Lament & Hope

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Words: Jon Swales

Music: Chris Sayburn

www.cruciformjustice.com

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Words: Jon Swales
Music: Sad Emotional Piano- Copyright Free Music via YouTube 

“Bats or great crested newts?”

“Neither, because I want growth,” Rachel Reeves. The Times Interview- Quick Fire Questions

——-

‘Bats or Great Crested Newts?’

‘Neither,

because I want growth.’

And the earth exhales,

a long, low breath,

threaded with dust and diesel.

Once, we were called to tend and keep,

to walk with care

among the creatures of feather and scale,

but now we measure worth

in units of concrete and steel.

The hum of engines drowns out

the song of the land.

Economic growth has become god,

its temples rising in glass and stone,

its gospel preached in numbers

that do not bleed or bloom.

The rivers hold their tongues,

the forests lean away,

and the bats,

those ancient scribes of dusk,

write their farewell

against a sky that forgets.

‘Neither,

because I want growth.’

Beneath the tarmac skin of the world,

the great crested newts wait,

pressed into the damp earth,

their stories unravelled

by a people who no longer listen.

They were here before us,

in the time when the land

was a gift, not a resource.

‘Neither,

because I want growth.’

But the wild ones know.

They whisper of a garden,

a covenant,

a calling shaped from soil and breath.

We were dust once,

and to dust we shall return—

but not before we have paved it all over.

‘Neither,

because I want growth.’

And the earth waits,

as it always has,

watches the rising towers

and falling wings,

feels the weight

of our forgetting.

Still, it murmurs beneath our feet,

a quiet, unbroken plea—

remember,

remember,

before all that remains

is hunger.

- Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025

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words Rev'd Jon Swales

Drill, baby, drill—  

strange words,  

a chant from a strange man  

in a strange world.  

Forests burn,  

their ancient voices 

smothered in smoke.  

Seas swell,  

lapping at the bones of 

drowned cities.  

The air thickens,  

heavy with the weight of loss.  

And yet the President speaks,  

as if the earth were not already broken,  

as if the fire were not already here.  

A voice of denial,  

slick with crude promises,  

slick with something darker.  

He smiles,  

as though the earth were endless,  

as though the air were not heavy  

with the weight of a thousand unheard warnings.  

Drill , baby, drill—  

fuel for the engines,  

fuel for the empire,  

fuel for the end.  

A strange hopium,  

sweet and sickening,  

whispered into ears too weary to resist.  

But the wind remembers.  

The oceans remember.  

The earth groans beneath  

each hollow pledge,  

each drilling rig,  

each hand raised in defiance of the storm.  

He builds babels of oil,  

shadows stretching  

across scorched plains.  

He laughs,  

and somewhere,  

ice falls,  

rivers vanish,  

and the sky weeps  

for what was lost.  

Drill, baby, drill!

Again and again,  

as if the earth will not break,  

as if the children will not choke,  

as if tomorrow is promised.

- Swales, 2025

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words Jon Swales
Music: Beautiful  by Lite Saturation

Find your own Calcutta—

a descent,

an incarnation that moves

towards the dirt,

to touch the wounded heart.

Take the hand of the image-bearer;

here, in the shadows,

you may yet glimpse the King.

Do you see Him?

The Crucified lingers,

not on Zion’s heights,

but in the cramped alleys,

His arms traced with lines

of a thousand sorrows, all His own.

Do you see Him?

He walks beneath the weight of the sky,

bearing the ache of the abandoned.

In the hollow eyes of the hungry,

in the trembling hands of the lost,

his presence whispers.

Angels wait here too,

holding their breath

on sacred ground,

scorched by sleeping bags.

Not in Sinai’s thunder,

but in the hush of the forgotten,

in the silence of the lonely.

The compassionate Kingdom creeps unseen,

roots threading through concrete,

a mustard seed planted deep

a light shining in the darkness.

Find your own Calcutta—

a descent,

an incarnation that moves

towards the dirt,

to touch the wounded heart.

Take the hand of the image-bearer;

here, in the shadows,

you may yet glimpse the King..

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Rev’d Jon Swales 2025, after reading  the words of Father Zosima in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (Book Two, Chapter Three: )

Do not be afraid.  

Bid farewell to fear.  

There is no shadow so deep  

that love cannot reach it,  

no sin so vast  

it could exhaust the boundless  

mercy of God.  

Repentance is  

but a turning,  

a quiet yielding to the truth  

that grace flows unending,  

even to the farthest places of the heart.  

Imagine this:  

more rejoicing in heaven  

over one who returns,  

broken and bare,  

than over those who never strayed.  

Do not carry the 

weight of bitterness;  

forgiveness is yours—  

a balm to wounds unseen,  

a release into freedom.  

If you repent,  

you will find love waiting,  

calling your name,  

not as a distant promise,  

but as the ground beneath your feet.  

And in love,  

you are one with God,  

who does not count wrongs  

but gathers all things into wholeness.  

There is not a hurt he will not heal.

Even now,  

with your sin,  

in your brokenness,  

you are loved.  

Even the weight you carry  

becomes but a thread in the tapestry of redemption.  

Love is treasure enough,  

a beauty to redeem the world,  

to cover every failure.  

You see—  

you will one day behold its face,  

and Love Himself will win.  

So go,  

with no fear,  

and let love be your guide.  

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Words- Jon Swales
Music: Chris Sayburn
www.cruciformjustice.com

Hope is not a calculation,  

not a tally of gains or losses,  

but the ache of a heart  

stretched toward the horizon,  

a whisper of light  

breaking through the veil of the now.  

It does not linger in stillness,  

passive as shadows gather,  

nor wither into wishing,  

an empty hand grasping at air.  

Hope breathes—  

and in its breath,  

a spark becomes a flame,  

warming the coldest night.  

Hope refuses to yield,  

to let evil speak the final word.  

It stands defiant against despair,  

a protest against what-is,  

a midwife to the not-yet-born.  

There is a restlessness in this hope,  

a holy disquiet,  

a stirring revolution  

that will not let us sleep.  

It has seen the dawn,  

and in its light,  

the future world shimmers,  

not with the dull hues of habit,  

nor the dark chimes of business as usual,  

but with the effervescence of the possible.  

Hope is not a calculation,

not a tally of gains or losses,

but the ache of the heart,

peering through a veil,

longing for the day—face to face,

when every tear will be wiped away.

- Swales , 2025

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Words- Jon Swales
Beats- Sayburn 'Father' 

Hope leans forward,

tender,

listening to the whispers of creation

groaning for renewal.

It does not turn its face from shadows

but gazes through them,

finding in the darkness

the first faint glimmer of dawn.

There is a holy audacity in hope—

a quiet trust and boldness,

knowing the story is held

in hands not our own,

 nail scarred hands that invite us

to weave and work with them

a future of beauty and grace.

Hope speaks where

fear falters,

narrating a kingdom ,

telling a story

where the scattered are gathered,

where the weary find rest &

the exile a home.

It does not retreat,

nor stumble

beneath the solemn,

world-weary weight.

It moves with sacred purpose,

a searching grace,

a steady faith.

Hope is a spring,

a foretaste,

an existential refreshing

a momentary liberation

that lifts us from despair.

Hope knows the wounds of this world,

but counters fear

with holy persistence, &

holy resistance,

declaring that there is not a hurt

 he will not heal.

Hope,

a gift,

a call to action,

a quiet confidence that moves towards the pain—

not alone,

but with hands outstretched,

pulling the darkness of this world

towards the light of Christ.

Hope leans forward,

Tender,

‘Be ready,

Greet it with a kiss.’

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