A Sonnet for St. Mark’s Day

A winged lion, swift immediate

The 25th of April is the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist and so I  am posting my sonnet on St. Mark’s Gospel, one of a set of four sonnets on each of the four evangelists. For each of these sonnets I have meditated on the way the traditional association of each of the evangelists with one of the ‘four living creatures’ round the throne helps us to focus on the particular gifts and emphasis of that Gospel writer. For a good account of this tradition click here. Mark is the lion. There is a power, a dynamic a swiftness of pace in Mark’s Gospel, his favourite word is ‘immediately’! and that suits the lion. His Gospel starts in the wilderness and that suits it too.

But the great paradox in Mark is that the Gospel writer who shows us Christ at his most decisive, powerful, startling and leonine is also the one who shows us  how our conquering lion, our true Aslan, deliberately entered into suffering and passion, the great ‘doer’ letting things be done unto him. In this sonnet, I am especially indebted to WH Vanstone’s brilliant reading of this aspect of Mark in his wonderful book The Stature of Waiting.

For all four ‘Gospel’ sonnets I have also drawn on the visual imagery of the Lindesfarne Gospels, as in the one illustrated above. Margot Krebs Neale has given me the beautiful image below taken in Galillee in Beth Shean,

This sonnet is drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press here in England. The book is now back in stock on both Amazon UK and USA and physical copies are shortly to be available in Canada via Steve Bell. The book is now also out on Kindle. Please feel free to make use of these sonnets in church services and to copy and share them. If you can mention the book from which they are taken that would be great.

As usual you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or on the title.

Mark

A wingèd lion, swift, immediate

Mark is the gospel of the sudden shift

From first to last, from grand to intimate,

From strength  to weakness, and from debt to gift,

From a wide deserts haunted emptiness

To a close city’s fervid atmosphere,

From a voice crying in the wilderness

To angels in an empty sepulcher.

And Christ makes the most sudden shift of all;

From swift action as a strong Messiah

Casting the very demons back to hell

To slow pain, and death as a pariah.

We see our Saviour’s life and death unmade

And flee his tomb dumbfounded and afraid.

Hatley St. George; a poem for St. George’s Day

St. George’s Day and my thoughts turn again to Hatley St. George. If St. George, as our patron saint inspires English patriotism, then I’d say my own patriotism is about loving the little particularites of my native land. Not the big political rhetoric or the aggrandising imperial history, but the patchwork of little parishes and quiet shires. That’s one of the reasons why I love little mediaeval church dedicated to St. George in the village of Hatley St. George, not far from here.

Though the church goes back to the fourteenth century , in the late sixties it suffered the apparent misfortune of a collapse in its sanctuary which was declared unsafe and taken down. A new east wall was built but the architects had the wisdom to set in the new east window an arch of clear glass. For beyond that window, across the still sacred space of what had been choir and sanctuary, stands the most beautiful beech tree, which church-goers can see now in all its glory , through the changing seasons, simmering above their altar.

It’s a magical place, but like many such, struggling for survival and recognition. I originally wrote this poem, which I also posted last year, both to celebrate the church and to help the cause. Do visit it if you can and support those who are working for its upkeep. One of the congregation has written this poem out in beautiful calligraphy and it is hanging on the wall there, and each summer I go and read it aloud for them as part of their summer fete. This poem will be collected in my new volume of poems with Canterbury Press, The Singing Bowl, which will be launched in November and I shall do a special reading at Hatley around that time, so watch this space!

View through the window of Hatley St. George

Hatley St. George

Stand here a while and drink the silence in.
Where clear glass lets in living light to touch
And bless your eyes. A beech tree’s tender green
Shimmers beyond the window’s lucid arch.
You look across an absent sanctuary;
No walls or roof, just holy, open space,
Leading your gaze out to the fresh-leaved beech
God planted here before you first drew breath.

Stand here awhile and drink the silence in.
You cannot stand as long and still as these;
This ancient beech and still more ancient church.
So let them stand, as they have stood, for you.
Let them disclose their gifts of time and place,
A secret kept for you through all these years.
Open your eyes. This empty church is full,
Thronging with life and light your eyes have missed.

Stand here awhile and drink the silence in.
Shields of forgotten chivalry, and rolls
Of honour for the young men gunned at Ypres,
And other monuments of our brief lives
Stand for the presence here of saints and souls
Who stood where you stand, to be blessed like you;
Clouds of witness to unclouded light
Shining this moment, in this place for you.

