A mix of here and there

All prayers greatly accepted today. I wait, still not accepted into varsity as institutions quibble over acceptance of marks for courses. This is no easy place to sit in the middle of waiting. I have done all I can but at the last post I feel not pipped but more than a little bound.

The season has hit me, the grief and the joy. Today I am asked to pray for a mother whose baby girl is born with a heart defect and dies. Such grief for a family who had looked so forward to a first baby at Christmas. So much investment, so many prayers now seen as lying fallow.

Then a young girl eight months pregnant is bought to my attention as a father in law demands her marriage now because although she is a sinner the baby deserves to be born 'clean'. I think of her and look over at my Nativity icon on my noticeboard. Some things never change Mary.

As I come to terms with being a hoarder and having to pack up house I can not help but look at the place I have grown up in. Christchurch the dark city of New Zealand home of pilgrims and prostitutes.

And I wonder...

I wonder if the darkness that is this city
Will sit in my blood when I have left this place
If the fierce light of late night scuffles will rise in my eyes
As it has in so many others when pressed against a wall

There is a price to pay for living in a feral place
A payment made at birth
This darkness so familiar so a part of us
Once clearly seen, we can but spend the rest of our lives
trying to outrun it.

Today I put in my resignation for work, next week I will go to the Blue Christmass and weep. Then fortified it will be onward into the light.

Blessings Megan