A Sonnet for Mothering Sunday

…for those who loved and laboured…

The fourth Sunday of Lent happens also to be Mothering Sunday. Continuing in my series of sonnets for the Church Year I have written this one for Mothering Sunday. It’s a thanksgiving for all parents, especialy for those who bore the fruitful pain of labour, and more particularly in this poem I have singled out for praise those heroic single parents who, for whatever reason, have found themselves bearing alone the burdens, and sharing with no-one the joys of their parenthood.

This poem is taken from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press. Canterbury are now also launching a Kindle Edition

If English readers would like to buy my books from a proper bookshop Sarum College Bookshop here in the UK always have it in stock.

I am happy to announce to North American readers that copies of The Singing Bowl and my other books are readily available from Steve Bell Here

I am grateful to Oliver  Neale for his thought-provoking work as a photographer, and, as always, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

Mothering Sunday

 

At last, in spite of all, a recognition,

For those who loved and laboured for so long,

Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition

To flourish in the place where we belong.

A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising,

Who buckled down and did the work of two,

Whom governments have mocked instead of praising,

Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through,

The single mothers forced onto the edge

Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected,

Invisible to wealth and privilege,

But in whose lives the kingdom is reflected.

Now into Christ our mother church we bring them,

Who shares with them the birth-pangs of His Kingdom.

A Sonnet for Mother’s Day

…for those who loved and laboured…

We had our Mothering Sunday in Lent this year. but I understand May 11th is Mother’s day in America so I am reposting this poem today for all my American friends and readers.. It’s a thanksgiving for all parents, especialy for those who bore the fruitful pain of labour, and more particularly in this poem I have singled out for praise those heroic single parents who, for whatever reason, have found themselves bearing alone the burdens, and sharing with no-one the joys of their parenthood.

This poem is taken from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press. Canterbury have also launched a kindle edition

I am grateful to Oliver  Neale for his thought-provoking work as a photographer, and, as always, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

Mothering Sunday

 

At last, in spite of all, a recognition,

For those who loved and laboured for so long,

Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition

To flourish in the place where we belong.

A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising,

Who buckled down and did the work of two,

Whom governments have mocked instead of praising,

Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through,

The single mothers forced onto the edge

Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected,

Invisible to wealth and privilege,

But in whose lives the kingdom is reflected.

Now into Christ our mother church we bring them,

Who shares with them the birth-pangs of His Kingdom.

A Sonnet for Mothering Sunday

…for those who loved and laboured…

The fourth Sunday of Lent happens also to be Mothering Sunday. Continuing in my series of sonnets for the Church Year I have written this one for Mothering Sunday. It’s a thanksgiving for all parents, especialy for those who bore the fruitful pain of labour, and more particularly in this poem I have singled out for praise those heroic single parents who, for whatever reason, have found themselves bearing alone the burdens, and sharing with no-one the joys of their parenthood.

This poem is taken from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press. Canterbury are now also launching a Kindle Edition

I am grateful to Oliver  Neale for his thought-provoking work as a photographer, and, as always, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

Mothering Sunday

 

At last, in spite of all, a recognition,

For those who loved and laboured for so long,

Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition

To flourish in the place where we belong.

A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising,

Who buckled down and did the work of two,

Whom governments have mocked instead of praising,

Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through,

The single mothers forced onto the edge

Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected,

Invisible to wealth and privilege,

But in whose lives the kingdom is reflected.

Now into Christ our mother church we bring them,

Who shares with them the birth-pangs of His Kingdom.

A Sonnet for Mother’s Day

…for those who loved and laboured…

We had our Mothering Sunday in Lent this year. but I understand May 12th is Mother’s day in America so I am reposting this poem today for all my American friends and readers.. It’s a thanksgiving for all parents, especialy for those who bore the fruitful pain of labour, and more particularly in this poem I have singled out for praise those heroic single parents who, for whatever reason, have found themselves bearing alone the burdens, and sharing with no-one the joys of their parenthood.

This poem is taken from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press. Canterbury have also launched a kindle edition

I am grateful to Oliver  Neale for his thought-provoking work as a photographer, and, as always, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

Mothering Sunday

 

At last, in spite of all, a recognition,

For those who loved and laboured for so long,

Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition

To flourish in the place where we belong.

A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising,

Who buckled down and did the work of two,

Whom governments have mocked instead of praising,

Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through,

The single mothers forced onto the edge

Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected,

Invisible to wealth and privilege,

But in whose lives the kingdom is reflected.

Now into Christ our mother church we bring them,

Who shares with them the birth-pangs of His Kingdom.

Kindling the Imagination; a Kindle Edition!

Nearly twenty  years ago I went on a retreat with the aim of discerning, and then distilling into a single sentence, what I thought it was that God had put me on earth to do. This is the sentence I came up with:

I am here to use my love of language and my delight in poetry to kindle my own, and other peoples imaginations for Christ.

Its not surprising therefore that the verb ‘to kindle’ crops up quite often in my poetry. It occurs, for example, five times in my collection of seventy sonnets Sounding the Seasons. When I reached for that word kindle, on retreat in the early nineties of the last century I had no idea that the word would one day be a noun to describe a kind of Ebook that could be made instantly available to anyone anywhere. Now I have some issues with Amazon over their tax avoidance here in the UK, but I think their choice of name for their Ereader was inspired, for kindling a fire of light and longing, one light kindling and lighting another, the flame leaping from mind to mind across the world and over the generations, is just what reading, at its best, is all about.

