A Sunday Talk

Malachi 4.1-2a; 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.5-19 (set out below)

Some people were talking about the temple and the beauty of its fine stones and ornaments. Jesus said,  ‘These things you are gazing at—the time will come when not one stone will be left upon another; they will all be thrown down.’ ‘Teacher,’ they asked, ‘when will that be? What will be the sign that these things are about to happen?’

He said, ‘Take care that you are not misled. For many will come claiming my name and saying, “I am he,” and, “The time has come.” Do not follow them. And when you hear of wars and insurrections, do not panic. These things are bound to happen first; but the end does not follow at once.’ Then he added, ‘Nation will go to war against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be severe earthquakes, famines and plagues in many places, and in the sky terrors and great portents.

‘But before all this happens they will seize you and persecute you. You will be handed over to synagogues and put in prison; you will be haled before kings and governors for your allegiance to me. This will be your opportunity to testify. So resolve not to prepare your defence beforehand, because I myself will give you such words and wisdom as no opponent can resist or refute. Even your parents and brothers, your relations and friends, will betray you. Some of you will be put to death; and everyone will hate you for your allegiance to me. But not a hair of your head will be lost. By standing firm you will win yourselves life.’

Let me begin with a prayer appointed for this Sunday: “Heavenly Father, whose blessed Son was revealed to destroy the works of the devil and to make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life: grant that we, having this hope, may purify ourselves even as he is pure; that when he shall appear in power and great glory we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Yesterday I was taking part in a funeral service at the Methodist Chapel in Snailbeach, on the edge of the Stiperstones, and, despite the sadness of the occasion, also quite enjoying the chance to revisit a chapel in which I took services regularly over quite a few years.  Building on the side of a hill is never easy, and I couldn’t help but notice some scaffolding in place.  Without constant care and attention even the most solid-looking building will become weak;  and when any weakness is discovered, it’s important to get on with the job without delay and put things right. Some of the churches in which I’ve ministered and served have of course stood far longer than the chapel at Snailbeach;  in two, one of which is the parish church at Llandrinio, the stonework in part at least goes back to a time before the Norman Conquest.  For a millennium and more a church has stood in that place to testify to the reality of faith, and to the continual offering of prayer.

I was also of course a canon of the cathedral for a while, sharing with my colleagues in those days a responsibility for the maintenance of that ancient house of God.  Even in this secular age cathedrals are much visited;  across the country in fact cathedrals in general are I’m told receiving more visitors through the week, and more worshippers on a Sunday, year on year. And I think that even those who arrive in such a place with a camera but without a faith come to sense the sanctity of an ancient cathedral or for that matter a small and ancient shrine, the church at Pennant Melangell for example:  a place of prayer, in which the visitor feel, perhaps to their surprise, that they are somehow drawn closer to God.

A friend who does some summer chaplaincy work on odd days at a cathedral not far from here told me of the many conversations he has with people who’ve just come for a day out but have found more than they expected. Some of them have left with a real sense that their lives have been in some way transformed. People I suppose approached the temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Gospel with the same awe as people today show towards our great cathedrals.  The disciples of Jesus, we read, marvelled at the size of the stone blocks with which it was built.

But Jesus told them that not one stone would be left standing on another.  Perhaps he was specifically predicting the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple that in fact took place some thirty years later.  Or perhaps he was saying that however grand and beautiful a building, it will not stand unless the faith of those who build it is real.  Our great cathedrals look so solid, as though they could stand for ever.  But on Remembrance Sunday especially we know how quickly the madness of human conflict can lay waste the work of centuries of human endeavour;  I’ve visited both Coventry and Dresden and stood prayerfully in the ruined shells of great churches.

The great temple in Jerusalem was not of course the temple of Solomon - that was long gone, but the temple of Herod.  Herod, called Herod the Great, began building his temple a few years before the birth of Jesus, and in fact building would still have been going on at the time that Jesus was there. People really did believe that this temple would last for ever, and that it could never be destroyed;  but by 70 AD it lay in ruins, and the city at the heart of Israel’s relationship with her God had been razed to the ground.

In today’s reading, from St Luke’s Gospel, it was the comments people were making on the beauty of the temple's stones and dedication gifts that gave Jesus the cue to say the harsh words he did, words designed to undermine any confidence in the buildings. Certainly those of us who like myself love church buildings may well be challenged here.  I am again and again inspired when I visit holy places, and stand within stones that have faithfully borne witness to the gospel over many centuries.

Those verses I also read from the prophecy of Malachi provide a response for this. The prophet challenges any over-confidence we may place in our own abilities, and in the works of our own hands. We may stand within a precious building, whether a small chapel or a mighty temple; but we must put our trust not in stone and stained glass, but in God - in God for whose worship and to whose glory these places were built.

And this is surely true - that, just as we need to be swiftly attentive to any weakness in the building, the stone and the timber and the glass, so too we need to be swiftly and regularly attentive to any weakness in the spiritual building, in the community of faith, and in the individual Christian self.  I know just how true this can be, and how often it’s true that just when I’m looking good and feeling strong, I’m in fact often more at risk than ever of tripping up and falling.  We need to regularly examine our buildings;  we need also to regularly examine ourselves - and in both cases we need to look deeper than the surface.  Paul tells us that we must never weary of doing right;  in fact I almost lose count of the places in the letters of Paul where he speaks of the necessity of perseverance and of self-awareness before God.

Those hard words of Jesus challenge us to be faithful to God through thick and thin, to be wise and not misled.  And it will, he promises his hearers, be a tough time, a time when even the closest of friends, even one’s own family, may turn against us.  Let’s not forget that for some of our sisters and brothers across the Christian world today, this is what it is like. Persecution is real and harsh, and they would identify in a very personal way with the words of Malachi the prophet about staying true to God's name in a time of burning trial.

But those words from St Luke’s Gospel, though they speak of hard times, they’re also rich with promise. If we stay with our Lord, he will stay with us.  Buildings may be destroyed, possessions may be lost, but our faith is in the God whose love is eternal, and the sign of that love is the cross on which our Lord Jesus Christ lost everything, laid down everything, laid down even his own life, in order that he might open the gate to eternal life to all his people, and so that he himself might be crowned High King of Heaven.  We need have no fear of worldly destruction - even such terrible things as the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple, which I suppose would still have been fresh in the memory of those who first read St Luke’s Gospel and the words of Jesus he recorded there.

Worldly destruction is never the end, never the final curtain, when viewed in the light of heaven - though we, still pilgrims passing, as Psalm 23 reminds us, through the valley of the shadow of death, will still need a persevering faith, which will require us to examine ourselves and to encourage one another.  And problems and troubles and attacks on the faith are also opportunities, or perhaps I should say these events provide opportunities to testify to our Lord.  Jesus tells us that we will be called on to bear witness in unexpected places; he tells us also that if we trust and persevere and stand firm in faith, when the time comes God will provide us with the words we need.

Today this might chime in with memories of conflict and war, and of times when the whole world has felt dark and dangerous, and tomorrow was by no means guaranteed.  It might also chime in with our prayers for Christians who are suffering today:  perhaps in Syria, Iraq or Egypt, perhaps in Pakistan or in parts of India, perhaps in northern Nigeria. We read of the destruction of church buildings;  let us pray they may stand firm in faith.  I find an immense contrast in those verses from St Luke’s Gospel:  on the one hand, the temple will be destroyed so completely that not one stone will be left standing on another, and this will bring in a time of hopeless confusion, of dangers and trials; yet on the other hand Jesus promises those who stand firm that not one hair of their heads would perish.

This story has been repeated throughout the history of the Church, as one of our hymns reminds us: “Through many a day of conflict, through many a scene of strife, the faithful few fought bravely to guard the nation’s life”.  Perhaps in some places today those words will be sung, and people will think on the few who fought in the cause of freedom seventy years ago, and the names read out by war memorials this morning.  We honour them, and shall do in our prayers; but the hymn is really about the times when the Church has seemed in great danger of certain destruction, and the revival the begins with, and depends on, the perseverance of the few, those who stand firm in the faith.  Those who will not be knocked down, even when not one stone stands on another. May we stand with them, and may the light of Christ shine within us and shine out from us into the world he died to save.  Amen.

Thursday Thought

"If you're going to shine, you have to burn."

Light Bulbs

I switched on a light yesterday morning and tripped the circuit, because one of the three bulbs in a corridor light fitting blew.  In fact, one had already gone, so that left only one functioning bulb out of the three - time to get some new ones, therefore.  On investigation, the bulbs needed proved to be different from any existing bulbs in my store, despite the fitting itself being quite similar in appearance to several others in the house.  A special purchase was therefore needed, and made - but why have things become so complicated these days? We seem to have every different contemporary form of domestic light fitted somewhere in our house, and it's all a far cry from the Good Old Days when the only issue was 60 watt or 100, and clear or pearl.

The same proved to be true of our kitchen tap when it started dripping.  In the G.O.D. all that would have been required of me would have been to spend a few pence on a washer . . . but this was a modern lever tap with some sort of ceramic insert.  And can we find a replacement part? No, is the short answer - so it looks as though we'll be fitting a new tap, so long as I can find one that works in the old fashioned way that was always good enough for me.

