The days of our years are three score years and ten.
It is soon cut off and they fly away.
The seventieth birthday is here and it is dreaded by all men.
Soon now our cares aside we will lay.

For You a million years is but an instant.
My life, all life is just one insignificant mirror shard of Your Image.
For You my time is your no time, all is constant.
You know that for us all truth and all past and future summers are just a desert mirage.

That maple tree before that I myself with bare hands I have planted.
Now it is in its first touch of delicate blooming growth.
Perhaps in one hundred years it will still stand glorious and scented.
I will long be in my grave but it too will wither and die, there is no other truth.

But we both will have come and gone, our lives no longer seen or read.
But perhaps we should be content, a little light and shade we too will have shed.

Do you want us to weed it out?
No, he said, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull out the wheat.
I look out now at the pristine wheat around me, all weeds put to rout.
But if you herbicide life as full of weeds, life you cheat.

There are no people who are either wheat or darnel.
We are all both.
As we grow we live together in this to final charnel.
It is to disease that we at birth plight our troth.

But through life, solitary weed by weed out we pluck with patience.
We will not be cast whole into the fire but our sins will.
At our death the lamp of life will not be extinguished but lit.
But to this end our vision sees but barely above a mysterious window sill.

We are now crouching in darkness.
But soon we we will rise and see by help of his harness through this bleakness.

Ut quid Domine
Why standest thou far off O Lord?
How often do I heartfelt say:
Pierce my heart with your loving sword.

The wicked hath said in his heart.
I shall not be moved for I shall never be in adversity.
There is always the secure braggart.
Who never doubts his own brilliant creativity.

He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den.
He lieth in wait to catch the poor.
In every guise does trouble dwell maybe even in the peaceful wren.
But most securely in our own heart’s grievous sore.

Our own desires we may never be able to suppress.
But can we not bear one thought for those we unwittingly oppress.

On the Clent hills, Kenelm is here in the low valley.
Born to be king, under a hawthorn tree, a headless corpse lies he.
This Mercian king did not count the cost of any tally.
He refused the maxim of me, me.

He would not murder his way to the crown.
But put his faith in Christ.
His reward everlasting renown.
His fate to his death be enticed.

To encourage devotion to an English saint.
Cardinal Newman would walk to the Clent Hills from the Oratorian house at Rednal.
We too can study our island’s history if our heart grows faint.
JRR Tolkien lived during his mother’s final illness at Rednal.

Thus a Mercian saint, an English cardinal and the Hobbit’s mystery.
Are linked here in his quiet English countryside in our history.

The beauty is proclaimed of Mount Carmel.
Here Elijah defended Israel’s faith in a living God.
There in our hearts to him we can play the minstrel.
In praise as on a natural stone quod.

Here settled the Carmelite.
A quiet contemplative life.
Prayer without respite.
Material riches cut away with a loving knife.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
The patroness of the order.
We can only marvel
At their love toward her.

But we just stand as on a mere foothill.
With our tender plodding spiritual skill.

Wednesday, 15th Week in Ordinary Time, 2020

I bless you father for hiding these things from the learned and clever.
And revealing them to mere children.
We worry about whether we are in error.
But the truth behind error is sometimes hidden.

Reason is faith’s dragging anchor.
Worrying rationality is the enemy of religion.
Children have this beguiling acceptance and no previous rancour.
We may have to imitate that lack of demand for precision.

St Bonaventure was a mendicant friar committed to poverty.
He wrote that the simple could have a clearer knowledge of God than the wise .
Belief in lack of wisdom may be a rarity.
But is it up to us to despise.

Can we ever have the child’s simple acceptance.
Can we lay aside for a moment all resistance.

Tuesday, Week 15 in Ordinary Time, 2020

By the age of twenty five he had lost everything.
Rejected as a priest.
He devoted himself to those who had nothing.
Despite every obstacle he refused to desist.

The hospitals were filthy . The staff violent and uncaring.
His reforms introduced against opposition stealthily.
But he had known these hospitals from inside, himself sickening .
And now his people emerged healthily.

He became bursar of Rome’s St Giacomo Hospital
He founded an order of the Camillian.
His work was as strong as forged metal
Against a bureaucracy truly labyrinthian .

We may not be able to follow those who in hospital care now too.
We can only say thank you.

