Our gardens here are small so I mostly go for containers. I try to make them attractive to insects using wild flowers and well known garden plants. My neighbour Sue also had a lot of containers. One always had sweet peas. She died last year in the summer, when the sweet peas were flowering. She said ‘no funeral, thanks’ so I grew these from those sweet pea seeds in memory of her.
We do remember you, Sue.
In our coming and our going
The peace of God
‘Use words like arrows’, Hilary Mantel said in her final Reith Lecture for 2017.
Now the summer holidays are here I take out my quiver and inspect it. Over the last couple of terms I’ve been living on borrowed arrows with little time to make any more. Battle weary I’ve had to count my arrows carefully, when and where to use them. On this rainy summer morning, I can at last bask in the idea at least that writing stuff can go back up the list of my priorities for the next few weeks.
Yesterday I saw red crocosmia in the park and it looked like a series of little flames running along a thin wire, each one flaring out in turn until the final tip glowed bright. At the junction there were a few tall stems of Rose Bay Willow Herb, also known as Fireweed. Once again each flower head was a mini conflagration, this time in dark pink. At the bottom of the spike the fire had caught hold as each fluorescence was well advanced. At the tip the buds had yet to break.
I liked what Hilary Mantel said about battles and how difficult it is to make them convincing on the stage with just a handful of actors and the clatter of armour. As I mostly write from life, I’ve not written about any real battles, having not taken part in any.
Silences are a different matter. I’ve taken part in loads of those. Even so they are difficult to write about. I shoot an arrow into the silence. I hear the twang of the bow string and the thrum as it vibrates. The arrow has left the bow and arches, silently into the air. It carves an arrow sized tunnel through the ether, fitting exactly to the size of the arrow head, shaft and fletch. I put my hand to my head to see where the arrow will land. I am surprised that it travels so far. I bound off after it, into the future to see where it has made its mark.
In our life and our believing
The love of God
O God you are my interpreter,
In you I put my trust,
For those challenging times
When face to face or virtually present to each other
We need One to bridge the gap:
We need One with intercultural experience to shepherd a diverse flock.
In this scary landscape where misunderstanding can have life changing consequences,
we need your Spirit of openness in us:
May we not assume evil.
The terrain is yours: websites, social media platforms and a host of other global connections and undulations.
May our praise and prayers twitter on and on and on.
In our life and our believing
The love of God
#twomplet is an on line version of Evening Prayer in German shared through Twitter, that I enjoy with my friend @janestranz who translates it for me
A room full of silence. Each one of us lost in some way, with our own thoughts and emotions. Fifty days may seem a long time to some but actually 49 of them had passed very quickly and most of us were still raw. There was denial, shock and anger still gangling about inside and between us and no one really knew what to say.
I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall looking toward the small window. Outside the sunset had just got to that point when it seems the sky is on fire. I watched the fire rage and then burn down low as the sun finally sank below the horizon.
What next? He had said we should wait and wait we had. We were still waiting, not all of us graciously. Arguments flared up, things were said or not said: it was a mess. Only Mary his mother looked at all calm. She was waiting as he said and we did our best to wait like her.
There was plenty of time, plenty of time for thoughts to weave back and forth. It was impossible not to relive the past. There was the trauma of his death of course, but I could slip back beyond that sometimes to the green hills and valleys, the blue lake, even the dusty road. There had been good times as we’d listened and learnt and travelled together. He had shown us a way. It had been extraordinary. Not religious in the confined sense of obligations but in a joyous sense of freedom and new discoveries. Each view of the landscape linked to a thought or action, each meeting together a crucible of anticipation. Change had travelled with us, welcomed and exciting. The call to justice was strong; to live in peace, to be merciful. We all wanted those things and he had awakened that longing in us, with his stories, the prayers and most of all the silence.
‘Wait’ he had said and in a few hours the sun would come up on the fiftieth day. Would it be different to the previous 49? Would we, feeling that we had been loosing it all this time, finally rediscover The Way?
In our life and our believing
The Love of God
For churches in Yorkshire and beyond, who are struggling to find The Way again: Pentecost 2017
The tide is going out,
The sand is smooth,
The rock pools isolated.
Standing on the shore,
The horizon joins the sky
At the edge of the world.
How often have we stood like this
And hoped to stand here again.
But the waters are moving faster now,
Tugging, pulling, more insistent,
Determined even, leaving:
Is there still time to visit the rock pools?
The treasures they contain,
Reminders of others days,
And memories to retain,
Until the next tide.
Our fingers touch, our minds too:
Can we let go yet?
God of the tide and the shore,
With your Spirit in us,
May the letting go and the loss
Be possible this side of your horizon
In our life and our believing
The love of God
Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
How long will ours last?
We want grief over and done with,
Our injuries healed and pain taken away.
Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
In this stillness, wait with us,
As the women waited at the cross.
Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
As we recognise in each other our shared wounds,
Help us to bear them together, holding fast to the light.
Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
That were so life changing for us all,
Be with those who bear unfathomable changes, give them life.
Christ, still bearing the wounds of the cross,
May we your cross-wise ones, following in your way,
live your wounded life together in love, and may your kindom come
On earth as in heaven.
