I hope all have time to sit in silence under the stars this holiday time, before being driven indoors by the midges and mosquitoes!
Filed under Daily Reflections, poetry
‘When I stand before thee at the day’s end thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.’ Tagore
Pere Hamel had worked hard, networked hard, to help his local Muslims integrate and feel welcome in the neighbourhood of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. But on this morning in 2016 he was cut down while celebrating early morning Mass. Two men of the Islamic State terror group wanted to keep hold of the differences between people rather than celebrate our unity before the God who made us.
May those who bring violence to our streets, homes, churches and schools, have their scars anointed and healed.
from “Stray Birds” by Rabindranath Tagore
Filed under Daily Reflections
Sometimes this blog wanders where the Spirit takes us – trusting that we are listening properly – sometimes we have a theme or pattern in mind, causing us to think rather than just feel good and complacent. I, Will, from time to time reread something and ask, Did I really write that? Am I so comfortable as that? And then a paragraph is added, or one is altered or taken away.
Today’s message is, I am sure, one that the Spirit would want us to send out: thank you to all our followers and more occasional readers for reading, and liking, and following us; I write on behalf of all our contributors. It’s good mental and spiritual exercise to produce a concise reflection on a passage from Scripture, a poem, an event from my own life or the news. Please stay with us and send us a ‘like’ or a comment from time to time.
And have a blessed summer!
Will T and Co.
A lane in Herefordshire.
Filed under Daily Reflections
Let’s go back to our search for the meaning of heart in the Bible. As we’ve seen, Scripture says more about the human heart than about God’s, but then, we need to be careful with our metaphors, lest they diminish God to what the atheists deplore: a product of human imagination and need. But here we have King David, of all people, claiming that there is no wickedness in his heart!
Well, I know that I’ve not held fast to God’s paths, my feet have indeed slipped; even if I examine my conscience carefully, I’m well able to deceive myself. Maybe that’s the spirit in which to pray this Psalm: dear Lord, this is an aspiration!
Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry;
give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
From you let my vindication come;
let your eyes see the right.
If you try my heart, if you visit me by night,
if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me;
my mouth does not transgress.
As for what others do, by the word of your lips
I have avoided the ways of the violent.
My steps have held fast to your paths;
my feet have not slipped.
Filed under Daily Reflections, poetry, Year of Mercy
We step aside from our Scriptural exploration of the Sacred Heart to listen to a poet, Alice Meynell, from her 1917 collection, ‘A Father of Women’. There was much to be wrathful about, much to shed a tear for. To continue to fight for justice, all the while believing there is nothing, springs from a special courage acknowledged here by Alice Meynell, friend of the rough sleeping drug addict and insightful poet, Francis Thompson. Thirty years on and the Welfare State was coming to existence in the United Kingdom.
I dreamt (no “dream” awake—a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the park:
“Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need
And leave us in the dark?
“There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love”—his oratory here,
Taking the paupers’ and the cripples’ part,
Was broken by a tear.
And then it seemed that One who did create
Compassion, who alone invented pity,
Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,
Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
Bent o’er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
In those impassioned eyes.
Filed under Daily Reflections, Mission, poetry
"There is not time for us to clasp a thing and crush it and fling it away to the dust." from "The Gardener" by Rabindranath Tagore
‘Clasp a thing and crush it and fling it away’ – that is us today. That is exactly what we Turnstones do with supermarket plastic milk bottles. When our milk was delivered in glass bottles to the doorstep, it was often stolen, our children left without milk for breakfast.
So we see sin and the effects of sin: someone clasped our milk bottle, drank the milk and flung the bottle away; we were forced to buy supermarket milk, and crush and fling away the plastic bottle. At least that is recycled nowadays.
Let’s use our time and resources to let the dust bloom, not accumulate our rubbish.
Filed under Daily Reflections, Laudato si', poetry
"THOSE who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself." from "Stray Birds" by Rabindranath Tagore
Filed under Daily Reflections, Laudato si', poetry
It is heroic to hug one’s sorrow and determine not to be consoled.But a fresh face peeps across my door and raises its eyes to my eyes.I cannot but wipe away my tears and change the tune of my song.For time is short.
Filed under corona virus, Daily Reflections, Mission, poetry
“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”
So let’s be a little more serious about the sorrow we looked at yesterday. Sorrow and depression are real. Hopkins bids us take comfort, even if we are tossed about by a whirlwind of spinning emotions and thoughts. We know our sorrow will at least have an end in death: life death does end. But does this mean that death brings an end to a frightful life, or that life puts an end to death? I would suggest both arguments hold true. And each day dies with sleep, ‘and another succeeds it’ is the subtext of that word ‘each’. We always have another chance to open our eyes and say with another of Wales’ poets, WH Davies:
It may feel all wrong at this moment to be uttering such a prayer, but that does not mean that it is actually wrong to make an act of hope.
Filed under Daily Reflections, poetry
The risen Lord by Saint Dunstan, monk, blacksmith, artist, and Archbishop of Canterbury. Died 988; his feastday is today.
Easter lasts for fifty days – until Pentecost, when the season of the Holy Spirit begins. George Herbert reminds us that we miss-count the days and seasons: there is just the one day that matters and that day, Easter, is not over in 24 hours, but is eternal, or as Herbert says, ‘ever’. Enjoy the physical images, ‘calcined’, resounding wood, strings and sinews; Herbert was a musician.
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.
The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.
Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.
Filed under Daily Reflections, Easter, poetry