Tonight I found myself reminiscing over the phone with my aunt about childhood days, and gas lamps, steam trains, slate boards to write and draw on at school, doorstep jam sandwiches at my Granny's house, sherbet dips from the corner shop, all kinds of memories of how things were back then.  Not that everything was better, and certainly there was less in the way of consumer choice available - but maybe now there can be rather more choice than any of us really needs.  At least as regards light bulbs and kitchen taps, I tend to find myself confused, frustrated, and also de-skilled, in our modern world.

All Saints

A teacher was asking her RE class, "What would I need, in order to be a saint?"  After a pause, a hand went up towards the back of the class.  "Yes, Emily?"  "Please, miss, you'd have to be dead!"

Maybe not the answer expected, but true all the same, I suppose - at least, of those famous men and women whom we remember with the title of 'saint'.  We have looked at their lives as a whole, and decided that there is some quality of holiness, of faithful perseverance, of kindness or courage, that we wish to honour and to remember.  Or, because there needs to be order and consistency in this sort of thing, "The Church" in some shape or form has made such an assessment.

In reality, people have feet of clay, and the airwaves are littered with stories of famous people, celebrities and high achievers, who have fallen from their pedestals like Humpty Dumpty from his wall, and with the same disastrous consequences.  But saints are (or were, I suppose) also real people, and you only have to look at the Gospels to see that even the first apostles, the founders of our Church, were anything but infallible. You might even gain the impression that, as they followed Jesus along the lanes of Galilee and Judaea, they were wrong nearly all the time.

So what is special about the Saints, capital 'S'?  Leaving aside the test of miracles performed and prayers answered, I suppose that, fallible and clay-footed though they undoubtedly were, these are people who provide us with an example of faith worth following.  When Jesus calls us, as he does, we can look at these people and see what it might mean to say 'Yes'. Saints challenge us and inspire us, and I like to think of them also as accompanying us - firstly, as pilgrims who have walked already the roads we now travel, and secondly, surely, as those who now pray for us around the thrones of heaven.

They are like stained glass windows, aglow with a light that is not their own, but which in each saintly life story shines in its own special and distinct way.  Saints are not superhuman, and indeed as we read their stories we become aware of men and women who were deeply aware of their own sin and frailty. They made the effort, though, to give themselves to their Lord, so that, like Paul, they could say that "my life is no longer my own;  it is Christ, living in me."  In reality, though, we give away our life in order to receive it back again, for it is as me, myself, that I can be of service to Christ and allow his love to infect and infuse me.

So what do we need, me and you, to be saints? Maybe our saintly status can't be confirmed until we are dead - but already we are saints,or that is the opportunity set before us: to open ourselves, to make ourselves translucent, transparent to the light of the love of Christ, and within that love and through its recreating power, to become our true selves, what we were made and destined to be. Here and now.

Birds

Our garden today has been absolutely full of very busy small birds - blue, great and coal tits, chaffinches, dunnocks, nuthatches.  They've been taking turns on the various feeders, but also prospecting along the greenhouse roof and through the various shrubs and bushes, searching out and grabbing whatever they can find.  The chicken wire walls and top to our fruit cage is no barrier to blue tits, and they were flitting in and out like anything, as our runner beans, still standing there, were obviously a very good source of small insects.  Of course, blue tits are no great problem for the fruit grower, and the mesh is fine enough to keep out the more problematic birds, I'm sure!

Since today was quite blustery with some very sharp showers, our comparatively sheltered garden was, I suppose, good and fairly easy hunting territory for birds eager to stock up against the coming winter.  We know of course, having watched the TV weather forecast, that there's a big storm on the way (though I'm hoping the worst of it will pass us by to the south);  I wonder, do the birds have some inner radar that warns them that they might not be doing much feeding for the next day or so . . . is that why they were so busy today?

And Again . . .

Yet another scam email purporting to come from NatWest . . . utterly pathetic, it didn't even TRY to be convincing - logo clearly snipped out of something and pasted, spelling and grammatical errors all over the place, and since when did anyone like NatWest call me a "valued customer"? I do find it all rather depressing.

Just a Thought . . .

All the time in our world, things are happening that never, ever happened before.  Be prepared to be surprised.

Rain

As I look at the ancient parish church,
its red stones glow in the rain, their corners and
edges blurred into soft-focus.
I pause to stand in the shelter of the lych, to note
how the music sounds of water around me have been enhanced
by worshipful voices raised in song,
“Cwm Rhondda” from within the stained glass
lit against the dark of this wet autumn afternoon.

I am only a bystander, someone passing through, and so
I remain safely outside, glad of the shelter
and glad to hear the hymn,
and perhaps also glad that prayers are being made -
but happy too not to have to be part of anything;
for the moment, I am only observing and recording
from a distance, not yet ready
to step into the baptismal shower.

Finding the Time is Hard

Finding the time is hard

at this season of the year.  The wind

clatters in a burst of spent leaves across the topstones

of the laneside wall, and icy drops spatter the screen;

the last stage of my journey, and already the light is failing.

I pass between the gateposts to park up, and watch

crows scattering like torn black rags

above the broken line of trees that tops the ridge.

Crows seem able to give themselves to be part of the storm,

while all I can do is turn my collar up, and keep my head down,

and lose my hold on time like the trees are losing hold of their leaves,

to be swept across the fields;  it will not be long

till nearly every curtain will be closed

before even I start my journey home.  It is as though

The dark were engaged in a two pronged attack, mounting

a pincer movement to squeeze the life out of the light.

The remains of the day have become skeletal and pale,

washed out like the trees through my rainy windscreen

now that the wipers have stopped.

I shall make my run for the door and my fireside chair,

to close the curtains, sit tight and

leave the world be, hibernate if I could; for anything more

finding the time is hard,

at this season of the year.

Corvids

A mention of an interesting event that I observed last weekend.  On Saturday afternoon I was outside clearing out the greenhouse and doing a few other autumn garden jobs, when all of a sudden there was the noise of a great assembly of crows and jackdaws in the big oak tree to the north of our garden.  To me it seemed like a major argument, perhaps even a battle, with the birds wheeling about in numbers.  I am pretty sure I could hear magpies too, though I couldn't actually see them. I know crows and magpies will fight, and perhaps that's true for jackdaws as well;  anyway, I really can’t be sure what provoked this, but it certainly disturbed the peace.  

We always have crows and jackdaws around our gardens, but I normally only see them in groups of three or four at most.  There will have been forty or fifty birds at least involved in this affair, and the commotion went on for at least a quarter of an hour.  During this time the squabble, if that's what it was, gradually moved south through the wood from the major oak until the birds were mostly in or wheeling above the trees (ash, elm and sycamore) that our own garden backs on to.  And then after a while they dispersed, leaving just a few jackdaws to shout at each other now and again.  I’d love to know what was really going on here, what started it, and how typical it is - after all, these are intelligent and quite highly organised birds.  Was it perhaps about carving out winter territories, or were these young birds just rousting about? I'm sure someone will know, or at least have a theory.

A Last Bite of Harvest

Well into October, and the Harvest Festival season almost over, nonetheless Ann and I still had two to attend today, one Anglican and one Presbyterian.  The first we attended only the service (Ann played the organ), but had to cry off the lunch, while the other we managed both the service and a very well-laden tea table afterwards.  Both were nicely taken;  the Anglican service could I thought have been better attended, but then again, some who might have been in church were busy instead producing the lunch, I suppose.  I liked the service, simple, clear and with a good cross section of hymns that directed us toward a wider perspective than just the local farms and fields.

The Presbyterian service, in a chapel whose normal Sunday attendance is very few, was I think better attended than had been expected, but a Montgomeryshire tea table is more than capable of coping with a few extra mouths (never knowingly under-catered), and there were plenty of sandwiches and cakes still left when people started packing up for home.  It wasn't a short address, but they like a bit of content in chapel, and there was also a singing-band with guitars, which was nice.  What I liked was the enthusiasm of the preacher, and I felt that his choice of text (from I Corinthians 3) was refreshingly different for a Harvest sermon.

Anyway, that's it for another year, I suppose!  We're already practising music for Christmas, of course, let alone All Saints, Remembrance and Advent.  But I do enjoy Harvest, not least because it's a season in its own right - it doesn't happen everywhere on the same day, so the successive services and socials in different churches mean you can get to see, as you travel about the place, quite a few different interpretations of the theme.

Ivy

The ivy snakes across the weathered bricks.
As I stand here I can almost think I see it move, trace
the twisting of the stem, the probing of velcro roots.
October has weathered the peacock sky to a flat grey,
and from it the spitting wind cuts through to my heart.

I am here to tend the garden, my task
to rip out a summer’s growth of buttercups and nettles,
to open up spaces and take down old stems,
get things tidy for the winter.
But I shall not touch the ivy, let it grow on.

Let it grow on, hiding the wounds, concealing the evidence.
Even in this chill breeze, its late flowers, frothing green,
are humming with flies and small bees, there to grab what they can
before it is all too late.
For me it has been too late for quite a while now.

The tumbling days of October
are just time at last catching up with me,
preparing itself to make winter real around me
as it is already real within; yet the polished green of the growing ivy
hints at a different outcome from the one expected.

