Collection 1: Worshipping...

Worshipping

After George Herbert, Ashburnham woods, Mielahti, Belonging, Stained glass at Harnhill

After George Herbert

Prayer from the first, a new born baby’s cry

And in the dying soul’s departing sigh.

Defibrillation, jolting us to start

The blood now beating through a broken heart.

Prayer in the desert blooming all alone

A rose whose sweetest scent to heaven is blown.

Prayer in the hubbub, linking all in one

As each lone flower leans toward the Sun.

Prayer in the groaning of a world in pain

The darkness weeping for the dawn again.

Prayer in my faltering words of guilt and shame

The quiet whisper of a healing name.

A living water welling up from deep

A soil that nurtures roots through winter’s sleep

A fire that blazes out with life, not death

A breeze, a gale, the sharing of a breath.

Prayer at the cross’s foot, an agony

That dives down deeper than the abyss in me.

Prayer at its height that, jabbing at the sky

Pierces the Father’s heart with my heart’s cry.

Prayer reaching out, a cosmos to embrace

And gather all its prodigals in grace.

Prayer in the depth, height, length and breadth of love

Prayer of the One in whom we live and move.

Ashburnham Woods

Nothing hurts the eye's peace

But a leaf's small trembling:

Only the tree-dew dropping

Plops in the ear's stillness:

Here in this small pause

Life's million wars upon the heart

Let lapse away, release

The grip kept tight about the soul,

That she too may enter on peace.

Now is the pure moment

Of my unquiet residence

In this two yards of clay,

You and I as all:

I in my swamp of hope,

Memory and desire, You

In the pure circle of eternity

And Your circle touches me

And the word of Your touch is love.

Mielahti

The poem below is connected to the photo above. It was taken at Mielahti, a magical, mirror smooth bay in beautiful lake Jämijärvi in Finland, where I have spent many summers with my family. Somehow light and water are made for each other, aren't they. I'm reminded of the first chapter of Genesis, where the Spirit of God is moving over the primeval waters when God says, "Let there be light." Ever since then light and water have been sisters and friends - just ask Monet. You may have noticed that the interplay of light and water seems to come up in quite a few of the poems in this blog.

I hope that together the poem and the photo will give some impression of what I get so excited about. The clouds reflected in the water and the lake reflected in the sky are mirrors of God's presence manifesting in us and of our consciousness embraced in His unfathomably deep awareness - for "in Him we live and move and have our being." I hope it works for you too!

Lovers who cannot drink

Enough of one another

Heaven gazes into

The lake’s still water

And she returns the

Stillness of his shining

Element to element

Embosomed in each other

The brightness draws up

Vapour from the deepness

Replenishes the clouds 

Whose distillation

Flows rippling down

Into the deep again

Her surface shifts, mists, 

Shimmers in his breathings

His image trembles 

Dissolves and is reborn

The workaday land of 

Streets and offices

Now shrinks away 

Into a slip of horizon

While the sky’s shabbat

Opens in vast caverns

Luminous at my feet 

Steps of the Shekinah

All noiselessly 

The water walker approaches

Calling me to step out 

From my staid shore.

Belonging

Master, how many ways are there that I am yours?

As the poem is the poet’s, You conceived me.

As I am my mother’s, by Your Spirit You bore me.

As my hand enacts my thoughts, You embody Yourself in me.

As the field is the warrior’s, You conquered me.

As the hoard is the hero’s, You despoiled my enemies of me.

As the pearl is the merchant’s, with all You had You bought me.

As walls and roof shape me a home, You inhabit me.

As the chair he sits in is the carpenter’s, You fashion me 

As the garden is the gardener’s, You labour in me.

So Yours that if You cease to think of me

I must be quanta fizzling aimlessly

Into the void, and can no longer be.

Then since I am Your own so variously

One more way to be Yours now offer me,

The grace to give myself, entire and free.

So I am Yours, You mine, eternally.

Stained Glass at Harnhill

We are friends of the Bridegroom,

apostles of staid gesture and astonished face.

