[Hosanna! Welcome to Our Hearts, Lord]

    

Hosanna! Welcome to our hearts! Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too; and full as dear
As that of Sion, and as full of sin:
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein:
Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor:
Crucify them, that they may never more
Profane that holy place
Where Thou hast chose to set Thy face!

—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)

Image: Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), Christ Overturning the Money Changers' Table

Scripture reference: John 2:13-22; Daily Office Year 1, Tuesday after 1st Sunday in Lent

St. Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

’TWAS silent all and dead
Beside the barren sea,
Where Philip’s steps were led,
Led by a voice from Thee—
He rose and went, nor ask’d Thee why,
Nor stay’d to heave one faithless sigh:

Upon his lonely way
The high-born traveller came,
Reading a mournful lay
Of “One who bore our shame,
Silent Himself, His name untold,
And yet His glories were of old.”

To muse what Heaven might mean
His wandering brow he rais’d,
And met an eye serene
That on him watchful gaz’d.
No hermit e’er so welcome cross’d
A child’s lone path in woodland lost.

Now wonder turns to love;
The scrolls of sacred lore
No darksome mazes prove;
The desert tires no more:
They bathe where holy waters flow,
Then on their way rejoicing go.

They part to meet in heaven;
But of the joy they share,
Absolving and forgiven,
The sweet remembrance bear.
Yes—mark him well, ye cold and proud,
Bewilder’d in a heartless crowd,

Starting and turning pale
At Rumour’s angry din—
No storm can now assail
The charm he wears within,
Rejoicing still, and doing good,
And with the thought of God imbu’d.

No glare of high estate,
No gloom of woe or want,
The radiance can abate
Where Heaven delights to haunt.
Sin only hides the genial ray,
And, round the Cross, makes night of day.

Then weep it from thy heart;
So may’st thou duly learn
The intercessor’s part,
Thy prayers and tears may earn
For fallen souls some healing breath,
Ere they have died th’ Apostate’s death.

--John Keble (1792-1866) Anglican priest, poet, and leader of the Oxford Movement 

Image: Baptism of the Eunuch by St. Philip, Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol, 1848

Scripture reference: Acts 8:26-40, Easter 5B

Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge

File into yellow candle light, fair choristers of King’s

Lost in the shadowy silence of canopied Renaissance stalls
In blazing glass above the dark glow skies and thrones and wings
Blue, ruby, gold and green between the whiteness of the walls
And with what rich precision the stonework soars and springs
To fountain out a spreading vault – a shower that never falls.

The white of windy Cambridge courts, the cobbles brown and dry,
The gold of plaster Gothic with ivy overgrown,
The apple-red, the silver fronts, the wide green flats and high,
The yellowing elm-trees circled out on islands of their own –
Oh, here behold all colours change that catch the flying sky
To waves of pearly light that heave along the shafted stone.

In far East Anglian churches, the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass
Buttress with prayer this vaulted roof so white and light and strong
And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.

--John Betjeman (1906-1984), British poet and writer, devout Anglican of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion, UK Poet Laureate from 1972-1984

Betjeman was open about his faith and about his wrestline with it, was willing to criticism the Church of England with which he was devoted throughout his adult life.

Image from Wikipedia

I Am The Light of the World

I see your world in light that shines behind me,
Lit by a sun whose rays I cannot see,
The smallest gleam of light still seems to find me
Or find the child who’s hiding deep inside me.
I see your light reflected in the water,
Or kindled suddenly in someone’s eyes,
It shimmers through the living leaves of summer,
Or spills from silver veins in leaden skies,
It gathers in the candles at our vespers
It concentrates in tiny drops of dew
At times it sings for joy, at times it whispers,
But all the time it calls me back to you.
I follow you upstream through this dark night
My saviour, source, and spring, my life and light.

