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.

High on the Lincolnshire Wold all is quiet and you are alone.
Great views of twenty miles, then suddenly out of silence, you hear the Skylark.
The song is insistent high in ringing tone.
The happy chirruping sound determined to make its mark.

To you have I lifted up my eyes.
You who dwell in the heavens.
See the skylark, in hidden cornfields he lies.
You cannot see him, only his voice beckons.

Then you return in wooded valley descent.
Here is all friendly cacophony.
The blackbird, chaffinch, song thrush, robin and pheasant.
All around movement, flight, song, and harmony.

But I remember the Skylark, rarer now, on the high wold.
His timid song heard not seen, of hidden memories untold.

Peter was sleeping fastened with double chains.
And the chains fell from his hands.
I was watching a live-streamed mass down the slow internet lines.
The hopeless rural broadband fell into ether’s sands.

I caught snatches about being locked in prison.
Then the internet, exhausted, cut out.
We ourselves always hear intermittently with blurred vision.
We do not listen we shout.

We are caught in the prison of our own doubt.
The signal weak.
But sometimes from small snatches fear can be put to rout.
We can concentrate on just one sentence and still seek.

Then chains might fall.
A distant quiet yet unwavering signal will call.

Sir, I am not worthy to have You under my roof.
Just give the word and my servant will be cured.
Give me strength, Lord, not to stand aloof.
Let my faith be safely moored.

When He says Go do we Go?
When Ge says Come do we Come?
We can His will gently to sow.
Every small amount towards a greater sum.

We are like those from East and West
To take our place at his feast.
We in our endeavours need some rest.
We can not always maintain our zest.

But if we have believed.
Like the servant we will be cured.

I caught Sergei Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil.
The plaintive tones of the Ave Maria.
Time was now utterly still.
A deep sense of joy, wisdom and sophia.

It was by chance I heard it.
The daily grinding news turned off.
Now joy was here, a candle lit.
Calm, peace, no more to hear people scoff.

A glorious adornment of the Russian Orthodox Church
Is it the stunning polyphony.
A vespers for every hearts stilling, fulfilling my search.
Or a spiritual harmony.

But it is something far more simple yet exalted.
For one brief moment, an ascent to heaven and time halted.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else
He told a parable.
The Pharisee told himself he was not like the others in all their mess.
Evildoers and the tax collector nearby, his prayer all too audible.

How often do we criticise others’ fault?
They have broken this rule or that.
But have we obeyed every rule to our default?
Are we so perfect or sometimes, well, just a brat?

Of course it tickles our fancy.
For a scalp to be taken, we say they didn’t do as they say.
They got what they deserved, they were ever so cheeky.
We would never do that we bray.

But what did that tax collector say.
Have mercy on me a sinner, is that not enough for our guilt to lay.

If you want to You can cure me.
Of course I want to be cured.
Can we not this for ourselves see?
If into His gentle grasp we allow ourselves to be lured.

Health is a fragile time doomed thing.
So much depends on our will.
Of His touch we should sing.
But life is but a raging surging mill.

Can He take our sickness away.
And carry our diseases for us.
But only if at His feet our cares we lay.
And accept His will without canting fuss.

We must know that all our efforts will end in failure.
If we set store with success in life not count on His favour.

I found it on the corner of the cottage.
Embedded in the warm ironstone, a fossil.
It must date from the Cretaceous age.
At least 65 million years old, time’s apostle.

The cottage has seen so much in two hundred years.
But that span is but a passing teardrop.
What is the importance of our tears?
In the context of those 65 million years since the fossil swam nonstop.

For once it swam past some tropical sea’s strand.
With passing dinosaurs on the beach.
Now in a peaceful country garden it stands in mortal land.
A sentinel to life’s short span us to teach.

Can we not now understand now our body’s fate in death.
One day to be embedded in some unseeing stone, a million years without breath.

It is not those who say to me ‘Lord, Lord’
Who will enter the kingdom of Heaven.
It is not rules that should be the binding lord.
It is what we do that will get us to Heaven.

It is what we do that matters.
We can believe anything less or more.
Our practice may be exemplary or in tatters.
Church going may be a chore.

Do not obsess about the existence of God.
Worry about your mind.
It is the mind that needs a new nativity.
That is the bind.

Meditate for a few moments consciously.
God may appear spontaneously.

The Lord called me before I was born.
He hid me in the shadow of His hand.
I think today of the little ones from the womb torn.
The sign was given to Zechariah when John was no more than a grain of sand.

What will the child turn out to be they wondered.
Indeed the hand of the Lord was with him.
Should we then not morn the child sundered?
Precious is even the tiniest limb.

Was not John the greatest prophet?
Yet his father did not believe.
Every little thing counts to our profit.
Everything to his mercy we should leave.

Every child will wondrously grow up.
At the Lord’s feast to sup.

Last night my dream was clear.
I saw up close a long-lost friend.
It was as if he was here.
The face, voice, dear deceased memories to tend.
Sometimes my father, mother, and brother long lost return in a dream.
Why is it only in dreams can I see them focused as in life, though now in afterlife?
Is it some deep subconscious stimulus that ensures how real they seem?
Or are they really here freed from mortal strife?
Awake now these lost ones dream-like appear.
I cannot paint them even if I had the skill.
But now in my dream my friend really is walking beside me, only to disappear.
He takes another road and is lost, I know not what until.
Do the dead walk only in dreams of the mind.
Or are they calling us from another country, for one brief real moment to us vined.

Enter by the narrow gate.
It is a hard road that leads to life.
I will always be disobediently late
To the sweet call of your summoning fife.
The road to perdition is wide.
And how easy it is to take it.
How difficult it is to decide.
My selfish will rises like a storm-tossed kite.
But it is true that few always follow that narrow road.
Surely I can forgive myself if I wander.
Fate is a river fast flowed.
And life flows not straight but in directionless meander.
So I just hope to start on the narrow way.
I make no promise I can my selfish will aside lay.

Love in most men will grow cold.
But the man who stands firm in the end will be saved.
Will our soul be cheaply sold.
Or honesty be craved.
Unlike Eleazar we need never to go to the block.
For all our cherished even idiosyncratic belief.
But in a hundred small ways we can lock.
Principle into etched relief.
Conscience is a multi faceted thing.
There is no clear path.
But you always know who is king.
If you avoid its nagging questioning wrath.
We are then not called by our conscience to die.
But not to our conscience lie.