Seven Whole Days: The Seventh Day; Blessing and Rest

This is the gift you give, the day you bring
blessing and rest

Here is the last in my little round of seven Roundels for the primal week in Genesis Chapter One. Today we enter the Sabbath, the blessed rest in which God contemplates his own creation with delight and love and pronounces it good, a sabbath which he also graciously invites us to share with him. Sabbath is always a sheer gift whenever and wherever we keep it, a gift more and more need in our pressurised 24/7 world. So here is my roundel celebrating that blessing and rest. as before it is preceded by the verses in Genesis ( in this case chapter 2 verses 1-3) that inspired it and, as before, you can hear it by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the Roman Numeral.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

Chapter 2:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

VII

 

Blessing and rest, delight in everything

Sustained by your strong love and richly blest,

This is the the gift you give, the day you bring

Blessing and rest.

 

This is indeed the ‘gladness of the best’,

From first lines in the east where linnets sing,

To where the last light lingers in the west,

 

You lift the cares to which I used to cling,

As you yourself descend to be my guest

And show me how to find in everything

Blessing and rest.

to where the last light lingers in the west

Seven Whole Days: The Sixth Day; Humanity

We walked together at the close of day

We come now to the Sixth Day in the Primal week of Genesis Chapter One, the day on which we are invited to contemplate the mystery of our own creation and of our being made in the image of God. Furthermore, because the  Sixth Day is a Friday, we are moved as Christians to think of God’s loving response to our fall, of how, as Newman put it, ‘ a second Adam to the fight, and to the rescue came’. I have tried to gather some of these thoughts into the little roundel which is my reflection on this day. As before I have given you the Genesis passage to which my poem is a response and also enabled you to hear me read the poem by either clicking on the ‘play’ button or on the Roman Numeral.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

VI

 

You made us new and beautiful today,

Your Spirit softened us like morning dew,

Your Image shining from us through the clay,

You made us new.

 

You woke us and we knew ourselves in you,

We walked together at the close of day,

You trusted us and called us to be true.

 

When we forsook your love and turned away

You came and sought us where we hid from you,

And on the cross, in darkness, on this day

You made us new.

and on the cross in darkness on this day
you made us new

Seven Whole Days: The Fifth Day; Creatures of the Sky and Sea

With open wings a seagull skims the spray

It is a lovely thing that in the Genesis story a whole day is given over to the wild things of the sea and sky, the flying and diving creations that inhabit elements other than ours, but who are also the work of God’s hand and the delight of His mind. They exist of course  for God’s glory and for their own good purposes but perhaps they are also His words to us and provide us with living images of our own thoughts and prayers.

This fifth of my seven roundels for the primal week of Genesis can be heard by clicking the ‘play’ button or the roman Numeral and is preceded by the verses in Genesis Chapter One that inspired it.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

V

 

With open wings a seagull skims the spray,

Sounding the depth below, a great whale sings,

Your Spirit moves amongst them as they play

With open wings.

 

Now open me to all your Spirit brings,

Move in me too as I begin to pray,

That love may ripple out in shining rings.

 

Speak to my soul through all you made this day,

Through all that swims and flies and swoops and swings,

And let your Spirit lift the words I say

With open wings.

Sounding the depths below, a great whale sings

Seven Whole Days with Faye Hall: 4 Sun, Moon and Stars

lights in the night, the lucid moon

Continuing my round of roundels celebrating the patterns of the Primal Week in Genesis Chapter One, I come to the fourth day  on which we receive the gift of the sun and the moon, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars in their courses, all the heavens declaring the glory of the Lord. As before I give you the verses from Genesis which form the poem’s starting point and then the poem itself, which you can hear by clicking on the Roman Numeral or on the ‘play’ button.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

IV

 

Lights in the night, the lucid moon and sun,

The lesser and the greater share your light

And lift my heart to you when day is done,

Lights in the night.

 

And lonely souls are gladdened by the sight,

For those who dwell in darkness hope is born.

The scattered stars still tingle with delight

 

Treading the dance, the seasons in their turn

Salute the lights of heaven in their flight.

In our dark hearts your praises shine and burn;

Lights in the night.

and lonely souls are gladdened by the sight

Seven Whole Days with Faye Hall: 3 Land and Sea

The earth will yield her still-unfolding seed

Continuing my series of seven poems in the roundel form for the seven Primal Days celebrated in Genesis Chapter One I come to The Third Day. As before I give you the verses in Genesis to which my poem is responding and then the poem itself and as before you can hear the poem by clicking on the play button or the Roman Numeral which is the poems title.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

III

 

The earth will yield her still-unfolding seed,

And barley sheaves grow golden in the field,

The vineyard and the fruit trees, all we need

The earth will yield.

