I tell you you will not get out.
Till you have paid the very last penny.
I know now I will be paid for my doubt.
But I ask about the pennies, how many.

The future worries us.
We will all end up in purgatory.
I will try not to make a fuss.
But in my dream I saw myself trudging through an endless quarry.

I saw the priest far ahead in the queue.
His shoulders sloped as he was trudging.
We were both in the same stew.
We both received the same purgatorial mugging.

I can console myself and this I note.
We will most of us be in the same boat.

Glory be to him whose power working in us.
Can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
It has always been thus.
Its power so gentle if we meet it, it will just happen.

I once saw an old man clothed in white.
His speech so slurred I could hardly hear him.
But here in Lourdes his dignity was in plain sight.
To courage his conduct a hymn.

When I am old will I fight to the end.
Against infirmity will I surrender the battle.
Pride will I finally suspend.
Or will I continue to wave my little ego‘s rattle.

Yet once I saw this old man, his body wrecked.
His life force but not his spirit almost checked.

If the householder had known at what hour the burglar would come.
He would not let let anyone break through the wall of his house.
We all rely too much on comfort’s crumb.
Our faith is as timid as any harvest mouse.

In my dream I climbed a never ending staircase.
Below me, sun dappled, a beautiful port lay spread out.
I sought the viewing tower and grace.
Then others queue barged and put my dreams to rout.

With these people I was angry.
And I was rude.
I stared at them blankly.
Perhaps I should have spared a thought for the Holy Rood.

But I was too obsessed with some passing slight.
To look upon the glorious view and see the light.

See that you are dressed for action.
And have your lamps lit.
In our hearts we all fear rejection.
We almost wonder if we will make it.

Keep the door unlocked.
He may come anytime.
Are we always ready, the cupboard well stocked.
Or are we in this game part time.

I dreamt I was reading the Gospel.
I stumbled and stuttered the writing come and went.
Nothing was simple.
Disgusted out they all went and I left the tent.

But when I finally succeed or fail.
There I know will be the one to tell the tale.

It is by grace that you have been saved.
Through faith not by any gift of your own.
It’s not just about how we behaved.
If we attempt belief our chances are never blown.

Christianity should be a happy creed.
It should be based on positive thinking.
It should plant in our mind’s the happiness seed.
Our hopes should be rising not sinking.

But we do not need to worry about eternal life.
Or whether we have enough faith to have confidence in it.
We can view it as a path now to the end of strife.
It’s to the here and now in this life that we can commit.

We may or may not end up in paradise.
But in the present we can rely on love, we don’t need to roll the dice.

Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
And to God what belongs to God.
Now we give all to the state, the new Kaiser.
To God we give a passing nod.

The state is all enveloping.
Under its shade freedom withers.
Where will all this end, there is no telling.
But one thing is certain, everything it tethers.

We are the nation that forgot God.
Or are we the nation that God forgot.
Does he lie under the all forgetting indifferent sod.
With most religion put to naught.

But somewhere there is a small flame.
If only two or three are gathered together, indifference we can tame.

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands.
The moon and stars which you arranged, what is man that you should keep him in mind.
You alone stand outside time’s shifting sands.
You alone stand outside man’s remorseless daily grind.

My argument with belief has been, how could the maker of the Universe stooped to us.
But the psalmist was amazed too, but believed that he cared for mortal man.
Thus he did not doubt only discuss.
What right have I to doubt, am I just not one man.

So should I like the psalmist.
Agree he has made mortal man little less than a god.
Through a heavy questioning mist.
I join reluctantly faith’s squad.

Others before have looked to the night sky and wondered.
But still my restless will remains un-surrendered.

ST RICHARD GWYN

Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in daylight.
And what you have whispered in hidden places will be proclaimed on the housetop.
So few of us dare to proclaim views or our religion in plain sight.
We are ready to give to changing fashion any sop.

St Richard Gwynn, layman, father of six, married he met the storm.
He refused to compromise, his loyalty to Queen as Queen not Head of Church rejected.
Offered freedom again and again if he would merely conform.
Tortured, imprisoned, bullied and finally executed.

One word is all it would have taken.
Even this he was not prepared to do.
His wife supported and comforted him to the end, he was surely not forsaken.
A patriot and a man of principle through and through.

I don’t even have the courage to speak my mind.
But maybe to weakness, my judge will be merciful and kind.

ST TERESA OF AVILA

Grant that we may always be nourished.
By the food of Saint Teresa’s heavenly teaching.
For long years prior to her great task she meditated.
She was not satisfied just with writing.

She discarded the easy path and founded the Discalced Carmelites.
Shoeless signifies a commitment to poverty.
This was a movement of duties not rights.
Of mercy and charity.

Yet with St John of the Cross, hounded.
And persecuted.
Her convents closed.
Her reformist views rejected.

To God she said, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few, she died exhausted.
Saint and Doctor of the Church now she is vindicated.

