First Love, or God in Nature Revealed

Lured by vinegary incense into the chrome shiny chip shop,

percussive fat bubbling darkly in the scorching vat,
we collected our ‘Three penn’th, please” and scurried away
into the tired Market Square strewn with dead cabbage leaves, chewing gum
and carrot tops, a sad cold detritus of the passing of another day.
A gaggle of teddy boys, crepe footed peacocks, displayed their velvet drapes
to a giggle of girls, red kiss-proof lipped and peroxide pony tailed.
Up the High Street we went to the church, pale granite and leaden roof
reflecting and refracting the evening’s fugitive sun,
a quiet elegance of dappled stone and our first chosen sanctuary.

The sharp flint of the wall bit into our ribbed grey legs,
its green moss staining our once polished shoes, but contented we sat
as Helios drove his fiery chariot far into the West,
and the dying sun fell behind the distant Abbey's pastel silhouette.
A barn owl, flash of white against the yews’ nocturnal green,
flew low into the shadowy dusk searching for prey,
or for a wandering soul to guide through Hades’ gloomy labyrinthine paths.
The waning moon rose pale above the squat Norman tower,
 and I gazed up into the chill of the darkening sky,
a celestial carpet embroidered now with a host of bright gilded stars.

The church clock struck eight, its sonorous tolling a solemn curfew
to proclaim the ending of our twilight freedom,
unwelcome summoning home to school books left abandoned,
 white mice unfed and evening tasks not yet done. 
But I walked through those dull suburban streets head in air,
suffused with the glory that had reached down to me from the sky.
The moon’s fragile light tipped corroded gutters with silver,
weeds like luminous gold ferns glistened beneath bleak sodium lamps,
and all those stars were a million tiny candles
 lit by the breath of God.

Absorbed into a mystery,
I held out my arms to the universe,
to a chaste and perfect unity.
 I was a girl in love
 with my very first love,
and the world was born anew,
to be for ever sanctified by this divine beauty.

      

Naomi              

The Angelus

Love not knowledge is the answer, feeling not logic is the process.

Charles Davis, Roman Catholic Theologian

They had climbed up to the old shrine - one wall only remained, built into the side of the Reformation chapel, perched high on the cliff above the bay. 

    “Is it alright” asked the Young Man, “when the Angelus bell is rung, for me to pause and say a prayer asking for help of Mary the Star of the Sea?” 

Reason, a statuesque lady with well cut hair and dainty feet, sighed. She regarded the Young Man with a trace of scorn mixed with the kind of sympathy that those who know themselves to be correct

can afford to expend. 

    “No.” she said. “It is not reasonable to invoke the assistance of a Jewish mother of uncertain virtue and little education, who was probably simply the construct of a first century radical Judaic legend.”   

    “But,” persisted the Young Man, “the spirits of the seamen who linger about this place move me to prayer. I hear the creak of ropes as passing ships dip their topsails in homage to the Lady, and sailors petitioning for her special protection.”

    “I would not tell you what to believe,” said Reason, “but I can ask you to consider this. Your mind is deeply influenced by the superstitious perceptions of centuries of well-meaning but naive folk. Prisoners all of an ignorant society whose sole recourse was to a learning perpetrated and preserved by a priestly class bent upon maintaining its hold over a compliant laity. Throw yourself into the study of the world around you. There are natural wonders here, enough for a lifetime of study; and a million more tragedies crying out for remedy than can be embraced within the competence of a single man or a single generation. Look to the salvation of this world and abandon the chimera of the next.”

    “Maybe.” said the Young Man. He turned to the Old Person beside him, androgynously resplendent in a long coat of many colours, and battered Ugg boots. 

    “Would you say a prayer to the Lady?” he asked. 

    “No reason not to.” returned the Old Person.