 

A soft wind sends the summer through the weald,

In valley folds the sheep and cattle feed.

The shoreline shines, Your wonders are revealed,

 

The waters are unbound, the ocean freed

To thunder praise, in whose depths are concealed

Your mysteries. Your praise in word and deed

The earth will yield.

The shoreline shines, your wonders are revealed

Seven Whole Days with Faye Hall: 2 The Firmament

The firmament, the vast curve of the sky

Monday brings the second day in my sequence of roundels celebrating and responding to Genesis Chapter One. As before I give you first the verses of Genesis then the roundel in response, and as before you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or on the Roman numeral which forms its title.

The Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here.  Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it, and you can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

II

 

The firmament, the vast curve of the sky

The breath and weave of every element

Unending blue, wherein we long to fly,

The firmament.

 

Your Love has pitched the heavens like a tent

And delved the depth where hidden treasures lie,

From whose rich womb our life has its ascent.

 

Out of those depths I hear my spirit cry

As height and depth give praise with one assent

To that great form that orders low and high;

The firmament.

Your Love has pitched the Heavens like a tent

Seven Whole Days: A New Book with Faye Hall 1

Seven whole days, not one in seven

I will praise thee,

In my heart though not in Heaven

I can raise thee    George Herbert

These familiar words of George Herbert’s have inspired me to write a poetry sequence, a little round of roundels, seven prayer-chants, for the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. Genesis Chapter One has a beautiful, liturgical antiphonal feel, with its repeated refrains of ‘ and the evening and the morning were..’, and the strong Litany of the great ‘And God said…’ phrases. Reading this chapter always feels more to me like stepping into a rich and mysterious service of worship than reading a plain narrative, and as with each ‘day’ the ‘congregation’ grows, as more is created, so the praise heightens and deepens. One of my ‘fathers in God’, Lancelot Andrewes, began his morning prayer each day of the week with thanksgiving for whatever was created and assigned to that day in Genesis. In what follows I have taken a leaf out of Andrewes book, but also tried to fashion prayers that anyone could use, prayers that could be part of the morning prayer for the day each is set, or prayers that could be gathered together in a single service, perhaps using the days of creation to celebrate God’s goodness in the created order and to deepen our sense of stewardship of the delicate and beautiful world in which he has placed us.

And now the Canadian artist Faye Hall has made a beautiful sequence of 63 paintings responding to my Seven Whole Days Sequence and we have published it as a book, which you can purchase from her web site here  or, in the uk from Amazon Here

If you’d like to see the book, here is a little video preview:

Seven Whole Days Book Preview from Faye Hall on Vimeo.

You can see these paintings for yourself at the MHC Gallery in Winnipeg from 16th March to 5th of May. I will be at the gallery on 15th April for a special book signing and launch event, full details here

So I shall post one of the prayer-poems in this sequence each day, on the day it is written for, starting on Sunday, for of course, as most Christians will know, Sunday is the first day of the week, the day of creation, the day of resurrection, the new creation. It became for Christians ‘The Lord’s Day’, but in the book of Genesis Saturday is the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord. Each day I will give you the verses from Genesis to which my poem is a prayerful response and then the poem itself. Faye has kindly allowed ne to include with each poem one or two of the paintings from the book, to give you a taste of it! So here is today’s poem, as always you can hear me read it by clicking on the ‘play’ button or on the Roman Numeral which is its title.

These poems were originally published in ‘Parable and Paradox’   Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016

Strong in the depth and shining from the height

Seven Whole Days

 

Seven whole days, not one in seven,

I will praise thee   George Herbert

 

 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I

Let there be light as I begin this day

To draw me from the darkness and the night,

To bless my flesh, to clear and show my way

Let there be light

 

Strong in the depth and shining from the height,

Evening  and morning’s interplay,

Blessing and enabling my sight.

 

Lighten my soul and teach me how to pray,

Lighten my mind and teach me wrong from right,

In all I do and think and see and say

Let there be light.

Evening and Morning’s interplay

Three New Endeavours!

I thought I’d take a moment to let readers of this blog know about three new endeavours that are already in hand or shortly coming to fruition.

A New Column!

