Do not go gentle
Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because there words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I do like Dylan Thomas's honesty.

My mother was not one to rage - just stoically and determinedly stick with it till the end. And for that I admire her. To her last moments, she had a smile (albeit weak) for the carers who attended her and she wrinkled her nose affectionately at us, her relatives, even though she was unable to speak.

The determined attempts to keep alive someone who is  imminently near to the end of their time on this earth does puzzle me. Well, not perhaps for those with little or no belief - for them Dylan Thomas's words may well be a balm. But for those who profess a Christian faith and a belief that there is something more wonderful after this earthly life, it does puzzle me. What are we so scared of? What am I so scared of? And does that fear say something about my faith - or lack of it?

These are all quite unnerving questions for a person of faith. And I have to go back to those words of Paul to quieten the stormy waves in my head.

Verses from Romans Chapter 8

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 
So, I take time to pause, to be silent, to allow these words to swirl around my whole being. And, as I do, a sense of peace - almost serenity - seeps in slowly.

And that, I guess, is faith.

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The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the last one of the seven - for 23rd December: O Emmanuel – O Emmanuel (God with us)

O Emmanuel
O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,
exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:
veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.


O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name,
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame.
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.

• 0 comments »

The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the one for 22nd December: O Rex Gentium – O Sovereign of the nations

O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.
O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:

Christ in majesty, 13-14th-century mosaic, baptistery, Florence

Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay
O King of our desire whom we despise,
King of the nations never on the throne,
Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,
Rejected joiner, making many one,
You have no form or beauty for our eyes,
A King who comes to give away his crown,
A King within our rags of flesh and bone.
We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,
For we ourselves are found in you alone.
Come to us now and find in us your throne,
O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

• 0 comments »

The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the one for 21st December: O Oriens – O Sunrise

O Oriens

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae,
et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes
in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

The minute dial added in 1759 to a 15th-Century astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Oriens
E vidi lume in forme de riviera Paradiso XXX.61
First light and then first lines along the east
To touch and brush a sheen of light on water
As though behind the sky itself they traced
The shift and shimmer of another river
Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;
The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.
Blake saw it too. Dante and Beatrice
Are bathing in it now, away upstream. . .
o every trace of light begins a grace
In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam
Is somehow a beginning and a calling:
“Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream
For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,
Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking.”

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The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the one for 20th December: O Clavis David – O Key of David

O Clavis

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

Detail from an earthenware Passover plate, Spain, c.1480 ISRAEL MUSEUM/NAHUM SLAPAK

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death

Even in the darkness where I sit
And huddle in the midst of misery
I can remember freedom, but forget
That every lock must answer to a key,
That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate,
Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard,
Particular, exact and intimate,
The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.
I cry out for the key I threw away
That turned and over turned with certain touch
And with the lovely lifting of a latch
Opened my darkness to the light of day.
O come again, come quickly, set me free
Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

• 0 comments »

The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the one for 19th December: O Radix Jesse – O Root of Jesse

O Radix

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

Detail from the Tree of Jesse in the Lambeth Bible, c.1140-50

O Root of Jesse, standing
as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.

We knew the virtues once of every weed,
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love,
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshiped in the sacred grove,
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.

• 0 comments »

The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

My thanks to Malcolm Guite for these poetic reflections. Here is the one for 18th December: O Adonai – O Lord

O Adonai

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

Detail of a Levite City in Galilee mapped by the English cartographer Thomas Fuller, from A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, 1650 ISRAEL MUSEUM, IIAN STZULMAN

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm
Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue,
Unseeable, you gave yourself away,
The Adonai, the Tetragramaton
Grew by a wayside in the light of day.
O you who dared to be a tribal God,
To own a language, people and a place,
Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,
If so you might be met with face to face,
Come to us here, who would not find you there,
Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,
Who heard no more than thunder in the air,
Who marked the mere events and not the myth.
Touch the bare branches of our unbelief
And blaze again like fire in every leaf.

• 0 comments »

The 'O Antiphons' (an antiphon is a spoken response in a church service) have been used in liturgical Christian traditions since as far back as the sixth century. They are spoken before reading the Magnificat at Evening Prayer during the last seven days of Advent.

Here is a list of them - you can see that they comprise different ways of addressing Jesus.

O Sapientia – O Wisdom – 17th December
O Adonai – O Lord – 18th December (Adonai is actually plural - O Lords)
O Radix Jesse – O Root of Jesse – 19th December
O Clavis David – O Key of David – 20th December
O Oriens – O Sunrise – 21st December
O Rex Gentium – O Sovereign of the nations – 22nd December
O Emmanuel – O Emmanuel - 23rd December (where Emmanuel means 'God with us')

During these seven days I will be posting a poetic reflection each day courtesy of Malcolm Guite.

