Holy Week - A soldier's prayer

Holy Week - A soldier’s prayer

I walked through the city guarding a man

who carried a great wooden beam,

going to his death in a place called Golgotha.

Staggering beneath the crushing weight of his burden 

his sweat mingled with the bloody wounds 

our nine tailed scourge had carved, 

and spread about his naked flesh like a cloak

of imperial Tyrian purple vivid in the sunshine

of that never to be forgotten day.

On his head we rammed a crown,

not of gold studded with precious stones

but a crown of thorns from a dirty hedgerow, 

whose vicious barbs stung deep until he wore

a myriad drops of blood  like a necklace 

of rubies about his sad brow.

A pious woman in the crowd offered him her veil

that he might wipe away the sweat and blood,

but those who last week cried ‘Hosannah’

this day screamed ‘Crucify’.

His eyes glassy with hunger and pain, 

he fell to his knees and could not rise again.

My centurion  bade a strong Cyrenian take up the beam

and the procession arrived at last in the Field of the Skull.

There we nailed him to his cross and raised him

up where all could see - his mother, his brothers,

his friends, silently weeping at the foot of the cross.

It seemed to me that the sky grew dark,

and the earth shook, but we divided his clothes 

amongst us, for he was dead now

and needed earthly goods no more.

That night we spent drinking and dicing

but I could not settle, remembering 

the love I had seen in the eyes of the dying man,

his body nearly broken, his last breath nearly drawn,

and the spirit of forgiveness and peace hovering

above him as he hung there, prisoner

of the instrument of his suffering and death.

I am an old soldier now, retired beyond the Tiber

to a small farm where I sit in the sun 

beneath my olive trees and muse on the death 

of that long ago man of infinite dignity.

Some said he had not died that afternoon but escaped

to a foreign land, others said he was reverently laid

in another man’s tomb, to rise again three days

hence from the kingdom of the dead.

I do not know,

maybe I shall never know.

But I pray to my gods that his god

welcomed him at last into Paradise,

chosen resting place for those honest souls

whose lives become, for us left here, 

a pattern of goodness and love. 

So may it be. 

Naomi

  

  

Oscar Romero

Remembered in the Corona Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral as one of the Twenty Saints and Martyrs of our Time.  

In this quiet chapel, where the welcome smile

of a winter morning streams through lapis glass

lighting up sun gold slim pillar and wide stepped stone,

I meditate on the saints and martyrs of our time,

commemorated here where once Becket’s crown was laid.

Archbishop, poet, philosopher, minister, priest and nun,

long cherished in the hearts of all whose lives they embraced,

their loving spirits bright mirror of the divine.

They followed their Master far up the dangerous mountain path,

along the edge of the precipice, across the roaring torrent,

into a city of sad madmen, tyrants and thieves.

There, to reject neither the summons to deathbed or prison cell,

the trembling outstretched hand, the empty pleading eyes,

but to nourish the broken and the hungry soul,

to touch with love the outcast and the untouchable,

to break again the alabaster jar and anoint the weary feet.

They went to Bethlehem to greet the Christ Child’s coming,

they sat in the Temple amongst the wondering doctors,

in the wilderness they prayed for him and at his baptism rejoiced,

they walked and talked with him beside the Sea of Galilee,

they wept for him in the moonlit agony of Gethsemane

and in his footsteps trod their own Via Dolorosa.

He, their Child, their Teacher and their Lord. 

Verbum caro factum

Venite adoramus Dominum

In a street in Oslo

March 2015

One day in a street in Oslo, 

a strong ring of loving arms encircled a synagogue,

a thousand Muslims showed the world 

that in the face of the rage that comes at sunrise

and the terror that haunts the darkness of night

they were as one with all the children of Abraham,

Muslims, Christians and Jews, 

and stood united with all people of good will 

that the powers of barbarism and death 

might be overcome

by the gentle healing of universal love. 

On another day, in another street in Oslo,

another ring of arms is made, 

a Jewish ring of protection around a mosque,

and the dance of Love begins again.

How many circles of support and love are needed

to send a simple message to the world?

After the journalists have left with their cameras packed away,

how many thousands of good people must strive

to make clear their continuing compassion?

But when a sudden dancing wind moves on

it leaves behind a fingerprint on the quiet landscape,

the flood recedes but soft pools still lie

in grass once parched and bitter.

So it is in the new joy and prayers of erstwhile enemies

that new friends and new resolutions are made,

until we come at last to recognise the faith

which is the true foundation of our hope

and the bringer of everlasting love.

So may it be

Amen.

                                  Naomi

                           

The wisdom of a stone

Not some famous latter-day president

carved into the fine Dakota granite, 

made to endure a thousand years or more

amidst the torrid heat and acid rain,

but an anonymous chalk behemoth,

half a forehead, an eye, and half an eye, 

an empty hole where once there was a mouth,

his whole face un-faced by mindless vandals

on the cliff where herring gulls nest and cry,

set high above the flat old Kentish beach.

The man, for man indeed he was, old eyes

sunk deep beneath heavy lids stared blankly

placid in freezing snow and burning sun,

silent, secluded, harmless and withdrawn,

a man of all seasons, attached to none.

His nose was flattened like a boxer’s nose,

his cheeks cracked like an old neglected floor,

his bulging forehead hung in weighty folds,

no words of greeting from his toothless mouth, 

no contact made from dim unfocussed eyes.