-- Malcolm Guite (1954- ) Anglican poet, priest, theologian, and musician 

Scripture Reference: John 8:12

Images: Lux Nova (2011) by Bernd Nestler, German, window made of float glass, treated twice with ceramic enamels, platinum mirror surface, and gold dust, at St. Christoffel Cathedral, Roermond, the Netherlands.

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,

The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

-- Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984), English poet, writer, and broadcaster; British Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984. He was a devout Anglican throughout his adult life while being honest about the struggle of faith.

The Two Ways: A Wisdom Song

Woe to us when we walk in the way of wickedness,
when we bend our ear to the counsel of deceit,
and scoff at what is holy from the seat of pride.
                                        Keep us true to your Way.

Blessings upon us when we delight in the truth of God,
and ponder God’s law by day and by night,
when we stand up for truth in face of the lie,
when we mouth no slogans and betray no friends.
                                        Keep us true to your Way.

Then we shall grow like trees planted by streams of water,
that yield their fruit in due season,
whose leaves do not wither.
                                        Keep us true to your Way.

We struggle with evil in our hearts,
tossed to and fro like chaff in the wind,
a rootless people whose lives have no meaning,
unable to stand when judgment comes,
desolate, outside the house of our God.
                                        Keep us true to your Way.

May ways of wickedness perish among us:
forgive us, O God, and renew us,
lead us in path of justice and truth,
obedient to your Wisdom and your Will,
trusting in the hope of your promise.
                                        Keep us true to your Way.

Giver of life, save us from the desert of faithlessness,
and nourish us with the living water of your Word,
that we may bring forth fruit that will last,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour.



--The Rev. Jim Cotter, Anglican priest and poet, from Psalms for a Pilgrim People.

Scripture Reference: Psalm 1, Proper 25A, track 1

The Calm

Our storm is past, and that storm’s tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth ‘suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady’as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress’ glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir’d church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen’s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth’s hollownesses, which the world’s lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes’ jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil’d wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag’d, the shepherds’ scoff,
Or like slack-sinew’d Samson, his hair off,
Languish our ships. Now as a myriad
Of ants durst th’ emperor’s lov’d snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov’d and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push’d me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, ‘gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

-- John Donne (1572-1631), Anglican priest, preacher, essayist, and metaphysical poet, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral

Scripture reference: Matthew 14:22-33, Proper 14A

Image: The Stormy Sea, by Alma Thomas

Eucharistic Prayer from Salal + Cedar

God be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to God.
Let us give thanks to God our Creator.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We give thanks to you for Jesus, whose first bed was a feed trough. He was baptized in the Jordan, tested in the wilderness, he traveled in fishing boats and told parables of farmers and seeds, labor and wages, yeast and bread.

We praise you here in the Bow and Elbow River watersheds, where both city and farm, wilderness and industry are side by side. We praise you at a time when the body of earth is broken again and again.

We give thanks for our place in the story of salvation. Our ancestors journeyed with you in creation and migration. They depended on the land, were displaced from the land and displaced others from their lands. They knew you in tents and cities, on mountains and by wells, in families and in dreams, and through wilderness prophets who spoke of lodgepole pines and listened to crows.

Together with angels and ancestors, chickadee and magpie, bear, moose and trout, aspen and larch, we join our voices with all creation in this ancient honour song (said):

Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread, food of the poor, the work of field and hearth, he gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his friends saying: Take and eat, this is my body, given for you, do this to remember me.

Again after supper he took the cup of wine, fruit of the land, gave thanks and gave it to his friends saying: This is my blood, which is shed for you. When you do this, do it in memory of me.

Remembering Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and awaiting his coming kingdom, we offer you this bread and this cup.

Creator, send your Spirit on these gifts so that we know Jesus in them and are gathered together with everyone who shares this sacred meal of justice and community. Fill us with the courage and love of Jesus that we may strive for justice and peace, respect the dignity of every human being, and safeguard the integrity of creation. All honor and glory are yours, Creator, Christ and Spirit, now and forever. Amen.


--Eucharistic Prayer adapted from Salal + Cedar, Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. Salal + Cedar's website is here.