Here is his contribution for 17th December.

O Sapientia

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Sapientia: image from Cochem Castle, Germany MATTHIAS BUEHLER

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence. I cannot think unless I have been thought, Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken. I cannot teach except as I am taught, Or break the bread except as I am broken. O Mind behind the mind through which I seek, O Light within the light by which I see, O Word beneath the words with which I speak, O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me, O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me, O Memory of time, reminding me, My Ground of Being, always grounding me, My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me, Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring, Come to me now, disguised as everything.

Thank you, Malcolm, for allowing me to use your work.

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We hear much these days of the global recession, job losses, cuts and welfare reform. In the midst of our own problems and worries, we can lose sight of those even worse off than ourselves. It's good when we find ourselves doing this to remember Jesus' story of the widow's mite. If you need a reminder, here it is.

Mark 12:41-44

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’
 

In the current climate, our charitable giving may be one of the first casualties of our new frugal ways, but there is one way that we can continue to support those people poorer than ourselves - even when we are counting the pennies.

Buy Fair Trade!

Yes, it is more expensive, but because the extra cost is spread over days, weeks and months, it is less noticeable and less painful.

Here is a poem to challenge you by Andrew Rudd. I have mentioned him before on this blog. Andrew is a Cheshire poet who, during 2006, was the fourth Cheshire Poet Laureate. 'This is a Fair Trade Poem' can be found in his book One Cloud Away from the Sky.

This is a Fair Trade Poem

This poem is made from
one hundred per cent recycled
words. It has not been tested
on animals. It has no additives
no artificial colouring.

Juanita’s poem is a sweet banana
fragrant, glowing. But the price
has fallen. ‘Dear teacher’ she says,
‘My children can no longer come
to school.’ This poem is made
from recycled words, but who
is listening?

Maria’s poem is a handful
of glinting coffee beans. She lets them
slide through her fingers. The price
has fallen. No clothes, no shoes
no medicine for the children.
This poem is made from recycled
words, but who is listening?

The supermarket poem is all noise
and colour. A price goes up
so we cross the aisle and choose
another brand, another packet.

Our lives are linked to their lives.
Their lives are linked to our lives.
This poem is made from recycled words.
Listen.

Many blessings as you enjoy your Fair Trade bananas and coffee!

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My previous post spoke of Jacob's experience at the Ford of Jabbok when he wrestled with a man/angel/God. One of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins refers to this episode from Genesis.

'Carrion Comfort' is an expression of Hopkins' determination not to succumb to despair. He battled against a gloomy and depressive nature through much of his adult life but died with the words 'I am so happy' on his lips. For me this poem seems to express an honest ambivalence about his calling to the monastic life and his personal struggle with suffering.

It speaks to me at a very deep level, because I too have a depressive nature and sometimes have ambivalent feelings about my own calling. I would be interested to hear other people's impressions of the poem and particularly whether you can relate to it and, if so, in what way.

Carrion Comfort

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist – slack they may be – these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! Lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Andrew Rudd is a Cheshire poet who, during 2006, was the fourth Cheshire Poet Laureate. He has previously written a guest blog for Reflections about the show Fourpenny Circus that he and three other poets produced in 2009. He has kindly accepted my invitiation to write another guest blog, so without more ado - here is Andrew.........

Artisans


We were visiting Taizé some years ago. In most of my life I am surrounded by English speakers, but at any given time there can be thirty different languages at Taizé, as visitors come from all over the world. Sometimes in the worship, there might only be one sentence of English. I was amazed, as usual, by my lack of knowledge of other languages.

But it does make you pay attention! We were singing the Beatitudes in French when I noticed the words for ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’ – in French this is ‘Bienheureux les artisans de paix…’

It suddenly struck me that peace is an art form, it is not just something that happens accidentally at the end of violence or when there is a cease fire. It is something that has to be made or created in our life together. Maybe this is the most important kind of creativity, where we make shalom, where we build community. And maybe one of the best things about art – sculpture, painting, music, poetry – is when it helps us to understand each other better, when it opens our awareness, when it makes peace.

This thought resulted in the poem ‘Artisans’ which is to be broadcast on the 21st of February on Radio 4’s ‘Something Understood.’ If you don’t know this wonderful programme, I would recommend it. It is a collage of words and music which explore a ‘spiritual’ theme in a very fresh way. The only snag is the timing – it is broadcast very early on Sunday morning (6.05 am) and then repeated at the end of the same day (11.30pm). Fortunately, you can catch it during the following week on Listen Again.