So it is with some pleasure that I can say that today my book of sonnets is released on Kindle!

It should be easy to find and download via Amazon in any country but here are the links for the kindle edition for the UK, USA, and Canada:

Sounding the Seasons UK

Sounding the Seasons USA

Sounding the Seasons Canada

Finally here is one of the sonnets from the book in which I use the word kindle; this one is a celebration of all God’s unknown saints

All Saints

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards

Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,

It glances from the eyes, kindles the words

Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright

With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,

The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.

Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing

He weaves them with us in the web of being

They stand beside us even as we grieve,

The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,

Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above

The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,

To triumph where all saints are known and named;

The gathered glories of His wounded love.

A Sonnet for Mothering Sunday

…for those who loved and laboured…

The fourth Sunday of Lent happens also to be Mothring Sunday. Continuing in my series of sonnets for the Church Year I have written this one for Mothering Sunday. It’s a thanksgiving for all parents, especialy for those who bore the fruitful pain of labour, and more particularly in this poem I have singled out for praise those heroic single parents who, for whatever reason, have found themselves bearing alone the burdens, and sharing with no-one the joys of their parenthood.

This poem is taken from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press. Canterbury are now also launching a Kindle Edition which will be available from March 21st.

I am grateful to Oliver  Neale for his thought-provoking work as a photographer, and, as always, you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button, or on the title

Mothering Sunday

 

At last, in spite of all, a recognition,

For those who loved and laboured for so long,

Who brought us, through that labour, to fruition

To flourish in the place where we belong.

A thanks to those who stayed and did the raising,

Who buckled down and did the work of two,

Whom governments have mocked instead of praising,

Who hid their heart-break and still struggled through,

The single mothers forced onto the edge

Whose work the world has overlooked, neglected,

Invisible to wealth and privilege,

But in whose lives the kingdom is reflected.

Now into Christ our mother church we bring them,

Who shares with them the birth-pangs of His Kingdom.

Thoughts on a Family Bible

My Great Grandfather’s bible

For all the convenience, the ease of reference and access afforded by the ubiquitous ‘ebook’, I have been reminded recently in three very concrete ways of how precious and irreplaceable real books are with their tang, tinge, smudge and wear, and most of all their tangible personal history.

I’ll tell you today about the first of my three reminders, which came in a remote croft in Wester Ross in the far northwest of Scotland, an old place where my uncle lived and where, under  portraits of my grandparents and great-grandparents, I can browse his library with its annotated volumes of Donne along with his own articles on the same, and the several volumes of my grandmother’s poetry.  The reminder came this summer when my uncle’s widow gave me an old Bible. Beautifully bound and printed, it is inscribed with my great-grandfather’s name and dated 1876, it has his pencilled underlinings and annotations over his many years of reading, and best of all, on a slip of paper inside the front cover it has the poem he wrote for my great-grandmother on their wedding anniversary in 1894.

And learn how we, by God’s good guiding hand,
Redeemed at last may reach the Heavenly Land

Of course the Bible is a precious book in any form, and I have, and consult, many Bibles. I even have a handy, searchable Greek New Testament on my iPhone! But this is different . The Bible itself is like a family album telling the long tale, over many generations of how God came to His people and, in the end, came to all of us in Christ. It is also the story of our long pilgrimage from the first garden of our beginnings, through the wilderness, and at last to the City of God in which the garden itself is renewed. But this particular copy of the Bible ties the threads of my own family into that bundle of life. In the anniversary poem my great-grandfather celebrates with his wife the way in which this particular Bible had accompanied them on their pilgrimage through time as they read it together:

“The years roll on unheeded in their flight

Maybe because you help to make them bright

Dear Wife in this our earthly pilgrimage

Each day may we peruse the sacred page

And learn how we, by God’s good guiding hand,

Redeemed at last, may reach the Heavenly land.”

And my jaw dropped whenI read this because I had used just that same image of pilgrimage together, in a Wedding anniversary poem I had written for Maggie some years earlier:

‘He made us, loved us, formed us and has set

His chosen pair of lovers in an ark.

Borne upwards by his spirit, we will float

Above the rising waves, the falling dark

As fellow pilgrims, driven towards that haven,

Where all will be redeemed, fulfilled, forgiven’

The tone, the tenor, the metre, and the meaning might all have been my great-grandfather’s!

It happened that I had with me the proofs for Sounding the Seasons, which I was still working on, and I had chosen one particular verse of Scripture (Luke 10:1) as an epigraph for the whole volume, to say that I was sending out my seventy sonnets, as bearers of good news, just as Jesus sent out the seventy. I should have known that when I turned to that page in my great-grandfather’s Bible, that verse would be underlined!

So when I pick up this worn old Bible and open it, I am in touch with something, and I have something to hand on, which no easy ebook, no digitised multi-version, will ever replace. I hope that by the time my great-grandchildren are reading it there will be a few more poems tucked inside!

Remind me to tell you about my other two reminders!

Inscribed 136 years ago by one from whom I sprung