Let us sing to the Lord for he has gloriously triumphed.
Jubilate Deo, God, O how wonderful art thy works.
The twilight lake, utterly still, the sound of a stream, all disquiet silenced.
And in that clear sky, bright Venus, west rising lurks.
And this is my pang unbidden of doubt, I cannot reverse.
I see Virgo Hydra and Ursa Major, so vast, so distant.
Did a preacher, two thousand years ago create this universe?
The Milky Way lays her haze and she is the closest, millions are less insistent.
But can such order, such beauty by chance be created?
Certainly these works are gloriously wonderful.
No answer in logic or reason will I find, all conclusion is confounded.
But this I know in this mere breath of wind , a presence there is mysterious joyful.
Do all universes like needles have a point?
Was he that point.

You can navigate bustling Heathrow and have your packed beach at St Tropez.
For me nothing can compare with, past the mobile home park, yes: Mablethorpe North End.
I love the blasting sun and arid bright blue sky, you say.
Give me the vast vista of an empty beach, for the mind a soothing silence to tend.
You can have your great crashing ocean Cornwall waves.
Let me wallow, up to my waist a hundred yards out in the gentle lapping North Sea.
You can have the azure ocean, give me the grey green wavelets, the cold fit for the brave.
You can brave the crowds, it’s the lone grey seal and wildfowl terns I want to see.
And after that what bliss, warm Coca Cola, a sandy sandwich and no signal for e-mail.
The jumper on, the wind break out to shelter from that bracing east wind.
You can have your fancy beach bar cocktail.
It’s ice cream for me at the end of the day, to the kids I want to be kind.
Here I can run three miles past rolling marram grassed sand dunes and barely meet a soul.
You only have the traffic homeward bound to toil.

My granddaughter was pushing a plastic train around.
A memory surfaced my old electric train set, green suburban Southern Region to enthral.
A light on the front, what excitement, in the dark emerging from the tunnel home bound.
I read this today, God is light, there is no darkness in Him at all.
I remember playing half-penny shovel on the dining room table.
Conkers in Autumn, a champion on a string running, boyhood energy.
Mummy always home to open the door after school, tea at the kitchen table, a school label.
The priest visiting, walking to Mass at the ugly modern church, old Latin liturgy.
I bless you Father for hiding these things from the learned, revealing them to children.
Why can we not exist like we were in the present, a land of never never.
Why do we not see the past as a few memories not disappointments, why are we so driven.
Can we not the pain of past and future sever.
Come to me all ye who are weary and burdened.
Let past and future by your easy yoke be interred.

My daughter is breaking bread.
Warm, crusty, the whole cottage fills with its scent.
Sunlight is streaming in from morning East. About happiness no more can be said.
My granddaughter is playing, breakfast cooking, no fasting now for Lent.
Leaving, I climb high up upon the Wolds’ gentle camber.
I look north twenty miles towards the grey smudge of North Sea.
A glint of sunlight on some sea distant wind farm, a ship sailing as if on land on the Humber.
Strips of receding farmland, yellow rape emerging and a sharp horizon as far as I can see.
And here before me on the lane’s verge are bright blue forget-me-nots sown wild.
Then I remember these words: I am the Bread of Life.
There is no service today, no incantation, but a joy fills me like a child.
All about me is bursting green swelling new spring life.
But it was not the countryside or baking bread that gives this joy as sublime as poetry.
It was the thought of the Bread you eat after which, with His promise, you are never hungry.

Certain people came forward to debate with Stephen.
They found they could not get the better of his profound sense.
A life of Matisse was on the television. He was called a three times failure, his art alien.
He failed his parents in their business, his in laws in a court case, and his art was nonsense.
Matisse was impoverished, but, supported by his wife, he persisted.
His picture of her was laughed at even in the avant-garde Parisian salon.
Brilliant, he could have done as fashion insisted.
Yet he would rather be rejected than compromise his vision’s questioning talon.
Who now remembers the stale art of those who rejected him?
The stones thrown at Stephen have indeed become a cornerstone.
You can conform or you can be true to your truth, for the martyr, a synonym.
In that children’s game paper can defeat any stone, wrapping the toughness in gentle love.
The cut outs of Matisse were thought lacking any traditional message.
Now they are without price, such delicate immortal pieces of his courage.

