Save us Lord, we are going down.
Why are you so frightened you men of little faith?
Can we not treat each moment as a new dawn?
Its rays a gossamer hope filled wraith.

Why fret over an unknown future?
Why regret a too well-known past?
Worrying will not change mere conjecture.
Shame will not alter what is passed.

The storm itself will decide whether to abate.
And the wind of its own accord buffet us more or forbear.
Our worry of itself will not it sate.
Perhaps our saviour is asleep and will not hear.

But if we see ourselves at the tranquil centre of the wind.
We can in just this moment our worries hope to rescind.

Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have a nest
But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.
All man struggles for is rest.
But suffering weighs him down like lead.

Would that he was like the fox,
Content with his solitary hole.
With no regrets for the past, nor shipwrecked on destiny’s rocks.
No fear for the future or our life’s role.

But that is not our destiny.
Ours is to worry and plan.
In hope of some lasting legacy.
Would they have them say from fate we ran.

And when all ends in disappointment.
We can take comfort that one man once gave all for our atonement.

High on the Lincolnshire Wold all is quiet and you are alone.
Great views of twenty miles, then suddenly out of silence, you hear the Skylark.
The song is insistent high in ringing tone.
The happy chirruping sound determined to make its mark.

To you have I lifted up my eyes.
You who dwell in the heavens.
See the skylark, in hidden cornfields he lies.
You cannot see him, only his voice beckons.

Then you return in wooded valley descent.
Here is all friendly cacophony.
The blackbird, chaffinch, song thrush, robin and pheasant.
All around movement, flight, song, and harmony.

But I remember the Skylark, rarer now, on the high wold.
His timid song heard not seen, of hidden memories untold.

Peter was sleeping fastened with double chains.
And the chains fell from his hands.
I was watching a live-streamed mass down the slow internet lines.
The hopeless rural broadband fell into ether’s sands.

I caught snatches about being locked in prison.
Then the internet, exhausted, cut out.
We ourselves always hear intermittently with blurred vision.
We do not listen we shout.

We are caught in the prison of our own doubt.
The signal weak.
But sometimes from small snatches fear can be put to rout.
We can concentrate on just one sentence and still seek.

Then chains might fall.
A distant quiet yet unwavering signal will call.

Sir, I am not worthy to have You under my roof.
Just give the word and my servant will be cured.
Give me strength, Lord, not to stand aloof.
Let my faith be safely moored.

When He says Go do we Go?
When Ge says Come do we Come?
We can His will gently to sow.
Every small amount towards a greater sum.

We are like those from East and West
To take our place at his feast.
We in our endeavours need some rest.
We can not always maintain our zest.

But if we have believed.
Like the servant we will be cured.

I caught Sergei Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil.
The plaintive tones of the Ave Maria.
Time was now utterly still.
A deep sense of joy, wisdom and sophia.

It was by chance I heard it.
The daily grinding news turned off.
Now joy was here, a candle lit.
Calm, peace, no more to hear people scoff.

A glorious adornment of the Russian Orthodox Church
Is it the stunning polyphony.
A vespers for every hearts stilling, fulfilling my search.
Or a spiritual harmony.

But it is something far more simple yet exalted.
For one brief moment, an ascent to heaven and time halted.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else
He told a parable.
The Pharisee told himself he was not like the others in all their mess.
Evildoers and the tax collector nearby, his prayer all too audible.

How often do we criticise others’ fault?
They have broken this rule or that.
But have we obeyed every rule to our default?
Are we so perfect or sometimes, well, just a brat?

Of course it tickles our fancy.
For a scalp to be taken, we say they didn’t do as they say.
They got what they deserved, they were ever so cheeky.
We would never do that we bray.

But what did that tax collector say.
Have mercy on me a sinner, is that not enough for our guilt to lay.

If you want to You can cure me.
Of course I want to be cured.
Can we not this for ourselves see?
If into His gentle grasp we allow ourselves to be lured.

Health is a fragile time doomed thing.
So much depends on our will.
Of His touch we should sing.
But life is but a raging surging mill.

Can He take our sickness away.
And carry our diseases for us.
But only if at His feet our cares we lay.
And accept His will without canting fuss.

