Category: Poems, Prayers and Promises

Rosemary asks a very good question in her comment. I wanted to think a bit more about it. Yes, I agree, Rosemary. I'm equally unsure we can ever be fully or properly
present to another person. Or at least, if we are to be, it requires of
us levels of attentiveness, inner hospitality and outward welcome that
we seldom achieve. But then again, hopsitality, attentiveness, 'the
unselfing of the self' that is agape love, and perhaps the sheer
celebration of the presence of an other – these seem to me to be moves
towards that fuller awareness that in your own good phrase, would mean
'properly present'.

Not much of the above is even possible with a
mobile phone clamouring successfully for our attention. As you say,
such respectful attentiveness to the presence of the other, by seeking
to be fully present ourselves, is really hard.

In the end I suppose our own presence to others, and theirs to us,
requires that mysterious connection of purpose, attention and human
recognition that we call relationship. Since reading it years ago, I've found J V Taylor's
description of the Holy Spirit as the "Go-Between God" a helpful image
of the God who enables, supports, enriches such intentional responses
between us and others. Prayer too, then becomes an opening up of
ourselves to the God whose presence is the promised and already given
gift. Something here reminds me too of what Martin Buber taught us about I-Thou as the essential disposition of one human being in relation to another.

One of the 'problems' of prayer, dealt with in countless traditional prayer manuals goes under the heading "Distractions". The reason it was thought to be a problem was precisely because a distraction moves our attention, focus, concentration, away from the presence of God – at that moment something or someone else becomes more important. The gift of the self to the other is withdrawn. We are no longer paying attention, and that seems to me to be a diminishing of the value of the Other.

There's more to all this, and I think I'd like to come back to it when I have thunk about it more. Also interested in what other readers of this blog think about how we can be 'properly present' to others. It seems an important question with significant pastoral implications.

One of the presents given for my birthday was the Collected Poems 1978-2003 of U A Fanthorpe. Not reading it through though, at least not yet. In any case it's a good book to have on the desk for those moments when you want a poem – in the same way that sometimes you want a coffee. And such an occasional but regular use of a book of poems takes it no less seriously than going to put on the kettle. Poetry on demand is no bad thing, and this book has seldom disappointed. The poem "Libraries at War", about the civilising and humanising activity of reading as a form of resistance to war reminded me of how J B philips translated the New Testament into modern english – while taking shelter in the London underground during the blitz. As the bombs fell, ancient texts first written on papyrus, translated into spiritual truth more accessible to a modern world needing to hear again the message of reconciliation. Fanthorpe's poem celebrates that persistent enjoyment of beauty, truth and goodness that lies at the heart of human creativity, and hope for a human future.

Libraries at War

The more you destroy them, the louder we call for books.
The war-weary read and read, fed by a Library
Service for Air-raid Shelters and Emergency Teams.

We can still come across them, the pinched economy
Utility war-time things, their coarse paper, their frail covers.
Such brightness in the dark: Finnegan's Wake,

The Grapes of Wrath, The Last Tycoon, Four Quartets,
Put out More Flags . On benches, underground,
In Plymouth, Southampton, Gateshead, Glasgow, in the Moscow Metro
They sit, wearing a scatter of clothing, caught off-guard,

The readers reading, needing it, while terror
Mobilizes in sound-waves overhead,
Lost in the latest. Something long. Or funny.

Fire, fear, dictators all have it in for books.
The more you destroy them, the louder we call.

When the last book's returned, there is nothing but the dark.

U A Fanthorpe, Collected Poems, 1978-2003, page 468.

I never did Higher English at secondary school. I did it at night school in a year that introduced me to three Shakespeare plays, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and Othello; George Orwell's Essays; D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers; Wilfred Owen's War Poems; and several poems by W H Auden. What I made of Auden's poems I have only the haziest notion, except I knew what I was reading was important, in that way that when you are young you just know.

Since then I've slowly read more of his poems, gleaned from anthologies, quoted in odd places from Four Weddings and a Funeral to the current Archbishop of Canterbury, who is one of Auden's best critics and most thoughtful admirers. In his review of Volume 3 of Auden's Collected Prose, the essayist Alan Jacobs considers Auden's Horae Canonicae the high point of Auden's statements on his Christian beliefs. As a mature account of what is at the heart of his Christian faith, this sequence of poems, Horae Canonicae, demonstrates the fusion of poetic art and religious experience as feeling, thought and conviction.

In my haphazard, accidental and occasional encounters with Auden's poetry I hadn't come across this cycle as a complete sequence. So I went looking for it. By which I mean, forgive me, I Googled it. And struck spiritual gold, or oil, or whatever the equivalent metaphor is for important because valuable spiritual discovery.

A couple of years ago this cycle of poems featured on Radio 3 on Good Friday, introduced by Rowan Williams and read by the actor Tom Durham. The other night I spent an hour or two listening to the poems and the introductions by Williams, and what started as anticipated enjoyment quickly became unexpected encounter.

The combination of sympathetic and spiritually attuned commentary by Rowan Williams, clear and unaffected reading of Auden's poems by Durham, the evocative beauty and religious inquisitiveness of the poems themselves, and this in the context of a Good Friday meditation, made listening a complex process of prayer, aesthetic enjoyment, intellectual pleasure, and inward surrender to events and realities at once ineluctably tragic yet inexplicably redemptive.