From cottage-lavendered garden one looks across the narrow valley to a medieval village.
Not there, of course, just a few furrows and grassy half-discerned clumps.
Long ridges and strips buried signs of oxen pulled coulter tillage.
These slightest curves of moss, a memory of long lost dwelling in shadowed bracken bump.
But now this vale is deathly quiet, few souls inhabit.
But once seven hundred years ago this valley was plague resisting, villein people teeming.
Now just heard, a barking dog, once there were children’s voices no parent could inhibit.
What lives, stories, hunger lies below these mounds, what reeve’s cows stood creaming.
But what is this straight-lined purposefully striding eastwards ridge.
Followed, just marked by setting sun, it leads to east facing dawn, framing village church.
Like those ancient lives, ignored by modern road and passing traffic passing over the bridge.
But still in the Saxon porch I can see its track lit by the suns westward downward lurch.
Once every day they would be walking Mass bound that lane under the old oak’s lea.
Now they are only nameless ghosts whose fierce faith, in my mind’s eye, confronts me.

Sitting in the church porch, today’s Gospel slowly reading.
On a bench nearby a cyclist rests awhile.
A couple water a grave commemorating.
The tired cyclist mops his brow, eats some bread, after a ride across wold and long mile.
Their eyes were opened and they recognised Him but He had vanished from their sight.
Looking up from app, the cyclist who had been there is vanished as if he never had been.
But we had said hello. He was real, we had talked, but he has gone now, risen like a lost kite.
Something prevented them from recognising Him. Had he really been.
Would I know, would I recognise, that passing breathing cyclist again.
Would I recognise Jesus passing by. Is he gone now as if he never had been seen.
But the cyclist was here, real, now over distant hills he rides, or down some shady lane.
Can I not trust that what was real is still real? Had my sight been so little keen?
Then they told their story of what had happened on the road.
Will we also have the courage to proclaim, though we cannot see, the signs that we are told.

My granddaughter in oblivious present is making a wonderful mud bath in the garden.
Memories surface, a black wind-up gramophone in my grandfather’s study.
Sixty years ago in shady respectable Horsham, an old Victorian house, lunch is done.
Lying on the floor listening to Flanders & Swann song about something muddy.
The girl chatters, her spade busy, something comes back unbidden from this garden mud.
“Mud, mud glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood, so follow me follow,
Down to the hollow and there shall we wallow in glorious mud.”
Suddenly, for the first time in years this buried past , my mind allow me to follow.
Always in jacket and tie, black hat, the old man, Big Da, no older than I am now.
His fishing tackle, Great War MC in the case, golf clubs and handicap of just four.
His sherry before Sunday lunch, outside the wisteria gives his wit a bow.
A film show memory of me on the toy tractor in the garden, and falling off happy and sore.
Walking home from Sunday church, ancient Robinson Crusoe prints on the kitchen wall.
One day will she of this recall, but for me brief echoes of faintly sepia happy memories call.

Go out to the whole world, proclaim the good news to all creation.
Will we do so.
Is it not so much the belief but the courage to take one step beyond meditation.
Will his spirit then on us blow?
But what are the signs that will be associated with our belief?
We will not be able to pick up snakes with our hands.
We will not have the gift of tongues to root out grief.
We will not be able to lay hands on the sick to reverse time’s sands.
My faith is too weak.
My belief so questioning.
But perhaps my tongue may soften, wandering up some time’s creek.
I may be able to cure the sickness in my soul diminishing.
I fear no action of mine will lead to others being recovered.
But in some minute way my own sickness may be smothered.