Ludlow

On my way to Ludlow this morning I was stuck for many miles behind a large lorry, which eventually turned off (hooray!). Not casting any aspersions, as it was being well-driven, and I'm sure it couldn't have safely travelled those narrow and difficult roads any faster. Nonetheless, as I followed on behind I couldn't help a somewhat wry smile at the legend "Speed - the Future of Distribution" on the rear of the lorry.

The reason I was travelling to Ludlow was to attend what turned out to be an enjoyable and stimulating day on the poetry of R.S. Thomas, whose verse I have long admired. He often seems to speak directly to my soul, and I would love to be able to write like him. The day focused on the theme of self-identity, and on some of the significant relationships in the poet's life. R.S. Thomas' poetry has always seemed to me to be sometimes quite painfully honest, but his poems may also demonstrate something of the limits of his own self-awareness - that is, he is very honest about what he is aware of in himself, and in his analysis of relationships, but maybe there were sides to the man, aspects of his character, that others could see and applaud but which remain unrevealed in his writings.

This led us to touch on the limitations of our own self-awareness. What are the things in life that lead us to become more aware of who or what we are? Clearly, the making and unmaking of relationships, with other people and perhaps also with new places; the points of achievement, the moments of tragedy, the times when we fail. Perhaps also the rare and special moments when we find ourselves freed from the fierce tyranny of time, perhaps by something as simple as a sudden burst of sunshine through the clouds, and the way it lights on a field the other side of the valley . . . the moments that do occur when we become aware that we are surrounded by eternity, even as we travel through this world of time and seasons.

Are self-awareness and God-awareness inescapably interlinked for the person of faith? Maybe that's true beyond faith as well, I ponder, having listened to a piece on the importance of religious faith and its insights to many atheists, on Radio 4 as I travelled in. All I can note is that it is often experiences of this sort that prompt me to write verse, even if I don't always quite know what I am writing. And that I find I am bound to agree with R.S. Thomas' own statement to the effect that poets need to write without being confined by orthodoxy or afraid of heresy, if what they write is to be the imaginative truth.

Mayflies

I was watching the second of the BBC nature programmes tonight looking at the seasons of natural history in the UK (Spring, therefore), and an awful lot of things seemed to be getting eaten by other things.  My wife, wandering in, said "Urgh, can't watch that!" and exited, probably not hearing me respond with something along the lines of "But that's life, that's how the world works."  And it is.  Nature overproduces, some things get eaten, most of the time a balance is preserved - and just because we grow most of the things specially that we eat (and kill them 'humanely') doesn't mean we're not just playing the same game.  If you don't eat, you don't live, but if you do eat, something else has to be the thing that is eaten. Still, to tell the truth, I wasn't watching that element of the proceedings all that easily and happily, either.

Anyway, a lot of the things getting eaten in the film turned out to be mayflies, and it does seem quite strange to me that something should spend two or three years growing as a nymph down there among the weeds and pebbles of a river, just to have, literally, a day in the sun as an adult, by the end of which all of that day's flies are dead. Sad, too, to think that some of the mayfly larvae will have spent all that time growing and maturing, only to be snapped up by a passing trout the minute they spread their wings. These adults have no other function than to fly, mate, and lay the eggs that will produce the next generation - that will, in their turn, become adults that will have no other function than . . . and so on and so forth.

There is immense overproduction. If all the brood of mayflies survived, I suppose they would swamp the world. But of course, as they emerge, everything else is having a field day, and they get eaten by fish, frogs and toads, by wagtails and other insect-eating birds, even by ducks. I bet all these species can't believe their luck on a day when the mayflies are emerging. It is also, ephemerally, quite beautiful - so many wings beating and catching the sun as these creatures rise up from the water, fall back down, and rise again.

All life is ephemeral, though most is not as ephemeral as the life of the adult mayfly (members of the order Ephemeroptera), and, although sometimes the dark at the end of the Long Day feels a little daunting and scary, on the whole I have no problem with that. But my faith is much more severely threatened, I find, by the prodigality and wastefulness of nature . . . an ever-present theme throughout tonight's account of Spring, but particularly brought into sharp focus when I watched those mayflies.

Epitaph

One of the poems I was revising today :-

When it is time to go
I shall hope to be remembered with smiles,
though I’d like to think there might be a few tears besides,
and, surely, a tale or two to tell
accompanied by the raising of glasses and laughter,
and maybe the odd eyebrow too.

When it is time to go
I'll hope to leave knowing
this has been a job well done, and a journey boldly made.
Maybe there might be a touch of frustration too: after all,
it would have been good to have had a little more to try at,
and to have found a mile or two further to walk; but let’s hope, anyway,
that there won’t be too much to regret.

Oh, I won’t have got everything right, I know, and I’ll never hide from my faults.
The plaudits I’ll be happy to share, while the mistakes have been all my own;
and yes, I do feel an ache in my heart for every hurt I've caused.
But when it is time to go
I hope that even those hurts might be looked on kindly,
and that I might find a welcome wherever it is I'm going,
with a slice of forgiveness and forbearance, and a bowl or two of love.

For know this of me, friends, and believe it, when it is time to go:
Always I put my heart into all I sought to do,
always I tried hard at love.  And always I hoped that
by the end of it all
I might have sparked more smiles than tears.

Alpine Incident

A poem written sometime last year, that I came across as I revised other pieces of writing today :-

Discovering a man just hanging on by his finger tips
to the stark and sheer rock face
(they had heard on the wind his cries for help),
the leadership team took a moment in committee
to discuss the correct procedure
and to establish protocol,

then, as agreed and directed, they stamped on his hands.

And, as he fell, they made sure to call down,
advising him to take good care.
They hoped that he would be all right, they said,
and that he would be able to adjust
to the new situation in which he now found himself -
flinging down after him a bar or two
of their Kendal mint cake.

And so they continued on their upward journey,
secure in the knowledge that the right thing had been done,  that they had
acted properly and within the guidelines,
been seen to be beyond reproach.

After all, he had been already
on his way down.

Birds

Yesterday I spent some time putting up a new feeding station for our garden birds.  The ones we had were I think too close to the trees that our garden backs onto, and therefore birds using them were potentially at risk from predators, cats mostly, that can use the cover to sneak up on them.  The feeders themselves were also quite vulnerable to thieving squirrels . . . I don't really mind feeding the odd squirrel, but they are greedy little beggars:  they consume far more than I can afford, and hang around for ages keeping the birds away.

So a swish new feeding station (complete with squirrel-proof baffle) has now been placed on an area of flagstones which I can easily keep clean (that's the theory, anyway), and stocked with sunflower kernels, peanuts, fat balls and nyger seed.  And almost straight away, our garden is full of birds;  it's quite remarkable.  So far, I have to say, they've not spent much time on the feeders.  They are still too new, I suspect.  The birds know what they are, and that there's good food there, but they don't yet know how safe it will be to use them.  So birds are flying by, across the garden from right to left, then back from left to right.  Numbers of them have perched in our little row of blossom trees, pretending to prospect the branches for insects. Occasionally one of them will fly across very close to the new feeders, perhaps veering away at the last minute, and perhaps then perching where the old feeders used to be and looking wistfully (or so I expect) across at the new ones.

In other words, birds are just like us. We too hang around waiting for someone else to take a lead, hoping that someone else will take the risk of trying it first, whatever "it" may be. I don't want it to be me that looks the fool, I don't want it to be me that gets caught. Mind you, once someone does take the lead, the rest of us soon enough follow - and I'm sure it will be just like that in our garden too. I'm not one of life's trailblazers, much as I might like to be; but I do thank God very sincerely that such people exist, for so much in human progress has depended on the one person who dared to take the risk, while ninety-nine others were just hanging around and dithering.

Bat

An unusual event today:  I decided to put away the sunshade we'd been using over our table on the veranda. Though it was a lovely day today and we all sat out for a while, the sunshade weather is past and over for this year! So I took it apart and opened up the shade so that I could fold it round more neatly, only to find a little furry ball inside.  Closer inspection revealed it to be a bat, too large I think for a pipistrelle, but I'm not well up on other species.  After a while, the bat decided it was perhaps time to move on;  it crawled up the fabric to a point at which it could take off, extended its wings, paused for a moment, and then flew across our garden and along the woodland edge, eventually disappearing into the trees.  I was sorry to have disturbed it;  maybe it would have been happy in our shed, but I don't know.  Was it intending to spend the winter in our sunshade, or had it just been hiding up there till evening?  Well, I hope it found somewhere comfortable and safe in the wood!

Coffee

It was suggested to me this morning that Welshpool is, perhaps, the coffee capital of mid-Wales, if not the entire UK.  Our small town seems to have at least one coffee morning each day of the week, and sometimes as many as three, and a hardy band of supporters will trek from one to the next.  Needless to say, I was helping to run a coffee morning at the time of this conversation;  there is a coffee morning every Saturday morning at Church House, with a different charity running it each week (today it was the turn of Welshpool Rotary Club), and a very faithful band of folk who come and support it.  We took just over £100 this morning, I think, which we shall be quite happy with.

I think the punters get a good deal at our coffee mornings - for £1 entrance, plus a quid or two on raffle tickets, they get the chance to catch up on the latest news and gossip, fuelled by pretty much all the coffee they can drink and a plate of cheap biccies thrown in. Having said that, please don't imagine that this means commercial coffee outlets don't get a look-in.  There are plenty of them too. At least three new tea shops or coffee bars have opened in the town this year, and they (together with the many we already have) all look attractive and inviting.  I wonder whether the economy of Welshpool can support so many caffs?  I sort of hope so - after all, it's nice to have a good choice of places where you can sit about and have a good chinwag over a latte or two, and if there are decent sticky cakes on offer too, so much the better.

