Virtual Methodist

So Lent is over. Covid restrictions in Northern Ireland have reduced sufficiently to allow resumption of public worship, though rousing "Alleluias" and roof-raising singing is prohibited... we have to whisper our liturgical responses and sing the level of our speaking voices behind masks... with a through draft from open doors and windows... though perhaps that could be seen as symbolic of the open door of the tomb! Anyway, to finish what has been more of a sombre than solemn Lent, I want to finish this series of poem with something much lighter... Shalom

I have previously given a shout out to Jim Deeds my fellow "Wonderful Wanderer" for the beautiful little hand cross he carved from cherry wood from my native east Belfast, (which I subsequently learned came from a tree colloquially named by after a fellow pupil in my eldest son's class at school by her family because it usually blossomed on her birthday - making it even more precious, reminding me of many different connections between family and friends.) It has subsequently inspired me to both write a poem and carve a linocut, and it is a constant source of grounding to me as I have grasped it in difficult Zoom meetings over the past month or so. It has spoken to me in many ways. Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature is peppered with pieces that give voice to all manner of creatures and inanimate objects in ways that seem almost surreal, but is probably grounded in the greater awareness then of people's connection with the physical world around them that we could do w...

We are nearly at the end of Lent. Out second locked down Lent. The discipline of waiting and the waiting of discipleship in this season is nearly at an end.  We are unsure how close we are to the end of a year of lockdowns. Methodist Churches in Northern Ireland are allowed to resume in person worship from tomorrow, although on my circuit we have symbolically deferred it to Easter Day, offering a series of "Holy Week at Home" services online, but our sisters and brothers in the Republic of Ireland have a further, as yet undetermined time to wait... and France has now just gone into a 3rd lockdown, perhaps auguring more to come for us. We are weary. And tonight's poem speaks into that weariness. It is human. It is part of the story of Christ's passion, and how his followers let him down because of that weariness. And we still do. Selah

So it's Palm Sunday - and whilst here in Northern Ireland there are still hopes of churches re-opening for (socially distanced) celebrations on Easter morning, this is our second locked down Palm Sunday, and with that in mind I wanted to record this piece that Father Rob Esdaile, parish priest in Thames Ditton, and a published poet wrote last year.... Shalom

A substantially shorter poem for this the 5th Sunday in Lent...  We've been let off the Lenten leash slightly for Mothering Sunday (or if we're going to get Latin about it "Laetare/Rejoicing Sunday from the instruction "Rejoice, O Jerusalem" (Isaiah 66:10) in the introduction to the Latin Mass for the day), and especially in the Irish influenced world, for the Feast of St Patrick... Thankfully wisdom seems to have largely prevailed around here and people don't seem to have relaxed the lockdown discipline too much over the past week, so we can look forward to some longer lasting and more significant relaxation over Easter weekend and beyond.  But this Sunday we are back into the rigors of Lockdown Lent disciplines, and so I offer this short piece by Christina Georgina Rosetti, reminding us exactly what Lent is actually about.  Shalom

All over the world on this day or the Sunday nearest to it you would normally, pandemic permitting, hear sung the hymn known as “St. Patrick’s breastplate” versified by Irish hymnwriter Cecil Francis Alexander in the 19th century. But her version is only one of many going back to fragments from the 9th century. The word “breastplate” is a translation of the Latin “lorica” which was the word for the body armour worn by legionaries, which didn’t just cover the front of the body like a breastplate , but encompassed it. Legend tells us that St. Patrick allegedly, composed this hymn to protect him and his monks against deadly enemies that lay in wait for them. As such it is an all-encompassing corslet of faith for the protection of body and soul against the devil, earthly enemies and temptations. It is also known as the Deer’s Cry’ from its title "Faeth Fiada" in the 11th-century Liber Hymnorum that first records the fuller version of the text. The legend here is that when Patrick...

In today's video I refer to my repeated pedantic refrain in sermons every 4th Sunday in Lent that today isn't Mothers' Day but Mothering Sunday, and I have repeated that tendency on this blog in various forms, including mention of the origins of both Mothering Sunday and Mothers' Day .  But today, in the wake of some of the events this week all such pedantry should be abandoned and the place of  mothers and women in general within society and especially the church needs to be loudly affirmed.  Mind you, given the state of my hair and collar in this video, I'm not sure that my Mum would have affirmed me much in the wake of it. I can hear her voice even now. As I say in it, in preparation for any public speaking I had to do as a child, she always put me over it in advance, and gave me some clear directions that I follow to this day. Among them was the instruction to check yourself in the mirror beforehand, to make sure you look presentable... Oops... Sorry mum... ps....