Pieta

Always the same hills

Crowd the horizon,
Remote witness
Of the still scene.

And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is the back in the cradle
Of a maid's arms

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

The Porch

Do you want to know his name?
It is forgotten. Would you learn
what he was like? He was like
anyone else, a man with ears
and eyes. Be it sufficient
that in a church porch on an evening
in winter, the moon rising, the frost
sharp, he was driven to his knees and for no reason
he knew. The cold came at him;
his breath was carved angularly
as the tombstones; an owl screamed.

He had no power to pray.
His back turned on the interior
he looked out on a universe
that was without knowledge
of him and kept his place
there for an hour on that lean
threshold, neither outside nor in.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Image: detail from a door from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

No Answer

Speak, farmer, over the green sod
To us forsaken by the sham gods
In whom we trusted. Where has the spring gone?
Is it always autumn even in the fields’
Primitive quiet in which you work?

Speak, friend; does not the earth renew
Its broken pattern, building again
Its green citadels, razed by the winds
And gaunt frosts, quarrying the face
Of the grim heavens for the springs ore?
Born here and reared, have you no proof
Of the slow summers ultimate reign?

Silence, silence; only the eyes’
Inscrutable grayness turned to mine;
And the hand’s gesture, vague as a branch,
Rowing forever the wind’s stream.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Anglican priest and Welsh poet, from Uncollected Poems.

Sunday Afternoon Service in St. Enodoc Church, Cornwall

Come on! come on! This hillock hides the spire,
Now that one and now none. As winds about
The burnished path through lady’s finger, thyme
And bright varieties of saxifrage,
So grows the tinny tenor faint or loud
And all things draw towards St. Enodoc.

Come on! come on! and it is five to three.

Paths, unfamiliar to golfers’ brogues,
Cross the eleventh fairway broadside on
And leave the fourteenth tee for thirteenth green,
Ignoring Royal and Ancient, bound for God.
Come on! come on! no longer bare of foot,
The sole grows hot in London shoes again.
Jack Lambourne in his Sunday navy-blue
Wears tie and collar, all from Selfridge’s.
There’s Enid with a silly parasol,
And Graham in gray flannel with a crease
Across the middle of his coat which lay
Pressed ’neath the box of his Meccano set,
Sunday to Sunday.
Still, Come on! come on!
The tinny tenor. Hover-flies remain
More than a moment on a ragwort bunch,
And people’s passing shadows don’t disturb
Red Admirals basking with their wings apart.
A mile of sunny, empty sand away,
A mile of shallow pools and lugworm casts,
Safe, faint and surfy, laps the lowest tide.
   Even the villas have a Sunday look.
The Ransom mower’s locked into the shed.
“I have a splitting headache from the sun,”
And bedroom windows flutter cheerful chintz
Where, double-aspirined, a mother sleeps;
While father in the loggia reads a book,
Large, desultory, birthday-present size,
Published with coloured plates by Country Life,
A Bernard Darwin on The English Links
Or Braid and Taylor on The Mashie Shot.
Come on! come on! he thinks of Monday’s round—
Come on! come on! that interlocking grip!
Come on! come on! he drops into a doze—
Come on! come on! more far and far away
The children climb a final stile to church;
Electoral Roll still flapping in the porch—
Then the cool silence of St. Enodoc.

