New Year’s Day 2018New Year’s Day 2018Crying ShameI cried and the Lord sat down beside me, weeping. So I cried unto the Lord. He said Just cry, it’s enough. He handed me a bottle, so I cried into it. Only being polite. Don’t worry about spilling, he said, nothing will be lost. I know tears.And in a dark garden outside a city he poured out his grief. He broke his heart. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop my crying. I couldn’t stop him crying. But I did hope that no one would think him less God. 2nd January 2018
Third-aged
Long ago, but I do remember how from crowding platforms I squashed onto sardine tin trains before the sprint from terminus to office door, and how at work's end the challenge was to wake before the train sped out of my home station. And I remember that January starting-again feeling,like putting on a so heavy overcoat to step out against a wind, and of how so similarly it could feel to surrender the liberties of holiday for the disciplines of routine and thenthis without the reassuring crowds at commuter stations, this when timetable and itinerary were largely up to me to devise, in the obligations of vocation. Now it is all in my own time. Third-aged, I can resist the new tyranny of an undiaried life. In the delights and freedom of cherry picking, I can make the volunteer's pledge to turn up reliably, enthusiasm untied to a pay packet, to lend amateur energy to the mix of experience.
I can choose joy before I begin, and during the shift and after.I can ruminate while I commit to work.I can wait while I reflect.I can adventure far from a slow death from boredom.At the station I can head off down a branch line with no leave of absence required.
Someday it will come to a natural end.All, all is a new beginning.
6th January 2018Love to PrayIf I say yes, I will pray for you, then, because I have given you my word, I will do as I say. But I reserve the need to do it in my most comfortable way, a method tailored by time and energy's availability.I may not be hammering on the doors of heaven in an all-night vigil, nor shouting at God to make sure that he gets it.I may or may not use the familiar patois of received extempore intercession, be asking for 'journeying mercies' or the nearest equivalent to your need.I may stand, kneel, sit or slouch, with no level of priority implied in your case.I may utter words, or not. I may or may not formulate sentences in my mind, silently or aloud.I may light a candle, put a pebble under a crucifix, or write a note assuming that at least one other person will read it.I may 'do' nothing, may not add your name or need to a prayer list, may never ask you how you are in order to check that it's working.But I have said that I will pray for you, so in love I will bring you to Love.
11th January 2018
Lead Me in Your RighteousnessReflection on Psalm 5
Be it an eagle,the full width of its wingspan shielding and protecting,or the hen gathering its brood under her wings, Nature demonstrates how mothers keep safe their helpless young.
Faith knows that God covers with favour, as with a shield, those who rightly belong to him. He spreads his protection over them. They exult, loving him and being sure of his love.
But from within the exile of darkness, I am looking for the way to straighten to bring me back, I long for the awe fullness of your disclosed presence.Straighten within me, remove far from me, the hate I have for others, those whom I fear, whose evil threatens me, who talk themselves towards Hell with mouths wide open, and I likely to follow unless you deliver me. Them too? Is there space to shelter them as you do me?
Grant that defended love may extend its reach. Convert my enmity, remove all animosity,let me love every one of those whom you cover with favour.Lead me, Lord. Lead me in your righteousness.
13th January 2018Three Saints, One Day, or What have the Saints Ever Done for Us?
Gentle teacher,Beloved apostle,Charismatic administrator,This is three on one day,The day we give special thanks for each of you,The day you died, who lived in different eras,Such different countries.Hilary, Bishop and defender against the heresies,Known for stern teaching and gentle behaviour,Pagan-born, brought to Christ and so soon thrice-ordained,Cheerful, merry, propitious, gracious, the same in nature as in name.Echo of Athanasius, in France you stood firm for the only begotten Son.Kentigern, darling Mungo of Strathclyde, Apostle to the British north of the wall,Through exile and danger you remained steadfast.You, elected their Bishop, ejected by pagans,Built wherever you travelled, built where you left your bones.You let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word.Your Glasgow now shelters and enshrines you, with love.Shoemaker George Fox, rebel against imposed religionAnd maverick who knew how to organise, Charismatic who shook the Establishment even as you quaked,Preacher of the inner light in England’s wildness,Exporter across the world of a new society of friends,You speak truth to power still through activism and silence.Three saints commemorated on this one day,A fraction of all who have lived and will yet be.Spur us on, from the witnessing cloud,To hold firm with generosity, preach the good news winsomely,And make every Christian a minister of God and his Church.
