The Anzac Spirit – A mother’s lament

Don’t speak to me of the Anzac Spirit

Of battles lost and won.

There are no winners, only losers,

When nations, many nations go to war.

At Gallipoli they fell

Eight thousand on that shore

In France we lost maybe

Fifty thousand more.

Each one a young man in the prime of life

Each one with a father, mother, sister, brother, wife.

Look there, lying in the mud,

My son lying dead.

He would have been twenty in a month.

He took a bullet in his thigh and fell

Then a tank has crossed his chest and crushed his head.

They know him by his dog tags

And send the message home,

“Killed in action” one of many such.

I open up the telegram

My mind is full of dread

I have to tell the family what I read.

A young girl, a teacher, whom he planned to wed,

His brother and his sisters gather round.

I go to find his father who left thirteen years ago

And whom I haven’t spoken to since then.

We speak and cry together, united in our grief.

We cannot hold his funeral

Or bring his body home.

There are many thousand stories just like ours.

Don’t speak to me of the Anzac Spirit

Of battles won or lost

Our souls lie broken on the battle field

Our Anzac spirit crushed into the mud.

Consider the Lilies

Consider the Lilies

The carpet stretched before me,
Red and yellow and blue
The art of Creator and gardener
Has brought the scene to view.

Red tulips are boldly bursting
Gold daffodils dance behind
But the blues flow on as a river
With banks all flower-lined.

Each bloom has its own perfection
As in its place it shines
But together they blaze with glory
A glory that fades with time.

A camera has captured the moment
And frozen it here for you
So may we each in our own place
Shine with a glory true.

Perhaps each colour and story
Of our lives lived here below
Will make a picture of glory,
Forever in Heaven to glow.

Alison Cunningham © 2011

time capsule

Queensland Women Writers are creating a time capsule to be opened in 2059 - this was my contribution.
Dear future readers,
What will fifty years bring? What sort of world do you live in, you who open this time capsule and read this letter? It is a question that stretches my mind.
I remember in the year nineteen fifty three when I was at high school our class was asked to write an essay on the topic “The World in Fifty Year’s Time”. The previous fifty years had seen great strides from horses to automobiles, for the first powered flight to commercial flights; so what would the next fifty years bring? We imagined a helicopter on every roof top, and motor ways like giant conveyor belts so that you keyed in your destination then sat back and rested until you car was disgorged at the end of your journey. Some of us imagined a third world war so horrific that nothing was left on this planet but scorched earth, dead bodies and insects. How little we knew!
The reality has proved much more wonderful. We have seen men walk on the moon and satellites photograph the whole earth in great detail. Computers came into being; firstly great monsters that occupied whole storeys of buildings and required precise air-conditioning. Now there is a computer in almost every home and class room in the developed world and almost everyone between the ages of eight and eighty can search the internet and email each other all over the world in seconds. Global Positioning Systems direct drivers to precise locations. Technology has advanced indeed.
But what about ideas? Have we gone forward or backward in our thinking? Wycliffe, Luther, Tyndale, Calvin and later the Wesley brothers were among those who brought Christian enlightenment to the world. Darwin put forth his theory of evolution which led to Hitler’s dream of a master race. This in turn led to the “final solution” and the horrors of the concentration camps. Marx’s theories sort to bring about a world where everyone would be equal. Instead the result in Russia, China and North Korea was the regimes of Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and Kim Il-sung – absolute rulers who tolerated no opposition. Now in the year two thousand and ten the rising ideology is Islam a system which seeks to dominate the world through jihad, the holy war fought by “martyrs”, suicide bombers, wreaking indiscriminate destruction on all and sundry.
So what are my predictions for the day when this capsule is opened in October 2059? I predict that technology will have advanced tremendously: that natural areas, our present national parks, will still be treasured: but that many species will have been lost for ever. In the realm of ideas I predict that Islam, like Nazism and Communism before it will be discredited: that Christianity will still flourish especially in China, India, Africa, South America and in North Korea.
By how much have I missed the mark? I wish I could see your faces as you read this letter!
May God bless you all,
Alison Cunningham.

On your wedding day

Your have stepped through the curtain, Kathryn
From one life to the next,
From girlhood to womanhood in one day.
We rejoiced, we celebrated,
we sent you on your way-
Dressed all in white, the veil on your head,
The veil, the symbol of the curtain
through which you tread.
Your friends in pink beside you;
Your family all around you;
A proud young man beside you.
God bless you on your way!

Birth and Rebirth

Birth and Rebirth

All of a sudden the birth pangs came
Hoped for, dreaded, intense
Focusing every bodily sense
Into the crisis of pain.

The baby lay on my arm
Small, round, red, crushed face
Every finger and toe in place
Suckling at last and calm.

Oh the joy of a baby’s smile
When dark eyes looked at me
The stirring of life in a soul is seen
In the love of a little child.

I thought of the birth pangs borne for me
As Jesus hung on the cross
What agony and bitter loss
He paid for a soul set free!

But oh the joy on the Father’s part
When I look to Him above
When He sees a smile of adoring love
Awakening in my heart!

The Old Book

The Old Book

What will we do with the Old Book
So out of touch and dated?
How long will we keep the Old Book
That says that God created?

Was not this world just formed by chance
Over myriads of years?
By accident on accident
Were formed your eyes and ears?

The Old Book’s “sin, abomination”
Is what we call gay pride
And greet the gays with acclamation
As through the streets they ride.

And did God know me in the womb
As the old book says?
Or should the womb become a tomb
For unborn boys and girls?

John Wycliffe trained his readers
To teach it far and wide.
For this his body was exhumed
Ash cast into the tide.

Luther nailed his theses firm
Upon an old church door.
He made his answer, “Here I stand
I can do no more!”

William Tyndale was arrested
Tried for heresy and burned.
Yet his work is in your Bible still
And from it we have learned.

We learned to follow Christ our Lord
To rest upon His grace.
On this old book I’ll take my stand
And keep it in its place.

Alison Cunningham © 2009

the Bible, sin, and salvation

So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever. Amen.
That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.[1]
Don’t you know that those who do wrong will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, who are idol worshipers, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, abusers, and swindlers—none of these will have a share in the Kingdom of God. There was a time when some of you were just like that, but now your sins have been washed away, and you have been set apart for God. You have been made right with God because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you [2]

It is clear that God regards homosexuality as a sin, but there are many things actively promoted in today’s western society that are also called sin in the bible. In God’s eyes it is a sin to kill an unborn child, it is also a sin to hold on to more than one’s share of this world’s goods when people are starving.
Jesus said that if a man has two loaves of bread he should give to the man (or woman) who has no bread. If a man has two coats he should give one to the man (or woman) who has no coat.
If you neighbour shouts abuse at you over the fence, it is a sin to shout abuse back at him. Jesus said we should return good for evil, blessing for cursing, we should love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us.
If you know someone who is sick and lonely and do not go to visit them, this is a sin. If a man knows something good to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
Truly there is none righteous the only righteous man who ever lived was Jesus. We all like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. But the Lord has laid our iniquity upon Jesus. Like the good shepherd that he is, Jesus has taken our sin into his own body, and carried to the cross. If we turn to Jesus and follow him, we will hear his voice speaking to us in our hearts. He will take us up in his arms and carry us home rejoicing.
This is the good news. Not only will our sins be forgiven they will be cast into the depth of the sea. As far as the east is from the west – so far are forgiven sins removed from us. Not only does Jesus forgive us but by the power of the Holy Spirit he gives us power to forsake our sin, and live holy lives to his glory.


[1] Romans 1:24 – 27 New Living Translation
[2] 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11New Living Translation