The Priory Church, St. Bees

With wandering eyes and aimless zeal,
She hither, thither, goes;
Her speech, her motions, all reveal
A mind without repose.

She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea,
By madness tortured, driven;
One hour’s forgetfulness would be
A gift from very heaven!

She slumbers into new distress;
The night is worse than day:
Exulting in her helplessness,
Hell’s dogs yet louder bay.

The demons blast her to and fro;
She has no quiet place,
Enough a woman still, to know
A haunting dim disgrace.

A human touch! a pang of death!
And in a low delight
Thou liest, waiting for new breath.
For morning out of night.

Thou risest up: the earth is fair,
The wind is cool; thou art free!
Is it a dream of hell’s despair
Dissolves in ecstasy?

That man did touch thee! Eyes divine
Make sunrise in thy soul;
Thou seest love in order shine:—
His health hath made thee whole!

Thou, sharing in the awful doom,
Didst help thy Lord to die;
Then, weeping o’er his empty tomb,
Didst hear him Mary cry.

He stands in haste; he cannot stop;
Home to his God he fares:
“Go tell my brothers I go up
To my Father, mine and theirs.”

Run, Mary! lift thy heavenly voice;
Cry, cry, and heed not how;
Make all the new-risen world rejoice—
Its first apostle thou!

What if old tales of thee have lied,
Or truth have told, thou art
All-safe with him, whate’er betide—
Dwell’st with him in God’s heart!

From ‘The Gospel Women’.

The Lord’s descent into the underworld

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
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THE SACRIFICE

O all ye, who pass by, whose eyes and mind
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blind;
To me, who took eyes that I might you find:
Was ever grief like mine?

The Princes of my people make a head
Against their Maker: they do wish me dead,
Who cannot wish, except I give them bread:
Was ever grief like mine?

Without me each one, who doth now me brave,
Had to this day been an Egyptian slave.
They use that power against me, which I gave:
Was ever grief like mine?

Mine own Apostle, who the bag did bear,
Though he had all I had, did not forbear
To sell me also, and to put me there:
Was ever grief like mine?
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I was looking at some of the flowers which began to sprout up the other week around the Priory. It’s a shame for them, I thought, that they can’t change their mind and grow back for a while. A bit of nice weather and up they spring, only to be confronted by driving wind, hail and snow. They have no ability to second guess the season once they start growing. They simply grow into whatever the weather is and hope for the best.

Not that plants consciously exercise hope. But certainly in their genetic make up they seem to exhibit hope every spring. Some plants are able to protect themselves from difficult circumstances, but only for a while. Even plant-like attempts at self-preservation have a kind of hope that the future will improve. If plants don’t grow, they die.

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“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.”

h/t www.rejesus.com

Prayer (I)

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,

Gods breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six daies world-transposing in an houre,

A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,

The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,

The land of spices, something understood.

Spring schedule 1 (March-May)

 Spring schedule 2 (March-May)

I remember listening to an interview with the Group Chairman of the bank HSBC. As you know HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, and it is doing far better than many banks at weathering the current financial storm. The Chairman is Stephen Green. He is a Christian and he is also ordained and so he is quite unusual in the world of banking. Some time ago when the financial slump first hit us he was saying what many bankers were reluctant to say then, but are being increasingly forced to admit, that the whole financial sector was being driven by a warped bias towards immediate gain against long term viability or profit.

A friend of mine who used to work in ‘The City’ expressed this basic warped idea with a story about how when he was starting out in the banking sector the company he worked for was expecting a deposit of something like £700,000.00 near the end of a day. Instead they accidentally received a deposit of £1,700,000.00. Knowing that they would have to return the difference the next day a couple of the men got together and put the difference in an overnight investment vehicle that they quickly ‘made’. By the time they had to refund the difference the next morning they had made 1000s of pounds in interest. They all then took the money and went on a big (very big) night out. This left my friend feeling like he had slipped into some kind of alternative universe.

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He left the post-pounder with me. Later I had to extend the fencing. I grabbed the post-pounder and went at it. I remembered my friend’s incident and was confident that I wouldn’t hurt myself in the same way. I was going to be attentive. It didn’t take long before I was settling into a routine of post-pounding when, in my enthusiasm, I elevated the pounder beyond the post and as I pulled down on it it caught the edge of the post. The pounder came down and caught me in the forehead leaving me literally stunned for a moment. Being fairly accustomed to concussions I did what every normal person does afterwards and I tried to recite my address… After a few tries I got my address right and regained my balance and vision.

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‘Nothing is inexorable but love.  Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor.  Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy…  For love loves unto purity.  Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds.  Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected — not in itself, but in the object…  Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.  And our God is a consuming fire’ (Unspoken Sermons, The Consuming Fire).