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
poem prayer silence 