tRuth

Wrongfooted

No church, no altar
just a table at knee height
or it feels that way
in the churchyard
no candles nowhere to put things
scarcely a congregation.
Welcome to Covid.

Are the words in the wrong place
or my head in the wrong place?
Why does it matter so much
that everything is different
and so much is gone?

Good question, says Jesus,
keep asking questions,
I’m still here.
Did you think I was the super-vaccination
against life? Nice try.
I’m not here to blow the storms away
but to sail with you.

And yes, my heart bleeds too
about this whole damn business
in case you were wondering.
That’s why I’m here
on this thing.

tRuth 2021

Reflective practice

reflective practice

like the sun

mirrored in empty shopfronts

virtual hangouts

cold coffee in abandoned bars

time to think

and think and think

stuck in a groove

of the way it once was.

And yet

even noticing your stuckness

flushes a quarantined world

green as hope.

tRuth 2021

Reflections for those who are self-isolating with the Coronavirus

Malcolm Guite wrote this week of ‘accidental anchorites’ in medical isolation. Anchorites were a type of hermit who were walled into their ‘anchorhold’ (cell) for life. They would typically have a window into the church building and a window where others could come to talk on spiritual matters. Could you treat this time as an opportunity for spiritual growth and deepening your relationship with God?

• Be encouraged by the thought that, although you are cut off physically, you are being upheld by the prayer of your Christian brothers and sisters around the world and in your locality. You can contribute to that ever-flowing river of prayer and connect with them.

• Pray for the sufferers in hospital and the exhausted medical staff. Pray for older people and those with lowered immunity, who are especially anxious.

• Consider how you might structure your days in order to use this period as a retreat time in which to draw closer to God. You might like to pray in the morning, at midday, in the evening and before bed. How you pray is your choice, it could be the set Church of England daily prayer, but go with what works for you.

• You could take the opportunity to experiment with unfamiliar forms of prayer: let yourself be nourished with classical sacred music or worship songs, try silent contemplative prayer, dance your prayers, plant seeds of hope in plant pots and water them…

• If you are used to having a prayer partner or prayer triplet, you can still meet by phone or Skype. The same if a meeting with your spiritual director falls due during your isolation time.

• Think about keeping an ‘isolation journal’ and reflecting before God on what is going through your heart and mind. He is near even when you feel anxious and find it hard to connect. It doesn’t have to be a journal in words, you could draw, collage, take photographs.

• This experience might be a challenge to your trust in God: what could help you feel secure that he loves you and will uphold you through the season of isolation? God’s love for each of us will carry us safely through the ups and downs of life and into eternity. If you are feeling anxious, it might help to limit your exposure to the news and instead strengthen your inner calm by watching or reading ‘feelgood’ stories.

• Your telephone is a gift from God: how might you use it to reach out to others who are alone? Perhaps you’ve heard of others who are self-isolating; can you call them? Can you spend more time on the phone to friends of family than you normally have time for? This could be a chance to renew those relationships.

• Now might be the time when you finally get around to reading that spiritual book or listening to that podcast.

• Lent is a time to ‘give up’ and offer to God. Can you reframe your thoughts about all that you’re missing, and offer these things thankfully to God for a season?

• Thank God for the unexpected rest, and allow yourself to enjoy it without feeling guilty.

Examen in the time of the coronavirus

A form of prayerful reflection on the past day

• I need to spend extra time centring myself and allowing God’s abiding love for me to come to consciousness through the fog of anxieties and fears. I could focus on a lighted candle or an ikon, or visualise God’s love like a warm light flowing through me and surrounding me. God will never fail or forsake me.

• I can look back on the day and notice where God reached out to me and how: a stranger’s smile, a phone call, a sign of hope. I reflect on how my mood changed as the day went on. Moods have their ups and downs but God’s love is always there and holds us through the changes in our internal ‘weather’. If the inner movements were positive, I can thank God. If they were negative, e.g. if I allowed anxiety to take over my thoughts, that’s OK. I can show God what happened and ask for strength to recentre myself in awareness and trust in his faithful love.

• I can look back on the day and notice how I reached out to other people and to God. Where was I able to give in some way? Where was I blocked or hindered from reaching out? What caused it? I can recentre myself in God’s love and ask him to show me what I need to be shown. How can God help me to give and receive love? It might have to be through a screen or over the phone, but it’s still love.

• I can look forward: what are my hopes and fears for tomorrow? I can lay them trustfully in God’s hands and compose myself to rest with something that takes my mind off my worries before bedtime: soothing music, a not too taxing book or TV programme. I am safe in God’s hands through the hours of darkness. Before I sleep, I pray for those I love and for those in special need at this time.

‘Within your hands we rest secure
in quiet sleep our strength renew;
yet give your people hearts that wake
in love to you, unsleeping Lord.’

(Compline hymn, Malling Abbey version)

Christmas tide

The cathedral glows with red and green and gold,
Waiting for the candles and the surpliced choir
And the people who will wash through its doors
These festive days and nights.
Their first Christmas for new canons and new Christians,
Tentative, joyful, amazed by splendour.
Their last Christmas for those who will move away
And for those whose death-day waits all unknown
Hidden in the new year that is to come.
And the tide of absences, the much-missed:
John whose wife faces the first Christmas of widowhood,
Jane who can’t find a carer to push her to church,
Jack who’s found a better shelter in jail
Than the wet waterfront.
In among the crowding strangers and the old friends they all come.
This human tide washes through the ancient building
For a day, a week, for forty years,
Finding a home here, a place to root down into God.