Reading these poems again, you become aware of Auden's patient discontent, his by now chronic longing to understand "what happened between noon and three…", on that pivotal day when the business of Empire required yet another crucifixion. This time with hidden but eternal consequence. The poem 'Compline' ends with profound eschatological hopefulness, more than a hint of eucharistic thankfulness, and a celebration of the mutual indwelling and shared participation that is the eternal movement of Love in the celebration of a redeemed creation.

                                         ….facts
are facts,

(And I shall know
exactly what happened

Today between noon and three)

That we, too, may
come to the picnic

With nothing to
hide, join the dance

As it moves in
perichoresis,

Williams' commentary and Tom Durham's readings can be found here.

Not much comment needed on this poem. Just two. By juxtaposing the inspired, disciplined agony of the artist, with the creative suffering love of God, it revitalises theological imaginations smothered by the tedium of the overfamiliar. Ever since a friend read this at a Good Friday service years ago, I've never again been able to listen to solo violin music with previous innocence, or been able to separate the vision of a musician giving his all, from the God who does the same.

Secondly the copy you are reading was written by a man who attended that service, wrote out the poem and presented it to me. It is for me a literary Icon. Alistair first started doing calligraphy in an Asian POW camp, sharing accommodation with Laurens van der Post. Though he never spoke of those experiences, he knew more than a little about suffering, and that in human experience which makes "such music as lives still".

A couple of theological Fibs. Not aiming at profundity – more interested in the process of packing transformative ideas like grace and peace into sentences shaped by syllable count, forcing a form of minimalism, and thus an interesting form of contemplative musing, theological reflection – perhaps even deliberately formed prayer. So I've also tried to write a few prayers in the same way, up to the 21 syllable line. Thinking of offering one to the congregation on Sunday, (going where this will be OK!), with brief prior explanation and then read together following one of the Epiphany readings on which the prayer is based. Might then post it.

The Van Gogh is there for no other reason than I think it's one of the most remarkable representations of light dispelling darkness, and of hopefulness as the rhythm of recurring vision and earth illumined under the dance of the stars.  

Grace

Grace.

Love

emptied

of self-love.

Mercy entangled,

refusing to be free from us.

The giving gift of those inept at calculation.

 

Peace

First,

help

others

rebuild trust

from broken promises.

Then speak with hope of being heard

above the din of grievance-fed retaliation.

The Lectionary Readings for New Years day include Psalm 8, with its poignantly surprised question, 'what are human beings that you care for them?' In a world that has so many suffering places, and where some of them, like Gaza and Israel, Zimbabwe and Congo, are places where it is other human beings who give occasion for the suffering of others – the question 'what are human beings', takes on theological urgency.

Violence is caused by the breakdown of dialogue – it thrives on the willingness to treat the other person as less than a human being. To do violence is to deny the God instilled glory of each human life. It is to stop speaking until only the voice of the strongest can be heard, because the other has been forcibly silenced. The correlation between manufactured human suffering and mutual wordless enmity is both obvious and tragic. Language enables a meeting of minds, hearts, wills and ultimately of people – but language also accuses, provokes, encases the hated other in rhetoric, and defines the speaker as the righteously and legitimately enraged.

Elizabethg Jennings poem For the Times, goes back to that line in Psalm 8, at least in its recognition of the breathtaking wonder that is a human being – and thus points us to language, that most human of gifts, as one of the life or death issues in our personal, local, national and international politics. If there is a Christian ethic of language, then Jennings' poem gives strong hints at the framework within which such an ethic operates – risk and trust, peaceableness and anger, fear and love, and the insistence of Psalm 8 on the glory and tragedy of human being, and the precious premium God puts on each uniquely created human being.

For the Times
I must go back to the start and to the source,
Risk and relish, trust my language too,
For there are messages which need strong powers.
I tell their tale but rhythm rings them true.

This is a risky age, a troubled time.
Angry language will not help. I seek
Intensity of music in each rhyme,
Each rhythm. Don't you hear the world's heart break?

You must, then, listen, meditate before
You act. Injustices increase each day
And always they are leading to a war

And it is ours however far away.
Language must leap to love and carry fear
And when most grave yet show us how to play.

The
picture is by one of my favourite contemporary artists, He Qi. His work
on biblical image and narrative has a texture and colour reminsicent of
both  needlework and stained glass. indeed some of his work is done as
needlework.

The
art of He Qi is both simple and complex – but the results are pictures
with an inner vibrancy, familiar story-lines but unexpected
combinations of colour and shape.

No I didn't do the Fibs on Christmas morning. These are some I prepared
earlier. Thought I'd try the extra line on the Herod one.

Peace and joy to all who come by here regularly, occasionally,
or even just today. May you know the great tidings of comfort and joy,
that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

Mary
Poor.
Pure.
Virgin.
Young Mary
pregnant with scandal.
The least of her worries!
What about mothering God, and not losing Joseph?

Joseph
Take?
Love?
But how
forgive if
betrothal's betrayed?
Conception by the Holy Ghost?
Thank God angels interrupt even our worst nightmares!

Herod
"King?
Where?
Find him!
Bethlehem?
Send in the soldiers.
Call it preventive massacre!
Warn Egypt to expect bogus asylum seekers."
But by reversed Exodus, Israel's hope finds refuge in the land of the Pharaohs.