Thinking about the feast day of Holy Roman Emperor St Henry.
Patron saint of Benedictine oblates.
At the door of the monastery he stands down the centuries like a welcoming sentry.
Letting us in whether or not we are spiritual mates.

We are really just a pseudo monk
So are we playing at the real thing.
But is it a disgrace to fear total commitment because we are in a bit of a funk.
For in our modest way your praises we can sing.

You mayb say St Henry was neither holy nor Roman.
Can we not then try to be apprentices , holy if not religious.
We aim to be neither a high nor low man.
But to the rule we at least try not to be mendacious.

We have our little daily dip into the rule and scripture reading.
And in this monastery of the mind for a few moments each day to you we are kneeling.

Some fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them.
Others fell on rich soil and produced their crop some one hundred told
My little vegetable patch is cloaked with weeds. Where is that potato stem?
But did I not put them in rich soil as seed with labour untold?

Where now my runner beans, potatoes and mint.
Where now the sage and tomatoes.
The truth Is have I not laboured without stint.
Where now those straight little pride filled rows.

But now is this not the distinctive leaf of the potato emerging.
A hardy breed resistant to the brownest of fingers.
So yes we are put in rich soil for our own hopeful growing.
And yes ambition’s weeds choke us but slowly we emerge, a chorus of hesitant singers.

We cannot blame any poor soil.
It is only ourselves that can burst through by our own toil.

Now that my life expectancy is less than someone on US death row.
I often ponder on where I am going and for an answer longing.
Are we just a bundle of molecules casually brought together which death in abandon will sow.
Are we to another reborn restless body in endless recycles on death going.

More and more I think we are in this life primarily memories.
I remember my first aged 4 born aloft in those aeroplanes that flew from Lydd taking cars.
Then I remember the heavenly clouds, there are many more but no defining truth tarries.
Am I, then, only these memories which death in mortality indeed bars,

Do I have a unique immortal soul?
Known for all time?
An everlasting creator warmed bright ember coal.
Too beautiful, singular and eternal to express in any rhyme.

I do not know but I so want it to be true.
So that is what I shall believe is right and thus all or some doubt away is blew.

There was a man of venerable life.
Benedict blessed by grace and by name.
He fled a world of strife.
His wants and suffering to tame.

I wandered disconsolate around his birthplace Nursia.
The churches lay crushed by earthquake.
But from every destruction by war and nature, hope creates a new anima.
A rebirth that can crush under heal despair’s insidious snake.

His little rule for over a thousand years is on countless bookshelves.
Moderate, undemanding and soul enriching in every way.
It allows us to grow out of not into ourselves.
And in our own lay life not necessarily in a community to stay.

We too can create our own monastery of the mind.
And to our faltering spiritual steps be kind.

He will have the beauty of the olive.
And the fragrance of Lebanon.
From an ancient gnarled tree his soothing oil we ask him to give.
And receive in holy reunion.

From war torn years the past in memory whistles.
I recall a mad dash down the mountain to Beirut.
Brake lights not used for fear of missiles.
Hope of peace in that car was mute.

But let us recall the majesty of Cedrus Libani.
Begonia, poppies, jasmine, gladiolus, and orange flowers.
Stretching out to calm the sight in warm litany.
And the green Cyprus’s beauty light scatters.

Come back to the Lord your God is the call to Israel.
And to us through every trial.

Psalm 104

O sing to the Lord, sing his praise.
Tell all of his wonderful works.
All our days.
Our bulwarks.

Constantly seek.
The face of God.
A path however meek.
However we are by the world called odd.

Consider the Lord and his strength.
Constantly search for his face.
Never at arms length.
To the end of our race.

The miracles, the judgement he spoke.
We need only evoke.

We were at Mass, the busy world locked out soundly.
Dutifully attentive and in silence.
Then a lady started muttering loudly.
You could feel the disapproval now intense.

But then I laughed and remembered today’s Gospel heard but the point not seen.
A man was brought to Jesus and when the dumb man spoke
The people were amazed, nothing like this had ever been seen.
The very point was before us judgemental folk.

We judge.
But we do not sympathise.
We grudge.
But we do not empathise.

No wonder His labourers are so few.
We are indeed at the back of this particular queue.

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.

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.