Harvest Thoughts

The first Friday in October is clearly big in the Harvest Festival world, and a large proportion of our local churches and chapels seem each to have their harvest services and suppers tonight.  I suspect that not quite so many people attend Harvest Festival as used to, but it is even so one of the success stories of the church year, and I hope all of these local Harvests will have had a good attendance.

The present situation of political deadlock in the USA, and the deaths of many economic migrants off the coast of Italy - two of today's headline news stories - are both a reminder that Harvest these days is more global then ever, even if at the level of the local church and chapel we may pretend to old-fashioned self-sufficiency with our local apples and potatoes and sheaves of corn and all those traditional harvest hymns. In reality the economies of the world mesh together to such an extent that today, three days or so into the American shut-down and with the dollar at its lowest for many a year, worried noises from all across the world are beginning to be heard in the news media.  We live in a world where jobs are being exported, or outsourced to low-wage economies, while increasing numbers of people are travelling in the opposite direction, some at immense risk, hoping that our streets may be paved with gold.  Our economies are increasingly dependant on the cheap labour both of workforces in Chinese economic zones or Bangladeshi sweatshops, and also (however hard a line may we talk up on immigration) of those who come voyaging to our shores hoping for a better life and a share of our wealth, whether they arrive legally or illegally.

Hmm - thinking about it, maybe that's why the old traditional Harvest Festival still attracts - it takes us away from the messy mixed up realities of today and allows us to bury ourselves in a sepia tinted simpler past that even then probably never really quite existed.

Mobbed

I was out a little earlier than usual this morning, as I wanted to spend an hour or so at one of our local nature reserves, Llyn Coed y Dinas.  I had the hide to myself on arrival, and in my hour there was plenty to see - snipe, gadwall, lapwings;  a little grebe and a common sandpiper - and all the regulars, ducks, geese, swans, coots, cormorants, that frequent this bustling reserve, formed by flooding pits that were the result of nearby road-building a few years ago.

What I was really there for was the chance to see a great white heron (or egret;  I prefer heron) that has been at the reserve for a few weeks now;  in fact at one time there were two.  I'd seen quite a few of these birds while on holiday, and I have seen them before in the UK, but for Welshpool this was a rarity, and worth the effort.  It took a while to emerge from behind the bushes at the far end of the lake (until then I'd had very brief and tantalising glimpses of something white moving behind the leaves - I knew what it was but couldn't really say I'd seen it, as such).  Once out in the open, though, I had some very good views.

It was left to itself while at the far end of the lake, but once it decided to fly up to "my end" so to speak - where the hide is, in other words - it didn't have such an easy time.  There were four or five greay herons also on the reserve, and they were obviously rattled by this interloper.  Again and again it was driven off, and forced back into the air.  The grey herons, or one or two among them at least, were prepared to chase the great white half the length of the lake.

Perhaps that's why the other great white heron decided to move on.  This one certainly seemed to have more "stickability" - but it was interesting to see an example of something a little different getting a reaction, and a hostile one at that, within the natural world.  To be fair, the grey herons do get quite fractious and territorial even among themselves, as they carve out their own hunting patches around the lake (I was fascinated, by the way, to get a good sight through my scope of a grey heron just in front of the hide catching and eating a fish.  The fish was caught and swallowed almost in one movement).  But I couldn't help but be reminded of the way in which in human societies the different person or the minority community so easily becomes seen as a threat and identified as a target, when often in reality there would be room for all to live in peace - it just requires a bit of give and take.

An Autumn Walk

(The first draft of a new poem)

Late afternoon into early evening;  the sound of bells from some way behind me

seems set to follow me all through my walk.  Leaves are turning by now,

red and gold showing amongst the green, while

from somewhere the slow smell pervades of a stinkhorn fungus.

This morning has been wet, that mizzling wet that soaks everything through,

so that now the bracken and the rangy nettles are strewn with pearls.

There is a feeble sort of sun that seems itself to be made mostly of water.

A robin is singing, another responds, and still the sound of the bells

is there, chasing me from a steepled tower half a mile away and more.

Years ago, too many to think about, I used to walk this path;

nothing much has changed, or so it seems - certainly

the bells sound just the same, just

a new generation learning the methods, plain bob minor,

grandsire triples, all of that.  The names mean little to me,

but the sound tugs at my heart, where somehow I am still that boy,

kicking at the leaves and hoping for fallen conkers.

And now I have reached the high bridge over the canal, where close by

busy squirrels are laying quarrelsome claim to the last few hazel nuts.

Here is where I shall pause, and reflect on which

of three or four possible ways back I might take:

perhaps the high path through the wood, and then the towpath.

That’s the way I would always use back then, but there is a steep descent

and my knees are not quite what they were. 

A nearby sycamore has already lost nearly all its leaves -

yellow and brown, they crowd against my feet

as I look down to check my boot-treads and laces.

Ways back I might take;  how about

a way back into boyhood, into the innocence of those far off days,

with my aims and hopes and dreams as yet unblunted by time,

and everything still to happen?

The only way I can take is via those bells

and the memories they stir, and even they are partial now and fading.

“Forty years on, when afar and asunder . . .”

There is only the onward journey, from autumn towards winter,

framed in the frosting air and falling leaves, but with, still,

the hope of a spring to follow.

Central Park, from the 'Top of the Rock'

(See the two postings below)

Some Harvest Thoughts

Just to keep my hand in, a Harvest address, based on Psalm 104 and Luke 12.13-34 :-

This is a favourite time of the year for me, and this year we’ve had the sort of summer that produces a good harvest, so there is much to give thanks for.  We live in a beautiful place here, and indeed we live in a world that is full of marvellous things.  I’ve chosen as a first reading one of my favourite psalms, a hymn of praise that speaks very vividly of the variety of forms of life with which we share our planet, and the way in which the Lord provides and cares for all of them.  I’m a keen naturalist, plant collector and bird watcher, and within the natural world I find our creator God glorified and glorified again.  Christians, and indeed members of the other great faiths of our world, more and more today are coming to understand that we are given the responsibility of stewards within this world of living wonder and variety.  Just as God placed Adam and Eve in a garden to tend it, so we too have the task under God of looking after all that he has made.

So for me that’s a significant dimension of my thinking at harvest festival. We use the earth to provide for ourselves as gardeners and farmers, and also as miners, manufacturers, fishermen and hunters.  But we’re also stewards of creation - so who are we as stewards protecting the earth from? Just ourselves, I suppose - after all, we’re the ones (at our greedy worst) who are the damagers and the exploiters and the despoilers of creation.

And it may even be that the Bible gives us encouragement to do this, to see the earth entirely in terms of resource for us to use.  For right at the beginning of our Bibles, in the first chapter of Genesis, God tells his people that they must “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” - dominion over everything: fish in the sea, birds of the air and all the rest of it.

So where does that leave us?  Well, there is surely a huge difference between using the earth’s resources and using up the earth’s resources.  We’re given dominion over all other forms of life, but the model for that dominion is provided by our Lord himself, and we see that his dominion is a dominion of love and care. In Jesus, who says to his friends  “I am among you as one who serves” he shows us the way of sacrifice and service. For the disciples of Jesus the measure of greatness is never how high and grand a throne we sit on, but how ready we are to serve one another.

I’ve been privileged over the years to travel quite widely in the world, to places where people seem to have very little, and to places where arguably people have far too much; to  places where development is urgently needed, and to places that suffer from over-development;  and certainly to some places where the harvest is poor and sparse.

So I’ve been made very aware of the challenge of sharing, of making space for one another within our human economy. I’ve been in Palestine, seeing how political tensions intervene, so that some of the harvest can’t be gathered because of the borders that can no longer be crossed.  In Tanzania I’ve seen lakeside communities where potentially there could be a rich fishery, only the resources to develop it aren’t there, so instead people just scrape a living, with goats and bony cattle on the shore and dug out canoes on the lake.  In Peru I’ve been in shanty towns where people have migrated to the city hoping for streets paved with gold, and finding instead mostly dust. Many have been driven from their family lands by poverty and by terror gangs.  I visited smallholdings established by the Rural Landless movement in Brazil, to hear stories of violence and murder done by agents of the big landowners against those who were trying to settle the land in a peaceful way.

And in all of these places I found church communities working hard and courageously to make things better for people in need, and taking seriously that call of our Lord to serve.  They were empowering people who had been helpless, and speaking out for people whose voices had till then gone unheard.  All these communities would I’m sure take to heart the verse from my second reading, in which Jesus says, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I don’t know who it was who said “tread as lightly as we can upon this world, for it’s the only one we have,” but those are wise words. Someone else has said: “Live simply, that others may simply live.”  In his story, Jesus quite brutally exposes the shallow desires of the man who hoarded all his crops in his brand new storehouses and barns.  “What good is all the wealth to you?” the man is told - it’ll all be left behind when you go.

