Poem

Walking to Lauds
sun rising, and
the misty veil lifting
from bare trees.
The Office of Readings has been
done; silence endured, wrestled with,
emerged from.
Through lips comes opened breath
smoke of embers rekindled.


(Written at Worth Abbey)

I have a new phone.

I'm very excited. I'm not like this normally. Honest. It's just so addictive.

There are all these apps on it: I can link up my facebook account, my email account and my text in-box. There's this natty thing that I can press and when I point the camera at something the phone automatically clicks to the internet, finds out what it is, and where I can buy one.

There's even this great setting where I can make my location known to all my friends. I'm contactable and locatable 24/7. I really need never be on my own again. Not ever!

No more boredom. No more loneliness. Never have to be on my own.
No more moments of wondering what to do, or why.
Fully occupied. No more awkward stillnesses.
Total distraction whenever I'd prefer not to look inside and see what's there.

Never have to be alone with just myself. Never have to be still. Never have to look inside...

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” Mark 1.35.

The Third Advent

Advent is traditionally the season when the Church remembers the coming of God in Christ, and also looks forward to the final coming.
However some words from St Bernard of Clairvaux made me sit up and think. For he spoke of three advents...

"We have come to know a three-fold coming of the Lord. The first two are clearly visible, but the third is not. The third coming takes place between the other two.

In the first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men.
In his last coming 'all flesh shall see the salvation of our God'.
But the other coming is hidden. In it the chosen see him within themselves and their souls are saved.

The first coming was in flesh and weakness.
The last coming will be in glory and majesty.
This intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power.

This intermediary coming is like a road leading from the first the last.
In the first coming Christ was our redemption.
In the last he will appear as our life.
In the intermediary coming he is our rest and consolation." (Sermon 5 on Advent)

Thomas Taherne

There's a superb new introduction to the Seventeenth Century English poet and priest Thomas Taherne by Denise Inge.

Among other gems two so far stand out from Thomas's mix of theology and poetry:

Heaven surely is a State and not a Place
To be in Heaven's to be full of Grace
Heaven is wherere we see Gods face.
(All Things, 9, p. 79)

and also his agument for why there must be life on other worlds:

The Earth is too poor a Cottage, too small a centre, to be the Single and Solitary object of his [God's] care and Love. For him that is Omnipresent and Eternal, to confine his Contentments to one little Spot, and leav all the Rest Empty and Desolate is unworthy of his Majestie and not very answerable to his Infinit Greatness.
(The Kingdom of God, ch. 22, p. 76-7)

There's a shorter version of Inge's introduction here.

Summer Poets - John Donne

CS lewis once referred to his conversion as 'reluctant', and many other Christians too have worried that their acceptance of faith might in some way rob them of their freedom. Critics of faith sometimes refer to conversion as 'intellectual suicide' or 'brain-washing'.

John Donne (1772-1631, a late convert from Roman Catholicism and ultimately Dean of St Paul's Cathedral) was a famous versifier of sex, death and religion. Perhaps reflecting his own complex experiences, his sonnet here picks up St Paul's strange imagery about being at war with oneself and seeking freedom.

Contrary to today's popular notion, Donne echoes St Paul's paradoxical conclusion that 'perfect freedom' for the Christian is in fact not autonomy, but service of God. Embracing faith can sometimes - for some - involve 'intellectual suicide', but others find that a strange freedom in being 'possessed by God'.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Summer Poets: Anon

Adam Lay I-Bounded is a pretty simple Christmas carol. But it has a strange twist – it gives thanks for Adam’s sin:

Adam lay I-bounden, bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerks finden written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne had never our Lady aye been Heaven’s queen.
Blessed be the time that apple taken was,
Therefore may we singen, “Deo Gracias!”

No, not a bizarre Satanic perversion. Instead it has its roots in the concept of the ‘happy fall’ (felix culpa). As Thomas Aquinas put it ‘the Incarnation wouldn’t have happened if sin hadn’t first existed’ (although he quickly adds ‘even if sin hadn’t existed, God could still have become incarnate if God wished.’).

On a day to day level, in our experience of sinfulness the truth is that after a while, any early glamour wears off. Sin becomes rather tiring and ultimately life-denying.

For example, nursing a grudge against someone begins to hurt me more than the person against whom I’m holding the grudge. And the same is true of other sins: just think of over-consumption and the effect that is having on our bodies and our environment. All sins ultimately back-fire and cause us more harm than the ‘good’ they initially seemed to promise.

Then there may come the moment - a tipping point – when we say, actually I’d be far better off just admitting I’m in the wrong. And with that an enormous liberation can come. What a relief! And so a new life starts, freed of the earlier boundaries, deeper and more aware of the forgiveness of God, more conscious of the Grace that brought us through.

And yet, true to say, had we not been limited by that prior sinfulness, we might never have appreciated quite the extent of God’s grace and what a life set free could be like. St Paul was aware of this paradox (and he was very careful *not* to say ‘let sin lots so that we can be forgiven more!’).

But still we may say, after we’ve admitted some self-deception, some sin, and been delivered from its grip: ‘I hope I never have to go through that again – but I’m glad I’ve been through it now, because it’s brought me closer to God’.

Summer Poets: PJ Kavanagh

Educated in a monastery, poet, author and journalist P J Kavanagh’s early thoughts of becoming a monk were thwarted because he 'liked girls too much'. The Catholic influence though remains (he once appeared in Father Ted).

Kavangh said in an interview: ‘I want to express, without frightening the horses, that there is something about. It would be treason to deny it. Not something religious, that is a slippery word. Or spiritual. There is joy or hope. I think it's joy.’

The death of Kavanagh’s first wife, Sally, forms the backdrop to this poem’s description of finding grief mysteriously contained – and yet not removed. It is a wonderful, funny, poignant, but also hopeful piece about being met by this ‘something’.

Beyond Decoration

Stalled, in the middle of a rented room,
The couple who own it quarrelling in the yard
Outside, about which shade of Snowcem
They should use. (From the bed I'd heard
Her say she liked me in my dressing-gown
And heard her husband's grunt of irritation.
Some ladies like sad men who are alone.)
But I am stalled, and sad is not the word.
Go out I cannot, nor can I stay in,
Becalmed mid carpet, breathless, on the road
To nowhere and the road has petered out.
This was twenty years ago, and bad as that.
I must have moved at last, for I knelt down,
Which I had not done before, nor thought I should.
It would not be exact to say I prayed;
What for? The one I wanted there was dead.
All I could do was kneel and so I did.
At once I entered dark so vast and warm
I wondered it could fit inside the room
When I looked round. The road I had to walk down
Was still there. From that moment it was mean
Beyond my strength to doubt what I had seen:
A heat at the heart of dark, so plainly shown,
A bowl, of two cupped hands, in which a pain
That filled a room could be engulfed and drown
And yet, for the truth is in the bowl, remain.
Today I thought it time to write this down,
Beyond decoration, humble, in plain rhyme,
As clear as I could, and as truthful, which I have done.

(From Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 2001, and reproduced from here)