Kester Brewin

Whenever a gift is given, an invisible cargo is exchanged with it, loaded with semi-conscious messages about power-relations between giver and receiver. Offering an expensive gift to someone can be a power-play: I am rich enough to give you this. Even letting someone out into traffic can carry the same message: I am more gracious [...]

There is only one thing on the children’s minds: presents. There has probably been only one thing on many of our minds these last few weeks: what to buy for who? How much is appropriate to spend? What did they give me last year? How will they think of me if I give them this?
It [...]

I absolutely love this advent poem by Katherine Venn. She’s currently doing a Masters in poetry at the University of East Anglia, and keeping a blog of the experience over at Minute Particulars.
Brother Hare
Born with your clothes on, trembling in your scrape,
wide eyes open, soft, as new things are, warm;
alone, pressed small into a shallow [...]

From ‘Advent’ in The Complex Christ:
Our problem today: the space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live. Driven hard and fast, we lack the time to allow alternate worlds and possibilities to form, careering past small turnings and exits, bound to follow the obvious straight [...]

Post-Partum
Amniotics spilt, and semiotics rupture;
there are no words, just raw screams and suckles.
Child of God, child of man – no difference:
new life is unmoored emotion,
a wide sea of tears and sick,
and just one desire:
to feed, gather in, be mother-close.
But God won’t stay.
Controlled crying;
separation an immediate fact post-partum:
we must learn to settle ourselves,
become content with occasional [...]

Born into occupation.
Killed by a corrupt state.
Growing in poverty
Troubling to the rich
Teller of wise tales
Lover of good meals
Accused of insurrection
Disregarded by the courts
Awkward for the powerful
Bain of the religious
Beaten by soliders
Denied justice
Tortured
Forsaken
Left for dead
But never to be underestimated:
Jewish, not Israeli
Jesus was a Palestinian.

Tomorrow (10th) is ‘International Human Rights Day,’ commemorating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN. Article 1 famously reads:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Incarnation is about [...]

Bethlehem has some great hotels. The Intercontinental is a fantastic old place, fronted with beautiful stones and containing a bar and pool room in a cavernous, lime basement. When I stayed there last year it was living up to its name: people from all continents gathered at meal times, piling plates from the buffet with [...]

Whenever we engage ‘the other’ we have to overcome our fear of doing so. Engagement that holds no such fear is not engagement with an ‘other’; it is easy to love what is lovely – we are called to overcome our fear and love that which is not.
As we consider the grounds of the divine [...]

Caesarean Sections
The bitter old man stands
at the gates of the earth
waiting, watching,
guarding the only entrance
and exit to this citadel planet.
The babies file in
and the dead file out
and he watches them,
grimly keeping count.
He watches, he waits
he shivers to shake
tired cold from old limbs,
for he must stay awake
for the one they say
will attempt a salvation.
One eye is [...]