My wife and I have not long got back from New York, where perhaps more than anywhere else on this planet you are brought face to face with human power and conspicuous consumption, in the immense buildings that rise up so high.  We ascended one of them - not the Empire State but the Rockefeller Tower, not quite so tall but 67 floors up as we looked out over the city.

As we surveyed the city skyline, wealth and power was laid out in front of us, expressed many times over in steel and glass and stone.  But looking north from the Top of the Rock, as the viewing floors of the Rockefeller Tower are known, you see not only skyscrapers but also the vast expanse of green at the heart of Manhattan that is Central Park.  We fell a bit in love with New York, for all its demonstration of the power of mammon, but we fell very much in love with Central Park, and for me that green oasis was a timely reminder of the truth that “Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

In Central Park birds flit through the trees, squirrels forage about on the grass, turtles sun themselves on rocks around the lake, and people eat ice creams and go jogging, sometimes both at the same time.  And here space is made and kept for the natural world and for the wild things, as well as for the refreshment and re-formation that we humans need if we’re to be healthy and strong in body and in spirit. And this should surely be true of the way in which we use the earth wherever we are within it.  Sometimes that means creating nature reserves and game parks and the like, not just as a resource for us or for the tourist trade, but also because the creatures with which we share this planet deserve their own space in which to survive and thrive.

But we also need simply to recognise that as human beings we’re a part of, rather than apart from, the natural order of our planet.  And as such we are diminished ourselves if we abuse or destroy the beauty of the wild places, whether that’s the hedgerows and woodlands that make our own countryside so lovely, or the rain forests and savannahs and wetlands and coral reefs of other lands.

What makes Psalm 104 so inspirational to me is the way in which it tells me that our lives are linked in to the lives of other living things, of wild donkeys and rock badgers and storks, and shows me how God provides for us all. The other day I was listening on the radio to Bishop James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool; one thing he said that I felt struck home was this: for Christians, to abuse God’s creation should be understood not only as something foolish and wrong, but also as an act of blasphemy. When we do as we like with the planet we deny God’s sovereignty, we say to him “You don’t really matter, we can do as we please.”

Another Psalm begins with these words: “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’".  God gives us the freedom to act as though he were not there, but we're fools if we take that route.  Jesus made it very clear that the rich man with his storehouses and barns was going nowhere.  Why have faith in stuff that will rust and rot and moulder away?  Instead, lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.

So for me, harvest thanksgiving must always be a time of commitment and recommitment, when we think of blessings received and also of our call to be blessing for others.  Anything less isn’t a real thanksgiving - thanksgiving for harvest isn’t expressed in what we do this evening, in our hymns and our prayers and our gifts on this one day, but in the generous and faithful living of our whole life and in the way we use all that God gives us.

That’s why at their Harvest Thanksgiving, the people of Israel brought the first fruits of harvest to lay before the Lord.  It was their sign and acknowledgement that the whole of the crop was rightfully his, that the whole harvest should and would be used in ways that were faithful and just.  May that be true for us too, and, indeed, may we ourselves be a good harvest to the Lord - through lives that will bear fruit, through lives that will reflect the love and care and compassion that the God we praise has for all he has made, and for all that by its being brings glory to his name.

Amen.

Birding in the Park

So here we are, back in business, after our trip to New York, of which more later.  Here, first of all, is the latest of my 'Nature Notes' columns, which derives from that visit :-

Parks are often good places to watch birds;  they are leafy oases in urban areas, and often there’s a good range of plant species and therefore food supplies, kind human beings who deliberately or accidentally feed the birds, and who of course also persuade the birds to be a little less timid than they might be in other places.

But Central Park, New York is an urban park on a different scale.  It’s vast!  And although it’s very full of people (in the early morning it’s like a sort of M25 for joggers), it’s also full of interesting habitats and varied wildlife.  Some of New York’s birds are very familiar, partly because we introduced them - Central Park has more than its share of house sparrows and starlings - while other birds like ravens and herring gulls just happen to be American as well as British.

But of course when you’re a new British arrival armed with field glasses everything is interesting!  A local birdwatcher identified a Wilson’s Warbler for us - a migrant species not all that common in New York, being a western American species; but we were just as interested in birds like Grackles, Robins (the American Robin is actually much more closely related to our Blackbird) and Blue Jays, which he probably never even noticed any more, since they’re so common.  There were a number of quite interesting warblers, and they seemed to be what the local birders were concentrating on most.

I’m sure that most of the birds we saw were common enough - Mockingbirds, Black-and-White Warblers, House Wrens, Mourning Doves, Chickadees - but they were all pretty special to us.  We saw other creatures too - some splendid butterflies, including that master migrant of the butterfly world, the Monarch, dragonflies, grasshoppers;  both grey and black squirrels, terrapins (there are several large pools) and, a couple of times, rats (well, they are everywhere, aren’t they?).

Two rather good sightings I had in the park were of a Red-Tailed Hawk (actually a close relative of our Buzzard and therefore a pretty big bird), which sailed across a clearing in front of me to escape a mobbing party of Blue Jays, to perch hardly more than twelve feet away from where I was standing;  and a splendid woodpecker which again crossed close in front of me to land on the trunk of a nearby mature tree.  I’m pretty sure this was a bird called the Northern Flicker.  I watched several flycatchers without being sure of the species, but I must mention the lovely bright red Cardinal that Ann and I both saw . . . “a common back-yard species” my book says - well, I wish we had them here.

Elsewhere we saw egrets, cormorants, a variety of hawks, vultures, various small sparrows and finches;  but two other delightful sightings to mention before closing were three Mockingbirds playing on the illuminated letters above the main doors of our hotel in Alexandria, Virginia;  and, best of all, the pair of Bald Eagles we glimpsed from our coach between Baltimore and Washington.  “Not many people see them,” commented Larry, our guide, who knew about them, when we told him later - and we felt pretty good.

Please note . . .

. . . that postings on this blog will resume at the beginning of October 2013.  Thank you.

Perspective

It occurs to me that religion is so often a force for division, hostility and even violence in our world chiefly because it becomes an end in itself rather than a means toward a better understand of oneself, one's world and its Maker.  An old colleague I came across last week - the first time I'd seen him for maybe twenty years or more - expressed the perspective by which he lives in what I thought was a succinct and relevant way :-

"Under God, and by his grace, I shall put Church before self, and Kingdom before Church."

It is that last section (and its equivalent, which there surely must be, in other faiths) which gets ignored. The faithful allegiance given to church is praiseworthy of course, but it can be the cause of great harm unless it is informed and moderated by an awareness of a higher aim and a greater purpose under God, which is that his love for all he has made should be proclaimed and lived.

Fight!

Today has been another lovely late summer day - sadly I think the last for a while.  One delight it served up for me was the sight of two speckled wood butterflies engaging in combat.  These are very territorial insects, or the males are at least - they will fiercely defend a patch of sunlit space within, or on the edge of, a wood or overgrown hedgerow.  Such a warm spot will provide the best chance of mating.

When an interloper arrives, a fight ensues, and that's what I witnessed today.  The two butterflies circle rapidly around each other;  and, looking closely, I could see that every so often one would dart towards the other and be repulsed.  I supposed the duel I witnessed went on for ten or fifteen minutes, though I'm told that they have been known to last for an hour or more.  The two butterflies covered a fair amount of ground even in that time, though!  In the end one flew disconsolately away.

One tends not to think of insects as territorial but in fact quite a number of butterflies seem to be.  Where we used to live we tended to find our drive claimed each year by a red admiral butterfly - obviously a different one each year, though as the behaviour was identical you might easily imagine it to be the same individual as last year.  Any invasion of the space, for example by me parking my car, would result in a sort of dive bombing enterprise by the butterfly.  Possibly it was responding to its own reflection in the windows or mirror, rather as some birds will.

Related butterflies, such as peacocks and small tortoiseshells, also behave in this way.  A male will select a perch and simply sit there and bask a bit;  but they are very watchful, and will quickly act to chase away any (male) intruders, their strategy being to sit in a good and obvious place and wait for the female to find them.

Nuthatch

I was gardening the other day on a bright sunny morning, when my thoughts were disturbed by a sharp insistent tapping sound.  I looked up, and there ahead of me was a nuthatch performing the activity that gives it its name.  It had carefully placed a hazelnut into the fissure where the trunk of a small tree divided, and was trying to break into it with repeated taps of its long sharp bill.  Apparently, this bird was originally called a ‘nut-hack’.

Eventually, it gave up and flew off.  I think it had misplaced the nut, so that its bill was striking the hardest and most intractable part of the shell.  On investigation, I found a sign of previous activity further up the crack:  another hazelnut, this time successfully dealt with - the kernel had been removed through a large hole in the shell.

Nuthatches are found throughout Wales and the southern half generally of the UK, and are here all the year round.  They are impressive little birds, with their long thin beaks, blue-grey upper parts and buff-orange underside.  For me, though, the best bit about the nuthatch’s plumage is the black bandit eye stripe that follows the line of its bill right across the side of the head.  Male and female look alike.

It is a bird of woodlands and large gardens, where it feeds on insects and other small invertebrates as well as on nuts and seeds.  It comes readily to bird tables, where it often lives up to its bandit eye stripe by being a bit of a bully.  Having said that, the ones I’ve seen in my present garden seem fairly shy.  In winter it flocks with tits and other small birds, tending to move around together - in flocks birds help each other find food, and have better protection against predators.  The nuthatch likes large mature trees, and can move up and down the trunk with equal facility (the tree creeper, in contrast, can only move up).  It has a loud and strident call.