Artisans

‘Bienheureux les artisans de paix…’


Blessed the singers of peace,
lamenting the unfinished business, sorrow
and dream: whose song changes nothing
but opens everything to change.


Blessed the potters of peace,
hands in the clay, shaping, smoothing,
reaching for hidden form, braving
the furnace for beauty.


Blessed the embroiderers of peace:
at their needle’s touch, an ordinary surface
shines in a sacrament of colour, angles
softened into treasures of texture.


Blessed the sculptors of peace
who look at the intractable
slab, and see marvels within it,
and reach for the chisel.


Blessed the poets of peace
who bear all voices into their emptiness,
settling stresses into speech
which at the last is music.

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Do you spend some moments in the first hours of each waking day being present with God? Perhaps you read morning prayer (matins as it was once called)? Perhaps you have a 'quiet time'? Perhaps you sit and look at the garden and wonder?

Whatever you may do, perhaps (another perhaps!) you might on one day take this poem by George Herbert into your time of prayer and lose yourself in it. Herbert was a Welshman living in the early 17th century who, after the death of his sponsor King James I, became an Anglican clergyman. He was a faithful and much-loved parish priest and wrote beautiful religious poetry which was published after his death. If you haven't read any of his poetry, he is worth investigating.

George Herbert is remembered in the Anglican church on 27th February - so perhaps you might take this poem into your prayer on that particular day!

I suggest you read it out loud.

Mattens

I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.

My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or starre, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?

My God, what is a heart?
That thou shouldst it so eye, and wooe,
Powring upon it all thy art,
As if that thou hadst nothing els to do?

Indeed mans whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
He did not heav’n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

Teach me thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see,
May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee.

George Herbert: The Temple (1633)

Portrait of George Herbert
by Robert White in 1674

From Wikipedia

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Wikipedia gives the following top two definitions of 'Epiphany':

Epiphany (holiday), a Christian holiday on January 6 celebrating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus
Epiphany (feeling), the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something

The word comes from the Greek for "to manifest" or "to show". At Epiphany, we in the Western Churches acknowledge our understanding - our 'seeing' - of Jesus as 'God made man' - the manifestation of the deity in the form of a human being.

In particular, we focus this understanding on the visit of the Magi (wise men) to Jesus at Bethlehem. The Magi, in the story told in Matthew's gospel, represent the whole of humanity - as opposed to just the Jewish world. They came, saw and acknowledged the Christ-child, paying him homage and giving gifts, demonstrating that this child was given for the benefit of the whole world.

So what will we 'see' at this time? The wonder of 'God made man'? The intersection of God's mercy with human frailty at a moment in time?

Here are some words by TS Eliot from The Rock for you to reflect on...

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face
of the deep.

Then came at a predetermined moment,
a moment in time and of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting, bisecting the world of time,
a moment in time, but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment:
for without the meaning there is no time,
and that moment in time gave the meaning.
Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being.

TS Eliot 1934

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It is Autumn now in England and the trees are looking like beautiful patchwork quilts - or Joseph's 'coat of many colours' (to quote the musical rather than the Bible)! Dappled colours, misty mornings, pale sunlight, glorious sunsets - it is a very lovely time of year despite it being the precursor to poorer weather and darker days.

And here is something else lovely that echoes the wonder of this season. I can just imagine Gerard Manley Hopkins sitting in the grounds of St Beuno's in North Wales writing this (he was probably safely in his room - but, hey, I can imagine)!

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things --
&nbsp&nbsp For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
&nbsp&nbsp Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
&nbsp&nbsp Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
&nbsp&nbsp &nbsp&nbsp With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Praise him.

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At our Wednesday Cafe Church that we hold in Costa Coffee in Frodsham one of our retired clergy rounded up the evening by reading a short poem called Africa's Plea. A murmur of appreciation went around afterwards and I thought I would like to share it with you.

Although written by an African - Roland Tombekai Dempster - it could have been written by any person who feels the injustice of not being accepted for who they are. Here it is:

Africa's Plea

I am not you -
but you will not
give me a chance
will not let me be me

'If I were you' -
but you know
I am not you,
yet you will not
let me be me.

You meddle, interfere
in my affairs
as if they were yours
and you were me.

You are unfair, unwise,
foolish to think
that I can be you,
talk, act
and think like you.

God made me me.
He made you you.
For God's sake
Let me be me.

