Spring reminds me that with God everything of value is renewable.

Through the last weeks I have witnessed a gradual resurrection during a 'stop-start' Spring. Here at the woodland burial ground where I come not because my love is here in precious ashes under a new oak tree, but because I share with her in the slow changing beauty of nature's resurrection, a carpet of bluebells under the trees has lasted long. Across a bank of new lush grass supporting bedraggled remnants of daffodils - their beauty safely locked away for another year - the rowan trees are struggling into their creamy-white new dresses encouraged by senior stately yews - mature with many years still to come. Young copper beech with full lives ahead, spread their arms in shady blessing over many silent graves. New life unites with old and codes of being in every decaying leaf are handed on to be renewed in barely recognised forms of beauty. Crows and magpies startle tits and blackbirds among tender chestnut leaves - busy birds even now creating another generation. There is no death here! - Only life's creative, renewing, eternal love. Only God in cross and resurrection!.

I had hoped the 'blogs' would be more frequent but that has not happened.  My last entry told of the trauma of going to the far end.   I did not know then that the far end would be even further along an unknown trail.   Like with Ezekiel, it seems to me that God took from me my most precious possession - and the wound is still raw.  However, God has once again been with us to the far end.   He has not let us down and his promise of resurrection life together in Jesus is still ours, as is that promise to Ezekiel that it will all be ultimately for the glory of God.

In the past weeks I have remembered the advice -let your pain be part of The Pain- or let your cross be part of God's Cross.   It was given to me many years ago by Veronica, a wonderful lady I met in a hospital side-ward in her last stages of a most painful cancer. She simply told me how she found comfort in fixing her mind on the Cross of Jesus.
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I had always believed that in Jesus and the Cross God shares the pain I experience in every 'hurt' time of my life but now my faith is expanded to understand that pain-sharing is two-way.  God gives me the privilege of sharing in his pain - only the twinges mind - all the hurt of the world - of living at that place where dark and light meet in a flash of glory - where hope pierces through despair - where death gives life and every cross-pain is the experience of forsakenness, of Father into your hands,  and today in paradise!  

Advent Thoughts

The announcement of Jesus' birth to Mary and her response of ultimate, bold, courageous faith is told with such simplicity that we sometimes miss the wonder of God's incarnation.  Just as we miss the immensity of so much of our Christian life and faith.

I need to feel the greatness of God and the littleness of me; his power and my inadequacy; his mercy and my unworthiness.  He is everything while I am almost nothing in the total scheme of things.

But I also need a sense of wonder - that this great divide between us is the very thing which draws Him to me - which he crosses to invite me into his friendship  - friendship with God the creator and sustainer of everything!   And the greatest wonder   - his love!   His love is the vehicle of our meeting and of our growing friendship!
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So hearing again of Gabriel's visit to Mary's and her response to God brings together for me the greatness of the Divine and the beautiful simplicity of his grace, and how the God/human divide is bridged by love - his love and our self giving devotion which accepts him, however challenging and impossible his ways may seem from our side!
 
 

I was asked to provide a reading for the Advent Service ........

Three Knocks for Trinity
Three knocks for trinity!
How courteous was God's coming!
Unexpected!  Unrecognised!
After long, long years of wondering;
prophetic inspiration;
visions of power and glory
of political dominion!
of triumphant, splendid orchestras of heaven
accompanying choirs in mystic melody
as the whole world, high and low
bows down to worship
in submission.
And that is how he will still come ...
But then and now  he comes so graciously.
Three knocks for trinity;
Three knocks on a young women's open door -
in the quiet hour of a working day ..
Three knocks for Mary.
A messenger from God ..
He calls her 'chosen'
pure and graceful
in the knowledge of her Lord's own
mighty, humbling, suffering love!
Inspiring deep and trembling love in her,
which eagerly responds -  'Come in!'
Three knocks for Trinity ..
on my door ..
Three knocks echoing through my life ..
At the door, brighter than streaming sunshine,
A dazzling insight into glories beyond time and space
right here!     
Advent!
Christ Jesus - Father Son and Spirit !
Three knocks for trinity
and all he asks is invitation to my life ..  'Come in!'
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​As I watched, the sun broke free below dark clouds along the fells and suddenly,  brilliant shafts of light draped the sky, touching every leaf and blade of grass; enabling their own beauty.
The scene was reminiscent of those 'spleandour' pictures of heaven meeting earth.  I was aware of a beauty beyond all physical senses, and for a while I thought of Elizabeth of the Trinity.  Still a young woman in 1906, she knew the time was near when her then incurable illness would lead her into eternal realms.  She wrote to her sister, I am sure that you will rejoice at my first meeting with Divine Beauty  ... the Lord .... then to spend my eternity in the Trinity which is already my dwelling-place here below.
 