Nuthatches nest in holes in trees, the entrance to which they make smaller (and therefore safer) by adding mud to partly close it up. They will also use nest boxes.  A pair will raise maybe six or more young, lining the bottom of the nest hole with bark and dry leaves.  For a short time this summer, our garden was thrillingly filled with nuthatches, as a local brood somewhere in the wood behind us fledged.

There is only one species of nuthatch in this country, but others are found elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, especially in Asia, but also the USA and Canada, and some parts of north Africa as well as across Europe.  All have a similar style of plumage, including in most cases the eye stripe, and all share the same habit of nesting in holes and crevices, though one or two species will excavate their own nest holes.  Some nuthatches are not woodland birds, for example the rock nuthatches which I enjoyed watching a few years ago on a visit to the Greek island of Lesbos.  They are lovely birds, and for me it’s always a thrill to see them.

Dust

She kneels once more in the dust,
placing her forehead against the cold wood,
and thinks again of the Sabbaths of long ago,
of the uncomfortably respectable old black suits,
of Mrs Protheroe in her blue hat
with the gauze, and that big pin to hold it,
of the voices ringing round, the sacred songs and solos,
and of the prayers and pauses,
the sermonising words and the long and holy silences.

It had all seemed so solid, then,
such sure foundations, so bound to stand firm, so set for ever.

She kneels where she has always knelt,
nearly eighty years of song and fervent prayer.
She had always wanted to grow old in this place,
but in that same lost world, and not in this;
with the next generation around her,
and not alone, or almost so.

She does not look up;  better to imagine
those long ago faces, those sure and certain things
that are now, for the most part,
reduced to the dust in which she kneels.

Sabbaths

A Sunday reflection :-

I’ve long been very grateful to the good folk of the United Reformed Church by the English Bridge in Shrewsbury - and it was nice a few weeks ago to have the opportunity to say so to their minister in person.  Their notice board outside the church always has such a good line in to-the-point messages, and those wayside words have been the inspiration or at least the starting point for quite a few of my sermons and Sunday talks over the years.  Today’s being no exception.  Here I am talking to you on the Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend, and I remember they had a sign which read, as you passed it in your car or on the park and ride bus, "Happy holidays!”

Except that if you looked just a little more closely, you saw it was actually “Happy holy days." And I reckon there’s a load of things you can take from those three words.  First of all, I’m simply reminded that holiday and holy day are really the same word.  In the dim and distant past when our fore-fathers were mostly serfs and villeins, the only time they would be able to take off from their labours would be the saints’ days and holy days authorised by the church.

Some of our modern bank holidays still happen on the dates of those old Church festivals, though Whitsun has now been dislodged from the real Whit Sunday, and this weekend’s holiday is just a day off for late summer, and a chance for a last trip out before everything starts up again in September.  It looks as though the weather's going to smile on us today and tomorrow, and so of course every road will be packed and every beach will be crowded, and anyone with any sense will realise it might have been best to stay at home.

But then you’d probably end up working, creosoting that fence or cutting that hedge, and all work and no play is never good for anyone.  People need their times of rest and recreation, and indeed of celebration and fellowship;  and that word 'recreation' if really of course re-creation: we’ll get used up and worn out and wasted if we don't rest.  All work and no play leaves us less effective not only as useful and productive workers, but as human beings.  I’m sure that's why Isaiah the prophet, speaking God's word to the people, told them to keep the Sabbath in order to be right with God, and for God to bless them.

For bank holidays and other special away times or off times are important, but so is the regular break from work that the Bible calls the Sabbath.  It’s a holy time.  Isaiah told the people that they should also honour the Sabbath by desisting from work and not pursuing their own interests.

Now that to me is an interesting phrase:  not pursuing their own interests. Isn’t there quite a big clue there as to what the Sabbath is all about, and what it isn’t all about, but so easily could become. Jesus put it better than anyone else, of course: the Sabbath is made for us, rather than we for the Sabbath.  Where keeping the Sabbath has become something oppressive and restrictive and downright difficult, we’ve got it wrong.  In fact, the Sabbath is given us not just as a rest and break from, but as a positive means towards.  Which is why Isaiah goes on to talk about 'finding our joy in the Lord'.  Remember, the sign outside the URC Church said ‘HAPPY holy days’.  Why is it that so often in the course of Christian history people have tried to make holiness something dull and dreary.  That’s not what it should be at all, it should always be a joyful time.  Sabbath is time away from the routine and drudgery of work;  but for Christians it’s also our opportunity each week to tune ourselves back into the things that are divine.  Our opportunity for re-creation, for which we need to be seeking the mind and heart of our Creator.

So, here’s the thing.  True religion should be a liberating thing, but instead all too often religion has forgot that it’s supposed to liberate, and has instead turned into something that cramps and imposes and divides - with the keeping of Sabbaths as one expression of this.

So let’s reflect for a moment on the story we’ve heard from St Luke’s Gospel, the story of something good that happened on the wrong day (for some, anyway) because it happened on the Sabbath. Jesus is in the synagogue, and there he responds with generosity and good purpose to the desperate need of a woman deeply afflicted by something that sounds a lot like rheumatoid arthritis.  But it's the Sabbath, and the leader of synagogue must have feared he might lose control - after all this his Sabbath service, not a free-for-all healing session.

"There are six other days in the week," he tells his people.  "Come and be healed on them, and not the Sabbath!"  Now hearing those words, I can’t help but wonder how I might have reacted had someone stepped forward and done something like this in one of the churches for which I had responsibility in my time as a vicar.  Like today, I’d have had stuff prepared and written down, not to mention a watch on my wrist and an idea of how long the service should take and when I might get home afterwards.

And here comes someone stepping up out of the congregation, and not authorized and ordained to be a minister, and he messes about with my carefully planned and organised service.  I can’t help thinking: Would I have rejoiced that one of God's children had been released from slavery and suffering?  Or would I have found myself moaning and complaining about the lack of discipline and the fact that things were not being done in the right way?  Might  I not have felt that my nose was being pushed out of joint?

I hope I would have applauded, but if I'm honest I’m rather afraid I might have moaned.  But the leader of the synagogue did I suppose have more reason than I had to complain.  For it wasn’t just that his own nose was pushed out of joint;  it was clear to him that Jesus had offended against God’s law by breaking the Sabbath.  But had he, really?  Thinking back to what Isaiah wrote, Jesus hadn't been pursuing his own interests or attending to his own affairs.  It surely was in complete accordance with God’s will that this woman should be released from her imprisonment to ill health and disability.  What better day to do that than on a holy day?  It would surely have been a misuse of the Sabbath to make it an excuse to postpone her release.  For the Sabbath is given us - given us by God - for our own benefit and health, and indeed for our own liberation, and certainly not to oppress or imprison us.  He made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Years ago, as an industrial chaplain at a time when the old Sunday trading laws were being relaxed, I found myself arguing the case for the Sabbath in radio debates and the like.  Or at least, the case for one day in seven to run at a different pace from the others.  I wasn’t interested in imposing a Sabbath on everyone just because Christians wanted a special day - but I did want to argue very strongly that it wasn’t just a religious custom or discipline, but something we really do need.  Everyone needs to be re-created.

As it happens, of course, Sunday isn't the Jewish Sabbath, which is the last day of the week, Saturday therefore.  Our holy day is a celebration each week of Easter, so it happens on the first day of the week, on Sunday.  But it's certainly been used as a Sabbath, as a day when no work should be done, as a day of enforced stillness and inactivity that was imposed on the whole of the land, so that (if you look back far enough in recent history) nothing was bought or sold, no buses or trains would run, and even the pubs stayed closed.

You may feel that today the pendulum's moved too far the other way.  Many people now have to work on a Sunday, not least because the leisure industry has become one of our major employers. Many churches now find they need to open up during the week to cater for people who couldn't come on a Sunday even if they wanted to.  Sunday leisure activities have burgeoned, and leisure is big business these days, sport also.  A lady was saying to me just the other day that no-one under the age of forty comes to her chapel because they’re all playing football or - well, there’s a multitude of sporting activity now on any Sunday.  And people tell me they might come to church more often, but we’ve got to visit the family and there’s no other day, or even they’ve got to do their shopping, and there’s no other day.  They just can’t spare the time.

I’m not in the business of insisting that my holy day should be kept by those who don’t believe what I believe.  And I certainly don’t want to go back to the days when Sundays were grey and oppressive days when busy mums like mine hung their washing up in a damp kitchen so that the neighbours wouldn’t be scandalised by seeing it blowing out there on the line.

But I do hope that Christians of all persuasions will be alive to the positive reasons for keeping a Sabbath, maybe not as a day of absolute inaction, but certainly as a day of blessing and prayer and of re-creation.  It’s a chance for us each week to bear witness to our faith by keeping our holy day when the world around us doesn't, and by keeping it as a happy holy day.

But remember, Sabbath is God’s gift to us, as something that should make our lives better and happier, not to test us or oppress us.  It deserves to be taken seriously, so we should certainly be paying it more than lip service;  but it doesn’t need us to be so super-zealous that our Sunday is kept with an in-your-face smugness.  It isn’t about being holier than thou, just doing  honour to the God who loves us, and who also loves, as my tutor at college always told us, the guys that are washing their cars or playing Sunday league football, even if they haven’t quite woken up to him yet.

