Do not be afraid.
For everything that is now covered will be uncovered.
Our worries in His care will be laid.
Or true path will be recovered.
We on earth who have little value.
By His love will be greatly valued.
If we just read his Apostle Matthew,
And realise life’s success is hugely overvalued.
For if there is no God and no success,
Then what are we worth?
But if we are all seen and understood in any mess.
There is then always a safe if hidden berth.
But what we hear even if spiritually lame,
We should surely with courage proclaim.

Did you not know that I must be busy about my father’s affairs?
But they did not understand what he meant.
Are we trapped in the beguiling lairs of life’s cares?
We will not understand til these shackles are rent.
He then went down with them and came to Nazareth.
And lived under their authority.
But we circle endlessly in own ego’s labyrinth.
Never attaining our own spiritual majority.
Can we not let our children go?
Their business may not be ours.
They have their own field to in time to mow.
Their will always in the end empowers.
And we must keep this quietly in our heart.
Watching and waiting for their work to start.

I bless you Father for hiding these things from the clever.
And revealing them to mere children.
Is this not our hope simplicity and endeavour?
Trusting openness as a pilgrim can be a given.
We must try to pass on our burden.
Ask him to take the crushing weight.
His care is certain.
His demands are light.
But we must believe in the Son.
That His Father is tender
That we are like a grandson.
And His love will never falter.
Endless burdens will cease.
Our life given a new lease.

Our God who is everywhere.
Let me constantly ponder You.
Warm my heart with Your soothing tear.
Let me follow You.
Here, now, and wherever you are.
Let us have just enough to live.
Understand our faults and care.
As we should understand others and always give.
Let us not put fault into fault.
But deliver us from our wrongdoing.
For you are the Universe’s highest vault.
The control overarching.
And selfless fame.
For all time.

Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men.
By doing you will lose all reward.
So should we now lay down our pen.
Forswear all witness. Never say ‘Lord, Lord’.

Shall we accept a value free society?
Accept the liberal way?
Cut out all hypocritical propriety?
Want means it may.

Are the unwanted, unborn to die?
The cheated woman divorced?
Are all values just a lie?
Should we never against our inclination be forced?

Or is there a gentler truth and to say it is no lying?
That though we keep falling, we must keep trying.

To Ahab He said I will sweep away your descendants.
And wipe out every male.
No family can stay ascendant.
Our fortunes are all ultimately for sale.

He tells us to pray for those who persecute us.
And this way we will be His true son.
But in our hearts there is discordant fuss.
Which shades us from his too blinding sun.

The truth is that we love our family.
We are sadly indifferent to a distant neighbour.
We achieve so little on life’s love’s tally.
Universal love is such a plodding chore.

He tells us we can be perfect.
But in the end we will only be judged as defect.

Jezebel had Naboth killed.
Only because she and Ahab coveted his vineyard.
All mercy was stilled.
All fair dealing barred.

False accusation made.
Scoundrels brought forward.
Greed swayed.
Death ordered.

So should it be an eye for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
Fight any lie.
Establish the truth.

But he says if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other one as well.
Do we really have the courage this injunction to tell?

He feeds you with finest wheat
And swiftly runs His command.
I walk half blinded towards His seat.
I cannot always obey His command.

But as water gently feeds a plant
And plants unwittingly feed an animal,
So His love steals into my soul like a half heard chant.
No one step is ever radical.

I may take the communion wafer for the thousandth time.
Is it mere bread or a holy manna?
A riddle in a hidden rhyme.
A communion truth lost in a spiritual savannah.

Reaching into an unfathomable distance.
Of life redeemed and given the most profound substance.

St Anthony of Padua, 13 June

For you will not let your beloved know decay.
I used to walk past a prime beech strong and tall.
Now I found it down, dying as it lay.
It’s private roots, hidden for generations, exposed to view, wrenched from life’s maul.

For centuries she has stood shading this ancient footway.
Countless blackbirds have there rested.
No man, no time could wish her away.
Yet this one Summer storm and she is bested.

Our life compared to hers is so short.
Can we not then cherish life but accept death.
Do we vain pleasures court.
And not see life as fleeting breath.

But from my beech’s rotting bark new life will grow.
And from our own corruption the key will be found, a soul will grow.

But the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind came an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
His touch I could not find.
His answer lay deep in a bottomless lake.

After the earthquake came a fire but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came the sound of a gentle breeze.
With no effect I pray until I tire.
Until like the touch of a gentle breeze there is a moment to seize.