I thought about heaven - and the Divine Beauty.   I imagined myself there - lost with loved ones - in the vast, countless crowd - as more and more the numbers swelled.   I saw the smiles and heard the laughter of children no longer hungry; the relieved faces of war victims made free;  of refugees now at home ....   all overwhelmed by the beauty.   Surely many of them had never had opportunity to glimpse this through Jesus in their time on earth  ... and I had not told them!    I pray there may be many called to prepare others for the Divine Beauty of The Trinity.  They are all welcomed through the grace of God.
 

It seemed to me that everywhere I turned; in the news which filled the media and in life situations I encountered every day, I met people crying out for freedom.  Many were unable to share the key to all freedom  -  Christ who is the truth  - who sets us all free ..
These prayers came to mind ...
 
 
 I am a prisoner, Lord,
behind the razor-wire of contemporary living:
the ceaseless winking of the clock;
the bulging diary's tentacles;
embraced by family commitments;
snagged with physical limitations.
 
Yet I am free:
free to breathe clean air;
free to think and speak, to care and love;
free to inhale your life-giving Spirit.
 
Help me put my hands through the wire
to pass out my freedom
to the people in the cell next door.
 
  
Lord, Jesus Christ, you teach us freedom comes at a price.
By your life, death and living again
you have given us freedom
which no prison can take from us.
Show us how to live, work and speak for freedom
for all who cower before military powers;
for those squeezed in the tightening grip of hunger and disease.
Help us so to cherish our freedom as to be ready to sacrifice for their release.
  
 
I walked through a hospital ward today,
and prayed for prison bars to fall away
from minds depressed,
encircled by an ever prevalent gloom;
afraid of unseen futures;
paralysed by lost self-esteem;
angry with helplessness.
Lord, help me share my freedom, if only by
a word of comfort,
a look of compassion,
a silent, often repeated prayer
to you.

Red Poppies for Ruth
[Red poppies have black centres producing
seed as small as grains of dust]
 
  
Dust to dust; dust of seeds;
Dust to dust; seeds to earth.
A pinch of poppy dust
to sprinkle on the soil;
reluctantly released,
with watching, faithful faith.  
Still clear in thought and heart -
not dark decaying seed -
red flowers of memory -
lost in the cold darkness;
beneath the rain of tears,
seeming decay and loss
of nature's agony.       
To mark the place, a cross
of sticks - our sign of faith.
We wait, we watch, we hope,
we picture memories -
both cruel and tender views -
 
And so we loose our hold,
trusting for transition,
until green shoots appear -
first signs to stir our hope:
Then come bowed heads - dew-touched -
exposed to cruel winds -
shaped like a question mark
dividing faith from doubt -
till open to the sun,
beauty blood red with black
at heart - more seeds to come -
The glory will not cease.
This is God's way for life -
life sown in the dark earth
yields to his transition
in the environment
of faith and hope and love;
Green shoots - Creator changed -
to beauty beyond words;
as death and life entwine,
joy and sorrow combine,
in his resurrection.
Red poppies stain the world:
Rich blood red, they witness
To God's undying love;
Promise of transition:
Death to resurrection.