Lifelines: Wrestling the Word, Gathering up Grace

By Carla Grosch-Miller

After the deaths of her brother, father and mother, the poet and writer Carla Grosch Miller felt that her world and faith had fallen apart. Lifelines is the fruit of what followed. These searingly honest yet hopeful poems reflect on the mystery at the heart of Christian faith and the journey through death to resurrection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781786222367

Carla Grosch-Miller

Carla Grosch-Miller spent more than 20 years in parish ministry in the US and the UK and has lectured widely on pastoral theology.

Book preview

© Carla A. Grosch-Miller 2020

First published in 2020 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978 1 78622 234 3

Typeset by Regent Typesetting

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

For David

whose steadiness keeps me standing and whose encouragement enables me to soar

Contents

To the Reader

Genesis

Part 1. Wrestling the Word

Lectionary Poems

Advent

The Waiting

The Tender Shoot

The Call to Repent

Leaping

The Joseph Cycle

Meditation on Rembrandt’s The Holy Family by Night

Expectant

Christmas

Christmas Eve

Christmas Morn

The Slaughter of Innocence

Song of a Mother

Epiphany

Star of Wisdom

Baptism of Jesus

The Tree

The Call

Make Peace

Becoming

In the Footsteps of Elijah

Holy

The Radiance!

Lent

Wild Beasts

For the Leader (Nicodemus)

Sarah Speaks

Temptation

Ode to Moses’ Mum

There is a time

Hidden Depths

Dying to life

Passion Sunday

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 2 – We rise

Good Friday

Holy Saturday

Easter

Raised to life

Heartlock

The Pruning

To love

Ordinary Time

Daybreak

Firstborn

From the mouth

Enough

Moses on Sinai

On Pisgah

The Prophet I

The Prophet II

’Til death us do part

Amidst the Ruins

Scorched lips

Offence

Wordless

The Prophet III

And you shall lose your life to find it

Blessed are those who mourn

Rock to sand

The table heaves

Who has not suffered an impediment of speech?

See these stones

Like Bartimeus, I want to see

The clutch for meaning

The one thing, the better part

Bent over

Lost and Found

Confidence misplaced

Outsiders

Some yearnings are so deep

The grateful eye

Am I lost?

I stand

Word Becomes Flesh

Part 2. Gathering Up Grace

The Geography of Grief

The Tom Cycle

Organ Failure

Things my father gave to me

Weather Talk (for my father)

The most beautiful thing

Last rites

Death’s undoing

Grief’s Pool

For my mother

Stardust

On the Road

The Storm

Go to your cell

The Vow

Sea Wind

Blood Donation

What if?

Breathe

It slips between my fingers

Earthing

I am not satisfied

On the road

Kintsugi (Gathering the Fragments)

Beginner’s Mind

Redemption Road

Vocation Prayer

Endurance

Sunday morning

The Sea

Grace is Grace. It comes.

Walking with Sophia

Coming Home

Now

Meditation on Tarn Beck Falls in Winter Spate

In wonder

New Psalms and Prayers

Psalm for the Newly Born

Psalm for the Seed

Harvest Psalm

Woodland Wedding Psalm

Psalm for the Dead

Psalm of Praise

Psalm of Lament

Psalm of Rest

Ode to Courage

Prayer for Awakening I

Prayer for Awakening II

Prayer for the start of a new week

Prayer of Thanksgiving for Enduring Love

Mother’s Day Prayer

Strong Prayer

Divine Sex

Song for Petticoe Wick

The Way of St Cuthbert – poems and prayers

A prayer for beginning a journey

Prayer for a long day

Prayer for ascent

A prayer to enter the wilderness

Prayer among the Cheviots

A pilgrim prayer

A prayer for journey’s end (a new beginning)

To the Reader

I write to save my life. The drama of that statement startles me. But there have been times when it has felt literally true. The lectionary poems in Part 1 Wrestling the Word and the poems in On the Road and The Geography of Grief in Part 2 Gathering Up Grace are those kinds of poems. They are poems that I started writing as and when my life fell apart. The violent death of my brother, followed by the quick death of my father and the more prolonged of my mother (they said Tom’s death would kill them) – all accompanied by an increasingly confusing and assumption-shattering few years in my work – left my brain in pieces. The world as I knew it became threatening and frightening. Nothing measured up. I couldn’t do numbers (as I discovered when I later tried to find documents I had filed by date). I couldn’t do people, couldn’t even look them in the eye. I couldn’t continue the work I had always found life-giving even when challenging. So I left ministry and swapped the pulpit for the pew or a Sunday morning walk.

Truth be told, I was tempted to leave the church too. Having lost my compassion and discovered the limitations and shadow side of some Christian traditions, what was left? The first few months after I left ministry, I could scarcely bear to hear of God’s love or God’s desire that we love. I was too traumatized to receive or to give anything. I did not understand what had happened to me and could neither seek nor find comfort