Perhaps when we look at someone who is different in some way - colour, creed, gender, orientation, nationality, we would do well to remember these words:

God made me me.
He made you you.
For God's sake
Let me be me.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest and poet who lived during the latter half of the nineteenth century and became, after his death, one of the leading poets of the Victorian era. His style was innovative and unusual for that time, experimenting with rhythm, word structure and imagery.

I was introduced to his poetry at school and instantly fell in love with it - particularly with what seemed to me a freedom and playfulness with words. In later life, going on retreats to St Beuno's, I learnt more of his varied and fascinating life, of his depressions (which struck a chord with me) and his struggles to hold in tension his poetry and his Jesuit life.

This is one of my favourites of his poems:

God's Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

To get the full effect, read the poem out loud (even if you are on your own!). It can become a prayer of poignant praise.

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This is the last of four posts during Holy Week, 2009, featuring peoms by R S Thomas. During our Holy Week services, our own local poet - Andrew Rudd - has been guiding us with his choices of Thomas's poems and some reflective thoughts.

The poems that Andrew Rudd has chosen for today - Maundy Thursday, 2009 - are below.

Would anyone like to share their thoughts on them?

Counterpoint

When we are weak, we are
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush

burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited, the guest comes

Gift

Some ask the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me

only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.

• 0 comments »

This is the third of four posts during Holy Week 2009 featuring peoms by R S Thomas.

The poem that Andrew Rudd has chosen for today - Wednesday in Holy Week, 2009 - is one called 'The Hand'.

The Hand

It was a hand. God looked at it
and looked away. There was a coldness
about his heart, as though the hand
clasped it. As at the end
of a dark tunnel, he saw cities
the hand would build, engines
that it would raze them with. His sight
dimmed. Tempted to undo the joints
of the fingers, he picked it up.
But the hand wrestled with him. "Tell
me your name," it cried, "and I will write it
in bright gold. Are there not deeds
to be done, children to make, poems
to be written. The world
is without meaning, awaiting
my coming." But God, feeling the nails
in his side, the unnerving warmth
of the contact, fought on in
silence. This was the long war with himself
always foreseen, the question not
to be answered. What is the hand
for? The immaculate conception
preceding the delivery
of the first tool? “I let you go,”
he said, “but without blessing.
Messenger to the mixed things
Of your making, tell them I am.”

Some of you, like me, may find this a difficult poem. I suggest you read it again before reading my thoughts below. Once more, I was unable to make the service in Holy Week where Andrew led the thoughts on this poem, so I am unable to summarise his words. But here are some of mine.

I had to read this poem a few times before, in any way, getting to grips with it. I then continued to reflect on it during yesterday. The progress of my thoughts followed this pattern:

1. Incomprehension. Struggle. What is the hand?
   
2. The hand signifies mankind (I am supposed to say 'humankind' here!). God is struggling with knowing the consequences of creation.
   
3. The hand signifies God's own creative instinct. God struggles with the consequences of God's own creativity, which is leading towards the creation of a being in God's image and, therefore, with a creative instinct of its own.

Perhaps you have other thoughts? And what about 'without blessing'. I wonder what was going through Thomas's mind when he wrote that?

Enjoy your reflections.

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This is the second of four posts during Holy Week 2009.

The poem that Andrew Rudd had chosen for today - Tuesday in Holy Week, 2009 - is one called 'The Coming'. I was unable to attend the service where he gave his reflection so I cannot share the gist of his thoughts with you. However, I can share mine!

I find this an amazing poem - one that causes an intake of my breath whenever I read it. Probably because, each time that I do read it, I get another small glimpse into the nature of divine love. Sometimes those glimpses are fleeting - just when you think you have grasped something, it slips from your understanding. But you are always left with the memory of that revelation - the revelation that there is something greater, more encompassing, far more incomprehensible that we can ever imagine.

So I leave you with the poem by R S Thomas:

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

Many blessings.

Monday in Holy Week

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From Monday to Thursday of this special week, the church I attend - St Laurence, Frodsham - will be having a communion service at 7.30pm each evening. During these services we will be reflecting on Holy Week, helped by the poetry of R S Thomas. Our own local poet - Andrew Rudd - is guiding us with his choices of Thomas's poems and some reflective thoughts.

Tonight Andrew chose the following poem:

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Andrew spoke of the importance of the present moment - rather than the past or the future - and the wonder of those occasional transcendent moments when we experience something of 'the other' - of God. It was a very moving reflection, touching all those present very deeply and we are very grateful to Andrew - who is also a Reader at St Laurence - for his thoughtfulness and wisdom.

These services are quiet, reflective Eucharists with no singing. If you are in the Frodsham area during Holy Week 2009, you would be most welcome to join us.

Have any 'transcendent' moments been particularly important to you?

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