Bitter

Bitter bitter
Sweet


Softened

Empire
Strengthened

upon 
the suffering

Of bitter, bitter
Pain.

Sweetness 
Bought

On the 
back

Of 
Brutalised 
Black men

Bitter, bitter, bitter
Sweet.

Fortunes 
Of families
Founded 
On falsehoods.

Ghosts
Of ungodliness
Hunting
Now  
Through our 
Corridors 
Of 
Power.

Slave-chains
Chiming
Like 
Porcelain
and
The stench
Of 
Blood
Mixed with
Sweat

Leak
Into 
Each 
Polite
Cup
and

Conversation

Around 
tea 
and 
coffee
And 
chocolate.

How long 
Will we
Bury 
Our 
Heads?

Bury
the 
shame?

Bury
the 
pain?

And credit 
Ourselves
With 
Foundations 
Of gold

When the truth
Of the matter
Is
That

Our wealth
Was built 

On the back
Of brutalised black women
And children
and 
men.

Generations
Of
Denial 
Slide into the past.


Boatyard
Buildings
Seemingly 
Solid
Melt
Like 
Cubes of
Sugar
Into the 
Thames

Exposing the bones
Of Black
Women
and 
children
And 
Men.

For the unseen and

The unheard millions

May your voices now be heard.

Struck – during this night – by something deep and simple:

That for the church to become ‘ecclesia’ – true church – carrying the life that the maker intended, there has to be a simple transformation that we all need to undergo.

People need, intentionally, to begin to create connections, networks that carry goodness between one another: sharing kindnesses, goods, life itself.

It can’t just be left to ‘happen’ because for too long here in the wealthy cosy corners of the West, we have had so many distractions, so many images to flcker up on our screens to make us think that we are doing ‘real church’ with our beautful worship, perfect preaches and joyous gatherings..

Left exhausted by the trail of church attendance we are left chasing after something and we don’t know what it is.

Returning home, I skip into my sofa and sleep. Forgetting – if I ever knew – that what really matters are intentional choices of love.

‘If you can’t love your neighbour, who you can see, how can you love God who you can’t?’

I woke with the gentle understanding that as we choose to become, to embody change of heart towards the ones we know and reach out to form unseen networks of care and love, we will – in the darkness – create networks of light, of life.

It doesn’t matter who we reach out to but it’s imortant that we reach out to our neighbours, who we can see – nieghbours are the ones we are placed next to. Not ‘deserving’ (any more than we/I was deserving of God breaking ion on my existence 30 years ago) but simply ‘existing’ next to us.

And our job? To listen, to hear, to find a niche, a place where somehow what we have can be received by them, for them: whatever we or I have, whatever unique gifts or substance we have to offer into the place of their need, we can do it. Even if they have no ‘need’, ours is to be a presence, a fragrance for them to smell, like some primal odour that only our spirit expresses – and their spirit understands. Ours is to laugh, to listen, to be still with them, to hear their heart and share ours, living expansively through God and speaking deeply to the substance of who they are.

I am, we are called to do good in the land, here where we live, where we stand, where we walk, work, live. Unpacking and releasing all the goodness that by warrant of His goodness we carry. Releasing it into the lives of others. Like salt leaking into the land, killing off the stench of death and waste and fear, bringing supernatural heat and light, like ground penetrating radar, infra-red, lighting up dark places and expelling shadows of lives that are dominated by dark things.

We are shafts of light.