No posts recently, as I have been quite busy with a few things, not least the 4 Corners Festival. But yesterday in the midst of a range of situations that have arisen over the last week, where there was the danger of my well-developed Messiah Complex re-emerging, my 4 Corners compadre Jim Deeds dropped round the little "rugged cross" in the attached picture. Its carved from a piece of gum-scarred cherry wood given to Jim by another friend in my native east Belfast, and when he posted pictures of another cross carved from a piece of the same tree I said how it called to mind my childhood where we had a flowering cherry tree in the street outside the home where I grew up. It was a source of many memories - as a street swing; a safe-base for games of tag; a source of spring blossoms, signs of warmer days coming, that we used to kick our way through when they finally fell; a producer of autumn leaves that we also kicked our way through much to my mum's annoyance when we also kicked what local dogs had buried in the midst of them; and also a producer of sticky summer resin that got all over our clothes and likewise annoyed my mum. That same resin or gum is also what gives this little cross its gnarled character, and together with the oil that Jim has used to season it, it has an aromatic quality that is strongly earthing, drawing me back from the crises that have surrounded me in the last 24 hours into the here and now.
And I am reminded that my actions (or inactions) are not the be all and end all of the situations that surround me... prompting this reflection:
The is no space on that cross
To allow others to nail me,
Or to do it to myself
If I could wield the hammer.
There is no job vacancy
For an anointed saviour
To address all the sins
And woes of the world.
There is no requirement
For me as Messiah to ride into town
On a white charger or chariot
Donkey or Skoda Octavia.
Even after all these years
I still need to learn just to
Carry my own cross,
And play my own, small, part.
Selah
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