Do not be afraid to speak out.
Nor allow yourselves to be silenced.
Can we cast away self doubt.
Has courage triumphed.

He said, I am with you.
And no one will even attempt to hurt you.
Is resolve made anew.
Can witness accrue.

At first we will be sorrowful
But that will transcend into joy.
The gifts will be plentiful.
A life to enjoy.

Is the time for questioning over.
Are we now to truth a lover.

Go therefore make disciples of all the nations.
I was reading this summoning line.
Normally I just carry on half believing faith’s obligations.
Now for an instant, I knew He had said this and given this sign.
Was this the working of the Holy Spirit?
Is this why we can witness
That we can do nothing on our own, every small victory is pyrrhic.
And then only for an instant of concentration from life’s business.
As He said this He was lifted up.
Rationally does that make sense, like turning off a light?
Or like a rocket disappearing, rising up?
No, He just vanished from our sight.
But this I understand from that instant of lasting value.
I knew it was absolutely true.

It is for your own good that I am going.
Because unless I go the Advocate will not come to you.
Our restless mind with worry is toying.
The end result, if we are honest, we have no clue.
But a pained parting
makes for a joyous reunion.
Someone leaving
makes space for a new communion.
We lie awake worrying.
But every difficulty will in its own time end.
Will not death then lead to a new beginning?
And we have the Advocate, His helping hand to selflessly lend.
And anyway is this consciousness separate and real?
Or a gift made only under his seal?

Why are we so mediocre?
Anything I plant from seed comes out horribly stunted.
We spend forty years in a job and never succeed, they say what a joker.
We try to write poetry and it’s painful to read.
In the Territorial Army I never rose higher than trooper.
In tennis my ball hits the net, my serve is so light.
When singing I sound like a clapped-out scooter.
I have never sailed further than the Isle of Wight.
Skiing down a mountain gives me a most dreadful fright.
Our campaigns always seem to fizzle out.
My oil paintings are childlike, a pitiful sight.
Sometimes we seem to have all the charm of a lout.
But we can console ourselves merrily.
If we have our faith and if we have our family.

That spirit of truth.
He is with you. He is in you.
A gift of eternal spiritual youth.
An amazing thought that we can be made anew.
Is it true then that this spirit never leaves us?
But this was His promise that He has kept.
We need never fear if this gift is truly thus.
Not only in us but we in Him, this hope to accept.
His spirit is our advocate.
We may stumble.
He is there to pick us up, if we call He is never late.
But He is only the precursor when into death’s embrace we tumble.
On that day His promise is this that we will be in the Father and the Son.
And them in us, His will then will done.

As the Father has loved Me so I have loved you.
It is easy to love father, mother, children.
Why can we not love others without hullabaloo?
Why can’t love for the world be a given?
We know why we are not a saint.
That would indeed be extraordinary if we could be.
But perhaps when we never succeed we should not worry, it’s enough it’s meant.
Is not the effort enough, even if little result we can see?
Would we lay down our life for all the others.
For our children, yes.
But we would struggle with the rest of the world, with all its selfish tethers.
But indeed there would be no greater love, we should try to give no less.
So to climb the mountain, to achieve the injunction is impossible.
To attempt it, to walk in the overgrown foothills is possible.

I am the true vine.
And my father the vine dresser.
They came to cut the high trees on the steep inline.
The ashes, sycamores and beeches are getting old and their growth lesser.
They abseiled dangerously high.
Up upon the great trees branches now withering.
Towering majestically into the sky.
Cut down in an instant with with chain saw stuttering.
Pruned now the healthy trees will grow better from their high healthy spire.
The old branches will die and wither.
Collected they will be cast into the log fire.
Cut from the tree they are useless, their dead leaves will scatter.
And are we pruned already to bear more.
Is it his word that is the mystical pruning saw.

Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you.
A peace the world cannot give.
We search for an elusive peace which never comes unless to cares we say adieu.
It will never come if we seek it through the world’s cloying sieve.
He tells us do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
Yet we are both troubled and afraid.
Can we not let for one moment our troubles to be laid.
In quiet thought leave them in some shaded spiritual glade.
He came from his Father.
He said the Father is greater than I.
One day we will follow Him to His altar.
That thought is the way to His peace, can this we try?
He cannot talk with us any longer.
But for his peace, we must believe he will return, our fear to conquer.