In our life and our believing
The love of God
A prayer for Ascension
Sometimes when you are reciting the psalms in worship like Benedictines do, you come across something odd like the Bulls of Bashan. Now I’ve no idea who or what they were but I’m pretty sure that webmaster Bob will google it quite quickly and put a footnote to inform us all.
But actually I think I may have met one today. When I say met one I actually made quite a lot of effort to avoid him. It was on the way back from Byland Abbey that the first sign on the footpath warned me of his presence. At that point he was about three fields away with his harem. The nearest I got to him was him bellowing and roaring, just like in the psalms, on the other side of the fence. I took a different path, up a hill. Turned out to be the same field, who could have guessed. Who comes around the cornerstone old grumpy and his gang. By now I was at the top of the hill and pretty soon over the handy stile.
So whoever the Bulls of Bashan are or were, my advice is, like the psalmist, to give the plenty of room.
As the Bulls of Bashan roar,
So the hare runs up hill.
Follow her!
A short time after writing this I had a fall off another stile and had to attend the Malton urgent care unit for some stitches in my left hand. Patched up now and back in Huddersfield with Bob.
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God
I grew up on the architecture of England. It was my father’s contribution to my general knowledge, complimenting my mother which was the common flora and fauna. As a result I can name seasonal wild flowers, birds and insects but I also know a Norman arch from a Gothic one.
Standing at Riveaulx the stones make me gasp. I saw it last summer but standing here again it was no less impressive.
It’s easy to imagine they prayed and sang in this lofty, now roofless sanctuary. I wonder what Henry VIII would have made of it all these centuries later after his greed and bad leadership laid waste to these holy houses of the North.
The trees clap their hands
But it is in the woods around Stanbrook Abbey that I find my true sanctuary. This enormous woodland cathedral, its green roof meeting across my path, letting in beams of sunlight, is a wonderfully restoring place.
A hind leaps across the path ahead of me. She also knows the value of this sanctuary. At this moment it seems to be the calmest place on earth and I know I need to store it in my core memory for later days.
Insects hum, birds sing and wild garlic makes a strong pong from ramsons deep as snow drifts. The light filters in catching small puddles and making the shine like jewels, giving the green leaves many different shades.
From time to time others pass by. Not many but a few who have also found peace here. They remark on how beautiful a place this is, a constant doxology, and walk on. The birds join in the refrain and the trees clap their hands, as the psalmist says.
As the hind rests peacefully in the wood
So may I rest peacefully in God.
As the birds sing joyfully in the branches
So may I praise God daily.
As the light flickers through the leaves
So may I pass each day in the light.
As the flowers carpet the ground
So may I hold the earth gently and honour the Creator.
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God
Here’s a meadow, here’s a may tree
Here’s the roots, twisted, brown.
Here I sit by the may tree
Here’s the meadow, all around.
Hear the birds singing skywards,
Walking forwards in the sun,
See the blue sky stretched above us,
See the Creator’s love abound.
There’s not much signal in this meadow,
Of the sort on which we rely,
But everywhere there is a signal
Of how the love of God comes near
Touches us in dark and night.
Keep on walking across the meadow,
Keep on walking into light.
When I heard about the bomb attack in Manchester I was on Retreat at Stanbrook Abbey, Wass, North Yorkshire, where there’s not much signal. In some ways it is a world away those events. Shock and disbelief are understandable emotions: not having words to express how we feel.
Wherever we are now, keep walking in the light.
In our life and our believing
The love of God
The Church has become a house of pain because our Church is sick with deep forgetfulness of our deepest identity: that we are missionary, that we are a Church “called to come out of itself” …the biblical tradition of lamentation teaches us that denial of our pain and sorrow is not an option. Every biblical lamentation ends in hope: hope for rebirth, hope that the Lord’s love has not been exhausted.
From Divine Renovation by Fr James Mallon
Calling One, has your love been exhausted?
Mine has, in so many ways and places.
I only seem to have a little left
and in itself that is painful to me,
when I remember all the love filled times and places
and compare them with this pitiful situation.
I am sad, and have been for some time:
Sad enough to be sick, and sick of sadness,
But unable to leave sadness behind.
I have left the church of my youth behind me:
I opened the doors and stepped outside.
Although I was called ‘a breath of fresh air’
I heard the door bang shut behind me.
I am exhausted from lamenting all of this:
My love has poured out onto hard ground,
Soaked into the parched cracks and is gone.
It is not just my eyes that weep,
but every part of me feels heavy;
my guts twist and turn, my back aches from the load.
How I wish I could put down this sorrow and leave this pain behind.
As I go out each morning, ready for each new encounter
I know I am fortunate to meet those who yearn to know you.
A child comes running towards me,
A youth begins a conversation
And each time my heart takes a joyful jump.
When we sing together or remember the stories,
Then my heart glows warm again.
Calling One, your love has not been exhausted;
I rejoice that it is new every morning.
In our life and our believing
The Love of God
(The initial quote is one of the daily quotes I receive as a Seeker in the Lay Community of St Benedict)
JAL:17.05.2017