My eyes, recovering in the sudden shade,
Discern the long-known little things within—
A map of France in damp above my pew,
Grey-blue of granite in the small arcade
(Late Perp: and not a Parker specimen
But roughly hewn on windy Bodmin Moor),
The modest windows palely glazed with green,
The smooth slate floor, the rounded wooden roof,
The Norman arch, the cable-moulded font—
All have a humble and West Country look.
Oh “drastic restoration” of the guide!
Oh three-light window by a Plymouth firm!
Absurd, truncated screen! oh sticky pews!
Embroidered altar-cloth! untended lamps!
So soaked in worship you are loved too well
For that dispassionate and critic stare
That I would use beyond the parish bounds
Biking in high-banked lanes from tower to tower
On sunny, antiquarian afternoons.
   Come on! come on! a final pull. Tom Blake
Stalks over from the bell-rope to his pew
Just as he slopes about the windy cliffs
Looking for wreckage in a likely tide,
Nor gives the Holy Table glance or nod.
A rattle as red baize is drawn aside,
Miss Rhoda Poulden pulls the tremolo,
The oboe, flute and vox humana stops;
A Village Voluntary fills the air
And ceases suddenly as it began,
Save for one oboe faintly humming on,
As slow the weary clergyman subsides
Tired with his bike-ride from the parish church.
He runs his hands once, twice, across his face
“Dearly beloved … ” and a bumble-bee
Zooms itself free into the churchyard sun
And so my thoughts this happy Sabbathtide.
   Where deep cliffs loom enormous, where cascade
Mesembryanthemum and stone-crop down,
Where the gull looks no larger than a lark
Hung midway twixt the cliff-top and the sand,
Sun-shadowed valleys roll along the sea.
Forced by the backwash, see the nearest wave
Rise to a wall of huge, translucent green
And crumble into spray along the top
Blown seaward by the land-breeze. Now she breaks
And in an arch of thunder plunges down
To burst and tumble, foam on top of foam,
Criss-crossing, baffled, sucked and shot again,
A waterfall of whiteness, down a rock,
Without a source but roller’s furthest reach:
And tufts of sea-pink, high and dry for years,
Are flooded out of ledges, boulders seem
No bigger than a pebble washed about
In this tremendous tide. Oh kindly slate!
To give me shelter in this crevice dry.
These shivering stalks of bent-grass, lucky plant,
Have better chance than I to last the storm.
Oh kindly slate of these unaltered cliffs,
Firm, barren substrate of our windy fields!
Oh lichened slate in walls, they knew your worth
Who raised you up to make this House of God
What faith was his, that dim, that Cornish saint,
Small rushlight of a long-forgotten church,
Who lived with God on this unfriendly shore,
Who knew He made the Atlantic and the stones
And destined seamen here to end their lives
Dashed on a rock, rolled over in the surf,

And not one hair forgotten. Now they lie 

In centuries of sand beside the church. 

Less pitiable are they than the corpse 

Of a large golfer, only four weeks dead, 

This sunlit and sea-distant afternoon. 

“Praise ye the Lord!” and in another key 

The Lord’s name by harmonium be praised. 

“The Second Evening and the Fourteenth Psalm.”

-- Sir John Betjeman, (1906 – 1984) English poet, writer, defender of Victorian architecture, and broadcaster;  British Poet Laureate 1972-1984.  From John Betjeman Collected Poems.

A Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Anglo-Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Scripture references: Matthew 13:45-46; Exodus 3:1-17

The Night

                           John 3.2

      Through that pure virgin shrine,
That sacred veil drawn o’er Thy glorious noon,
That men might look and live, as glowworms shine,
         And face the moon,
   Wise Nicodemus saw such light
   As made him know his God by night.

      Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
         When Thou didst rise!
   And, what can never more be done,
   Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

      O who will tell me where
He found Thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
         So rare a flower,
   Within whose sacred leaves did lie
   The fulness of the Deity?

      No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,
But His own living works did my Lord hold
         And lodge alone;
   Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
   And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

      Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
         Which none disturb!
   Christ’s progress, and His prayer time;
   The hours to which high heaven doth chime;

      God’s silent, searching flight;
When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
         His still, soft call;
   His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,
   When spirits their fair kindred catch.

      Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel’s wing or voice
         Is seldom rent,
   Then I in heaven all the long year
   Would keep, and never wander here.

      But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
         To every mire,
   And by this world’s ill-guiding light,
   Err more than I can do by night.

      There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
         See not all clear.
   O for that night! where I in Him
   Might live invisible and dim!

-- Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) Welsh poet and devout Anglican through the English Civil War and Commonwealth

Image: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Study of Nicodemus

Scripture Link: John 3:1-17, 2 Lent A

Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev’ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work’d it
Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high ‘mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

And “Tea!” she said in a tiny voice
“Wake up! It’s nearly five”
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive.

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
At the gray, decaying face,
As the calm of a Leamington ev’ning
Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

--Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) British poet, broadcaster, defender of Victorian architecture, and writer, British Poet Laureate 1972-1984.

Joy and Peace in Believing (Olney Hymns, XLVIII)

Sometimes a light surprises 

   The Christian while he sings; 

It is the Lord who rises 

    With healing on His wings; 

When comforts are declining, 

   He grants the soul again 

A season of clear shining, 

   To cheer it after rain. 

In holy contemplation 

    We sweetly then pursue 

The theme of God's salvation, 

    And find it ever new; 

Set free from present sorrow, 

    We cheerfully can say, 

E'en let the unknown to-morrow 

    Bring with it what it may! 

It can bring with it nothing, 

    But He will bear us through; 

Who gives the lilies clothing, 

    Will clothe His people too; 

Beneath the spreading heavens 

    No creature but is fed; 

And He who feeds the ravens 

    Will give His children bread. 

Though vine nor fig tree neither 

    Their wonted fruit shall bear, 

Though all the field should wither, 

    Nor flocks nor herds be there: 

Yet God the same abiding, 

    His praise shall tune my voice; 

For, while in Him confiding, 

    I cannot but rejoice.


-- William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and Anglican hymn writer.

Cowper struggled with tragedy and depression his entire life; his friend John Newton suggested he begin writing hymns as therapy while Cowper was committed to an asylum.

The Coming

And God held in his hand

A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Welsh poet and Anglican priest.

In Church

Often I try

To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.


-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet, Anglican priest

The Good Samaritan

How kind the good Samaritan
To him who fell among the thieves!
Thus Jesus pities fallen man,
And heals the wounds the soul receives.

O! I remember well the day,
When sorely wounded, nearly slain;
Like that poor man I bleeding lay,
And groaned for help, but groaned in vain.

Men saw me in this helpless case,
And passed without compassion by;
Each neighbor turned away his face,
Unmoved by my mournful cry.

But he whose name had been my scorn,
As Jews Samaritans despise
Came, when he saw me thus forlorn,
With love and pity in his eyes.

Gently he raised me from the ground,
Pressed me to lean upon his arm;
And into every gaping wound
He poured his own all-healing balm.

Unto his church my steps he led,
The house prepared for sinners lost;
Gave charge I should be clothed and fed;
And took upon him all the cost.

Thus saved from death, from want secured,
I wait till he again shall come,
When I shall be completely cured
And take me to his heav’nly home.

There through eternal boundless days,
When nature’s wheel no longer rolls,
How shall I love, adore, and praise,
This good Samaritan to souls!




--John Newton (1725-1807), former slave ship captain and investor in the slave trade who became an abolitionist and Anglican priest; he is best known as the author of the lyrics to the Hymn "Amazing Grace." The British abolished the slave trade just weeks before he died.

Scripture reference: Luke 10:25-37 (Proper 10C)

I Am Not A Camera

To call our sight Vision
implies that, to us,
all objects are subjects.

What we have not named
or beheld as a symbol
escapes our notice.

We never look at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.

It is very rude to take close-ups and, except
when engaged, we don’t:
lovers, approaching to kiss,
instinctively shut their eyes before their faces
can be reduced to
anatomical data.

Instructive it may be to peer through lenses:
each time we do, though, we should apologise
to the remote or the small for intruding
upon their quiddities.

The camera records
visual facts: ie.,
all may be fictions.

Flash-backs falsify the Past:
they forget
the remembering Present.

On the screen we can only
witness human behaviour:
Choice is for camera-crews.

The camera may
do justice to laughter, but must
degrade sorrow.


-- W. H. Auden (1907- 1973), BritishAmerican poet, essayist, and teacher