IN DANGER FOR BELIEVNG

IN DANGER FOR BELIEVING  (a poem)

Dinner is served since we’re all there

Stopper pulled from a wine decanter

Pause for routine pre-meal prayer

Return to mundane table banter. 

No one speaks of persecution

Grave human rights issue of our time

It seems there’s no sound solution

To this grave international crime. 

We in the west know so little

Of global Christians’ desperation

Their lives fragile and so brittle

Feeling we’ve left them in isolation.

Charged with blasphemy and libel

Daringly claiming Christ’s gift frees us.

All they did was read the Bible

Prisoners now for trusting Jesus.

© Ron Unruh, October 27, 2019

Backstory: On November 2 2019, on the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, Christian believers in 130 countries of the world will praying for people who because of their faith are living in high-risk conditions.

RECOVERING A DREAM

If this would end we’d all be thrilled

All who are here are too unskilled

To unravel tangles

So complex as promise expelled

As burning as a love withheld 

The failing of a dream.

I see it now an answered prayer

So clearly I might think I’m there

The other side of life.

Where hope’s alive where joy’s restored

Where gladness is sweethearts’ reward

Revival of a dream. 

What’s done is done, can’t be undone

An apt truism sounding homespun 

By captain obvious

Cannot refute conversions made

Will make the spouses glad they stayed

To build again a dream.

© Ron Unruh, October 2019

LIGHT COMFORT

LIGHT COMFORT

I wish at times it was a dream

a bad dream from which I could wake up,

a nightmare that can stop my heart

which I can’t remember now.

It’s not, and that’s the saddest thing,

to know there is no morning light

informing me it’s over. 

Instead it continues, nightmarish,

day and night, another twenty-four hours

and tomorrow and the next day,

dreadful, unrelenting.

Yet psalmists long before me

living through their private hells

found solace in His presence

and invited me to join them 

in the company of light.

© Ron Unruh, October 2019

OPAQUE

OPAQUE

The world is an unusual shade

Unlike any I’ve seen in years

My favoured hues all tending to fade

As my eyes open screened by tears.

Life has a way of thinning splendour

It’s pain disturbs even artists’ eyes 

And every sense is far too tender

As what’s most cherished slowly dies. 

Won’t need to be an unsteady hand

Nor is it something meds can settle 

This loss of love that once was grand

Cracked like ice on a flower petal.

© Ron Unruh, October 2019

SOUNDSCAPE (a poem)

SOUNDSCAPE

We live in a noisy world.

Audio ecologists tell us that

            there are no quiet places left.

The din of humans and our machines

            our constant audio backdrop.

Even away from cities we feel obliged

            to fill our ears with noise

            artificial sound.  

Silence is not the absence of noise

            Sensory deprivation,

            soundlessness.

True silence requires removal of all

            Audible mechanical vibrations,

            Leaving natural sound, undisturbed.

Silence is the sound of dancing wind and trickling brook

            and peeping bird, and beating heart,

            often unheard sounds around. 

Maybe we have reasons why we’d rather hide in our noise,

            Not wishing to listen in silence.

Finding silence and keeping silence exposes us,

            to our deepest thoughts and feelings,

            our pretense and complacency,

True listening raises discernment and evaluation

            providing opportunity for renewal,

            rousing an inner desire for cultivating quiet.

© Ron Unruh, October 2019

Backstory: A compilation of ideas accruing from the writing of Margaret Manning Shull (Silent Places), Kathleen Dean Moore (In Search of Silence); Julia Baird (An Unquiet Nation); Alan Jones (Soul Making).