I saw the star all alone.
Peeping out far above my London yard.
The Milky Way barely seen yet known.
Light pollution hidden as by shadow scarred.

I think of my loved Lincolnshire country garden.
Its great night light’s array.
The soul taken aloft upwards and given pardon.
The spirit into beauty carried away.

Your praise Oh God reaches the end of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with saving light
But here in town the lights of Your universe cannot shine forth.
Our manifold cares cloak our sight.

It is inwards therefore that we seek.
With a will that is questioning but necessarily meek.

First Public Mass after Lockdown

Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened.
For I am gentle and humble of heart.
My first public mass in three months locked in and abandoned.
The sermon is on the rules on social distancing, a tedious chart.

Shoulder my yoke.
And you will find rest.
What we yearn for is a spiritual soak.
Not Government guidelines burying the zest.

So I return to scripture.
Plain unadorned.
Always the victor.
Even if scorned.

Let me receive like a child.
For indeed your yoke is mild.

Nor do people put new wine into old wine skins.
If they do so the skins burst.
Can we ever move on from our own impatient sins?
But for patience we can still thirst.

No one puts a piece of un-shrunken cloth onto an old cloak.
Because the tear gets worse.
I did not mend that sail’s tear, rent by wind now we will soak.
In frustration we are too keen to curse.

Perhaps we should not have worried about the lines into the wind cast.
We should accept both East and West winds and fate.
Nothing on this restless sea will last.
Disaster will always sate.

Peace from life’s storms we can have.
Living for this moment is the gentle salve.

Unless I can put my hand into His side.
I refuse to believe.
Our own belief flows in and out, restless as the tide.
Indeed we cannot be its constant reeve.

We have to make our decisions for ourselves.
We will never willingly trust someone else’s word.
It is no stain on the mind’s complex realms.
It is human nature, we should never just go with the herd.

We demand the evidence of our eyes.
We will not accept the evidence of another.
Doubts will always rise.
Even when we are assured by a brother.

But worthy indeed it is indeed not to have seen.
But in faith’s holy womb been.

They say the happiest day of your life is when you buy a boat.
The next happiest, expense relieved when you sell it.
But what careless dream to be afloat.
Those surging restless waves sparkling sun lit.

Out there beyond Spithead you are alone.
No crowds, regulations or e-mail questioning.
No more the rasping engine drone.
The white sails wind’s gently drawing.

But better than sailing is the happy return.
The buoy caught, the sails down, hard labour finished.
Now to that cup of tea I can turn.
Kettle humming, hot and thirst quenched.

The muscles relaxed, skin aglow, tired.
Is that why some people want to be retired.

As long as we were in the world our eyes were peering.
Into the depth and we led our lives in the mud.
So St Jerome on Psalm 41 was writing.
I will go up to your glorious dwelling place, his only desire to laud.

Like the deer that yearns for springs of water.
So my soul is yearning for you my God.
Jerome’s commentary could not falter.
He raised the word out of buried sod.

His translation of the Bible into Latin.
Is peerless and used still today.
It is sung at laud and matin.
It’s cadences will never let us from truth to stray.

His Latin leads us to the spiritual life.
And he leads us from life’s strife.

He lies quiet there now.
High in the chantry in his small box at Downside.
Dismembered in life, little memory does now he sow.
His body here in the Abbey, his head at Drogheda because one Oates lied.

This gentle man stranger to ambition and to sin.
Crushed in politic’s greedy claw.
A pastor only, yet his a martyr’s crown to win.
His body cut by unforgiving rope and cruel saw.

He could with scholarly teaching have stayed in Rome.
In the quiet garden at Propaganda Fide College.
His head buried in a holy tome.
Only concerned with imparting scripture’s knowledge.

But to Ireland and death his duty called.
And we with our timid faith, at his death just stand and applaud.

And the one who received the seed in rich soil.
Will yield an abundant harvest.
St Charbel yielded his life to toil.
For decades he prayed without rest.

But his was a life of solitude.
Refusing any touch of money.
No ambition did thus intrude.
Loneliness the sweetest honey .

He imitated the desert father.
We do the opposite.
Ours is a life of the world so we may prosper.
But cannot we ponder a grain of desert sand to him imitate.

And thus we carry on.
Barely thinking of a lonely life begone.

St Peter tells us you will have to do your utmost yourselves.
Adding goodness to the faith that you have.
This is an injunction easy to read, but for ourselves?
Difficult to achieve even with love.

He wants us to add understanding to goodness.
Self control to understanding.
A difficult path in the midst of every day darkness.
All our efforts notwithstanding.

And he says add patience to your self control.
True devotion to your patience,
But patience above all takes its toil.
Especially given our nagging impatience.

And we are told to add kindness to your fellow men.
And to this kindness love, despite failing we can only try again and again.