13th January 2018Never an Anxious MomentWorry? Why worry if you trust in the Lord?The preacher warmed to his theme.I'm never anxious. I trust in the Lord.I know how not to worry. I trust in the Lord.If you want not to be anxious, you'll be like me.I never worry because I trust in the Lord.So go back home trusting, trust in the Lord.Give up anxiety, trust in the Lord.Put worry behind you, have peace and joy. Never be anxious, trust in the Lord.The guest preacher sat down and turned to his host.I hope that was alright? he asked.(With thanks either to Jim Smith or Adrian Plass)
14th January 2018
Sunday Best
So glad to be here, in church, with our Congregation. Today there is a troupe of school children behind a banner, escorted in by love.
Here you don't have to dress in Posh. You can wear a suit if you so wish, of course, but no one objects, there are no gossipy comments.You are welcome anyway.
Today I am dressed casually in jeans and bright, summery shirt, but I've put on my Sunday Best: the smile that I want to smile, am glad to wear, and the scent of cheerfulness.
Even when, as today, there is no efforted pretence, no carefully constructed defensive wall to keep penetrating questions out, no frailty to confess, yet the call to examine self, before jointly we make Confession, lays siege to what God knows even before I do. There is inside all the outer clothing what no one else can see or smell, what I want to call rottenness or decay but what God through the Gospel calls a sickness that is to be healed.
I offer it up to him, along with my tearfulness, my cheerfulness and every in between emotion.Sins confessed are pronounced absolved. Even my Sunday Worst, my concealed realities.
At the altar invited and welcomed, Christ gives himself to us, body in bread and blood in wine. The enormity of the gift hits home again.My life participating in his, Heaven in this earth of mine, eternal inhabiting time.God’s Best indiscriminately bestowed, remaining available. 16th January 2018Of Such Great ValueGift that you give right through the awful years,as star going before, to lead to your presence, it surprises, ambushes even, this gift of tears, heals, releases joy, traps despair, forces the dark blight to relent.
And best, it brings close the Sorrowful Man who, for joy before him endured the cross, disdained its shame and rose to the majestic height as the Man at God’s right hand. 26th January 2018
In Praise of Social Media
Victor on video, live and actual.My friend from over there, far, far away, here on my smart phone, or interacting on Messenger or liking on Facebook, and me him!
The seconds only scan of a tweet, which informs, enlightens, encourages, or stirs to some achievable action,is how twenty-first century brains grab and consume,like the half-second cartoon-inspired nod, yes, at a joke but also a truth.
Hail you!, I declare (and will put this on a social media page),and all power to you, enabler of conversation and relationship.I will not damn you for what you never claim to be.I will accept your pitfalls and limitations, and take responsibility for my own sins, shortcomings and misspeaking.
False news may breed rapidly by means of you, but it is deceitful to blame you alone,hapless to try to block truth by blocking you.You have been invented. Pandora, once her box she opened, could never undo that one moment.Bravo, social media. I hope this gets many likes and shares. 30th January 2018FuerteventuraSo stark, so bleak a landscape, more like the moon than the earth.As far as the eye can see rise the cones of spent volcanos, those long ago dragons of fiery breath and hard rain that quenched life and emptied out their own life.Little humankind, puny against such awe and awfulness, squats on this barren crust of earth whose vast towers dwarf and ridicule a tiny strength.Yet even little humankind, gifted with resourcefulness and rewarded for aiming far beyond, has carved and created, cajoled and crafted life where only death seemed to thrive, and built a highway in the wilderness.Pleasure island now for many. They come in droves seeking refuge from the chill of the north, they come to bask in the clear light and heartening warmth, to make Carnival and to rejoice in life's annual conquest of the dying of the light, to deny the day to the grey underworld.Give you joy, Fuenteventura. I have left with you some of my heart.
31st January 2018
On Purpose
Right from the start God created. He who has no beginning intended, in love he intended, in his nature intended, and the making was at the very start of no-beginning God, intentionally.
He is who he shall be.His love never changes.What ever began never changes, for love wins, love, the idiot, the reckless, the mother and father of self-spending, always replenishing giving that loves all it makes and turns it into love, intentionally.