Stand here awhile and drink their silence in.
Annealed in glass, the twelve Apostles stand
And each of them is keeping faith for you.
This roof is held aloft, to give you space,
By graceful angels praying night and day
That you might hear some rumour of their flight
That you might feel the flicker of a wing
And let your heart fly free at last in prayer.

CS Lewis: A Sonnet

Scribe of the Kingdom, Keeper of the Door

As I mentioned in my last post, this is a Jubilee year for CS Lewis as, fifty years after his death, we reassess his extraordinary legacy. That can be done in lots of ways and I will be participating in some of the conferences that will hilight the sheer weight and power of his academic work, and explore the depth and richness of his imaginative writing. But for many of us the debt we owe to Lewis is more personal, and more poetic; it is a debt to someone who has opened a spiritual door, someone who has baptised the imagination. As I worked on academic papers I found that what I also needed to do was write a poem! So here is a sonnet articulating something of who Lewis is and what we owe to him. It will be appear as part of a sequence called ‘The Household of Faith’ in The Singing Bowl, my next volume of poetry with the Canterbury Press, which should be out in November.

As usual you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

CS Lewis

From ‘Beer and Beowulf’ to the seven heavens,

Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere,

You are our portal to those hidden havens

Whence we return to bless our being here.

Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door

Which opens on to all we might have lost,

Ward of a word-hoard in the deep hearts core

Telling the tale of Love from first to last.

Generous, capacious, open, free,

Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds

Through which to travel, whence we learn to see

Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds,

Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing,

Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King.

Your wardrobe mind has furnished us with worlds

From San Diego To Westminster Abbey – a big year for CS Lewis

Many of you will know that I am a great admirer and, as far as I am able, a follower of CS Lewis, without doubt one of he most influential people in my life. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of his death. There will be many events, conferences and meetings across the world to celebrate and commemorate his life and legacy, but I thought it might be useful for readers of my blog to let you know which of these various events I will be involved in. (also a useful reminder to me, so that I can try to be in the right place at the right time!) In this post I’ll give you the lowdown about the first one, the San Diego Summer Conference, and then list the others about which I’ll blog in more detail later.

So first up is the CS Lewis Summer Conference in San Diego June 21-23rd. This is going to be a major event focusing on Vision and Vocation in Lewis, both his own and the new vision and sense of vocation he can inspire in us, all focused through listening for his distinctive and unique voice amidst the modern cacophony. I will be giving the daily meditations at this conference, reading poetry and also performing with the amazing Steve Bell who will also be there as one of the resident artists and performers. But the real heart of these CS Lewis Foundation events is not just the lectures and seminars, good as they are, but the sense of community and interconnection, the friendships inspired, the new projects begun. I have seen the genesis of new books, plays, poems and songs, new collaborations and scholarly projects, all happening over coffees in corridors at these conferences, or over a beer in the famous evening sessions known collectively as ‘The Bag End Cafe”. I’m really looking forward to this one. My collaboration with Steve Bell on his last album started at the Foundations Oxbridge Conference in 2011 and we are going to be working on some new material after the San Diego meet. Steve has blogged about it here. They have assembled a great team of speakers including Peter Kreeft, James Como, Diana Glyer and Andrew Lazo. Check them all out here: Speakers and Artists. There are ‘early bird’ discounts on booking this conference still available until the April 25th.

July 14-19th there will be an Inklings Week in Oxford with all kinds of talks and events. I’ll be speaking on the Friday 19th July

On the 21st and 22nd of September there is going to be the CS Lewis Jubilee Festival, a weekend of events and talks on Lewis in Headington, centred on the church where he worshipped. I will be speaking on the evening of Saturday 21st on Lewis’s poetry and science fiction. Alister McGrath will also be speaking at this event.

Then in November around the anniversary of his death itself there is going to be a major conference and event at Westminster Abbey leading up to the ceremony on the 22nd of November when Lewis will be inducted into poet’s corner.  At the conference I will be speaking on Lewis’ use of imagination as a truth-bearing faculty, in a lecture complementing a talk by Alister McGrath on Lewis’s use of Reason in apologetics.