The first is that since the early summer I have been contributing a weekly column to the Church Times which appears on the back page as ‘Poet’s Corner’. It is the successor to Ronald Blythe’s wonderful and long-running column ‘the Word from Wormingford’, which was series of glimpses and reflections of life and faith in a small corner of Suffolk from the pen of one of Britain’s greatest rural writers. It was an honour to be chosen as his successor and thought I can’t really ‘follow’ him, I have been doing my best to enjoy and master the 500 word essay as a form of prose poem. The column appears in print every Friday but is also available on the Church Times Website. A full read of the CT requires a subscription but you can read two or three articles each week without a subscription, so readers of this blog might care to dip into that column. Here are some links to a few of the pieces I’ve written so far:

Autumn Leaves

Samuel Johnson’s Cat

A Moment in a Railway Carriage

Upstream

 

A New Book!

My second endeavour has been work on a new anthology for Canterbury Press, called Love, Remember, and I am happy to say that this is now completed and the book itself should be out in November. It is an anthology of forty poems chosen to help the reader give voice to lamentation and grief but also to make the journey through that grief, towards hope, never letting go of love. It is intended as a kind of antidote to the apparently facile denials of Henry Scott Holland’s ‘Death is Nothing at All’. I say apparently facile because, as I discovered when I wrote the book, the famous Henry Scott Holland passage, often used at funerals is in fact torn out of context from a much greater and more grounded sermon. a sermon that faces the reality of grief and death, rather than denying it and so can offer in the end a greater and truer comfort. There will be an official Launch of my new book in Heffers in Cambridge on December 14th, but it should be available from the publisher, from amazon, and in shops before then. You can book for the book launch Here

 

Another New Book!!

Finally, the third endeavour is not really mine at all but is the work of the artist Faye Hall. She has made a truly beautiful book out of my sequence of poems ‘Seven Whole Days’ with stunning pictures for almost every line. You can see a video about it Here

North American can also order copies from Faye in time for Christmas Here 

If you use the code ‘sevenpoet’ on Faye’s site you can get a 25% discount.

There is  now an Amazon UK Page for the Book  so you can order it from the UK

I also hope to have some copies available before Christmas for UK buyers so email me at malcolmguite@gmail.com if you’re interested

Saying the Names; a Poem and a Painting

Saying the Names by Faye Hall, from a photo by Lancia Smith

The painting above is one of an sequence of three by the remarkable Canadian artist Faye Hall. This one was made in response to my poem Saying the Names, which I give below. Saying The Names celebrates the remnant fishing fleet in the little Northumbrian harbour town of Amble. The poem chants the lovely names of these vessels as part of a meditation on the power of language, of naming itself, and as an evocation of the unique atmosphere and history of that part of England. Faye has created a remarkable work, using a photopraph by Lancia Smith for the portraiture and encorporating lines of my hand-written text for the poem, in different scales, into the fabric of the painting, so that my words about sky and sea and light become part of her evocation of those same things in colour and texture. Faye has written an article about these paintings, and her collaboration with Lancia and with me in the Mennonite Brethren Herald here, but she has also given me permission to post the photo of her painting here on my blog, where I thought it would be good to set it alongside the poem and also a recording of my reading it.

In fact this is not the first artistic colaboration inspired by this particular poem. It was picked up in 2002, shortly after it was first published, by Kevin Flanagan and his Riprap Quartet and they played a jazz setting of it in the royal Festival Hall. we have since performed it together on several occasions and, fter the text of the poem I will embed a youtube video of one such performance. (If you are in or near Cambridge and would like to hear Riprap, and also have a chance to hear the great Beat writer and biographer Gerry Nicosia, then do come to the Unitarian church for a jazz-poetry concert on 8th September at 8pm. full details here.)

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

Saying the Names

Dawn over Amble, and along the coast
light on the tide flows to Northumberland,
silvers the scales of fishes freshly caught
and glowing in their boxes on the dock,
shivers the rainbow sheen on drops of diesel,
and lights, at last, the North Sea fishing fleet.
Tucked into harbour here their buoyant lines
lift to the light on plated prows their names,
the ancient names picked out in this year’s paint:
Providence, Bold Venture, Star Divine
are first along the quay-side. Fruitful Bough
has stemmed the tides to bring her harvest in,
Orcadian Mist and Sacred Heart, Aspire,
their names are numinous, a found poem.
Those Bible-burnished phrases live and lift
into the brightening tide of morning light
and beg to be recited, chanted out,
for names are incantations, mysteries
made manifest like ships on the horizon.
Eastward their long line tapers towards dawn
and ends at last with Freedom, Radiant Morn.