Category: blessings

feast day

wonderfulexchange2 Comments

Cuthbert has had a good day (and the charcoal hasn’t even been stoked yet for evensong).

The wrens were hopping branch to branch along the old pilgrimage route.
A flock of goldfinch joined in procession.

There were 85 or so at the mid-day eucharist, and it felt more like the whole church gathered than ever I have known it too at the Cathedral (was it the teenagers, maybe?). The light danced on the flame-warmed air, and the transfiguration window blazed in glory.

Afterwards, the Millennium window threw colour at the Hatfield tomb.  The play of it led all but the French teenagers to stop.  One tour group got carried away touching the stone and gold leaf saying, ‘but is it the tomb or the light?’ while another were left breathless with sighs of ‘the colour!’ ‘oh, aye.’

In the cloisters, there was a jaunty Westie, who was gathered up in his human’s arms, and carried carefully to the shrine.

And then, through town, the pilgrims carried a new banner, beautifully wrought, with silver bells swinging.

Blessed Cuthbert: a jubilee gift.

Still, I confess:  I had hoped for otters at the tomb.

voicing

wonderfulexchange5 Comments

I caught the cathedral purring today.  Bright sun filtering through the clerestory onto the ceiling vault.  Vergers on benches or leaning against pillars, at ease among the tiny handful of visitors.  I love it like this; a gift of unmerited grace.

Then, the voicing of the organ began: a long low note from the south transept.   Voicing fascinates me, though I know nothing but what one gleans from hearing it done.  The note begins fuzzy and rumbly and is allowed to fill the space.  Then — slowly, miraculously–  it is gathered in.  The fuzziness stops.  The note rings true, and the building sighs in response.

Pipe after pipe, note after note, it is the same: each drawn into its own centre, then taught to resonate with the others.

It seems like a perfect expression of both church and prayer.  One note at a time, prayer turns the volume up on our fuzziness, till the true note sounds and we are gathered in.

It’s a slow process though.  Slower for people than organs.  In the time I was there, Jophiel and the organ tuners managed three pipes.  God and I were content with just one.

wings of the morning

wonderfulexchangeLeave a comment

After waiting seven more days, he again released the dove from the ark.  In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its beak was a freshly picked olive branch.

Genesis 8.10-11 (NJB)

The tweet I was suppressing said:

mourning dove on neighbour’s chimney pot. #utterlylovely

But I was supposed to be saying morning prayer, not staring out the window, and certainly not tweeting, so back I went. Old Testament. Genesis. And there he was again…

I’d never stopped to think about the grace of that moment between Noah and the dove. Yes, of course: the relief of dry land appearing must have been overwhelming. But what about the joy of the dove’s return. The remarkable wonder that a creature wild and free should return to us?

One day, when I look back on this jubillee year, I suspect I will think of it as the year of birds. Starlings and morning doves, goldfinch and robins, magpies, herons, cormerants and gulls. And Kingfishers, too. Swift offers of promise that gleam like the rainbow.

‘But what are you doing with your year?’  friends and strangers both ask.  Well, in large part, this: looking. watching. experiencing the grace of it. letting it fill the wells deep, and listening closely as I try to discern where the water will flow.

The birdwatching brings its own connections.  It is, perhaps, the only part of my life that is fully shared with the man who sleeps rough by the river banks, and spends his days watching the gulls.  When the light catches on their feathers and they suddenly rise up, our differences are held in common laughter.

The apophatic Kingfishers forge many a connection, too.  ‘Have you seen them?  Are they here today?’  Once, I was talking with an old man, and my question stirred an ancient memory of scrabbling to the river banks to where the Kingfishers nested when he was boy.  He was lost to me for a moment, and then said ‘Are they still here?  I didn’t realise…’

Yes, they are still here.  Waiting for us.

set free

wonderfulexchange11 Comments

Blessed are you, Sovereign God of all,
to you be glory and praise for ever.
In your tender compassion
the dawn from on high is breaking upon us
to dispel the lingering shadows of night.

(CCP, Tuesday morning & Advent)

Advent.

It comes strangely early this year, at the time of new beginnings of childhood memory: beginning of September, beginning of term, beginning of something new.

I have been in Durham for three weeks now, and I am just emerging from happy hiding.  I am amazed at how long it can take simply to live.  To unpack the boxes and settle the house and do the shopping and enjoy cooking a meal.  Days have been full and spacious all at once, a glorious release of strain and tension.

And that is what I notice most.  I am more relaxed than I have been in a very long time.  I know:  it is easy to be relaxed when there is literally nothing to do, no one making demands, every breath is free.  It is unrealistic — not a pattern of life that we can often achieve.  But still, the contrast is lovely, and it shows me sharply how the stress we carry can get in the way of relating.

I find myself chatting to waitresses, laughing with young mothers as they pass on the street.  I find myself coping, even, with plumbers and bus drivers and strangers in the queue.  I remember I used to do these things, easily, joyfully.  But it had been a while.

The difference is in the freedom.

I cannot tell you how great the relief was when I waved the movers off and closed the door, knowing that for the first time since student days I was in a house that was not owned by my ’employer’ (either church or school).  A house that I had chosen, which was of interest to no one else.  And because I know I can come home each night to a room of my own, a space that is free, I have the energy to engage better with those I meet. I see more, and am more immediately present.

I used to believe in rectories.  I thought it was hugely important that the priest be available, on sight, recognizable.  And maybe it is.  But I cannot live that way.  I start feeling trapped and hemmed in and I find myself running away from what is supposed to be my home.

‘Time off’ meant restlessness.  Driving all around, looking for a place to be.  And so the house would be ignored, and the rooms would never be finished, and I had no space to rest.

I should have seen it coming.  My first week of training as an ordinand, I went into Old Saint Paul’s for the Friday morning eucharist, and the reading was ‘Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the sun of man has nowhere to lay his head’.  I burst into tears.

I guess I did know.  A priest dwells in the eucharist, in the liturgy, in the church.  But not in the rectory.  We are just visitors there, weighing up the relative cost of paying for new carpets or living with swirls of brown.

No more.

I sit now in church and I miss standing at the altar.  I miss preaching.  And I cannot imagine that I will not somehow return to these things.

But I cannot imagine ever wanting to return to a rectory.

I have more to offer — as a priest? as a person — when I have a space in which to be free.  A room of my own.

‘For freedom Christ has set us free.’   And it is glorious.

(my camera has been taking a break too, but there are a few new photos at http://lifeandlight.wordpress.com)