I have a certain reputation among some for grumpiness and a tendency towards negativity, and at times I play into that. But those who know me better know that isn't the whole story, although neither is the hearty laugh or the times when I am happy to play the fool. No-one is entirely the image they project. All of them disguise something deeper. R.S. Thomas the Welsh Anglican priest-poet has a reputation for being a curmudgeonly, anti-social, anti-modernist ascetic and because of both his and my reputation it will be no surprise that I really like his poetry, both his earlier earthy poems and his later more overtly religious ones. But one of the things I like is his complexity, both in terms of form and ideas. And in this poem he touches on the ultimately unknowable complexity of a God, that outwith the incarnation and spiritual ecstasy, can often manifest himself in a profound sense of absence. Selah

As I say in the video below my choice of this poem is influenced by the fact that during our first "locked-down Lent" last year I revisited some of talks I had given at Holden Village on the book of Jonah and repackaged them as our first online Bible study for members of my congregation and others, and prior to that I recorded the associated monologues, that had been kicking around for almost 20 years to kick off this YouTube channel. Jonah, and particularly the episode in the "big fish" is ideal for a lent/lockdown meditation For a bit of nostalgia I thought I would record this poem outside in our back garden as I had done with the videos of the monologues, but I decided to wear slightly warmer clothes and was glad that I wasn't doused in water, because it is still somewhat colder this year. But I am also glad of having a back garden at all, and the ability to get out in it and the surrounding leafy avenues and parks to get some fresh air even in the midst of...

This is the promised post for the first Sunday of Lent 2021… Those sharing with me in our livestreamed communion service this evening will hear a version of what I have to say here twice, but this is a more permanent record and one accessible for those who don't wish to join in that fleeting experience. I recorded this immediately on my return from a walk out to and around Islandhill on Strangford Lough, just within the recommended 10 mile limit of travel for exercise. Actually we are inordinately blessed to have so many beautiful places to walk within easy reach, and I reel for those who cannot access them or places like them for whatever reason. I find getting out into the outdoors in some shape or form invaluable during lockdown. And even where I haven't been able to venture beyond the garden, as was the case right at the start of the first lockdown when Sally and I were subject to standard isolation due to potential exposure to a covid-case, we at least have a lovely garden...

I've gone a bit quiet as I usually do after the 4 Corners Festival... And that was exacerbated by the tsunami of emails on return from my self-imposed computer purdah during my week's leave... This means that my plan to post a video of poems for Lent on Ash Wednesday and then on subsequent Sundays didn't quite get off the ground. I had already scaled back from my daily video posts of poems during the weekdays of Advent, but Ash Wednesday zoomed up out of nowhere... and my planned post of Jan Richardson's "Blessing the Dust" came to naught... maybe next year... But in my readings in preparation for Lent this week I came across this poem by Ann Weems , the American Presbyterian poet who died in 2016 and I thought it might make a good introduction to the series, which continues tomorrow...  Given that there are others posting poems and other reflections morning and evening during Lent (including my friend Father Martin Magill who is posting poems on facebook) I ...

My final poem in this series is by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, an Anglical priest and a favourite poet of mine. Though born and brought up in England he always regarded himself as Irish because of his antecedents. He volunteered as a chaplain on the outbreak of World War 1 and was nicknamed Woodbine Willie for giving out cigarettes along with spiritual support to injured and dying soldiers. In 1917, he was awarded the Military Cross at Messines Ridge for running into no man's land to help the wounded. At first he supported the British military effort with enthusiasm but was converted to Christian socialism and pacifism which brought him into tension with his superiors and led to him being refused burial in Westminster Abbey by the Dean because he was a "socialist" after he died on 8 March 1929, exhausted at the age of 45.  He wrote many poems, some of which reflected his time in the trenches, but this one is a purely devotional one. Shalom

Today's poem was written in 1863 in the midst of the American Civil War. Two years before writing the poem Longfellow's second wife, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then when war was declared, his oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father's blessing and in late November 1863, he was severely wounded in the Battle of Mine Run. On December 1, Longfellow received a telegram notifying him of his son's wounds, with the army surgeon suggesting that he might be paralysed, because the bullet had narrowly missed his spinal cord. Longfellow then wrote the poem on Christmas Day itself, although it wasn't published until February 1865. As I say in the video it has become enormously popular especially in America, and has been set to music a number of times (and after hearing Casting Crown's version of it I previously wrote about it ) but in many of the sung versions the references to the Civil W...