ST CALLISTUS

Alas for you lawyers.
Because you load on men burdens that are unendurable.
Well I’m one of those barristers.
Are our actions so unconscionable.

St Callistus was a failed banker, broke it seemed.
A slave imprisoned, cast overboard.
But he taught that repentant sinners can be redeemed.
Slip, sin, but you should not be put to the sword.

Was Peter and his successors given power to bind and loose.
Yes, emphatically, that was a power not just given to him but his successors.
As long as repentance is honest and not a ruse.
Angels not men should act as our assessors.

All of us sinners owe a lot to St Callistus’ sentimentality.
A life lost temporarily can be regained permanently.

What matters is faith.
That makes its power felt through love.
Whatsoever you saith.
If true to yourself, your voice will rise like a dove.

I know Thorney Island, this is where I live, work and tarry.
Here surrounded by marsh, Aldrich had a vision of St Peter and built a church.
Here St Peter’s Abbey was founded in the seventh century.
Here St Edward began building the Abbey as a royal burial church.

Here a week before Edward died his church was consecrated.
Here he was buried.
Here was the present Abbey by Henry the Third constructed.
Here until 1539:the Benedictine monks lived and here were monarchs crowned and married.

But we know so little of St Edward buried in Anglo Saxon mists yet revered as a saviour.
Save listening patiently, generosity to the church and to the poor.

Stand firm therefore.
And do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
Self slavery lies in the mind’s inner core.
It is with ourselves that we need to show the greatest bravery.

Suffering comes not only from wanting too much, denying ourselves or not caring.
Suffering comes from a death fear.
We cope with temporary setbacks, what troubles us is that death is unsparing.
And it is for ourselves that we shed a tear.

But death is pain free annihilation.
Or death is glorious new life.
We should not fear the body’s extermination.
For death is the end either way of all strife.

There is one who came to free us from the yoke of slavery.
We just need to free ourselves from life’s vain glory.

On this mountain he will remove.
The mourning vale covering all nations.
We despair but we have nothing to prove.
Self suffering is the greatest of all temptations.

It is wanting physically and emotionally that leads to suffering.
But suppressing what is natural also leads to suffering.
And losing all interest in wanting also leads to suffering.
Is not the answer just accepting.

We are invited to an amazing wedding feast.
Too often we think ourselves too busy to go.
We could enjoy this hope for the future, listening to the high priest.
But our worries bring us low.

So accept.
Then we will not have wept.

Before faith comes we are allowed no freedom by the law.
We were being looked after till faith was revealed.
Before we neither heard nor saw.
In ignorance our fate was sealed.

St Paulinus converted Northumbria by royal marriage.
A mighty kingdom stretching from Firth to Humber.
Beset by strife showing enormous courage.
He built churches and congregations without number.

But one on my heart stands out, in Lincoln a lost church of stone.
Here in ancient Lindsey once he walked.
His work now gone but his memory alone can atone.
From a Bede we know only of his appearance, but his mission was finally balked.

He would have known today’s words of Paul that there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.
His work largely lost in Anglo Saxon mist, all that remains a distant echo of his tale.

I am ugly, my head is wizened and blackened.
I droop in the wind headless.
Men avert their gaze as I hang slackened.
The chilly Autumn showers soak my once multi coloured headdress.

But not so long ago it was high summer in my story.
My head was golden, my face glorious.
With my brothers I gave these vast wold hills a yellow glory.
Sun dappled, my strong green storks straight , I was victorious.

Once long ago my forbear was by Van Gogh painted.
They pay millions now for my painting in oil.
Who would now waste a shilling on this shrivelled and matted head.
Soon they will cut me down ending this weary toil.

But in time in a different world, I will grace bread golden yellow and no longer be forlorn.
Such is life, in death we are reborn.

The spirit reaches the depth of everything.
After all the depths of man can only be known by his own spirit.
Today when I looked for Newman’s kindly light I saw nothing.
Was it because my spiritual seeking was without merit.

I wondered if there is a God , he could stand hearing all these complaints.
I find it difficult enough to be patient with the few addressed to me.
I know we cannot all be saints.
And what a dreary world that would be.

We can never plumb the depths of God because we are not spirit.
Perhaps we can only know God not from what we can see but from the gifts given.
Through humanity’s surrounding fog we can dimly see it.
We know these things if at all spiritually not rationally, thus it was always been.

We can only follow that barely perceived light.
For we are given human not spiritual sight.

Ask and it will be given unto you.
Search and you will find.
Yet I knocked and no door opened, I still stood in a mind created queue.
I asked and I did not receive, my request declined.

I was looking at the sea.
Others and I before had found it glitteringly beautiful.
Now it was as if I could no longer see.
In its constant motion, it’s utter disregard for us, it seemed immovable.

Then I noticed the small stream trickling down the beach.
It’s waters were insignificant but cool and fresh.
Soon it would be subsumed in the whole out of reach.
But now it seemed a metaphor to escape this mind meshed and depressed.

If you look.
You may find a open book.