1st February 2018Peace and JusticeSo intensely sad he looks today, does Jesus.Is he mirroring my feelings of sadness at injustices and betrayals;the young girls mutilated by FGM, and those forced into prostitution and modern slavery?Is he upset for the disabled people unjustly treated by State, Society and Church?Is it the environment in danger, the loss of animal life, or the slaughter of any innocents?But he who bleeds for creation has no more blood to give, or water. This Jesus is dead. I saw him at the Pieta, a laid aside, broken corpse, all spent and empty, no use at all now.Yet, I cannot linger in sadness, not while I can still pray, not while he lives, as he does now, not while the Spirit whom the Saviour sentagitates into love and action the whole responding circle of humans, whether or not they call him Lord.I say Glory to God who so loves.
3rd February 2018Cathedral WorshipKiss the icon, light a wax light,Run your fingers up the statue's neck.Bow a deep bow or genuflect, do, Use your body, kneel, be in touch with God.Many the ways to worship one Lord.Use your mind, go beyond, be as deep as you can.Shouts of praise need also the blessing of stillness.Silence for hearing, for saying much more.All sorts and conditions and yet there is more.Eternity waits and inexhaustible praise.Eternity's here, the kaleidoscope turns In the shriek of a toddler and the wordless prayer.Anthems and Psalter, procession and dance,And all in between in the worship of God.Love the tradition and blaze a new trail,Be aware of the scope of the touch of the Lord.
6th February 2018
Prayer on a Wintry Day
From a leaden sky snow fallsand begins to blanket cold earth,earth in which are stirrings of determined Spring,newness of life which will come safely to birth. As night is darkest the hour before dawnbut must surrender to the rising sun, so this weight, this oppressive smothering, shall give way, shall turn from opponent to servant when the clouds part and the blaze of the light's shining strength reflects light into dull eyes and inspires joy where once there was grief. Snow, ice, cold that gripped and shackled, in their melting shall be food and water to life now in prison, soon to be released. For all the depressed, the blighted in spirit,the deadened in heart, those who feel nothing but sorrow, embed, I pray, within the darkness the seeds of coming health,life that, when night gives way to day, will have deeper joys . .
For K and for V 10th February 2018Love in Thin Places
As far as the eye can see, and way beyond, as far as the Space-telescope reaches, and further, all things belong to God, for he made them. He, who is, is no mere tribal deity, no local warlord. He ever lives, as ever he has and ever will, for he was before all that has been and will be after. Yet self-limiting God, who breathed life into clay and shaped star dust into his image, will not withhold from us the choice to exclude him, to go our own way. The door slamming was on our part, not his.Not his the making of walls to keep him out, to keep us out of his range. All down the years he has intruded, has implanted his mercy, for no door can keep him out.In covenant, promise and law code, by patriarch, priest and king, through Wisdom, prophet and reformer, he has fought for our freeing,and in the end put on flesh like ours and travelled all the way to the cross. He won back our freedom. He who is, everywhere, who is anywhere, is still far above us, hidden in the cloud of unknowing. But there are thin places where he can be found, where mystery reaches and touches, awes and surprises the heart on pilgrimage. The story told in Durham, told and celebrated, remembered and known now, is the same story of eternity's determined love distilled in Christ, love which draws near, love in thin places.Ash Wednesday 2018
So it is Lent
It begins for me not with a mark on the forehead, but the sight of dawn breaking,God’s visual aid teaching that newness comes from the breaking,as for Adam, for Jacob, for Ruth, for Jesus, for Saul, it did, as it has done for so many, Stephen, Valentine, Alban, Oswald and the countless we cannot begin to number.
There is much to break, even though it has all already been broken through the lightning strike of Calvary.There remains, for each generation, a command to obey and an example to follow from the Broken Man.
