Saint Francis, restless, always on the move, wanting Morocco, Palestine, and Spain, (though oft prevented by illness) to prove ways of fraternity, and peace explain.
Embarks at last to crusade in the Nile, no fixed strategy, gospelling his goal; to nurse crusaders who undergo the trial of dysentery, and their homesickness console.
At last, with Brother Illuminato, Francis discovers God’s authentic aim: befriend the Sultan, talk love and credo, and Islam in the Christian to proclaim.
On coming home, he sounds the bells for prayers, and all true Christian Names of God he shares.
Ted Witham, St Francistide 2025
The Sufi Path of Love – Saint Francis and the Sultan
God gives us death; the gift is nature kind. Death puts to an end the pains of old age, making space for those in the queue behind. God writes each chapter and the final page.
Species yield to species, each man to a new, Deep time sweeps all away to stubborn death. Death’s truth’s not sad, it’s merely stark worldview: Each allotted our finite store of breath.
So death spreads from past until the very end. But wait! There’s a surprise: God….! A new thing surpasses all we can know: Fresh universe of power and love to grow.
God rips death‘s fabric the curtain to transform, The new-made mystery; pristine creatures swarm. Alleluia!
- Genesis 1:20-23, & 2:7-8, John 1:1-18, Mark 15:38 - Ted Witham tssf, Easter A.D. 2025
This is how it has always been:
Christ upturning the cosmos, mingling the darkness of death
With the ever-burning promise of life
The Feast of the Stigmata – on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost 2023
Moses stretches his hands wide across the Stop Signed Red Sea. The prophet is backlit by the pillar of cloud and fire (The double defence cleaving the hosts of Egypt from the hosts of Israel.) His arms cast a vast shadow on the dark billowing waters. The shadow is a cross leaning forward centuries and cross countries Through forty ages of wilderness and desire The pillar of fire with its mass of deaths behind – the cream of Pharaoh’s army Separated from the joyful fire of the feasting masses ahead.
This is how it has always been: Christ upturning the cosmos, mingling the darkness of death With the ever-burning promise of life; sifting through the expiration of tohu and bohu* which is death He forever speaks into existence the tenacity of fresh life: And on the steep mountain top near Assisi, Saint Francis sees with his eyes within The truth of this eternal intermingling when only life can win
Ted Witham tssf. Feast of the Stigmata 2023
Genesis 1:2. ‘And the earth was tohu and bohu’ (formless and void)
Can you breathe through spreading pain? Can you bear the suffering again? Can you bleach the blood-red stain? Can you stop the rape of Ukraine?
Can you dull the loins of those on heat for war? Can you block their guns as you’ve done before? Can the hope of peace-talks cry, ‘No More!’? Can fiery minds change their very core?
God, so implement the love of Calvary, Your eirenic Spirit blast the fighters free, Caress the world with mastery, Your love that heals painstakingly.
The Disappeared (The Dictatorship, Argentina, 1976 – 1983)
They’re rolling bodies from the soiled airplane, they’ll hose the cargo hold when all are gone. Did they cry ‘Our Father’ before were slain not by the sea but by all who looked on?
Truth: so hard to hear that we dismiss it. With Pontius, hands are washed in hypocrisy. Not us, in crimes in our name complicit, We choose systemic evil not to see.
We leave to Jesus burden of the cost, to carry the pain, to accept the blame. We roll him out and dump him with the lost: For this he was born, and for this he came.
Look on, he becomes our mocking mass song. Onlookers, felons – we compose the throng.
Lamentations 3:63
John 18:37
Ted Witham
Published in Sonnets for Sundays
The mothers of the disappeared – Argentina
This Good Friday I pray for the poor and oppressed.
Jesus suffering on the cross is Jesus suffering with the oppressed.
I pray for children and women and men in refugee camps in Syria and in neighbouring countries and around the world.
I pray for the people of Gaza.
I pray for people in the slums of Mumbai and Lagos and in the barrios of Rio de Janeiro.
I pray for women and other vulnerable people trafficked in many parts of the world.
I pray for civilians caught up in conflict situations.
I pray for health-workers, including Médecins sans frontiers, and for other humanitarian workers, who are dedicated to helping the poor and oppressed.
On these people, and people like them, the heaviest burden of the Covid-19 pandemic will fall.
Refugee camp, Somalia – courtesy UNHCR
The featured image, ‘Jesus Falls for the Second Time’, comes from the Stations of the Cross, Church of Notre Dame des Champs, Normandy, France. Image courtesy: Paul Davis
De-civilising ships keep arriving, our shores no longer secure, nor our culture thriving, the wedulah (the white man) brings sickness, death too by pointing his lethal finger.
So it’s outrage I sing this Day of Invading, Anger I shout at the smooth persuading of their own to the terra nullius doctrine and the smug nerve to take and to linger.
Surprise and pride at the enduring of songlines, of rock art, of language maturing, of wilga for dance, culture corrosion resisting, the didj, the singer.
So it’s pride I take this Day of Survival, ceremony I make to sing and stamp a revival of a near-lost world of soul whose force continues, sets my heart to tingle.
Make it too a favourable Day of cautious Carnival for the culture that’s come and the culture that’s here, a caucus of crafts and story-telling all mingling.
So I make joy from blended blessings, football deftness, hybrid harmony, cheeky humour, drama stars, open- ness to future cultures coupling.
Ted Witham kaya – G’day wilga – ochre for ceremony
From today until Christmas Eve, my poem ‘The Disappearing Arts’ will be printed on patrons’ printouts when they borrow from Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library in Melbourne.
The Federal Government has moved responsibility for the Arts from the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet to a new super Department (Infrastructure, Transport, The Regions), where the Arts do not even feature in its name.
The Disappearing ARTS
The ARTS are so subversive now (for we are young and free) They lock them up in ‘Infrasport’, and hide away the key.
The ARTS can set the people free (our home is girt by sea) So smother them in red red tape and tangle into braid.
The ARTS nerve our loath bravery (Advance Australia Fair) but we are not afraid to speak the truth so to disempower.
The ARTS cause us to laugh at rules (of beauty rich and rare) to denigrate the canny clown and turn them all to fools.
I am pleased to announce that two poems I have translated from medieval Italian and Umbrian into English have been published in the Adelaide Literary Journal.
Part of Jacopone da Todi’s Lauda (Praises) on the subject of poverty is published as Lauda XV.
Francis Seal of Love, by Vittoria Colonna is a Petrarchan sonnet. Colonna was a great admirer of St Francis.
Now begins the year ecclesiastical with storms of judgment, visions of the end, rejection of all ideas plastical they clog the soul and block God from being friend.
Without our spiritual cleansing drastical blindness hides the holy incarnation, makes belief selective and tactical its fearful retreat from fervent vocation.
Advent imagery wild and fantastical stirs up our hearts to see the larger stage. opens us to live enthusiastical integrity in this and the coming age.
He
will come, he says, in clouds of glory:
Now the time to heed and join his story.
Mind Journeys 