Where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?
He only said this to test them.
We lie awake worrying where we will find metaphorical bread, our life’s meat.
But should we not have more confidence in Him.
It’s strange how so much can come from the most delicate films of lace.
Just as five barley loaves and two fish could feed so many.
What great worry or disappointment cannot break against the smallest of rocks with grace?
And were the cakes not brought by a small insignificant boy, one out of so many?
Do we follow him by the signs He gave?
When thirst and hunger come do we doubt?
Do we wail, where can we feed our thousand doubting thoughts to which we slave?
But He knows exactly what he is going to do to send our doubts to bloody rout.
If only we can believe, indeed hamper full of scraps will be left over.
We just need in that great dark forest of doubt to find his one small fragment of loving clover.

Note: These sonnets are inspired by the readings of the day. For me it is a sort of lectio divina: To read the Gospel and think what it means. Putting these thoughts into poetry, however inadequate, forces one to slow down, rest, and consider the sense, rather than quickly reading and getting on with the day. Using the Sonnet formulation is a kind of discipline and slows down the writing even more! I hope they may help a few others on their journey. — EL

I opened the egg but really I thought, it needed some salt and vodka.
That taste, immediately memories of Russian Easters past flooded in.
Zakuski, herrings, black bread, coloured eggs, pickles, perhaps not as far as a balalaika.
The party after Midnight Mass, after that long fast now permitted with rich food to sin.
And that long service. The oh-too-long standing.
The total invasion of the senses, incense, chanting, vision.
Astounded, it leads the soul to a mystical flame, Christ risen, remembering.
Khristos voskres. He is risen indeed to proclaim is our mission.
And then at midnight the solemn procession,
Three times the church circling.
Every action unchanging in one thousand years. This is the lesson.
He is risen, rising.
But it is gone one thirty.
The party awaits and I am thirsty.

St George’s Day — Thursday, Second Week of Easter

Have you ever understood why they attack you?
Remember if they persecuted me, they will persecute you too.
Remember if one stands against or even outside the world’s interests, they will come for you.
St George, a life clouded in mystery, only this we know. They martyred him too.
Does he watch over England in her lonely history offshore?
Sometimes you are hated but it hated him before.
If you walk through another country your vision may soar.
This is your fate if from the world’s ambitions you withdraw.
We know a servant is not greater than his master.
If they persecuted him, they will do the same to us.
But like St George we know it will be on his account. Like him we pray our enemies will scatter.
They do not know who sent him but they can only see us.
So we are the witnesses, no one else.
We must keep this in our minds. Our constant life’s pulse.

And indeed everybody who does wrong hates the light,
And avoids it for fear his actions should be exposed.
This Easter April sun out of deep velvet sky is terrifyingly, searchingly bright.
I can barely read or write outside. It searches me, only on shade is my soul reposed.
Does desired retreat from light expose, is inner sight denied, a soul in distress.
But we seek it with all our hearts.
Usually it lives behind a grey unforgiving English sky, our island’s mistress.
Its fitful rays forgotten in busy day, through clouds of care it barely darts.
But can I not remember, what did he say. I forget it to my cost.
God so loved the world that He gave his only son.
So that everyone who believes may not be lost.
I suppose all I can do is say in fitful hope. Thy will be done.
So easy to utter in brief quiet meditation.
So difficult to do in life’s busy commandeering commotion.

The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear the sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
This is how it it is with all who are born of the Holy Spirit. Into their hearts It eases.
But into our soul, is this message like our spring grass seed, gently sowing.
In shady gladed area I have lain this seed. It lies buried waiting for gentle rain.
The rain will come. The grass green, luxuriant will grow multiplying one hundred times over.
Yes my feeble faith lies buried, hopeful, waiting to wipe away future death’s stain.
And this wind, never ceasing, brushing my cheek, caressing like a spiritual lover.
I cannot tell from whence it comes, but into my heart steals a presence.
It did not come from storm tossed Atlantic or North Sea. It came from within, a breath of life.
An atheist within tells me poppycock. All self-delusion. Have some sense.
But it can’t be resisted. Not physically real it cannot be cut by any reasoning knife.
But if a nagging doubt remains in some undefined deep mind’s cove.
Where does this presence come, if not from Holy Spirit above.

