Things I want to remember from this week:
- Finding out that Tim is going to be training with the National Team!
- Hearing Shane Taylor's life story (here's a recording of him telling his story in a different church), and his incredible transformation from one of the UK's most dangerous criminals to a gentle father of five children because he met Jesus Christ in prison and believed and was saved.
- Hearing Tim (Lornie)'s passionate poem:
Burning Flags
Flags.
Flags burning
Burning flags
Everyone’s burning something these days
Flags burning
Koran burning
Bridges burning
Muslim ban
Can you believe it?
Our precious countries, with their foolish borders
Lie in tatters
All of our proud ideologies have shattered
What we could have had
Get fed to the churning seas, the stomach lining of
our hungry nationalities
You see
These dark mentalities
That build up walls, always walls
That make banalities of human beings
Clocking up pointless Mediterranean fatalities
But have just become reality;
Normality
Our mundane, reckless refugee reality.
Calories.
Calories burning
Burning calories.
But not many
Not any, some days
Maize
Would do, today
But it’s always the same
The boring same.
They’re learning young to tame the pangs
The fangs that bite
When need comes
When the need to feed comes
And mums watch their kids grow potbellies
And something in my gut cries “no”
“It’s not meant to be this way”
But so it is.
Things are not as they should be
could be
would be
If we loved.
Loving.
Even hoping seems fragile, sometimes
Coping is all we’ve got, sometimes
But loving
Loving costs
When you love you get burned.
Burning
Words burning
Burning words
Words that burn
Words that yearn
Not to be said, but which were said
Words that slipped and blurred
And words that grip and slur
And words that tip and turn
Us round and round in circles
What he said to me
What she said about
me
What we said about them
What I said to him
What I said
Things I said
Things that bled from my lips
We’ve all said them
Shed them
in ugliness from our tongues,
We’re all caught up in these tangled webs
Our lungs are thick
With words, words, words all around
This cacophony of words that stick.
Burning
Anger burning
Things are not as they should be
Burning anger
Furious, tense, shouting, loud
Blazing
“What have you done with my world?”
Or…
Is it even anger, any more?
Maybe it’s just grief, as he sits and he weeps
And as he keeps
coming back to the world he has made
And he keeps
Coming back to the world he has made
And he keeps
Coming back
But still we’re the same
When will we change?
And he can’t hold back the tears
Not any more
For all the long and wearied years
That he has longed to see something that looks just
a little bit like justice
“Must this violence go on?”
He cries
“Must you spin your webs with your words and lies
Thoughts that tie
You up in knots?
I’ve not come to judge
I’ve come to love
But we both know it’s true
When you love you get burned;
And when you pierce anger, it bleeds
Fire
Blazing fire
God is here.
Perfect, flickering flame
Cannot be tamed
Wildest love, cannot be tamed.
Burning love.
Passion
Burning passion
Passion burning
Churning him inside out
Compassion
The tearing of the soul
The bearing of the whole
weight of anguished love
the love that burns him
We’re beyond doctrines, here
Beyond dusty books and hymns, we
Are beyond flimsy
Arguments and back-and-forth
For
This is real, this is blazing fire,
Beyond words, words, words
Of words I’ve had enough!
But this man –
He could be love.
And he turns
And he burns
He burns
Fiercely in his eyes
and he says
“Come. Will you follow me?
Will you actually follow me?”
Where?
“Where? To the places I always go
Come, and let me show you,
The places I always go to”.
They’re the dark places
The places no one wants to be
The places no one wants to see
The people no one wants to be seen with
They will be your friends
Come and spend
Yourself, yourself
For the poor and oppressed
Come and use your voice for the
voiceless
May the homeless know your address
And may it be theirs as well.
May hell itself
Flee your every word
For they are life and love and hope
And when you cannot cope
My child
With this broken world
I will be your strength.
Bring me every
gun
And I will rip
it
Every prison
grate
Show me every
wall that separates
Your walls of
hate
And I will tear
them down
I cannot bear
your walls
Your walls I
cannot bear
Bring me every
spear and sword that humans have made
Every knife that
tore, every arrow that maimed
Bring me wood for
a fire and a flaming brand
We’ll set it
alight and we’ll look and we’ll stand
For a day is
coming when grief is all gone
And the people
who hurt have a place to belong
Come with me
See what I do
I am the God who
makes everything new
My love, it
burns.
Will you come
and follow me?
- Auditioning for the Sidney Choir and joining in their (candle-lit) rehearsal
- Having the best gallop up the columns in Esther's Ceilidh, really really fast, just how I like it
- Seeing the lights from the E-Luminate festival project a galaxy onto the side of senate house
- Running down to class with Alex, and arriving at the same time as our supervisor who had only just managed to get out of her meeting, hadn't had lunch, and had to open her emergency stash of chocolate biscuits
- Chance snow showers (love-hate relationship)
- Discovering this recipe for a cinnamon roll mug cake (absolute dreams - has also altered my normal banana, cinnamon and raisin porridge breakfast habit)
- A chance encounter with a homeless woman, born of seeing her ungloved, cold hands and feeling the unshakable impulse to do something. (Although also this week Cambridge was shocked by the disgusting news of a student who burned a £20 note in front of a homeless man)
- Looking up in the University Library and thinking how absolutely unbelieveable it is that they have so many books. (And yet, the one book on Chinoiserie that I wanted was unfindable.)
-Finding out that the Dome now has vegan options!
- Discovering Punks and Poets, Lion Club and Venice on Soundcloud - hello solo dance parties!
-Laughing and laughing over Sunday with Will, Tim and Darren.
Less proud moments:
- Chickening out of my long run this week because of the light light snow (will do it next week, also I was just genuinely tired)
- Eating all three of my treat coconut and macadamia bars in one night (they are so good gah)
- Procrastinating majorly on my essay
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