Anyone who keeps my commandments and keeps them.
Will be the one who loves Me.
But can I keep all these commandments and find this hidden gem?
Is this the only way to love him and reach this apogee?
The task is too hard.
The way too difficult, my will too faint.
I can only give love’s sliver of a shard.
Not be a saint.
But He says anyone who loves Me will be loved by the Father.
And I shall love him and show myself to him.
But how can I know this and don love’s armour?
In God I must just trust, the cup full to the brim.
So are actions and words not enough, a mere toiling wraith?
Is love the only way to true faith?

The walk was long and lonely, the green pasture empty.
I rested by the sign that said there was a Roman villa in this field.
Now all is quiet, not a trace, not one mound has evaded time’s sentry.
No lives, no stories, no distant echoes does it yield.
Was this a Villa Urbana, a retreat from Lindum or a Villa Rustica from civilisation severed?
A simple farmhouse or, my thoughts took flight, I imagined frescoes and toga wearing.
There was a mosaic found here after seventeen hundred years, now with pasture covered.
Under the trace of a ridge from medieval farming after countless years ploughing.
The mosaic was geometric, I’m told, with some blackbirds etched on a fourth century floor.
Did some pagan household God or Nonne Deo speak from a new universal religion.
Did slaves work here, what family tragedies played out, what ancient lore.
Will our own lives lie buried waiting for the trowel of an archaeologist on knowledge’s mission?
Now in rural solitude, I hear only a humming trace of a distant local bound car.
But did once noble carts seek by nearby Fossdyke travel to empire’s far.

Inspired by John 14:1-14

Philip said Lord let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.
How often have we ourselves doubted, saying, how could a man do all this?
Do we not always demand everything to be verified?
Can we believe this “I am the Father and the Father is in me,” how can this truth we miss?
But who am I?
Am I just a consciousness, an electric current neurone branched tree?
No, I cannot rest content with what must be a beguiling lie.
I cannot accept that I am not a soul and the physical presence is all there is to me.
We search for this elusive truth of who we really are, a spiritual essence.
Can we not accept the evidence of his work?
How else in a court of law is truth determined other than by evidence?
And slowly can joy emerge from the world’s clogging murk.
Can we just not accept His promise that if we ask anything in His name
He will do it and this we must know, our death He by His, overcame?

We have come to tell you the good news.
Yet I can scarcely watch the news, it is so depressing.
Full of perplexed and discordant views.
If for a moment a restless soul can recall, there is another path to a joy growing.
On this day 75 years ago there was welcome news, a triumphant day.
They heard it, my parents at Bletchley Park, my grandmother in occupied France.
Here was much to celebrate, a dark cloud lifted, for one day cares aside to lay.
And perhaps to remember friends gone, struck down by war’s fickle lance.
Did this generation ever lose hope, did they doubt their path?
Lord, we cannot know or understand Your will did they say?
Or did they ponder that there is one truth?
There is one way?
And now we too grapple with death’s hand
Can we not console ourselves with his love for our land.

The cottage is filled with gadgetry, zooming around the world on an Amazon sell.
I think of a quieter time remembering.
Of the cottager going to work at the farm’s 5 a.m. bell.
Walking to his work at the yard, the horses preparing.
I think of the first electricity in the valley and a burning oil lamp.
The first bathroom arriving in the 50s, the outside loo.
Of warming range and wet stone walls ringing with damp.
Of the three pigs brought, two for market, and one in the shed for the family too.
But I think of a quieter life too and a certain repose given.
Of walking to market six miles away and staying in one county place.
Of the village school, long closed, once filled with children.
Of the community gathered in the village hall and a sense of peace.
And on Sunday the hymns at the tin Methodist chapel and others walking to Eucharist at the village church and a burning candle.
And maybe a few others on a five-mile walk to the nearest pub to open a barrel.

Paul and his friends went by sea from Paphos to Perga in Pamphylia.
A train of thought, the running sea.
So spiritual and calm yet sailing to questioning Judaea.
Implacable light, reflecting, blinding us so that land’s troubles we cannot see.
Yet in my own small boat, never far travelling.
Gentle Solent traversing.
Welcome anchorages unveiling.
Water rippling down the boat’s side, sails singing.
Alone no distraction,
No excuse to not sing forever of your love.
The wind shifts, going about, concentration.
And for you Lord from this surging sea a tranquil love.
The ropes laid out to berth side’s quay, a cup of tea.
But my vision of him in this bustling harbour place, I no longer see.