But the old stones know: everyone passes
Like the flower of the field.
Over the centuries the human tide
Has washed in and out, heavy with sorrows,
Bubbling with joy, awed into wonder.
This is the place where the fragile, the fleeting
Touches hands with eternity, and once a year
Remembers the truth: nothing is lost in God.
Not a butterfly, not an old man’s vanished memory,
Not a loving glance or act of kindness.
The candles in the winter dark remind us:
In endless light the lost tides shall return
And be made whole. All passing generations
Are held safe in God’s love, for ever.
The undefended baby in the manger shows:
There is no need for fear. This is the true nature
Of the Light beyond light, the Maker of the world:
A love that reaches out and never threatens.
Where all tides end he waits with endless joy.

tRuth 2019

All names are pseudonyms

image © portsmouthcathedral.org.uk

Not Psalm 136

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who watched over me in my heedless, self-seeking youth,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who allowed me to know the pain of false love
for his mercy endures forever,
That I might learn to desire his true love,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who indulged me in the blossoming of my intellect,
for his mercy endures forever,
That he might set in motion the ripening of the heart,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who saw me act both as Judas and Peter,
for his mercy endures forever.
And learn the bitter lesson of Gethsemane for myself,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who lit the longing for his glory in my heart,
for his mercy endures forever,
That I might discern the humble, hidden yeast of his love,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who drew me from wonder at far-flung galaxies,
for his mercy endures forever,
To seeking the kind eyes of Jesus in my neighbour,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who let me learn for myself that I hold too much stuff,
for his mercy endures forever,
That I might let go and be free for love,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who bound me to himself for eternity,
for his mercy endures forever,
And drenched me with love and fulfilled desire,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who spoke words of love to me as Jesus,
for his mercy endures forever,
That I might be his hands and feet and loving heart,
for his mercy endures forever.

Who taught me that I am bound in love to all who belong to him,
for his mercy endures forever,
For Jesus is all, and in all, and all is for him,
for his mercy endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of gods,
for his mercy endures forever,
Give thanks to the Love of all loves,
for his mercy endures forever.

tRuth 2019

Advent

Like a whisper passing through a crowd of children,
All eyes suddenly straining up for the angel,
He is coming,
Really he is, and all shall be well, the kingdom is coming.
The forgotten truth flames up in winter dimness,
Lighting hope as the days darken,
He is coming.
This world of pain and cruelty will be remade,
All shall be well, no more tears,
He is coming.

To children bent over screens, livid in the blue light
Of a thousand earthbound stars, dizzy and deafened,
The moon speaks, rising over silent fields,
He is coming.

To the warriors of hatred and contempt
And to their broken victims
The earth speaks, as the harvest rots
Like those who planted it, unburied,
He is coming.

To the last trees, the trapped wild things,
To the no longer teeming waters,
The wind breathes over the chaos,
He is coming.

To the evil thoughts feasting like cancer
On human hearts, multiplying misery,
The One with the sharp sword speaks,
I am coming.

Like a whisper passing
From the gardener to the healer
To the prayer to the maker
To the broken child
Lighting a candle against the darkness,
He is coming.

Like a whisper passing
From angel to stupefied angel
In the marvelling silence of praise:
With empty hands, in weakness and poverty,
To a failed creation with failure
To a dying creation with death
He is coming.

Like a shout, like the new-created light,
Like life out of death,
He is coming.

tRuth 2015

Advent Sunday

Winter sun lifting the heart:
Frail, crisp, clear like a glass bauble
Delicate and precious, retrieved
From long storage.
We begin again, the old story,
The high hopes: he will come.
Not with reassuring return of beautiful
Music and readings, no Wachet auf,
No choral perfection, no mince pies.
He will come, shattering the baubles
We hold dear, searing us with the touch
Of truth’s cold blade.
He will come shaking the tree
Of our bauble-hung life.
Hatching from the shards
Like blinking, naked chickens we will come
Disorientated to his clear light,
His forgiving judgement,
Who holds our tiny worlds like baubles
In long-suffering hands, until he comes
To work his new creation white-hot
From his furnace of change,
He, the Light undying.

tRuth 2019

Your friends were with you only for a season

Your friends were with you only for a season
To hear your word and share your holy life,
And then they scattered to the world’s far corners
To bring joy to indifference and strife.

Lord, so with us: we walk the path together
A year or two, we’re knit in friendship’s bands,
Until you bid us follow where you’re leading
In lonely coracle to unknown lands.

Teach us to part: for parting is not ending,
In glory we will meet if not before;
The bands of love in prayer grow ever stronger,
We bear each other to those separate shores.

And so we weave a net of grace and kindness
Across the world and down the passing years;
Christ is the net who binds us all together,
Who makes our souls through sharing hopes and fears.

And so farewell, in gratitude and laughter
For all that Christ has given in this place;
Lord, lead us on to find tomorrow’s blessings,
Tomorrow’s friends, tomorrow’s gift and grace.

tRuth 2019

I had the tune Londonderry Air in mind when writing this, but one would need to repeat the last verse.

End of term

The head chorister’s tears fall
As he bids farewell to ruff and surplice,
To seven years of music-making,
Half his life,
As he bids farewell to his boyhood.
First loss, piercing yet sweet to look back upon,
The happiness of days chock-full of meaning.
He has learned now: all things pass.
May he learn also: that which is eternal
Can never be lost, but abides forever.
Broadened horizons for the young man he will be
Will bring new blessings, passing yet eternal.

tRuth 2019