The tree was two hundred and fifty years old.
The second largest wild pear tree in the country.
And now it is no more, laid out cold.
Felled by our new bureaucratic gentry.

Felled now to clear a path for progress.
For a high speed line no one now needs.
Why rush when now we can all work at home without distress.
Now all that is left of that great tree are new life, its seeds.

Once under its welcome waving shade we laid.
Once in glorious colours of shivered dappled white, we saw it.
Now over it a brutalist steel track is laid.
Once where there was timeless calm all is cast down into hell’s pit.

But one day there will be resurrection, a new pear tree will grow.
As mighty as the last, all despair laid low.

Lord teach us to pray.
Just as John taught his disciples.
So often, I just don’t know what to say.
Just endless worries the mind recycles.

Sometimes I say the Rosary.
It’s an alternative to worry.
It too is poetry.
A chance our mind’s worrying wanderings to bury.

But if all else fails.
There is always the Our Father.
From us a message sails.
We can lay our lives on his altar.

Perhaps it’s helps if for a moment I don’t think about myself.
But for a change think and pray for somebody else.

Lord do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself.
Martha, you worry and fret about so many things, yet few are needed only one.
We are always wanting to do things, to tidy every untidy shelf.
We think too much of what we need to do, too little of the moon and sun and son.

Perhaps we should pause awhile.
And metaphorically sit at his feet.
I imagine ourselves on a tiring country walk and take a rest before climbing a style.
By doing so we take one step closer to his seat.

We work.
Maybe we should listen.
We should attentively lurk.
Not constantly hasten.

We fret that we are doing the serving all by ourselves.
It is not myself that matters but the one self.

PENTIRE POINT AGAIN

If you rest awhile and stand high above Pentire Point.
The restless sea is far far below.
It rages back and forth but the sound is faint.
All is quiet here despite the seas fast tidal flow.

Thus must the dead from a high point serene.
Look down on us weary mortals.
Our lives race in and out, our ambitions unresolved though keen.
We come in with the tide and we go out for we must pass through death’s portals.

In this great ocean.
We are a merest bubble of water.
Our lives but the merest token.
All then subsumed and carried away before our slaughter.

For us all is weary movement.
But one day on these high cliffs we will look down, cured of all disappointment.

ST ENODOC CHURCH

It was the stone rejected by the builders.
That became the cornerstone.
Nothing like failure and rejection bewilders.
We accept everything but failure it seems we cannot condone.

As we walked, the wind came gusting in from the Atlantic at fifty miles an hour.
We hurried into St Enodoc church nestled in the dunes.
Once buried in sand now bedecked with flower.
We came here for evening prayer and to unpick spiritual runes.

This tiny church.
Once rejected.
Now a keystone of search.
And which flourishes, thirty of us today were collected.

And here tarry awhile beside John Betjeman’s grave.
And think on what can save.

PENTIRE POINT

I walked slowly up to high Pentire Point, the wind teasingly cold.
Two hundred feet below me the sea surged, waves were crashing.
I pause on rocks where Laurence Binyon wrote his poem, They shall not grow old.
It has been a good time from historically tragic Port Quin walking.

The sea is implacable, beautiful , impervious , so in that sense surely unthreatening.
The sea does not react to ones emotions, it just is.
I find it inspiring yes but still frightening.
You cannot forget or deny it or so close it miss.

I know you are powerful, what you conceive you can perform.
Am I the man who obscured your design.
I am old , dimly can I see the approaching storm.
The sleet and rain are a fast approaching blue line.

Then I look at the cliff top plaque again. As they that are left grow old.
Our life and it’s sorrows should not be a story untold.

ST MICHAEL’S MOUNT

Water cascading over the causeway.
In England’s far South West mist and rain rolling in.
Here the sea will never be kept entirely at bay.
The Westerly wind scraping the skin.

I walk through the Terrace Gardens, a riot of colours.
Indian shot, tree aeonium, blue aster, bigfoot geranium, guernsey lily.
I miss my box of watercolours.
But how could I do justice to this with my hands so chilly.

The crowds walk up to the castle.
All is bustle and interest.
I wonder if people wonder in all this hassle.
What this place was born to witness.

That once this was a priory dedicated to the Guardian Angel St Michael.
From Monastery to Castle besieged and tourist haven a thousand years is but a cycle.

The Lord led her and taught her and kept her as the apple of his eye.
Like an eagle spreading its wings, he took her up and bore her on his shoulders.
Therese felt herself to be so low yet he raised her so high.
For one so weak, so great a love for the Lord in her smoulders.

If anyone is a very little one let them come to me.
She was in her own estimate utterly little and weak.
You do not have to be a hero to be able to see.
You do not have to take great steps to be able to seek.

There is the great way.
Of scholarship or martyrdom.
There is the little way.
Of seeing God in a speck of flowered dust, in one small petal of a geranium.

When she said we were children, our parents loved us as much when asleep or awake.
She as much as any martyr gave her life in her quiet way for our sake.