Deus Misereatur.
God be merciful unto us and bless us.
A prayer for Parliament, our intentions to pour
A psalm before the nations affairs to discuss.
Interest and commitment may come from many things.
But joy comes more often from religion.
We may be absorbed in the affairs of kings.
But how do we find true happiness, this is our decision.
We cannot meet God in rational argument.
We just have to accept and feel.
He comes unexpected not as a theory proved but as a presence lent.
We do not need to argue, but press to Him our heart’s seal.
Then the prayer is over in four minutes.
And we move on to discuss secular affairs for six hundred minutes.

How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ tell us plainly.
We ask this question ourselves, but this message can impart no lasting sense.
Yet hasn’t He told us this so many times and so clearly?
The problem is not being told, it is believing.
Does His life and work not bear adequate witness?
If He walked into the room now would we believe or stand there uncomprehending?
What is it in our minds that leads to this spiritual sickness?
He asks us to think of Him as a shepherd.
But we are too proud to follow as humble sheep.
We need to reason to question and never leave our doubts unheard.
But the prize is so great if only into this instant of faith we can leap.
Imagine that, eternal life.
That was His promise, pray cut our doubts loose with your merciful knife.

Who to pray to pray to for a petty problem, thinking about me me.
I had forgotten today is the feast of the English martyrs slain.
I had long neglected to pray to one, the blessed Richard Leigh.
An estate’s eldest son, he could have stayed in Cheshire and to his family no stain.
He could have said just one scaffold word of loyalty to the nation.
An agonising death by halter they chose rather than compromise their belief.
To them a higher loyalty called than to country or family or Queen, it was to God’s reaction.
And praise too to those Protestant martyrs true to their faith despite fiery pain’s grief.
Richard had a younger brother Peter.
My ancestor he stayed at home, married , prosperous and peaceful.
And I too would conform, swear any oath to forgo death and touch of the Tower’s beefeater.
For our faith is so weak, our will to conform so deep and so dull.
But we can at least do this before our fall.
To salute all men of faith who give their life, their all.

Years ago down the lane there was a sheepfold.
What a bustle there was some early some late.
Chaos flock milling, their way not clearly told.
Where was the narrow gate.
The gatekeeper opens it, they swarm in.
But they will only follow their shepherd.
It is his voice that leads them to follow their kin.
Any other they think as dangerous as any leopard.
The sheepfold is gone now.
Only a few rotting pieces of wood remain.
But this thought is resisting time’s steady plough.
There was a good shepherd, he led them down the open lane.
There is in every mind this mental gate.
There is one who can lead us through, with him for salvation we never will be late.

In the midst of the church he opened his mouth.
And clothed himself in a robe of glory.
Was St Athanasius just another dry saint of long ago loyal to his truth?
A fierce opponent of the Arian heresy, long forgotten, a long lost story.
But this is no dry Nicean debate.
Is he just created by his father and no equal?
Did God then not descend to man’s low state?
To God’s power and glory not as one but history’s sequel?
But then man is left to low earthbound estate.
But this I believe God once was we.
Not just One who was and is in unchanging state.
But subsumed in love He gave all for us, his truth to see.
To this champion of your son’s divinity.
We owe our serenity.

Along the Viking Way walkers now wander.
A verdant wold valley soothing all tension.
Nurtured by time’s quiet embrace the path meanders to Caistor.
A dream trickles, ashes wave, views beckon.
But the walker now stumbles across the mine’s remains.
Nettleton Top and Bottom closed tunnel’s opening.
Once two hundred men toiled here under these quiet country lanes.
The iron ore prized out with brute shovel and drill powering.
Fifteen one-ton trucks a day, farm work after the eight hour early shifts.
By 1968 and closure, for grinding labour six pounds a week.
An accident in 1872, deaths at Claxby nearby, the Rev Sumner of Nettleton writes.
That gloomy cavern of disaster, safety improvements I seek.
Now once where the mine railway stood there stirs only a faint memory.
The walker carries on, his mind and his life in another country.

