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).

MUSIC OF THE NIGHT

I’ve given myself a belated B-Day present. Today Christine & I are soon going to enjoy Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 70th B-Day Concert Tour presenting all of his major musical moments. I’m eager for this musical treat. 

TOP OF THE MORNING ( a poem)

TOP OF THE MORNING

Sweetheart delivered my morning hug

Familiar now, no youthful fainting.

Hot Coffee in my Tom Thompson mug,

With printed image of his painting.

A quiet start to an easy day

I leisurely gaze through misty blur

A distant pine tree with gentle sway

A black crow sits on its topmost spur.

From two hundred feet above the ground. 

He surveys the realm of human homes.

Drew my attention without a sound,

Found his way into one of my poems.

© Ron Unruh, September 2019

77 YEARS OLD

 Yes, it is my 77th birthday, no big deal really, just another day, another year. Yet a friend had the nerve to remind me that 36 months remain until I am 80. We’ll he’s right, as if I couldn’t figure that out without his impertinent reminder. In fact on this side of 75 a person often thinks about the slide.

But it’s okay. I find it interesting how a person at my age makes some naturally comfortable conclusions that an imminent departure from the planet’s surface is not tragic. In fact apart from the family connections with children and grandchildren which one does not want to leave, it seems okay to leave. It’s expected after all. Everyone leaves eventually.

And I have the assurance that my faith provides to me, that life ending here does not terminate my existence but rather I live beyond the immediate in an arena of glory about which I know nothing other than what scripture promises is true for me.

Don’t ask me why I am discussing ‘demise’ because I don’t know. I have a lot of life and every reason to be content with my life at the moment. I am humbly grateful for my health and my mind and my loved ones and my fun activities including painting and writing and marshalling at a golf course, and occasionally preaching God’s Word. So today I start a new year for me, my 77th on Planet Earth. I am looking forward to what God will do this year.

RAPID CHRISTIAN RESPONSE IS NOT A TOO-TALL EXPECTATION

It’s not surprising that some Christians become disillusioned and disappointed with a church, with its leaders and with the Christian friends who comprise it. Christian education and evangelism are not the only services a church should prioritize. When a person, or couple or family experiences a crisis, the church should respond. Rapid Christian response should be the ready position. Christian friends should jump to assist. Even when the presenting issue is awkward, distressing, immoral, angry, or hopeless, it is a God-assigned responsibility to love and to listen and to counsel and to shelter and to give aid. That’s not a too-tall expectation.find the entire essay here ... at my NO,MAYBE,YES SITE

VERITY - a poem

VERITY

Fervently believed it, trust so stout

so life was joy and faith uplifting.

Yet now with life, belief is shifting,

listening to alternate voices, 

compliant with some lifestyle choices.

Daringly rejects it, choosing doubt

so life seems bliss as faith’s evolving,

assuming this is problem solving.

Only for one, for others heartbreak,

collateral damage in the wake.

Ardently trusting the others shout.

Their lives are hell but faith’s compelling.

Their God will amend this rebelling;

His love will bring recalibration,

Restoring conjoint admiration.

By Ron Unruh, September 2019

Back Story: Sometimes loved ones experience disappointment that derails them from faith and relationships with people who care deeply.