The Awakening

He woke,

not with trumpet,

but with tremor,

a shiver in the soul

as the Ruach hovered—

not over ancient waters,

but deep

in the fault lines of his being.

The kettle whistled.

Milk. Two sugars.

Yorkshire Tea.

Considered oat milk—

reckons it tastes like porridge.

TV flicked on.

The news screamed louder than the kettle:

rivers bone-dry,

oceans rising

with the grief

of a thousand drowned coastlines.

He stood,

collar on,

bare feet on cold tiles,

as a Yorkshire dawn

bled through the window.

"Looks nice outside,"

he said to himself.

But he knows.

He feels it.

Humanity has sinned—

in thought,

in word,

in deed.

And we will reap

what we have sown.

And something stirred,

part rage,

part fear,

the ache of calling,

a whisper braided

through birdsong and smoke.

He’d preached comfort

to the comfortable.

They had issues—

who doesn’t?

But they were fine:

two holidays a year,

mortgage paid off,

SUVs and solar panels.

One of them drives a Tesla.

Member of the PCC.

Eco-conscious—

within reason.

But this priest knows.

Perhaps they do too.

We’ve been seduced by capitalism,

got in bed with consumerism,

almost from birth.

Every billboard,

every advert—

I consume, therefore I am.

But now,

the earth groans.

Future generations

stand on the edge of ruin.

He had offered calm,

but the Spirit now

was storm,

and it raged in his bones.

The liturgy trembled.

The chalice cracked.

The incense smelt,

not of sanctity,

but wildfire.

He saw it.

The prophets were not gone.

They wept in wooden pulpits,

chanted on motorways,

laid down their bodies

as living sermons—

to challenge the status quo,

a piercing scream

in the night of late capitalism,

offering a fresh imagination,

a judgment,

an unveiling,

a hope

for a future

still barely possible.

And he,

clay vessel

of Word and wound,

could no longer bless

a burning world

without naming the flame.

So he turned

from stained glass

to stained earth,

from gold-threaded vestments

to sackcloth skies,

and spoke,

not with ease,

but with fire:

Repent.

For the kingdom comes

not in comfort,

but in courage—

in tear-streaked dreams,

in trembling hands

that dare to build again,

that refuse

to go silently into the night.

And the Wild Goose,

the Ruach of love,

hovering over wounded earth,

answered back:

at last.

Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025

The Hermits Cell, Swaledale