A poem which I originally wrote towards the end of Advent 2010 as an antidote to the sentimentality of "Away in a Manger." 2010 was not a particularly good year for me mentally (I dread to think what I would have been like this year had I been in the same mental state), and having to sit through over a dozen renditions of that cloyingly annoying carol was the cherry on top of the Christmas Cake. But out of that came this which is anything but sentimental, It's a fairly rough piece of poetry but there's a wee bit of Biblical theology in there too, exploring themes in both John and Matthew's Gospels. Anyway, enjoy... Selah

 Ooops... Just realised that although I had uploaded this poem to YouTube, and posted that via social media, due to the craziness of yesterday's diary I didn't put the link here, and so when I went to upload today's poem this one had an even more pitifully small number of views than normal.  One of my tasks yesterday was prerecording the Circuit "Last Light" Service for the 31st December (is it any wonder I don't know what day it is?) and as part of that I note that time is an arbitrary (and indeed as Einstein demonstrated, relative) concept  and that people use different yardsticks to mark different aspects of it out. But for a around 1600 years the world has increasingly used the birth of Christ to mark out the pivot point between two historic era's, even though this is a frustratingly difficult point in time to pin down, even to a year never mind a time of year... given the events of this "Christmas" I'm all for celebrating again on one of...

On the shortest day of a particualrly dark year, which has been granted a greater sense of psychological gloom by the government announcements over the weeked, I post "Into The Darkest Hour"by Madeleine L’Engle, the American Episcopalian writer. Shalom

Another piece today from "Shine on, Star of Bethlehem" compiled by Geoffrey Duncan for Christian Aid/CAFOD, and another piece prompted by the experience of Mary, this time "Mary's Lament" by Margot Arthurton. I have referred elsewhere to the almost complete erasure of lament from comtemporary Christian worship, and others with greater reach and influence than I have started to write about this, especially in the light of the year that is almost past, but I nowhere else have I seen lament specifically referred to in Advent and Christmas reflections, except with reference to the Massacre of the Innocents after Christmas. Yet there perhaps should be an element of lament in our advent preparations, and this poem puts it into the mind and mouth of Mary en route to Bethlehem. The confident praise and adoration of the Magnificat is past, what lies ahead is uncertain. Selah

Another contemporary poem, if something over 25 years old is contemporary... although the truth is that the themes in it are depressingly current! It is Stewart Henderson's "Christmas Bonus - Magnificat" from his anthology "Homeland" published by Hodder and Stoughton 1993. It was Henderson's writing, possibly more than any other apart from perhaps Godfrey Rust, who influenced my writing and thinking at this time... But maybe I should have thought more about the source material and the power of the song that inspired it - Mary's Magnificat. Shalom

When I posted the written form of this poem at the weekend and used the Rembrandt etching of St. Jerome as the illustration for it I didn't realise that there was an exhibition of recently acquired Rembrandt etchings at the Ulster Museum that Sally and I went to see over Sunday lunchtime in lieu of our now habitual Sunday walk, given that it was tipping down...  Now given that my piece makes reference to the absence of an angel and my mother in law frequently makes reference to Koestler's Library Angel with reference to "coincidences" I really couldn't resist posting this, complete with the Rembrandt as the backdrop... Selah

Yesterday I shared John Donne's "Annunciation" today I share a longer and more contemporary poem offering a different perspective on the same event, but one also by someone who is both a cleric and a poet. Actually Jan Richardson , today's author is not only a United Methodist Minister and poet, she is also a gifted visual artist and has ministered to many people in both word and image over the years, and has even used her own grief on the loss of her husband and collaborator Garrison Doles in 2013 to develop some powerfully healing resources. I first came across her through another friend in England and the use of her work in the online "The Text this Week" resource, but she is a close friend of two friends of mine and on one of their visits to Belfast we had a brief dinner together at which I was reduced to the role of tongue-tied fanboy... She regularly leads Advent retreats and produces resources for this time of year, indeed I picked up her "Thro...