We must know that all our efforts will end in failure.
If we set store with success in life not count on His favour.

I found it on the corner of the cottage.
Embedded in the warm ironstone, a fossil.
It must date from the Cretaceous age.
At least 65 million years old, time’s apostle.

The cottage has seen so much in two hundred years.
But that span is but a passing teardrop.
What is the importance of our tears?
In the context of those 65 million years since the fossil swam nonstop.

For once it swam past some tropical sea’s strand.
With passing dinosaurs on the beach.
Now in a peaceful country garden it stands in mortal land.
A sentinel to life’s short span us to teach.

Can we not now understand now our body’s fate in death.
One day to be embedded in some unseeing stone, a million years without breath.

It is not those who say to me ‘Lord, Lord’
Who will enter the kingdom of Heaven.
It is not rules that should be the binding lord.
It is what we do that will get us to Heaven.

It is what we do that matters.
We can believe anything less or more.
Our practice may be exemplary or in tatters.
Church going may be a chore.

Do not obsess about the existence of God.
Worry about your mind.
It is the mind that needs a new nativity.
That is the bind.

Meditate for a few moments consciously.
God may appear spontaneously.

The Lord called me before I was born.
He hid me in the shadow of His hand.
I think today of the little ones from the womb torn.
The sign was given to Zechariah when John was no more than a grain of sand.

What will the child turn out to be they wondered.
Indeed the hand of the Lord was with him.
Should we then not morn the child sundered?
Precious is even the tiniest limb.

Was not John the greatest prophet?
Yet his father did not believe.
Every little thing counts to our profit.
Everything to his mercy we should leave.

Every child will wondrously grow up.
At the Lord’s feast to sup.

Last night my dream was clear.
I saw up close a long-lost friend.
It was as if he was here.
The face, voice, dear deceased memories to tend.
Sometimes my father, mother, and brother long lost return in a dream.
Why is it only in dreams can I see them focused as in life, though now in afterlife?
Is it some deep subconscious stimulus that ensures how real they seem?
Or are they really here freed from mortal strife?
Awake now these lost ones dream-like appear.
I cannot paint them even if I had the skill.
But now in my dream my friend really is walking beside me, only to disappear.
He takes another road and is lost, I know not what until.
Do the dead walk only in dreams of the mind.
Or are they calling us from another country, for one brief real moment to us vined.

Enter by the narrow gate.
It is a hard road that leads to life.
I will always be disobediently late
To the sweet call of your summoning fife.
The road to perdition is wide.
And how easy it is to take it.
How difficult it is to decide.
My selfish will rises like a storm-tossed kite.
But it is true that few always follow that narrow road.
Surely I can forgive myself if I wander.
Fate is a river fast flowed.
And life flows not straight but in directionless meander.
So I just hope to start on the narrow way.
I make no promise I can my selfish will aside lay.

Love in most men will grow cold.
But the man who stands firm in the end will be saved.
Will our soul be cheaply sold.
Or honesty be craved.
Unlike Eleazar we need never to go to the block.
For all our cherished even idiosyncratic belief.
But in a hundred small ways we can lock.
Principle into etched relief.
Conscience is a multi faceted thing.
There is no clear path.
But you always know who is king.
If you avoid its nagging questioning wrath.
We are then not called by our conscience to die.
But not to our conscience lie.

Do not be afraid.
For everything that is now covered will be uncovered.
Our worries in His care will be laid.
Or true path will be recovered.
We on earth who have little value.
By His love will be greatly valued.
If we just read his Apostle Matthew,
And realise life’s success is hugely overvalued.
For if there is no God and no success,
Then what are we worth?
But if we are all seen and understood in any mess.
There is then always a safe if hidden berth.
But what we hear even if spiritually lame,
We should surely with courage proclaim.

Did you not know that I must be busy about my father’s affairs?
But they did not understand what he meant.
Are we trapped in the beguiling lairs of life’s cares?
We will not understand til these shackles are rent.
He then went down with them and came to Nazareth.
And lived under their authority.
But we circle endlessly in own ego’s labyrinth.
Never attaining our own spiritual majority.
Can we not let our children go?
Their business may not be ours.
They have their own field to in time to mow.
Their will always in the end empowers.
And we must keep this quietly in our heart.
Watching and waiting for their work to start.

