“In a Resplendent Cloud the Holy Spirit appeared.”

DON’T WORRY

It’s not what you believe or what you do that will get you to Heaven’s gate.
It’s whether you try that will open up Heaven on Earth.
There’s no set of rules that have to be obeyed that will for this appointment make you late.
You can indulge yourself in sadness or mirth.

You don’t have to have a view of what comes next to reach the Sun.
We cannot know how many lives I have had or just this one.
This is not a race to be run.
We just have to hope and the crown will be won.

So do not be disheartened, just continue to seek.
What you are is just fine.
You are utterly unique.
To you one day will be given a wondrous sign.

Read, meditate, dance or pray.
Live this life and enjoy.

Now the slow lorries trundle north.
Impatient the drivers curse silently behind.
There is a distinct lack of mirth.
As the line of sight vanishes into a dip, I can’t overtake, what a bind.

But slow down awhile and look at the great skies.
The huge views in this vast undulating Lincolnshire landscape.
A land of distant copses, pylons and gentle rises.
Far flung villages in tree shaded guise.

And think of this dreary asphalt as the stone clad Ermine Way.
A Roman legionnaire, plodding forwards.
Fully laden at thirty miles a day.
His work on the Northern frontier of empire taken onwards.

And then a mighty bend around a runway goes the road.
To take Cold War Vulcans, bearing an altogether heavier and deadlier load.

Memories of the church in the Jubilee year I had visited.
The Roman summer’s suffocating heat.
But duty done, the Holy doors of all four great basilicas entered.
Grateful for the cool after the hot street.

It was August, We did not know of its name as Our Lady of the Snows.
During the Consulate of Liberus on the 5th August snow fell.
The wish of the Roman patrician John for an heir granted , we suppose.
Whether the legend is true or false we cannot tell.

But we remember those words, you have great faith.
Let your wish be granted.
We all search for one thing that escapes like a wraith.
Let’s just rejoice that John’s wish was obtained.

But we pilgrims and tourists just wander, gawp, and gawk.
Another piece of Roman architecture done and we carry on our walk.

Despised as a scholar with no promise.
Rejected at first as a priest.
Accepted not for knowledge but devoutness.
He refused from his vocation to desist.

Your priest, O Lord, shall be clothed with justice.
Your holy ones shall ring out their joy.
In the obscure village of Ars en Dombes, he was just as us.
They were slow at first to trust this poor boy.

Such was his poverty, his honesty as a preacher and orator.
He would spend eighteen hours a day in the confessional.
He refused any promotion or any honour.
His ability to understand people’s fears and regrets was exceptional.

He tells us that careers’ achievements can end in tatters.
It is what we are not what we do that matters.

But as soon as he felt the force of the wind, he took fright and began to sink.
Men of little faith, why did you doubt?
What between them and me is the link?
I will not let my doubts be rooted out.

If my faith was just as heavy as a feather,
I would float on a Galilee sea of calm.
But my faith is like a sinking stone and not strong like leather.
I reason, I doubt, I sink out of God’s realm.

None of us will ever walk on water.
We have not the courage or even sense to try.
We are held in doubt as by a reasoning halter.
About this we cannot lie.

But this man Peter too who sank
One day the rock became one of faith’s highest rank.

Oh come to the water all you who are thirsty.
Why spend money on what is not bread?
I was thinking in the early stages of meditation asking for mercy.
The first is to overcome habitual fears, the second to ignore the ego into which we are bred.

We met the walkers on the lonely path today.
They loomed large, chatting in clear good shape.
And now on our return by a different way they were far far away.
Tiny dots in the huge wheat in stubble landscape.

The bread we seek is such a small quantity.
Not enough to satisfy the hunger for life
But by his power, its power grows in constancy.
Till it satisfies all craving and strife.

And even the scraps left over.
Would satisfy even the most ardent life’s lover.

A gentle man of great learning.
He wore it lightly.
Composer of the carol Tu Scendi Della Stella, still singing.
Living with the poor of Naples daily.

But above all a lover of beauty.
Musician, poet, author, and painter.
Master of interior life but not as mere duty.
Taking the Gospel to the poor, Redemptorist founder.

Opposed to sterile legalism and rigour.
Said such rigour should never have been practised in the Church.
Can we not also welcome all to communion’s succour.
Can we not put more stress on mercy, less on rules as we search.

Let us put humanity and the person first.
And rejection because of lifestyle last.