,
or the wonders, the tragedies you will find
around its sharp corners
(but, Christ alive,
if you open your heart as much as your eyes
you will find them).
I can tell you that it will end in your death –
of course! And why would we forget?
The ground is solid, but softer than you might think.
You can sit down anywhere
and admire the view.
You are encouraged to make a habit of rest.
At many points it will branch off
and you won’t know which path to take.
Do not be convinced that it matters.
But take note of this:
in all places it is wider
than one set of shoulders.
Gideon Heugh
Your ungodly socks
The entrance to heaven
is not a pearly gate
to be prised open
by the rigid bodies
of the devout;
the way to the divine is endless
and everywhere
and you can stagger through
hand in hand
with the rejects and the vagabonds
laughing your ungodly socks off.
Happy Pride Month x
Gideon Heugh
Do you think that your life has a purpose?
Do you believe that it should?
What is it you are meant to be doing
with this tangle of light and shadow that is you?
***
I asked the gods
(there were three on this occasion)
if it was enough to just live.
One of them began to sob.
One of them – I kid you not –
got down on their knees and began to pray.
And the last one it seemed
was struggling to contain their laughter.
As I was leaving, this god, now in fits of giggles,
caught up with me, gesturing to the wide doors
that led outside, ‘Yes! Of course yes! But my friend,
what do you think that living is?’
***
Once you have the right question
you might discover that you already have the answer.
***
To live is enough.
Every living thing except the human being
will tell you this.
The angels are not writing an evaluation,
they are simply gazing (a little awestruck)
into your face, waiting for your eyes
to widen in wonder,
your mouth to arise into a smile,
your cheek to be blessed with tears.
Do you understand?
***
If I am to do one thing it must be this:
to teach you that the earth is a gift
to be be joyfully and solemnly received,
and that you yourself are a gift
to be joyfully and solemnly given.
Life – yes, the life that you so crave –
is this simple, this gentle exchange.
***
I walk beneath the trees,
oak and ash and beech,
each one content (and nothing could convince me otherwise)
with both its uniqueness
and its utter reliance on all that is not itself.
Scientists tell us that the tips of their roots intertwine
with the thin halls of fungus
that cross the soil, sharing nutrients and information
and who knows what else
with the greater web of life.
A prophet could not have said it better.
Do you think you are self-sufficient?
Do you think you are self-made?
Do you think you can do it on your own?
The air would beg to differ, as would the flesh
of the plants, and the animals.
Let us speak then – and without cynicism – of love.
Let us give thanks that we are not alone.
Let us know it deeply.
***
The sun and the rain and the soil give life.
The world offers freely its beauty and delight.
Reciprocate.
***
Tell me, friend,
have you loved today?
Have you set the fruits of the earth upon your plate
and made a proclamation of grace?
Have you let your body know that it is real,
have you moved it through the gorgeous world
of which it is a gorgeous part?
Is life enough? Are you?
When we are not bothering the gods
with our search for answers
they are dancing.
There is the breaking. The falling. The tearing open. The pulled apart. The head buried in the hands. The fists pounding on the floor. The shrieks and the sobs and the why and the why and the why.
This is the broken heart; the grief; the failure; the betrayal; the disappointment; the loss.
There is the waking up in the wilderness. The long and trembling wait. The glimpses of movement in the shadows. The unexpected expansion. The deeper rivers discovered. The reality uncovered. The truth rushing up. The love pouring in and pouring in and pouring in.
This is the dawn that the darkness brings; the light that our ruin lets in; the gold filling the cracks in our shattered selves.
There is the realisation. The astonishment of grace. The response. The renewed or newly discovered purpose. The opening up. The reaching out. The tentative steps forward growing bolder and bolder and bolder.
This is the move from I to us, from me to we; the fierce and tender hope that only eyes that have wept can see; the journey that is goodness, is a terrible beauty, is the message that is written in the marrow of God.
Gideon Heugh
Gideon Heugh 