Lurking half hidden on his lofty perch,

eyes always on the path below, he was

a watcher not aggressive, but timid,

afraid to meet our cold dismissive stares

while, sneering at his disabilities,     

we might rail against him, as against

the nameless intruder in our backyards.

Origins unknown, this sculpted John Doe,

became a reminder that Love would have

us welcome a stranger to our table

In the Spring the calcite head disappeared, 

wiped away by rain and tide and storm,

but my heart still heard his heart's sad voice:

"Remember my friends this my poor sad face

which disturbed the beautiful passers by;

think on the anguish of the thief disowned

by the good who neither forgive nor trust;

consider the chasm which lies between 

wealth and destitution, cardboard boxes

in the cold beach caves - mansions on the hill. 

"In the name of God embrace the cripple, 

for the love of God visit the prisoner,

at the command of God feed the hungry

and invite the stranger into your home."

I saw again the white tears running down

his battered face, but his urgent bidding

left me awed that a stone could be so wise.

Alone on that still path beside the beach,

I was left to mourn his quiet departing

and ask God’s blessing on his lithic soul. 

                                                                     Naomi

My sacred spaces

I have spent a lifetime slowly learning that I do not have an orderly mind, I do not have a rational time-table, I am a creature of fancy and unexplained perceptions. I am moved to worship and prayer by a strand of mist in the the sky, by the minute prism in an abandoned drop of rain, and by the mighty wave blown up from the sea which spills a cloth of living lace across the pebble strewn beach. 

On my bureau is a Nail Cross from Coventry Cathedral. It is a replica of the 1940 original, fashioned from three medieval nails taken from the ruins of the old Cathedral. The world is full of Crucifixes and Crosses, but none I have seen have ever spoken so poignantly as this starkly minimalist Cross which has become the symbol of Coventry’s Mission of Peace and Reconciliation. 

I have on the wall to the right of my desk a Russian blue enamelled Orthodox Crucifix which my most eccentric great-aunt brought back from Russia early in 1917. This has become for me a symbol of the essential unity in Christ that any liberal, unitarian and free Christians may find in the life and teaching of Jesus - whether he be man, myth or God - who was and is a living lesson of love and a mirror of the ineffable and the divine. 

I have shelves stacked with several hundred CDs, very many of them of religious music from every part of the world, from Europe, from Asia, from South America, from the Middle and Far East. These together with the poetry books, most particularly of the seventeenth century religious and metaphysical poets, of T S Eliot and R S Thomas, Mary Oliver and various others of contemporary American and English religious poets who provide the background to my home based religious life and worship. 

From my window I can see Viking Bay and the Channel which links the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea.  I have been inescapably drawn to the sea, to the wonder and vastness and seeming eternity of it since I first set eyes on it in 1943.  But I had to wait nearly fifty more years before I made my home within sight and sound of what is now my ever changing and God-given seascape.  

Sitting on a bench, looking out across the living waters along the silver-gold path laid down by the sun beginning its journey towards evening I find that this is a very wonderful place for meditation and prayer.  It is here that I fancy in the pounding of the waves, the calling of the gulls, and the shining of the moon and sun that I can hear the voice of God - and for this I give Him my thanks. 

Naomi

Winter sun

I looked into the January sun 

and I saw there only a blinding light, 

not the face of God nor of his angels,

but a mysterious power I could not 

comprehend - ineffable and divine.

I looked down at the sunlit dappled path

where crumpled leaves, discarded victims 

of Autumn’s shedding, every vein awash 

with molten gold, lay beneath my feet 

as if they were a carpet for a queen.

The tarmac was ablaze like a mosaic 

of tiny precious stones, brilliant and new

in that miracle of transmuted light;

delicate webs glistened on rusty iron,

frail witness to everlasting beauty.

Thus was the metamorphosis made clear,

mighty strength and small loveliness now

become one along the path where I walked

beneath the burning celestial globe,

God immanent in all his creation. 

My whole being, body and soul, suffused

with love and joy, to Him I gave my thanks,

not only for the sun’s shimmering fire,

but for small things, delicate and humble,

made glorious at his gentle command.

God be praised   Amen   So may it be

                                             

                                                   Naomi

Christmas Song 2014

Christmas Song 2014

Ring out the bright bells to welcome the Baby,

parcels of gold at the foot of the trees,

sing with the bright bells, for this is the season

for tasteful bibelots to flatter and to please.

Your table set up for feasting not fasting,

glasses of crystal and porcelain rare,

put magnums of bubbly by the new sofas,

thank the God Plenty there’s caviar to spare. 

What of the young girl and what of her Baby,

at the Inn no room, no cradle for ease,

stars in the dark sky and angels watch over,

oxen and asses sink down upon their knees. 

In our selfish world too little to offer

homeless and hungry, the  victims of war,

while we sit dazzled and full with rich living

the Baby weeps for the plight of all the poor. 

We who who once perceived this chasm between us,

ignore the tortured, the lost and the lame

these who are loved by the God of compassion,

these are the sad souls to whom the Christ child came.

All of us should now be neighbours and brothers,

feeding the hungry with food from our hoard

give shelter and trust to folk who have nothing,

love to the loveless, and glory to the Lord.

Naomi