We strow gifts for the wedding

over the sanctuary floor,

carnadine and cobalt and chrome

confetti for the Lord of light

for the King is coming.

O floor, floor, floor, how blessed

though thirty generations tread you down

is your homely Cotswold stone:

now to be kissed by His gifts of light,

now to kiss His wounded feet,

for the steps of the King of love have borne Him here

and the feast is ready.

A Haiku of Haikus

Five

Elements of earth,

Wind and rain and toil and tears

Gather here to wait.

Rain swells grape and grain

Sun and soil combined create

A little cosmos.

Ploughman and planter,

Reaper, brewer, baker, all

Bring their sweat and skill,

Bring us bread and wine.

A portion small as seed is set

Here on this table.

Grain and grape stand forth

As body and blood: none here

Without being crushed.

Seven

Crushed as small as seed

God-sown, rooted in Mary,

The Lord of Harvest

Grows in flesh and blood

In sweat and skill and wisdom

Waiting for ripeness.

The sower scatters

good seed on a stony field.

Thorn and thistle thrive.

Strangest of harvests

Here where love combined with hate

Shreds flesh and sheds blood.

Stone shadows enclose

A long sabbath day, nothing

Left to do but wait.

For unless a seed

Falls into the ground and dies

It abides alone

But dying rises:

From harrowed and furrowed dirt

Springs this hallowed bread.

Five

Now Christ calls His guests

From every tongue and nation

In vast multitude.

The Host in heaven

The hosts around His table

The host in our hands.

Christ’s breaking heals us

Christ’s death is living in us

His blood flows through us.

His rising raised us,

His table, though not of earth,

Now holds our harvest.

Now at His supper

At the fulness of all things

Heaven kisses earth.

Patterns

Holy and undivided Trinity

Three persons are a perfect unity

Giving yourself in love eternally

One to another giving, majesty

Forever moving, though immutably,

Pouring yourselves away all sinlessly

Giving yourself in love eternally

None reaches up to press for primacy

No shade when light is shed so liquidly

Can find a masking place: all holily

Three persons are a perfect unity

A stillness pulsing with all energy

A giving that reverses entropy

Action unblemished, thought a radiancy

Holy and undivided Trinity

Love is the name of God, and lovelily

Three are composed of One, and One of Three

Love, joy and peace embrace infinity

Giving yourself in love eternally

Three persons are a perfect unity

Holy and undivided Trinity…

A couple of insights came to me while I was pursuing the reflections that gave rise to this poem. One is that the universe everywhere exhibits entropy, all too briefly suspended in the case of life, but the continual self-giving of the Three Persons to One Another reverses it: instead of being diminished through giving out, they are stronger. So the Trinity "reverses entropy." 

The other is a key difference between this model and the simple monad of Judaic and Islamic monotheism, where one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. That unity of only a single element is static: there is no space for movement, dynamism, interaction or process. Since the created universe constantly displays processes brought about by interacting powers, the dynamism of the Trinitarian model is a better fit. 

Hidden

Set your mind on things above… For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3

My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord

My death an echo of his sundered grave

My song is tuning to a distant chord

My soul, dawn stirring in a twilit wood

In longing for his light is all my love

My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord

Hear now the chirrup of a waking bird

While light is yet to creep through clouds above

My song is tuning to a distant chord

Waste shall fall from me and become the food

That cycles through the earth and makes it move

My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord

World swirls around me with unwearying word

Selling the trash that glitters in its trove

My song is tuning to a distant chord

Here in the heavens with you is all my hoard

Here is the soul you spent yourself to save

My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord

My song is tuning to a distant chord.

For poetic structure nerds, the form of "Hidden" is a villanelle. I don't usually mess with these complicated formats, in fact this is my very first one. However I felt the delicate chiming of the repeated lines would bring out the feeling of that far off and faint, yet ever present, life and longing, like distant bells. I also decided to leave out punctuation to let the sounds run into each other more, with the same intention. I leave it with you to decide whether it worked. 

The twentieth century produced many fine examples of villanelles, including "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas and "If I could tell you" by W H Auden.