The sky bright. East wind strong. I rested under the boughs, the old maple barely growing.
How long had it been here? One hundred years.
Yet long before its seeding, the priory had dissolved into green grass under cattle lowing.
It was swept away in 1539 — a long, slow, forgetting 485 years.
Now the only trace, gentle green mounds in marshy boot clogging sward.
Yet in that nearby abandoned stone barn is that not a round topped doorway long bricked in?
A remnant perhaps of that long vanished priory, with the past a slender connecting cord.
Did religious once walk through it? Only ghosts now pass in.
Once all was busy. Premonstatensian bells summoning.
Now by me a flock of sheep in contented ignorance stand idly by.
There is no echo here of ancient chanting.
No rebuke they make to prayers dissolved with no hope to belie.
And I will wander on, thoughts astray.
Will others passing by give thought to quiet prayer long taken away?

Quare Fremueunt Gentes.
Why this tumult among nations?
This useless murmuring among peoples?
Why these futile plots, why this arrogance among the nations?
But as they were praying, the house where the disciples were was rocked.
I hear only a wind through the rafters sighing.
A sparrow flies across the porch on it’s way by the church tightly locked.
They were filled with the Holy Spirit. Is He here in this wind with the passing tractor vying?
They went out to proclaim the word of God so boldly.
I just sit and feel a presence.
Are our actions mere words, our deeds carried out so coldly?
Thoughts flying from His essence?
The moment passes. It always does. No permanence it contains.
But a tiny sliver of belief, hope and love remains.

I was not there when You came.
I did not choose to hear You say, “Peace be with you.”
I did not hear Him when He called be by my name.
I did not listen to my sins being forgiven and life made anew.
I will not though yet say: Unless I see the holes the nails made, You will not believe.
I will ponder this quietly, praying, waiting.
Will I have to wait eight or eighty years until this burden of doubt is relieved?
Will I still doubt as I lie dying?
Happy we would be if only we could believe and yet not have seen.
Yet we, all of us, if only we let go and trust, can believe.
What joy there is in surrender to Him though unseen.
To my Lord and my God then can I say and receive.
There are indeed many other insights not recorded in any book.
Yet if just we pause and listen. He is here now. You truly do not have far to look.

My heart is heavy that these Easter days are ending.
These all too few days tell of a joy unended.
The witnesses with Mary first, the hopeful message sending.
But they did not believe her. Do I, my every suspicion suspended?
They doubted too, the men on the road. Do I?
And then He stood before them and still they stood dumbfounded.
I too, like them, stand reproached for my incredulity and obstinacy, believing any doubting lie.
This table now, this pen, this chair say I am here, your doubt confounded.
And do I heed His words, “Go out”.
“Proclaim this good news to all creation.”
Do we creep about, our word in shy whisper or in confident shout.
That this news cannot be hidden. It stands in glorious citation.
But I sit alone in my gentle garden. Drop of rain, birds calling. Wind sighing.
And with muted thought, a quiet disciple, merely thinking.

The blue lake was simmering in hot spring sun.
A blue so deep as to be almost black.
Yes, the sun shining was a bright whiteness blinding me to sight of His Son.
Once, long ago, some fishermen too were sun-blinded to their lack.
Yet He called and one said: It is the Lord.
And does He call to me from the lake’s blinding light?
Or is it in this gentle shallow stream bubbling gently over stones lit by light’s diffused sword?
From lake’s rim it flows without ceasing to the distant breaking sea day and night.
And does that Figure on the bank lay out a net for my soul to be redeemed.
Would I even leap off the shifting craft of my life to His voice?
For surely then a glorious meal awaits. It lives in this Bread sanctified.
Would I have the courage to say: It is the Lord. We all of us His born choice.
If only we would have that faith, never in our life before or since would there be such a catch.
And open the clasp and the way to eternal life’s latch.

They stood there dumbfounded.
These Easter readings are indeed the most intense.
If these are true then the whole world is changed for ever and all doubt confounded.
These too-few Resurrection readings, so joyous pervade our every sense.
They saw His hands, His feet, yet still they stood there doubting.
And I too, in this country garden, can say yes there is the beauty of the hyacinth, yet I see it.
All their doubts were dismissed by the grilled fish He was eating.
Surely we can believe, accept not in mental carping and keep the feeble flame of faith lit.
He opened their eyes to understand scripture.
And I am reading this Gospel story now too.
They were witnesses to this. They were there. I can only conceive in mental picture.
But can it not be real for us too
Jesus himself stood among them.
And He is saying to us too. Peace be with you. Amen.

