Virtual Methodist

No advent poem today as it is the weekend, but instead here is a piece freshly forged off the back of another sleepless night last week. I may include this in the poems later in the week, but this is it in all it's entirely derivative glory, with the first verse pilfering from Christina Georgina Rossetti and the last line from St. John of the Cross. Well if you are going to copy, copy from the best! Middle of the night, midwinter As bleak as any I’ve known With no snow on snow To cover the decay underfoot. Awake awaiting the dawn Enfolded in the echoing dark The cold silence pregnant With potential, blessing, piercing. But the archangel is absent No heavenly harbinger  Of unusual good news or peace in place of fear. So I am left in the darkness Uncomprehending, unhearing God’s voice, unless His language is silence. Shalom  

There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:   A right time for birth and another for death, A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal, A right time to destroy and another to construct, A right time to cry and another to laugh, A right time to lament and another to cheer, A right time to make love and another to abstain, A right time to embrace and another to part, A right time to search and another to count your losses, A right time to hold on and another to let go, A right time to rip out and another to mend, A right time to shut up and another to speak up, A right time to love and another to hate, A right time to wage war and another to make peace. Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8   We'll it's almost a month on from my last blog post... and a number of people recently have asked why I have stopped posting so regularly? Frankly it has been a question of time... I haven't had enough of it to do...

This was prompted by us hosting an open meeting of silent worship led by the South Belfast Society of Friends last Wednesday night, and I had hoped to post it yesteday, since it was national poetry day... But I was prevented by a hectic timetable and internet problems... But better late than never... Meeting for worship and prayer with Friends Silently sitting in a prayer room, A cell or silo, cut through with a single window Through which, at the right angle One can see the world go by One can see the world go buy Silence suffused by the constant rumble of traffic Pierced by a wailing alarm crying wolf And punctuated by prompted words Through which, in the right light One can see a wider world One can see a wiser world Worship is not a matter of words and music And prayer is not retreat from the world But an active interweaving of heaven and earth Through which, in the right time One can see another world One can see in another world ...

Silence...  Have you ever heard the sound of silence. Not the Simon and Garfunkel song, which in many ways is the antithesis of what I am talking about, but the sound of REAL silence. I've done a fair bit of radio work over the years and there is nothing that is dreaded more in that industry than  so-called "dead air." Silence... Nothing disturbing the air molecules around the microphone that can then be converted into electrical signals, which are then disseminated across the world to fill any gaping void in the soundscape around people's lives... Thanks to radio, TV, ipods etc., combined with the unrelenting noise of modern life, technical tinnitus... the rumble of traffic, the muffled roar of aircraft all around, the hum of electricity, the whirr of computer and aircon fans... silence is a rare commodity...  But perhaps in this Lenten season, with its central image of Christ in the midst of the wilderness, and my own period of sabbatical, a u...