Waking the lane I came across a blue purple five-leafed flower in a cleft so lonely and stony.
Slowly from March through to May subtly changing from deep red.
The delicate flower favouring a home, lane banked fresh and shady.
Common Lungwort Pulmonaria Officinalis, the book said.
But why Pulmonaria, Latin for lung, if you’re oh so clever.
Why lung, this tiny plant used since the Middle Ages to cure coughs and chest diseases.
Well I thought, it’s strange how things so natural can come in so useful, never say never.
After all we hear a lot today of horrible coughs and sneezes.
But why it’s other names, Mary’s tears, Our Lady’s Milk Drops.
Named by Carl Linnaeus after the doctrine of signatures.
The Christian doctor’s belief that a plant looking like a body part could be used as cure mops.
Their belief that God put in plants to guide mankind, medical signatures.
I pass on my way, not tasting a drop of her tears, back to a house lardered with modern pills.
Is Mary crying for us, I ask? Who knows if this medieval thought is any use for life’s ills.

It was a midwinter walk.
I sought the path from Kirmond Le Mire.
I was with my son and we were engrossed in talk.
Suddenly an impenetrable mist came down, my legs began to tire.
Our aim was to head towards Tealby but we had lost all sense of direction.
We crashed through a hedge and found ourselves on an ancient barrow, as if turning a page.
I knew now where I was, by the Neolithic way, all time surrendered by time’s partition.
Here it was if we were standing many thousand years ago in the Bronze Age.
Hard by unseen a lorry thundered along the Caistor High Road.
But long before Rome this was already, above the forest, a path along the ridge of the Wold.
What lies buried beneath time’s feet, pottery, pagan ritual, a chief’s family covered in woad.
Did once from this place did they look far to the West the Pennines, we are not told.
The fog lifted, we set off to the pub, now in mind’s eye a welcome pint we could see.
But there was a chill about my heart, we avoided the lonely path and kept to the B1203.

Worthy is the lamb who was slain,
To receive power and dignity and wisdom.
I am looking across a narrow valley at a flock of sheep, so innocent with no mark of Cain.
They barely move, like white statues, to speech contentedly dumb.
A dog barks, a duck lake bound sings, a distant tractor growls, the wind sighs.
A bumblebee busy about its tasks hovers to the stone’s house cosy crack.
There is a stillness and expectancy all about and no fear-filled cries.
To these creatures there is no past or present, no power or wisdom they need or lack.
Suddenly just before he reached the city there came a light from heaven all around him.
I pray that this light would make us like the lamb content to be still.
We only ask for some small shard of future divinity, some pull from hell’s dark brim.
We do not seek to preach with majestic prose, only our restless pride to kill.
The sheep have not spoken, nor ever will, nor care, nor ever will.
And my mind freed for one instant, now returns to its usual debating, grinding restless mill.

Let us sing to the Lord for he has gloriously triumphed.
Jubilate Deo, God, O how wonderful art thy works.
The twilight lake, utterly still, the sound of a stream, all disquiet silenced.
And in that clear sky, bright Venus, west rising lurks.
And this is my pang unbidden of doubt, I cannot reverse.
I see Virgo Hydra and Ursa Major, so vast, so distant.
Did a preacher, two thousand years ago create this universe?
The Milky Way lays her haze and she is the closest, millions are less insistent.
But can such order, such beauty by chance be created?
Certainly these works are gloriously wonderful.
No answer in logic or reason will I find, all conclusion is confounded.
But this I know in this mere breath of wind , a presence there is mysterious joyful.
Do all universes like needles have a point?
Was he that point.

You can navigate bustling Heathrow and have your packed beach at St Tropez.
For me nothing can compare with, past the mobile home park, yes: Mablethorpe North End.
I love the blasting sun and arid bright blue sky, you say.
Give me the vast vista of an empty beach, for the mind a soothing silence to tend.
You can have your great crashing ocean Cornwall waves.
Let me wallow, up to my waist a hundred yards out in the gentle lapping North Sea.
You can have the azure ocean, give me the grey green wavelets, the cold fit for the brave.
You can brave the crowds, it’s the lone grey seal and wildfowl terns I want to see.
And after that what bliss, warm Coca Cola, a sandy sandwich and no signal for e-mail.
The jumper on, the wind break out to shelter from that bracing east wind.
You can have your fancy beach bar cocktail.
It’s ice cream for me at the end of the day, to the kids I want to be kind.
Here I can run three miles past rolling marram grassed sand dunes and barely meet a soul.
You only have the traffic homeward bound to toil.