Poems

These are texts used in women’s liturgies.
We have tried to trace the owners and obtain their permission where possible.

• To Weavers Everywhere
• Life Loom
• I dream of a Church
• Winter God

To Weavers Everywhere

God sits weeping
The beautiful creation tapestry
She wove with such joy
Is mutilated, torn into shreds,
Reduced to rags,
Its beauty fragmented by force.

God sits weeping.
But look!
She is gathering up the shreds
To weave something new.

She gathers
The rags of hard work
Attempts at advocacy,
Initiatives for peace,
Protests against injustice,
All the seemiñgly little and weak
Words and deeds offered
Sacrificially
In hope, in faith, in love.

And look!
She is weaving them all
With golden threads of Jubilation
Into a new tapestry,
A creation richer, more beautiful
Than the old one was!

God sits weaving
Patiently, persistently,
With a smile that
Radiates like a rainbow
On her tear-streaked face.

And She invites us
Not on1y to keep offering her the
Shreds and rags of our suffering
And our work,

But even more -
To take our place beside Her
At the Jubilee Loom,
And weave with her
The tapestry of the New Creation.

M. Rienstra

Life Loom

Accept the offering of ourselves:
women and men...men and women,
our separate strands
to be woven in and out,
over and under and through,
as we seek to come together,
the strands...
men and women...
women and men,
a part of life,
a part of Church,
A PART OF YOU.

Give us a vision of the tapestry
you weave
with our willingness to be shuttled
back and forth,
women and men ...men and women...back
and forth...
as the tapestry of days becomes the tapestry of years.

But the vision of tapestries remains...
the patterns and the fabric that COULD be,
that COULD be,
as we are shuttled back and forth..men and women...
..women and men.....back and forth..the
strands out of which you weave a fabric...a tapestry,
OF LIFE...OF CHURCH...OF YOU.
Amen.

Kira Sohldoost R.C.,
Journey to the Millennium

I dream of a Church

I dream of a church
that joins in with God’s laughing
as she rocks in her rapture,
enjoying her art:
she’s glad of her world,
in its risking and growing:
‘tis the child she has borne
and holds close to her heart.

I dream of a church
that joins in with God’s weeping
as she crouches, weighed down
by the sorrow she sees:
she cries for the hostile,
the cold and no-hoping,
for she bears in herself
our despair and dis-ease

I dream of a church that
joins in with God’s dancing
as she moves like the wind
and the wave and the fire:
as church that can pick up
its skirts, pirouetting,
with the steps that can signal
God’s deepest desire.

I dream of a church that
joins in with God’s loving
as she bends to embrace
the unlovely and the lost.
A church that can free,
by its sharing and daring,
the imprisoned and poor,
and then shoulder the cost.

God, make us a church
that joins in with your living
as you cherish and challenge,
rein in and release,
a church that is winsome,
impassioned, inspiring;
lioness of your justice
and lamb of your peace.

Kate Compston

Winter God

Winter God
Waiting in the coldness
away from the city's wamth and bustle
away from the touch of friends and an
open door

Winter God
pregnant with Christmas carols
knowing that the journey to the stable
will be lonely and devoid
of all that is safe and known

Winter God
the angels keep their distance
the world is full of strangers
fellow strugglers, who recognise no one
and for whom the nights and days are cold

Winter God
walking into Advent
the wait of not knowing
the wait of being scared and alone

Winter God
whom the prophets sensed in the darkness
bring us with you
we, whose eyes are too frightened to face you
bring us with you to Bethlehem
and when the birth is over
give us our name

Ruth Burgess

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