So let’s keep our Christian Sabbath seriously but also joyfully.  For every Sunday is a celebration of Easter, and of death being no more and a broken world being renewed - and people being healed. Every Sunday we keep preaches and proclaims the God of love whose desire is that all should find healing and salvation.  To keep Sunday as a happy holy day is my confession that God comes first in my life:  and if I’m keep this day as his Sabbath then I’ll do my best to use it in a way that will renew and re-create me, and that will give me the power, purpose and holiness I shall need to take into all the other days of my week.

We Are Sorry You Are Waiting . . .

My mother-in-law closed her BT account on 7th May this year. The phone number ceased to operate on 6th June. She has just received her latest phone bill, which quite properly included a refund of line rental, set against some small charges for two 1571 calls we made just before the phone service ceased, and the £30 'cessation of Broadband' charge. So far, so good. But the bill came to nearly £50 because she was charged for broadband and phone services for the coming quarter, plus 'family and friends mobile' for the same period.

So I rang BT. After a lengthy wait, I spoke to a gentleman somewhere in India who told me the charges had to be made because "the account is still open". He then said he would need to transfer me to another department, where all would be explained. What actually happened is that I just went back into a queue; another lengthy wait, and the next person I spoke to had no idea what my problem was. She did, however, have more of a clue about what to do, thankfully. Apparently, "the order (for cessation of phone and broadband services) was left open" when it should have been completed. Kafka would be writing about BT were he alive today.

Two hours gone from my life . . . Oh well, a result of sorts, anyway.

Fire Upon The Earth

A Sunday talk :-

So there I am, driving along on a bright sunny morning, with the radio on, and Lionel Ritchie singing 'Easy Like Sunday Morning' - and that was me just then: easy, relaxed, and happy:  all’s well with the world.  Well, I do thank God for those times, but of course things aren't always as 'easy as Sunday morning'.  And as it happens, the readings given for today in the common lectionary, the book of readings used by churches of all sorts around the world - today they dwell on the hard side of the faith we profess, the times when it’s not so easy.  Coming out here to speak to you, my temptation was to ditch those readings and find some nice ones, but then I thought: no, they deserve to be tackled, and they will have important things to say.  They certainly speak to me, as I look back over the past few years, when I’ve had more than a few anxious moments, albeit mostly of my own doing.

The first reading I used this morning tells of one of the hardest times in the career of the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was often out there on his own:  the words he had to deliver, the word of God that burned within him, was often a hard word for the king and his counsellors to hear. Compared to the other prophets of his day, men whose words flattered and consoled, men who were quick to assure the king that his decisions were right and wise, and all that he planned and did would have God's approval, Jeremiah was a voice out on his own.  But his was the real message God wanted his people to hear, even though it wasn’t good news or easy listening.

This meant that life was often tough for Jeremiah, as it was for the heroes of the faith who are praised and commended in the second reading I gave, from the letter to the Hebrews.  These were the verses that inspired the 19th century bishop and hymn-writer Christopher Wordsworth to write in his hymn ‘Hark, the sound of holy voices’ the words: "mocked, imprisoned, stoned, tormented, sawn asunder, slain with sword." I remember we loved to sing those rather bloodthirsty words when I was a little boy in our church choir!

But that was the fate of many whose stories we read in scripture, the men and women who are remembered as saints or martyrs, heroes of the faith.  They were those who remained determined and steadfast in their faith when times were hard.  Their devotion to their crucified King stood firm, even when it seemed the whole world stood against them.

Their stories show us that to be true to God brings no guarantee of worldly popularity or success.  Far from it, in fact: you may well become a target, for it may mean that you stand out as different from the crowd, and that others may see you and your faith as a challenge to their unfaith and apathy.  For most of us that isn’t going to involve us in much more than a bit of gentle ribbing down at the shops or the pub;  we might have to put up with campaigning atheists of modern times, people like Richard Dawkins, rubbishing what we believe, but we’re unlikely to get physically attacked.  But that isn’t true for all, and there have been many Christian martyrs, and many who have suffered grievously for their faith, in this modern day.  It’s happening now to Coptic Christians in Egypt, or Orthodox Christians in Syria, or to members of the secret Christian communities of North Korea - just to take three examples of those who by standing firm in their faith today encounter genuine persecution, the denial of civil rights and opportunities, the burning down of their churches, and even injury and death.

This may be directly because of their Christian faith, as under some Islamic regimes;  it may be because as Christians they feel bound to speak out against abuses of power and authority, and to challenge what within their societies is unjust.  It may be because they choose to care for and speak up for people whom others disregard and reject. Christians should never be easy with what is sinful and wrong;  if my neighbour is being hurt or abused or damaged, there's no way that can be none of my business. It has to be my business, because I know that it's Christ's business.

At the birth of our Lord, shepherds out in the fields tending their sheep head the choir of angels hail the baby Jesus as the Prince of Peace;  but in my third reading this morning we heard the man that baby grew up to be telling his disciples that he has come to cast fire upon the earth.  He tells them that what he brings is not peace but division - even at the level of the family.  Those were hard words indeed;  I wonder what the disciples made of it when they first heard them? What could fire and the sword have to do with what they were hoping for - the new Messianic age of prosperity and harmony?

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth.”  In scripture fire is often a symbol of judgement - fire is something that tests and tries:  the precious metal will withstand it, while the base metal - the impurities - will be burned away and removed.  Those who believed, as many Jews did, that the Messiah was about to come, believed that he would come to sit in judgement on the nations - by which they understood the gentiles, the other peoples, but not them themselves;  as Jews born and bred, as children of Abraham, they themselves would have no need of judgement.

But Jesus is telling them that all must face the test.  Indeed, he tells his companions that he himself will have a test to undergo.  When he talks to them, as he does, about his coming baptism, he’s referring not to the water of the Jordan, which has already happened, but to the baptism of fire, the great ordeal, that he knows he must face, as he sets himself to walk the way of the cross.  This wasn’t what the disciples expected of him at all.  Probably they imagined their Lord gathering an avenging army to drive out the enemies of his people so that the Kingdom of David could be established in peace.  The notion that the Messiah might stir up dissention within his own people would have been a very hard thing for them to hear.  As would the thought that the Messiah, the Christ of God, might himself have to endure suffering.

Angels in the hills above Bethlehem had sung of peace on earth and goodwill to all;  but when we read the story of the birth of Christ we do hear other voices too. Old Simeon in the temple tells Mary and Joseph that the child they've brought to him is destined to be a sign to be rejected, and that his ministry will meet with great opposition. For those who speak God's truth, whether Jeremiah or Jesus, are likely not to be heard gladly.

Truth is a challenging and disturbing thing.  Those who want only to be comforted and reassured will be tempted to stop their ears to it.  St Paul writes that the word of God is a two-edged sword to penetrate the depths of the human heart.  Jesus did not come in order to promote dissention and division;  he had no desire that brother should be set against brother, and families divided;  but he knew this was bound to happen as he spoke God's word of truth.  Of course, Jesus preached a gospel of love and forgiveness and mercy;  of course, his words show us God as the Father who never ceases to love his wayward child.  But there is also a word of judgement, a message of judgement and division even that’s there in so many of the stories Jesus told:  God's love is constant and his mercy is faithful and sure; but he meets his people with an urgent call for change in our human lives, for the mending of our ways and the opening up of our hearts.  This is the preaching that led to our Lord’s own suffering and death;  and to the pain and persecution that lay ahead for those he would send out as his missionaries and apostles.

And that Gospel word remains the same.  We live in a world that seems today to thrive on a culture of celebrity, and that likes to have every Sunday morning easy: and in places the Church will be tempted today as it has always been, to think that its role is to give uncritical blessing to the status quo, and to offer comfort without the challenge of judgement and the call to commitment and change.

But where we do that, we issue half a Gospel at best, and in the end we are untrue to our Lord’s teaching and call.  We need to use and to hear the hard readings as well.  When we see our role and mission as to bless and to offer comfort, then of course all of that is true to our Lord's example: for certainly he gave comfort to all who came to him, and he turned no-one away. There is no lost sheep for whom he does not search, there is no sinner who is beyond the reach of his forgiveness.

But his teaching is also challenging and hard. If we stray from the true path, there is always acceptance and welcome and forgiveness when we come to our senses and turn back, just as there was for the prodigal son;  but that really does have to mean giving up the bad, changing course, genuinely repenting, making the cross our sign.  For he says to us: “Follow me” - which doesn’t just mean “Wander along behind me” - no, it means “Try to be like me.”  Do your best;  take it seriously;  be mine, heart and soul.

The way of faith isn’t always an easy road, and wherever we travel it there will be those who take offence at us, as they took offence at Jesus.  There are rocks and thorns where we travel, and there’ll be tough decisions to make, and siren voices at one shoulder or the other to tempt us to turn aside. It remains as true as ever today that those our Lord calls to himself, each and every one, he calls to be different from the everyday world around us, to dance to his tune and not the tunes of the world, the flesh or the devil;  to be faithful to him before all else in life, and to resist the temptation to sell his grace too cheaply, or to make too easy the way of his cross.

