Lament & Hope

Send us Fan MailRev'd Jon Swales

Send us Fan Mail

Send us Fan MailWords and Voice- Rev'd Jon SwalesMusic: Used with Permission, Chris Sayburn , 'Father'

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Send us Fan MailWords and Voice: Rev'd Jon Swales'

Send us Fan MailWords: Rev'd Jon SwalesMusic Pixabay: Piano LamentAfter the Chorus/After the NoiseI wrote this travelling by train through the Alps from Rome to Paris, after reading John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” These two poems trace a movement from the triggered body, where worship can still feel like threat yet there still,  despite numbing and distance, is a desire for encounter. I. After the ChorusDo not come to me now  as soft advice.Not as the bright smile  at the church door.  Not as the chorus swelling  through the speakers,  all uplift  and upward hands.The room is singing  its predictable liturgy —  the slow one,  the anthem,  the key change meant  to lift the heart —and something in me  locks.The body remembers  what the mouth  still cannot say.One chord,  and the old rooms open.The brand.  The corporate style.  The lanyards.  The smoothness of it all.Words weaponised  like daggers:‘you bring nothing of value  to this place.’And suddenly I am back there,  inside the room  where harm was done  and called itself ministry.So come like weather.Come like rain  against the chapel windows  when the singing grows too loud,  when joy itself  feels like threat.Break the locked places.There are pews inside me  still occupied by ghosts,  whole liturgies of fear  recited in the blood,  old shames hanging there  like vestments  in the dark.I have called it resilience.  I have called it faith.  I have called it carrying on.Still the walls sweat.Still the heart,  that small battered flat  above the old sanctuary,  lets in every echo  except peace.So come not as guest  but as the one  who knows the building  was never theirs.Kick in the swollen door.Shatter the stained glass  of the god they handed me —  the one who looked too much  like power,  too much like control,  too much like men  who mistook harm  for holiness.Burn what must burn.The false shepherd.  The polished liturgy.  The songs that ask the wounded  to rise too quickly.Batter my heart,  threefold mercy,  Father of the bruised,  Christ of the locked room,  Wild Goose moving  not in the amplifier’s roar  but in the tremor beneath it.Undo me.Not as they undid me.Not to wound  but to make room  for breath.For I have been  an occupied city,  streets patrolled by fear,  every chorus a siren,  every bridge lifted in worship  a trigger.

Send us Fan MailWords and Voice: Rev'd Jon Swales www.cruciformjustice.comMusic by Tunetank from Pixabay

Send us Fan MailWords and Voice: Rev'd Jon Swaleswww.cruciformjustice.commusic. pixabay

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Send us Fan Mailwww.cruciformjustice.comwords: Jon Swalesmusic. pixabay 'Hope'The Waiting of All ThingsThe whole creation waits—not quietly,but leaning forwardwith the ache of expectation.Galaxies tilt toward the dark,spirals cupped like listening ears.Stars hold their breathbetween burning and blessing,knowing there is morethan endless expansion and collapse.Rocks remember touch.They remember being named goodbefore they were quarried,before they were brokenfor speed and profit.They bear the weight of violence,the long erosion of sorrow,and still they wait—patient as prayer pressed into stone.Rivers keep movingthrough poisoned veins of land.Waterfalls falllike tears that refuse to be wasted.They groan with the sound of mourning,yet rush with hope,as if every plunge knowsit is not the end.Rainbows stretch themselvesacross wounded skies,not forgetting the flood,but daring to believethat mercy still arches over ruin.They wait,colours pulled taut as promise.Whales sing in the deep.Their voices carry grief and memory,songs heavy with plastic and silence,yet tuned for joy.They groan—but their groaning is music,a labour-song for a worldnot yet born.Trees rise on tiptoes,peering through the dark.Roots remembering light.Branches leaning toward dawn.Then—they clap their hands.Not politely.Not on cue.But wildly.Leaves shudder with memory.Bark strikes barkin stubborn praise.They clap because roots know resurrectionlong before theology names it.They clap because hopeis older than despair.All creation is watching,eyes wide with longing,for the revealingof the children of God.The world is not what it will be—and it knows it.When they appear—not by courage,not by timing,but because the hour has come—creation exhales.Rocks loosen their grip.Rivers quicken their dance.Forests erupt in applause.Galaxies widen with joy.This is the glory creation waits for:not escape,not domination,but belonging made visible.And the whole world—still groaning,still hoping—keeps leaning forward,waitingfor love unveiledto take fleshagain.Rev'd Jon Swales Feb 2026. 

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