He will not come in great force.
He will not come with strong demanding.
He comes almost as a matter of course.
Suddenly unbidden he is answering.

His answer is quiet, fleeting.
And then I am left alone to carry on my seeking.

It is the feast of St Barnabas.
I think of our local hospice.
We can go without fuss.
What really will we miss.

Cherish life.
Accept death.
Sooner or later it will be cut as with a knife.
One moment here then our last breath.

But the hospice holds us in love.
Not delaying our passage.
Releasing us like a dove.
Leaving behind hope’s message.

Do not speed me on my way.
Do not hold me back from my true fate for one day.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt becomes tasteless what can make it salty again?
It is good for nothing, and can only be thrown out to be trampled under foot by men.
Does this mean that if we lose faith, we can never once more it attain?
Surely not: unlike salt we can again and again regain our vigour but when.

When we make the effort and try.
That is what is meant by us being the light of the world.
It is not the result, it is the journey, the key is the attempt to break the world’s tie.
Then our light is clear for all to see, our tattered banner unfurled.

We will never be the city built on a hilltop.
We will be some small hamlet on the valley floor.
But like a skier circling up a mountain bearing a torch above a distant treetop.
People will see us attempting the ascent, opening ajar a spiritual door

Our light may only be a weak flicker for those in our house.
It is enough to have tried even if our faltering faith produces such a mouse.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains,
From where shall come my help.
Now I dreamt I was climbing rugged and befogged mountains.
It was high, my head for heights is weak, I was tempted to whelp.

But in my dream I saw Christ climbing ahead of me.
He was my guide, without Him I could not safely proceed.
But strangely under His shadow I could see.
He seemed to be a shining guiding light in my need.

It happened that in the dream, I reached the summit.
Now I stood alone yet in His sight.
I had no right to be at His side, but my way had been lit.
His raiment had been multicoloured blinding bright.

The country I saw from that summit was more beautiful than any I had ever seen.
And my sight that had been failing was intensely keen.

The Lord is a God of tenderness and compassion.
Slow to anger rich in kindness and faithfulness.
Moses was on his Sinai passion.
And we too are on our own journey through life’s wilderness.

We know that history’s greatest charlatans have promised to remove mortality’s stain.
Sometimes my hope fails, is immortality after death but a dream.
Are we too carrying stones of doubt up our own mist enshrouded mountain.
Do we search there in vain to pierce a silent unforgiving cloud ready to blaspheme.

But as I listen to the soothing mass.
The gentle cadence of Gloria, credo and paternoster.
Slowly faith grows with acceptance from a half empty to half full glass.
And from this holy water doubts begin to scatter.

But every day is a new long climb up that stony mountain.
And thus I fear I never will be certain.

Do not reject me now that I am old.
When my strength fails do not forsake me.
Sometimes the ardour of faith is so cold.
Answers and certainty I but dimly see.

My lips are filled with your praise.
With your glory all the day long.
Is witness not enough if given honestly without cease.
You demand faith, but is it not enough to give praise filled song.

Is it not enough to have fought the good fight to the end.
Is it not enough to have run the race to the end.
Do you demand more, an unreasoning faith to defend
If my faith falters, to perdition will you your disciple send.

But this I hope that it is enough to have kept the faith.
In effort, in desire, even if belief is a wavering wraith.

Paul says all scripture is inspired by God and can be used profitably for teaching.
This surely is the question we constantly ask.
For the answer to the first part I am still searching.
I pray every day I may complete this task.

I fear my asking may never have an answer.
But surely scripture can be a transformer.
So I will settle patiently for the latter.
And await grace for the former.

It is not by some sudden vision.
But in trudging small steps, putting cynicism to rout.
Day by day reading, seeking, never demanding precision.
And sometimes a shaft of light will pierce the cloud of doubt.

But in myself alone I can place no trust.
It is for Your dear Holy Spirit that I must wait to dispel all distrust.

My Father if it is possible let this cup pass me by.
Nevertheless, let it be as You not I, would have it.
I heard this admission, an eternal yet all too human sigh.
And in my doubting heart a lamp was lit.

Would a God have stooped so low
To self doubt even for a moment?
His very human anguish on show.
His courage to persist despite his torment.

But is this not the demanding point.
He was truly human.
To doubt and fear is our fate, our will is so faint.
If only he was a God would he be our guiding lumen.

And For me too in that brief moment was doubt relieved.
I saw and believed.

There are a variety of gifts but always the same spirit.
There are all sorts of service to be done.
We worry that our gifts are without merit.
Perhaps we should be happy that for one brief moment we may shine.