Lepidoptera

My most recent 'Nature Notes' column :-

I was remarking to my cousin the other day that I have a phobia of moths - her younger son has one, too - but that I had no problem with butterflies.  I have no problem either with bees, wasps, ants, spiders and indeed a myriad small creatures that could perhaps actually do me harm, and yet I have a fear of moths - though most of the time I do manage to overcome it.  My cousin assured me that this phobia, while irrational as these fears mostly are, is actually quite a common one, though it is unusual not to be afraid of butterflies as well, as her son is.

Our conversation had been sparked off by a butterfly that came fluttering into the room where we were sitting.  This summer has been very good for butterflies, with remarkable numbers of cabbage whites, unhappily for growers of brassicas and nasturtiums, but plenty of others too.  Hopefully this will reverse the impact of the last two or more rather disappointing summers, at least as far as the more common species are concerned.  On one buddleia bush not so long ago I counted upwards of 20 whites, at least a dozen peacocks, plus small tortoiseshells, red admirals, commas and gatekeepers.  There most have been 40 or 50 butterflies on this one bush.

Worldwide there are more than 150,000 species of butterfly and moth, which grouped together form the order Lepidoptera.  As higher insects, they have a four stage lifestyle, with the egg hatching to produce a caterpillar, which is basically just a growing machine on legs;  once grown this becomes a pupa, which is an externally inert phase, but with lots of changes going on internally. In butterflies, the pupa develops a hard skin, and is called a chrysalis (in many moth species the pupa is contained within a protective case called a cocoon). Eventually, the adult or imago emerges, which in some species will live only a few days, though others, like the small tortoiseshell and the peacock, will hibernate as adults.  Adult butterflies are nectar feeders, probing suitable flowers with a long, slender proboscis.  In the autumn they will also feed on soft fruit, which always caused me some amusement when we had an orchard, as I watched autumn butterflies clearly suffering the effects of alcohol after probing into gently rotting windfall apples!

There are about 2,500 species of lepidoptera in Britain, and most of these are moths, and most of the moths are very small.  Butterflies are mostly day-flying, and have wings that are often brightly coloured, which, when the creature is at rest or feeding are either held open or else closed in an upright position above the body.  The body is usually more slender in butterflies than in moths.  Moth and butterfly caterpillars are almost always herbivorous, but some, especially some species of moths, can be quite damaging to fruit trees and other commercially important plants.  Quite a few leaf-miners, damaging leaves from within, are in fact moth caterpillars.

Most moths are very small.  Some of the larger moths, like hawk moths and tiger moths, can be brightly coloured and may well be day-fliers.  A day flier I’m fond of is the small black and red cinnabar moth, whose yellow and black striped caterpillars can be found on ragwort and groundsel.  Most moths, though, are night fliers;  often moths have feathery antennae, and they tend to fold their wings flat against the body when at rest.  Some species of Hawk Moth count as the largest British moths, with the rare Death’s Head Hawk Moth the biggest of all.  Its wingspan is up to four inches, and its body is marked with the image of a skull; unusually, this moth also squeaks, so I think I’d have some justification in being afraid!  However, it isn’t a resident of the UK but a migrant species, appearing mostly in the south of England. A moth with a wingspan of about a foot turned up on a windowsill in Lancashire about a year ago.  This was a giant atlas moth, normally found in South-East Asia;  it had probably escaped from a collection, perhaps on emerging from its cocoon, since the adults of this species live for only about a week.

Crisps and Light Bulbs

When I was young I used to love a bag of crisps, the crackly feel of the bag in my hand, and that delve inside to find the dark blue twist of salt. I'm British, of course . . . to Americans or Australians this would be 'potato chips', I guess - but to me, and especially to the childhood me, crisps.  Flavour: potato, plus salt, if added.  Later, while at high school, such flavours as 'cheese and onion' and 'smokey bacon' appeared - dangerously modern.

Now, of course, snacks have a whole economy of their own, and come in a bewildering display of shapes, sizes, colours and flavours.  So it should be no surprise that, today, as I sit at my desk I can see a van outside my office window that is delivering "retail snacking solutions" to the shop just down the way.  Well, that's what it says on the side, anyway.  Clearly, there's a "retail snacking problem" that requires a clever, inventive and sophisticated response . . . or at least, a bit of neat marketing.

The number of varieties of light bulb on the market has also expanded exponentially.  We needed a new bulb for the office kitchen;  in the old days almost the only question to ask would have been "60 or 100 watts?" Or maybe, "Clear or pearl?"  Now there are long lifes, halogens, tubes of many different shapes, LED's - the list, if not endless, is certainly a very full one.  They may be bayonet or screw - but there are different sizes these days to each of those - but they might be neither of those anyway, there are two pin and four pin bulbs and tubes (the one I needed, I discovered when I eventually managed to work out how to dismantle the light fitting, which was flush to the ceiling, was a four pin coiled tube).

I realise that I'm straying into 'angry old man' territory here, and I'm sure all these varied snacks taste wonderful, and each different variety of light fitting delivers top quality lighting, appropriate to each situation.  And choice, of course, is the great god of our commercial times.  But now and again, do you not just wish we could have the simple old days back again?

Watching the Wheels

He had been left behind, left stranded
by life’s onward flow
and the twists and turns of fate.  Most afternoons
I saw him up by the recycling bins:
he would sit watching the wheels of the passing cars, and
from time to time, as I watch him,
stand and shake a fist, and shout something,
as though one car had upset or angered him more than the rest;
but I could never quite manage to catch the words.

We always called him Barry,
and that might have been his name.

Today I see a rusty grey truck
judder and groan nearly to a stop on the highway,
generating a chorus of horn blasts from among the busy traffic,
before turning to pass through the gap in the twisted fence
with its ragged hangings of bindweed and hops:
time once again for the bins to be emptied of their bottles and cans.
As the dust settles I see Barry, forced to leave his sentry post, moving
crouching and crablike towards the shelter of a nearby overgrown hedge.
The bins are efficiently hoisted, turned upside down,
set back to be filled again.  More dust, but it doesn’t take long;  meanwhile
Barry looks on, framed in a tangle of hawthorn,
waiting for the warning beep
as the lorry reverses to leave.  He is not recyclable,
cannot be turned to any useful purpose, and so
will simply stay around, I guess.

And yes, as soon as the lorry lurches out to rejoin the traffic flow,
he sidles, scuttles back to rejoin the stranded flotsam on this barren shore.
As I turn to walk on, I see him once again
take up his usual position, crouching forward, hand raised as a shield,
or as maybe a challenge;
papers blow aimlessly across the yard,
meaning nothing, and going nowhere, as once again he
watches the wheels,  with his hurt and angry eyes.

The Lizard and the Fly

Adrift from the normal flow of things
he is watching the progress of a lizard
across the window pane.  Someone is speaking
as others listen, but he can find no way
to become part of their conversation.  Time
is running at a different pace in his mind,
in his heart,
and the essential geography is all askew.

The lizard (“Is it a gecko?” some part of him wonders)
is on the outside of the glass,
and on the inside there is a fly.
The lizard is stalking the fly, but cannot catch it,
cannot touch it, cannot understand why;  while the fly on its part
seems oblivious to the lizard.

The fly continues to buzz against the pane,
the lizard continues not to catch it.
People continue to speak.  And so the morning progresses,
this meeting at which he has to be present, even though
he cannot truly attend.  Only a fraction of his self
is even attending to the comic drama of gecko and fly,
which at least has the virtue of novelty.
“What is wrong with me?” he wonders.

What is wrong with me
is that I am still on the wrong side of the glass;
nothing I see is able to catch me, for I am not really here.
I left too much behind;
the beating heart of me is elsewhere, on another continent.
I remain out of reach
and out of touch.

Wall

In a short sunny break from today's cloud and rain, I was able to take time to examine an old stone wall not too far from here, south facing but I think fairly well shaded for much of the day, and so still well clad with growing and flowering plants despite the recent heatwave.  I love the plants that colonise stone walls, with ivy-leaved toadflax and yellow corydalis as personal favourites, along with the little ferns known as spleenworts.  I introduced the toadflax and corydalis to our last garden, but the toadflax sadly only lasted one season.  I've often failed to introduce stone wall plants to gardens, and yet they manage to plant themselves, very successfully, in what seem like much more hostile situations.  The toadflax actually plants its own seeds into crevices in the rock, which the seed-bearing stems seek out - quite a remarkable process.  Anyway, I notice that we do already have spleenwort growing on a wall in our present garden, so maybe there'll be the chance for some successful (this time) introductions from elsewhere.

Meanwhile, here is a poem I published in my most recent collection, last year, though in fact I wrote it some years earlier :-

This ancient wall has seen so many summers:
sun sparkles now on quartz grains in the stone
as I sit here to take the valley view,
the climbing oaken hillsides and the river.

The constant hum of insect life around me
shows how these sterile rocks have come to life;
and the delicate spleenworts, purple toadflax,
valerian red, and brash yellow of corydalis,
have been quick to exploit the cracks that time has made.

Consider this:  that though the summer’s warmth
makes this wall now a bright and busy place,
it was the winter’s sharp and frosting blade,
the blast of storm wind, sweep of rain and snow -
the dark days brought these stones to what they are,
and opened up the ways to let them live.