I bless you Father for hiding these things from the clever.
And revealing them to mere children.
Is this not our hope simplicity and endeavour?
Trusting openness as a pilgrim can be a given.
We must try to pass on our burden.
Ask him to take the crushing weight.
His care is certain.
His demands are light.
But we must believe in the Son.
That His Father is tender
That we are like a grandson.
And His love will never falter.
Endless burdens will cease.
Our life given a new lease.

Our God who is everywhere.
Let me constantly ponder You.
Warm my heart with Your soothing tear.
Let me follow You.
Here, now, and wherever you are.
Let us have just enough to live.
Understand our faults and care.
As we should understand others and always give.
Let us not put fault into fault.
But deliver us from our wrongdoing.
For you are the Universe’s highest vault.
The control overarching.
And selfless fame.
For all time.

Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men.
By doing you will lose all reward.
So should we now lay down our pen.
Forswear all witness. Never say ‘Lord, Lord’.

Shall we accept a value free society?
Accept the liberal way?
Cut out all hypocritical propriety?
Want means it may.

Are the unwanted, unborn to die?
The cheated woman divorced?
Are all values just a lie?
Should we never against our inclination be forced?

Or is there a gentler truth and to say it is no lying?
That though we keep falling, we must keep trying.

To Ahab He said I will sweep away your descendants.
And wipe out every male.
No family can stay ascendant.
Our fortunes are all ultimately for sale.

He tells us to pray for those who persecute us.
And this way we will be His true son.
But in our hearts there is discordant fuss.
Which shades us from his too blinding sun.

The truth is that we love our family.
We are sadly indifferent to a distant neighbour.
We achieve so little on life’s love’s tally.
Universal love is such a plodding chore.

He tells us we can be perfect.
But in the end we will only be judged as defect.

Jezebel had Naboth killed.
Only because she and Ahab coveted his vineyard.
All mercy was stilled.
All fair dealing barred.

False accusation made.
Scoundrels brought forward.
Greed swayed.
Death ordered.

So should it be an eye for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
Fight any lie.
Establish the truth.

But he says if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other one as well.
Do we really have the courage this injunction to tell?

He feeds you with finest wheat
And swiftly runs His command.
I walk half blinded towards His seat.
I cannot always obey His command.

But as water gently feeds a plant
And plants unwittingly feed an animal,
So His love steals into my soul like a half heard chant.
No one step is ever radical.

I may take the communion wafer for the thousandth time.
Is it mere bread or a holy manna?
A riddle in a hidden rhyme.
A communion truth lost in a spiritual savannah.

Reaching into an unfathomable distance.
Of life redeemed and given the most profound substance.

St Anthony of Padua, 13 June

For you will not let your beloved know decay.
I used to walk past a prime beech strong and tall.
Now I found it down, dying as it lay.
It’s private roots, hidden for generations, exposed to view, wrenched from life’s maul.

For centuries she has stood shading this ancient footway.
Countless blackbirds have there rested.
No man, no time could wish her away.
Yet this one Summer storm and she is bested.

Our life compared to hers is so short.
Can we not then cherish life but accept death.
Do we vain pleasures court.
And not see life as fleeting breath.

But from my beech’s rotting bark new life will grow.
And from our own corruption the key will be found, a soul will grow.

But the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind came an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
His touch I could not find.
His answer lay deep in a bottomless lake.

After the earthquake came a fire but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came the sound of a gentle breeze.
With no effect I pray until I tire.
Until like the touch of a gentle breeze there is a moment to seize.

He will not come in great force.
He will not come with strong demanding.
He comes almost as a matter of course.
Suddenly unbidden he is answering.

His answer is quiet, fleeting.
And then I am left alone to carry on my seeking.

It is the feast of St Barnabas.
I think of our local hospice.
We can go without fuss.
What really will we miss.

Cherish life.
Accept death.
Sooner or later it will be cut as with a knife.
One moment here then our last breath.

But the hospice holds us in love.
Not delaying our passage.
Releasing us like a dove.
Leaving behind hope’s message.

Do not speed me on my way.
Do not hold me back from my true fate for one day.