Then on the 23rd November there will be a conference in Magdalene College Cambridge, where Lewis was a fellow. I will be giving a paper on the contemporary relevance of Lewis’s prophetic words in The Abolition of Man.

Phew! well I hope I’m able to meet some of the readers of this blog afresh, or for the first time at one or other of these events.

The Canterbury Gospels-The Gospel from Canterbury

Augustine

Justin

One of the most moving moments in the recent enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury the 104th successor to St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was the moment at which he stood before the Canterbury Gospels and showed his love for the Gospel, which is itself God’s declaration of love for us, by kissing the sacred text. It was moving because the book he kissed was the very book that Augustine of Canterbury brought to these shores in the 6th century. Like the gospel it contains, it has stood the test of time, like the gospel it contains it has persisted fresh and beautiful through all the vicissitudes of our history, the wars and betrayals, the making and breaking of governments, the wrecks of empire, declaring in time and in timely ways, the redeeming Love that comes to us from beyond time. It embodies the extraordinary and miraculous continuity amidst change, the apostolic succession, that links the first and the hundred and fifth Archbishop of Canterbury.

And for both men this same gospel book, and this same Gospel is a vital source of hope and inspiration, the story of strength made perfect in weakness, of Love triumphing against the odds. ‘Apostle to the English’ was a tough assignment then and it’s a tough assignment now. In fact St. Bede tells us that after Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine to our shores he got cold feet on the way (literally I expect as well as metaphorically) and Bede tells us he wrote to Gregory asking if he could be allowed to turn back and have an easier posting somewhere else! Bede quotes the letter back from Gregory in which he strengthens Augustine’s resolve and says, ‘you’ve put your hand to the plough, go on in faith, Christ and his gospel will see you through. In last month’s enthronement service Justin Welby placed Christ, and reliance on Christ, the Christ revealed in those Canterbury Gospels at the centre of everything he will do as Augustine’s successor, and I am sure that the first ABC was cheering him on from Heaven. After watching the enthronement service I wrote this sonnet, for Augustine and his successors:

(As always you can hear the sonnet by clicking on the title or the \play button.This sonnet will be part of a sequence for the saints in my next book of poetry ‘The Singing Bowl’. meantime my current collection Sounding the Seasons, published by the appropriately named Canterbury Press, is available from Amazon and all good booksellers)

Augustine of Canterbury

‘Oh loving Lord don’t send me to the English,
Boorish and brutal pagans that they are’
You prayed, you wrote to Gregory in anguish
But he replied ‘since you have come so far,
Your hand is on the plough, you must continue,
And reach them on their rain-drenched island shore
There’s something in the English that will win you
And Christ himself will open up the door.’

And so the gospel came to Canterbury,
The very gospel book we still possess,
Weathering the storms of history
In all its splendour and it’s hiddenness.
We bless you for that gospel you proclaim,
Bless your successors as they do the same

The new Archbishop andThe Canterbury Gospels

Thank God for ‘Doubting’ Thomas!

Today, on the first Sunday after Easter we have the reading from St. John’s Gospel, about how ‘doubting’ Thomas met the risen Lord and was invited to touch his wounds.

Well thank goodness for Thomas, the one disciple who had the courage to say what everyone else was thinking but didnt dare say, the courage to ask the awkward questions that drew from Jesus some of the most beautiful and profoundly comforting of all his sayings. “We dont know where you’re going, how can we know the way”? asked Thomas, and because he had the courage to confes his ignorance, we were given that beautiful saying “I am the way the Truth and the Life” Here is the poem I have written for St. Thomas, which seems to fit with this Eastertide and also a sermon called ‘Touching the Wounds’ which I preached this Sunday at St. Edwards.

This sonnet is drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press here in England. The book is now back in stock on both Amazon UK and USA and physical copies are shortly to be available in Canada via Steve Bell. The book is now also out on Kindle. Please feel free to make use of these sonnets in church services and to copy and share them. If you can mention the book from which they are taken that would be great.

I am greateful to Margot Krebs Neale for the thought-provoking image above, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button below or on the title of the poem and you can hear the sermon on my podcast site by clicking here: Touching The Wounds

St. Thomas the Apostle

 

“We do not know… how can we know the way?”

Courageous master of the awkward question,

You spoke the words the others dared not say

And cut through their evasion and abstraction.

Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,

You put your finger on the nub of things

We cannot love some disembodied wraith,

But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.

Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,

Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.

Because He loved your awkward counter-point

The Word has heard and granted you your wish.

Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine

The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.

 

oh place my hands with yours, help me divine
the wounded God whose wounds are healing mine

A Sonnet for the Annunciation

We miss the shimmer of the angels’ wings

Monday April 8th is the feast of the Annunciation, that blessed moment of awareness, assent and transformation in which eternity touches time. In my own small take on this mystery I have thought about vision, what we allow ourselves to be aware of, and also about freedom, the way all things turn on our discernment and freedom.

I am posting this sonnet a couple of days in advance of the day itself as I know some churches may keep the feast on the Sunday, the day before and they may like to make use of it.This sonnet is drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press here in England. The book is now back in stock on both Amazon UK and USA and physical copies are shortly to be available in Canada via Steve Bell‘s Signpost Music. The book is now also out on Kindle. Please feel free to make use of these sonnets in church services and to copy and share them. If you can mention the book from which they are taken that would be great.

As so often I am indebted to Margot Krebs Neale for the accompanying images, and she has kindly offered the following note for the images that accompany this sonnet:

‘As I was making suggesting a picture for another sonnet, Malcolm said he was working on the Annunciation sonnet. A little cheeky I sent a picture of a beautifully blurred lily wondering if it might help. Malcolm liked it and could see angel wings in it, I thought we needed a face. A young woman of sixteen. One of the many 16 years old I know and love or…myself. I remembered and found this picture of me taken when I was 16 or 17. Why me? Because of the “We” of the first strophe, I read it like an “I” : We see so little, only surfaces, and yet we have a choice.

« Quel fruit lumineux portons-nous dans l’ombre de la chair? » What luminous fruit do we carry in the shade of our flesh?

« un fruit éternel enfant de la chair et de l’Esprit ». An eternal fruit, child of the flesh and the Spirit »

May we be granted the joy of giving it to the light.’

As usual you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ buton or on the title.

Annunciation

We see so little, stayed on surfaces,

We calculate the outsides of all things,

Preoccupied with our own purposes

We miss the shimmer of the angels’ wings,

They coruscate around us in their joy

A swirl of wheels and eyes and wings unfurled,

They guard the good we purpose to destroy,

A hidden blaze of glory in God’s world.

But on this day a young girl stopped to see

With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;

The promise of His glory yet to be,

As time stood still for her to make a choice;

Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,

The Word himself was waiting on her word.

but on thi day a young girl stopped to see

On Writing poetry

A Note to my self and my fellow writers:

On writing poetry

To begin a poem you must know that everything is possible, all images are available, metaphor is everywhere, every word, known or unknown, is at your disposal. To finish a poem you must discover that only one form is possible, and at each moment, one metaphor, one image, one particular word, and one only will do. You begin in absolute and passive openness, you end in absolute and particular concentration. You open with availability, You finish with fidelity.

First Steps

Here is a poem written on my brief post-Easter break on the North Norfolk coast near Brancaster. It was written on the occasion of my first outdoor walk since I had the cast removed after breaking my leg in January. It wasn’t a very long walk, and it wasn’t pain free but it was a breakthrough of sorts, as this poem records.
As always you can hear it by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

First Steps

This is the day to leave the dark behind you
Take the adventure, step beyond the hearth,
Shake off at last the shackles that confined you,
And find the courage for the forward path.
You yearned for freedom through the long night watches,
The day has come and you are free to choose,
Now is your time and season.
Companioned still by your familiar crutches,
And leaning on the props you hope to lose,
You step outside and widen your horizon.

After the dimly burning wick of winter
That seemed to dull and darken everything
The April sun shines clear beyond your shelter
And clean as sight itself. The reed-birds sing,
As heaven reaches down to touch the earth
And circle her, revealing everywhere
A lovely, longed-for blue.
Breathe deep and be renewed by every breath,
Kinned to the keen east wind and cleansing air,
As though the blue itself were blowing through you.

You keep the coastal path where edge meets edge,
The sea and salt marsh touching in North Norfolk,
Reed cutters cuttings, patterned in the sedge,
Open and ease the way that you will walk,
Unbroken reeds still wave their feathered fronds
Through which you glimpse the long line of the sea
And hear its healing voice.
Tentative steps begin to break your bonds,
You push on through the pain that sets you free,
Towards the day when broken bones rejoice