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.

If any were so rash as to challenge him for reasons.
One in a thousand would be more than that they could answer.
Job was his for all seasons.
For fate was as fickle as any dancer.

If disaster struck.
Could I be so sanguine.
I know I would never be a man of such pluck.
Hope would be left hanging.

Could I be reassured wherever disaster came on this scale.
Could I just say his works are beyond all reckoning.
Would I wail.
Would I reject his mercy beckoning.

In the end the book of Job is reassurance.
From cruel fate can come reassurance.

O God, grant that our life may be defended.
By those who watch over us, both angelic and human.
These angels are like a heavenly fender.
A celestial lumen.

Oft times have I doubted their existence.
Many doubt an angel with wings in an annunciation.
But I hope for and crave their assistance.
Do I really have a guardian angel protecting me from agitation.

So I have no idea in reason if you are there.
I just have this feeling, this sense that you might be.
To this I cannot swear.
It’s as mysterious as the one in three.

But as to whether you are at my shoulder.
This I believe more and more as I get older.

Naked I came from my mother’s womb.
Naked I shall return.
Job’s good life stands out as the shadows loom.
His acceptance is extraordinary as his fortunes turn.

To lose all your possessions is one thing.
To lose all your children that is the worst fate that can befall a man.
His refusal to curse God is something sublime taking wing.
He stood steadfast, into God’s merciful hands he ran.

Anyone, Jesus said, who welcomes this little child welcomes me.
Today I helped take my granddaughter to her first day at school.
In these little ones, it is his reflection we can see.
Far better is the innocent example of children than any rule.

How many of us would have Job’s courage if fortune deserted us.
Without divine help human nature is always thus.

The first son answered, I will not go, but afterwards thought better of it and went.
The second answered, certainly Sir, but did not go.
We can ask ourselves: do we go where we are sent?
Or do we go where the wind does blow?

We judge.
But those who know they are wrong have the better idea.
They we grudge.
But we rest in our own anaemia.

Perhaps for one moment we could be full of gratitude.
And full of love.
Often, it is not others we should criticise but our own mood.
For what is resented or regretted by the dove.

But the moment passes and we go on our own way paying lip service.
In the end it is only to us that we do the most disservice.

Let your heart give you joy in your young days.
Follow the promptings of your heart.
In our mist bound time we seek out the sun’s rays.
The world may baffle for it is abstract art.

Is it true that everything is mere vanity?
I was young and strong once, now I am old.
But there is always one final home, Christianity .
It, I hope will come to my aid when all is cold.

But is this also mere vanity.
False hope from ancient legend’s myth.
Perhaps in this universe there is just humanity and no God.
Forging alone the World like some great terrestrial blacksmith.

No, I will not give up hope.
My hand grasps from under water this unseen celestial rope.

Man who is merely a breath
Whose life fades like a passing shadow.
It is only our memory that we can bequeath.
Soon we shall pass below.

What do we read in Proverbs, there is a time for everything.
A time for giving birth, a time for dying.
Why do we spend endless hours fearful of not just death’s but life’s sting?
Everything will surely resolve itself despite our crying.

We will lose.
And we will keep.
We will choose.
And we will reap.

We will spend no doubt sometime dancing.
But we must accept now that we will spend some time mourning.

All things are wearisome.
No man can claim that eyes have not had enough of seeing, ears their full of hearing.
Today I could not help but feel wearily lonesome.
The soul quietly keening.

But I thought now content of those Autumn pilgrim days in Walsingham.
At the Anglican shrine, sitting alone in the black-bricked little house.
Offering oneself to the Celestial Lamb.
The place so quiet you could hear a heavenly mouse.

Outside is the shrine’s fountain.
At that late and deserted hour, you can listen to the water through the open door, tinkling.
The stillness of a high lonely mountain.
The light in the dark of candles burning.

All is shaded and without trouble.
The statue of Mary, her remade statue, the old one cast into fire, welcoming, sad, inscrutable.

As for those who do not welcome me:
When you leave the town shake the dust from your feet.
Why do we encounter so much venom to me and thee?
So many a nasty tweet?

Don’t bother to read the answers.
Just have your say.
Those unpleasant replies are just festering cancers.
If you don’t read them you can keep them at bay.

We can walk our own path.
We can be in company or alone.
We can dispel from our mind all wrath.
Casting off our thoughts, our only millstone.

We need take nothing for our journey
By way of mind cluttered scurvy.

The hardworking man is thoughtful and all is gain:
Too much haste and all that comes is want.
Can we just imagine ourselves walking down a country lane,
Towards a beloved haunt?

Calmly thinking.
Not restlessly doing.
Happily thanking.
Not constantly regretting.

Contentedly holding.
Not Refusing.
Satisfied with keeping.
Not uneasily gaining.

O that we could just be,
And not be a busy bee.

Bear with one another charitably.
In complete selflessness, patience and gentleness.
Oh dear, please cure my irritability.
Perhaps I’m a bit short on goodness.

To some his gift was that they should be apostles, to some prophets.
To some evangelists and teachers.
No we will not be bright starred comets.
We will not attempt to be preachers.

Perhaps we plodders.
Can plod our weary way.
Perhaps on our path not produce too many shudders.
We are entitled to our say.

For everyone has something worthwhile to say.
To no man or woman should we say nay.