Author: MARK BERRY

Mark is a Pioneer and a Creative, with over 20 years experience. He is a founder of the safespace community.

Advent 27

I don’t understand this energy that grows and flows, I should feel tired, I do feel tired, sleep is the momentary dark between the dreaming begins again. Before the colours begin to bounce around the walls and the stories re-emerge and paint themselves into my spirit.

But the energy is shifting and changing, I feel it sparking between you and I, between us and others. It is vibrant and so alive. It deprives me of sleep but sustains me when the tiredness drags. Then it stills me when I can take no more.

The energy of spirits connected, viscerally, physically connected. Not some ethereal, shadow of me-less connection but a real melding of us, reshaping, discovering, releasing me in ways I could not imagine, even in the night watches.

Here in the midst of this unsettling, this strange place life will burst. Here in this place where we are not at home we will find a new us, an us that encompasses so much more than we could be alone.

In you I find a new me, in me you become more you, in all of us together there is a spark of the greater divine, the God that is more than one. How can we see one as enough, when God is an ‘us’?

In the God that is ‘us’ all things are possible, nothing cannot be created, nothing cannot be loved. No desert cannot be flooded, no land must remain dry. The God that is ‘us’ makes us so much more as you are knitted in my being, as you grow within me and, yes, I grow within you. As we become ‘us’ there is nothing that God cannot do and nowhere God cannot go.

Oh how I dream between the sleep of where we will go, of what we will do! The possibilities sparkle with the energy that flows through the unknown, that lights a rainbow through futures unwritten! Oh how I feel the love! We don’t yet have our words for it, but that it is there there is no doubt, there is no fear!

So I dream and I wake, when all else sleeps. This energy, this love, this spirit we share and we give in our very being will not let me be still. The time to lie like death will come, but not yet, not now, now is a time to dream of birth.

Advent 25

The time of change speeds on the desert wind, over the Jordan water and the surface of the great lake, across the heights and through the valleys. Those that can hear, listen its voice is loud. Those that can feel, sense it filling the air with energy. It is there in the coming together of the great lights of the east.

It is calling a new way into life, a way which will flood the dry plains and nourish the world beyond these shores. Men will use it and abuse it for their own greed and power, they will use it to murder culture and destroy innocents. But they are not the true hosts of the new. The change will call the lovers and the children, the fragile and the meek, the martyr and the peacemaker. It will honour the ordinary for it begins in the womb of the ordinary. It will bless the powerless, the small and the humble who carry its name and its purpose.

It will witness the Temples fall and the Priests fail in the face of the child. It will see empires rise in power and collapse in disgrace. It will see dynasties descend into corruption and democracies become the plaything of the rich.

It will speak one name, a simple name that will endure despite those who speak it in hate and lie. It is a name of wonder and humility, of King and servant, Teacher and friend. It is the name spoken in the night by angels and the desperate alike.

The change is coming, always coming. Yesterday, today and forever.

Walking

soaking streets, polished by the evening rain to reflect the lamplight tone. drawing me in solar hue, passed cars running with trails of clarity down tinted glass. on, following behind the rain, breathing the nature smells, the trees and grass, lavender, reaching to me through the pavements drenching. my feet move through, through the gaps where there is no resistance to my walk. buildings shade the sky against the deep violet, domes and towers block the light of night. I am aware of the people still and stiff watching my walk, but I see no faces. they stand and then they fade as I walk on. but there are some who I see and who stay, those who have committed to me and those I have promised. they are always there, even as they sleep. their colours tint the streets and I feel their presence in the glowing heart. green flows with the stream as the new day shifts the view and I walk on, toward.

Sleeping

I hear her sleep, breath telling stories I cannot know. The stillness only broken by a rare twitch or turn. The day has drifted into the night. Taken up by the warmth as it rises from beneath the blanket. Filling the space above her head with its concerns. Be free yesterday, she must rest and make space for tomorrow, your only home now is the movies that play in the deep. Do not wake her with your game of ‘what-ifs’ or disturb her rest with the things that can’t be changed. Play if you must, but fade with the sun when your time has gone… for she has other tales to write. I hear her sleep, breath whispering desires and hopes. Be still and rest well. Be still

Advent 22

Rehoboam made you his strength and on your soil David set his throne.
Many have fought for the right to your shelter, many have sought to make you their own.
Perched high on the hills of Judah, within reach of the most sacred place.
Behind the wall, the tower and fence, gripped firm by a concrete and wire embrace.
Precious city of many tongues, place of years and lives and history,
You gave to Rachel the gift of rest, sleep to Miriam the mother of mystery.
You are the inheritance of Ruth and Boaz and the ripest fruit of Jesse’s tree,
Sweet Bayt Lahm of scripture and song, calling of the pilgrims dream.
You stood sure under the stars as the angels sang, and before the soldiers gun,
Calling shalom to be reborn, in the blessing of the coming Son.

Home?

Sometimes I have an emptiness in my centre that feels like it might spread and eat me to my edges.

Sometimes it’s beyond full and I fear that those edges might rip and I will flood across the ground.

Rarely do I know equilibrium. Sometimes I long to sleep in certainty, to be peacefully numb. Mostly I want to feel and to feel means knowing.

Sometimes I would willingly jump to know the rush of unstoppable air. I would love to know what it is to lose everything. I would give and give to feel it all come back in a momentary look. And then be gone for ever.

Sometimes it scares me, to be alone, to not know real intimacy, that is where I dare not go! That is what wakes me in the dark and tears my soul. I know in that second I would give it all to feel for one breath, one glance, one kiss.

But there are days when I pray this wasn’t so. When the need is too strong and the emptiness wells. When I stare across the still water in hope and desire, looking for the surface to break with life. When the wind drops and suddenly I hear the silence and it is lonely.

Life in the time between time, In the moment that the wave breaks, in dropping cloud as it waits to release the rain, in the dawn and the dusk, in the delta between land and ocean. This is my home, like it or not!