There remains the easy pathway which demands no struggle, and the too complicated struggle that confuses the pathway.There is still the freshness of the Ash Wednesday frankness. We remain dust. We are invited to have our starlight rekindled. 16th February 2018On the Way to Where I Came BackOut of Failte and left, past the Castle and illegal telegraph poles,down by the village and across the Coquet, to the slip-slidey track to Alwinton.Harbottle in February preaches that it's not long now till you won't see through. I exhaust the camera.Ant. rings, away in the Canaries.We talk of dear men away with the fairies, and of fishing.Can't cross the river. I return to my thoughts of God the good and kind, in this year of my deliverance.He ambushes me - again! Tears spring out of bushes, and I am halted. I am wracked, but it passes into peace, gratitude's peace.I am urgent for coffee and to write this.Failte welcomes me back, and I see Jane, comfy with her book. 26th February 2018
Whiteout
The snow begins to fall without fanfare in the windless silence.We have entered a new day with that half-remembered, half-doubtingmemory of its previous impact on our lives.
From inside the house, centrally heated and cosseted, it’s the prettiness, the snowman-making adventure, the winter sports excitement that we anticipate, because we are not now stuck in drifting, blinding conditions out in the sharp air. The snow is like TV fantasy, a vicarious thrill.
But some, elderly or vulnerable, may die because of it, if not in it, if the coldness grips and tightens, and conditions worsen.And cars may crash as accidents happen, or feet slip on ice.
Premature, our hopes of an early Spring were. Cancelled, like trains into towns and journeys if not really necessary, putting on hold what can not be easily abandoned.For mice and men so often forget how plans go oft astray. 13th July 2018
Winter’s Tail
Some winters, lingering long, defy the stretched-out hours of daylight and the weeks-long heatwaves.
Episodes of Depression violate the human mind, and make it malfunction, like delinquent climate change.
They are droughts that flash-flood-away life and drown all joy.
They are rogue events, ice ages that feed wildfires of darkness in the soul.
They spread a conflagration of blazing poison and serve it up,reducing the new wine of delight to the bitter dregs of ash.
Overwhelming, disabling and relentless, when they recede and scorched earth begins to turn green again, they whisper See you again, we’ll be back.
Even as summer returns to the mind,that’s the sting in the winter’s tail.
14th July 2018
One Hundred Days
I tumbled onto the floor and lay there, as it were, for one hundred days, each day repeating its impossible demand. I felt like Sisyphus in Groundhog Daywhile Depression just laughed at meas I wriggled in the clutches of anxiety.
Self-pity is a good defence mechanism when nothing else helps, and faith flaps aroundwringing its hands, out of action, like a Champion at a jousting contest unhorsed at the first gallop. That was then. The coward, Depression, has suddenly slunk away back into its own shadow, no longer a monsterbut a midget.I sprinted out of the internment camp into such wonderful sunshine, a so long confinementsuddenly over, just like that.
I can't explain it, like so much. I'm hoping for some clarity to emergeduring the debriefing, for therapy to produce some fresh understanding.
But allow me, for now, just to bask and to relish.
15th September 2018
Prayer with an Oil Lamp
As I light the light in this special room, a place apart, I join your light which is always lit. Even the darkness is alight to you, and I am always in you even and especially in the darkness.
I lift to you my needs but also those whose grief and loss are etched on my mind. I find them now and always on yours.
You are silent, yet always the word once spoken, echoing now and into eternity, absorbing the blows that beating fists pummel onto your chest and your goodness and your credibility.
You have nothing new to say, yet I am longing to search you, to explore and discover all that I may.
And who, apart from you, is able to embrace us all as we fall upwards? 31st October 2018
Bang! Bang! BANG!
How do you explain fireworks to a dog,trapped by the immediacy of terrifying sound waves, volley after volley of them?
He doesn’t know he is safe. He is not, not now, and he can only be in the present.
I’m assaulted too. It scares the proverbial out of me. Guy Fawkes has so much to answer for, and it isn’t yet his day.
Oh for sheets of rain to snuff them out!Oh I suppose my grandchildren love them. They love to be scared and entranced, and this is not the hell in Yemen or Syria.We shall comfort each other, the dog and I.
5th November 2018
Back Then
Pull yourself together, said the old priest, and get back into a parish.The young priest begged to disagree. He couldn’t do either.He was doing what he could about his health without pulling.
He was a good priest, the old man, much loved and kind, but why did he say that? A good priest wouldn’t have said that, though he was a good priest.He wouldn’t have been a good doctor, but maybe he had forgotten some pastoral basics and knowledge.
Anyway, he didn’t get back into a parish, the young priest, but he got on with his vocation.