But something prevented them from recognising Him.
And I too. Do I look around me? Do I search for the truth?
I am walking with my granddaughter to the village churchyard’s rim.
Do I recognise Him in the tall beach trees on the village road? Our cathedral in spring youth.
Do I find Him in the scattering bracken sward? In the joyful daisy and dandelion.
Do I see Him in the chalk stream’s light shining shallow flow?
But He is here all around and in the little girl’s shadow grown by bright sun as large as any lion.
Do I listen to Him in my head and in girl’s skipping so slow?
Do I ask Him to abide with me?
I cannot break bread with Him now but I can inspiration find in this green leafed tree.
Can this grandfather’s age care dimmed eyes at last see?
He is here everywhere. In small girl’s chatter. In nature’s new life, in distant sea.
Does not my heart now burn within me in his talk.
Is He not also with me on this slow country walk.

She did not recognise Him.
And I too ofttimes can barely recognise Him.
My faith is like the forsythia before me, a memory of its bright yellow glory ever more slim.
But my hope rises like a distant hymn.
No, He is not just the gardener. He is here in this spring garden.
He is here in the brightening yellow purple of the primrose oxlip.
He is here in the lawn, it’s life surging, strewn with the daisy’s white and yellow pardon.
He does not say “Noli me Tangere” but gently gives me leave to bring the flowers to my lip.
And surging life too for the mauve of birds eye speedwell. How then can I weep at His loss.
He calls be by my name and then I know.
And do I then have the courage to say he has risen from his cross.
And do I then have the courage like these wild plants, so inconsequential, the courage to sow.
Like Mary will I run to tell my friends of his word.
An leave awhile in minds eye this spring garden to write of new life undeterred.

Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb.
They ran to tell the disciples.
And on this Easter Monday I would be in the flowered cathedral, a delightful calming womb.
Now the churches are locked by lay scruples.
I stand alone on the path, wild forget-me-nots and dandelion the only congregation.
The hawthorn hedge the church’s aisle.
The reading not from sonorous pulpit given. I am in isolation.
But from the Universalis app I can only ponder awhile.
No lack of Mass can take this story’s wonder away.
For I read and this I know that there, coming towards the women, was Jesus.
I cannot fall down. I cannot clasp His feet but, in my heart I can Him lay.
And I too can know the joy of finding Him alive and this joy will surely seize us.
And on this country path I too am never alone.
He walks before me for my sins to atone.

He saw and he believed.
The Sun dappled transient on the wooden cross.
And for this moment when I surveyed this cross the gift of faith , I received.
The linen clothes so negligently laid are a sign of our doubts loss.
All those hints , prophesies, words so negligently forgot.
This simple cross , it’s plain wood more glorious than any gold.
I see now my belief so small , so fleeting , so hard to grasp was my lot.
Is our faith then to worldly cares sold,
No, He is not here. He is risen.
And joy in my faint heart rises.
Like Mary we can only run to tell others of this vision.
The morning star that never sets. He really is here . Our burdens he reposes.
He bore for us the cross without complaint.
And he can make of all us if we wish, an apprentice saint.

The church was locked and I sat on the churchyard bench thinking.
The village sounding distant, lawn mower, and bank digging.
The sheep at a distance barely moving, new life in the white blossom growing.
The old Walesby warm honey glowed stone church for a thousand years not stirring.
But here before me the gravestones were breathless quiet.
And where on Holy Saturday is God?
Do I believe He is dead or just asleep, this is my disquiet.
These village people before me, their eternal rest never ended under earth’s unforgiving sod.
O let me, I beg in this quiet spot come into his presence.
And now at last in stillness I feel his touch.
So tentative, so fleeting but devoid of life’s menace.
The church is locked but he is here with me on this bench, a holy hutch.
I move, I stand, I walk gently closing the gate.
He is gone and for my breakfast and the World’s calling, I am late.