General (Vol. 1)

Article Sections

Contents

  1. The Drama of Life
  2. River of Baptising Water
  3. Faith, Hope and Love
  4. God's Earth
  5. Nicodemus
  6. Wedding
  7. Relationships
  8. Mothers
  9. Forgiveness
  10. Testaments
  11. The Bethanies
  12. Retrenchment
  13. Donkeys
  14. Learning
  15. Catastrophe
  16. Mercy
  17. Shepherd
  18. The Trinity and its Virtues
  19. Lamb and Shepherd
  20. Peter's Burden
  21. Grandmother
  22. Confirmation
  23. The Way, The Truth and The Life
  24. Puzzles
  25. Comfort
  26. Bethlehem's Legacy
  27. The Church on Earth
  28. Mary's Pentecost
  29. Prayer
  30. Always
  31. Power
  32. Trinity
  33. Responsibility
  34. Strength
  35. Everyone Can Call Upon Jesus
  36. Unity
  37. Jesu of the Desert
  38. Judgment
  39. Sacrifice
  40. Pressure
  41. God in Us
  42. Vocation
  43. Commitment
  44. Jesus of All the Ages
  45. The Spiral
  46. Commendations
  47. Retreat
  48. Lamb, Child, Servant, Shepherd, Priest
  49. The Path
  50. For Victims of Human Failure

Bethlehem's Legacy

  1. We threaten in the tanks around Your Throne,
    Our pointless hatreds fester, then explode,
    Flares desecrate the Star of Bethlehem,
    Our rifles butt the outcasts on the road:
    Our cowardice recruits the men who fight,
    Mercenaries fire where we will not explain;
    We squirm, concealed behind the torturer's light,
    Numb to the icon of this source of pain.

  2. How little we have learned of simple things,
    Of firm but courteous witness, prayers and creeds,
    How great the torrent of our idle words
    Against the cruel desert of our deeds:
    Our charge must be to share the things we value,
    Our giving, god-like, cheerful, without grudge,
    Not pared and parcelled into pompous fragments
    But full, yet private so that none can judge.

  3. Our sympathies are narrow and exclusive,
    We bribe to send or keep beggars away,
    And it is not our talk that causes damage
    But the important things we fail to say:
    He chose to live and die beside the feckless,
    His neighbour was the misfit and the thug,
    His friends were carnal, penitent and reckless,
    His enemies were insular and smug.

  4. He chose to live in a down-trodden country,
    Where soldiers strutted in an emperor's name,
    Where feuds out of defeat were deep and bitter
    And sadism was an endemic game:
    O royal Refugee from Herod's curses
    O noble alien in a Cairo slum;
    O sufferer and lover of reverses
    But King of all our happiness to come.