Can we remember those words?
One body, many parts.
Even the tiniest has a role, a small lever lifts heavy loads.
We really wouldn’t do so well if it departs.

I am hopeless at any foreign language.
They pummelled me with French from a baby.
And still I am not fluent and in Italian not at all, how can I then manage.
But does it matter that this tongue of fire has not descended on me, maybe.

We are not heroes, we are not given the disciples’ spiritual fitness.
But in some small and insignificant inadequate way we can just witness.

I was told it was just a giant weed of a tree.
I looked at the sycamore, should it be felled?
Then I remembered how Zacchaeus had used one to see.
He was short so he just climbed.

A tax collector, no one rated him.
My tree interrupted the view.
Zacchaeus’s one immortalised him.
Now I will keep mine in review.

Zacchaeus means pure.
Blessed are the pure of heart.
He gave away half his wealth, his pride to cure.
And pay back those he had cheated as a start.

He had been rich in wealth.
Now he was enriched in spiritual health.

Three times he asked St Peter, do you love me?
More than the others do.
That is our only fee.
To love him too.

St Paul the Sixth asked us this question so that we should constantly thirst.
He lived for love of Christ and begged us there to dwell.
Putting Christ and gospel, not in the past, but here in all things first.
Our duty to tell.

In Pensiero allla Morte, he wrote my approaching death
Is a gift of love for his church.
I can say I have always loved her and nothing else, with my dying breath.
That is the goal to which he asked us to march.

In his last will and testament, he said build no monument to me.
His legacy is surely love, that is what we can and should see.

A troubled life.
Daughter of an executed father.
Mother of an executed son, herself put under the knife.
But a blameless life, to a priest a mother.

No trial was possible.
There was no treasonable evidence.
Executed by an attainder all too risible.
Not for what she did but for what she was, innocent in every sense.

Loyal to her faith.
Her crime, mother to author Reginald’s De Unitate.
Cromwell could find no crime, her inner truth, she saith.
De Laudate.

At the scaffold she still had the courage a statement to make.
Her last words, blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness sake.

On St Philip Neri’s feast day, a boyhood memory.
Walking to the Brompton church from St Philip’s school.
On my blue cap the three stars of the Oratory.
Our confirmation day, the bishop asking a question and me a fool.

Putting my little hand up, I answered and didn’t get it right.
But St Philip loved laughter and said we should make ourselves ridiculous.
God loves us as we are, our smallness to his might.
He was terrified of being looked up to, don’t, he said, be saintly meticulous.

If you confessed to him, trembling at the saint’s feet,
He might give you an absurd penance.
Perhaps carrying his cat through the street.
Or he stood on his head to make you laugh, giving you joy out of nonsense.

Serving him is not about being good, I never thought as a boy.
It is about finding joy.

In the midst of the church he opened his mouth.
And the lord filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding.
I pondered Saint Bede today , his life and writing both.
And his life and work thirteen hundred years ago and still running.

This untroubled solitary life.
In closed monastic walls in Wearmouth and Jarrow.
The only source for England’s fledgling history and her strife..
Our very first writer of English prose now lost to our sorrow.

We can read of him in St Cuthbert’s life.
His last days and death , his life and work replete.
He joked , learn quickly I don’t know how long I will last in mortal strife.
Dear Master he was told the book is almost complete.

His last thought , little gifts to his brothers, pepper, napkins and some incense.
But to us only an incomplete history
His last word , glory be to the father before losing all physical sense.
And then he entered the greatest mystery.

The boy had said the book is now completed .
Like his lord he said it is finished.

After Jesus was taken up into Heaven.
All those joined in continuous prayer.
Their first thought was prayer, life’s leaven
That transforms our life for the better.

What is prayer but placing oneself
In the presence of the Lord?
They had gone just a short Sabbaths walk away, their grief to engulf.
But we ourselves have never crossed this holy presence’s ford.

Our prayer is distant and doubting.
Tentative, distracted, and questioning.
Our pride slowly humbled.
A difficult rock strewn path walking.

But they who had seen so much, would see him no more on this earth walking.
We are no less than they in that upper room praying.

Ask and you will receive.
And your joy will be complete.
A joyful resplendent weave.
No taste more sweet.

But do we ever ask.
Pride, doubt even inattention impedes.
The question corked in life’s care filled flask.
Cloaked in fortune’s fickle weeds.

So let us ask in his name.
Pride set to one side.
Merely in a single breath to acclaim.
Joy then is taken at full tide.

Loving him, we love the father.
And his love for us will never falter.