    “And yet, my reason tells me that Reason is correct. There is so much suffering and sorrow in this world crying out for reform and repair. But, love is what I see with and what I see touches first the heart. The reasoning mind must always be our guide for without it we cannot contrive the good that we would do, but it is the heart that strikes the spark which fires the boiler of compassion. Look,” he said pointing across the bay as a great shaft of light pierced the dense mist over the water, “does the Lady gives us a sign? Or is that amazing radiance merely a meteorological phenomenon? A sudden off shore breeze, a parting of the sea fret so that the Winter sun for one glorious moment shines through?” He took Reason’s hand in his.
    “So long as we can in conscience each respect the other, does it matter which of us is correct?”  
    “Perhaps not,” answered Reason quietly, “I don’t suppose it does.”
The Young Man put an arm around each of them.
    “Amen, and thank God for that my brother and my sister."

                                                                                       Naomi

Only the Heart hears the Music

Only the heart hears the music
 

Near a village called Azincourt where once were gathered up
the bones of the slaughtered nine thousand, there is a peaceful forest.
Great trees, their massive trunks like carved stone pillars
raise high their branched arches to the sky, and the leaf dappled
sun lights up a tranquil space, a vast sylvan cathedral
whose bosky peal proclaims Sitque Pax non Bellum
For across these green lands men and horses have trampled;
around these woods death has come untimely by sword and arrow,
knife and noose, treachery and bullet, mine and gun.
The screech owl mimics the cries of the dying,
and the craters of destruction
masquerade as pools of sweet white lilies.

In the blackest night only imagination can see the light;

in the deepest silence only the heart hears music;

God alone can speak with the voice of a man who has no tongue.

Let your tired eyes embrace the bright darkness,
your heart rejoice in the outpourings of the passionate nightingale
and gentle quiet surround your restless soul.
God is in the darkening light and the muted crescendo;
his the still voice that echoes far, like thunder
dancing amongst the jubilant hills.
By a million years of blood and bone have these sacred fields
and lonely woods been nourished, and Mary’s Christ Child sleeps
secure now, in an old stable beneath the sheltering trees.
 

The Lord is in this place.

N.L.  2011

Illustration from a painting by Oliver Postgate

What dreams the Land?

Below this ridge long isolated by river and by sea, lie the wide flat lands
of the Island, stretching from sunset to sunrise.
 Here you may find half a million years of history, an unending narrative
of a landscape, and the chronicles of its tribes.
The lion and wooly mammoth once roamed this  land of chalk and flint,
while rhino and aurochs grazed on these rough grasses.
As the wandering hominins of Europe fished our teaming waters
and trapped the two-ton straight-tusked elephant,
 the Island lay quiet, contented in the young sun’s pale morning, dreaming
 of a burgeoning landscape and a satisfied people.

Two thousand years of husbandry, three thousand years of trade,
the land flourished, the sea was abundant with fish.
But under the wide open sky and the eerie scream of the the great gulls
the people were not at ease with their Island home.
They had watched the Roman legions tramp across their small fields,
fled the long Northland ships at anchor in their harbours,
endured the plague that stalked their children and laid waste their lives.
They dreamed of relief from the cruelty of greedy manors,
of an end to the tyranny of Augustine’s proud successors, and of peace.
The Island dreamed of Death hovering close by its shores.

In times of a new plenty, the corn tall and golden, the apple trees’ branches
weighed down by a rich harvest, the Island’s modest
masters grew comfortable and fat - their only enemy the Revenue men.
Farmers dreamed of barns stacked high, their wives of gowns
rich in velvet and silk, seaside landladies dreamed of the quiet winter house
and the basement kitchen free from the clamour of bells.
But the labourer displaced by new machines, the coachman and the carter
their trade lost to the ubiquitous monarchs of the iron road,
the old sailor outrun by steam, all dreamed of days never to come again.
The Island trembled and dared not sleep.

Men ripped coal from the land, tall chimneys spewed soot and fumes, 
rivers were poisoned and man-made light overwhelmed
the sky’s darkness snuffing out the starry candles, the sailor’s celestial
chart and the promise that the sun always will return.
The roar of aluminium  pterosaurs drowned out the skylarks’ empyrean song
and the rising sea plucked impatiently at crumbling chalk.
Until
Like some beneficent Kraken arising slowly from its deep watery slumber,
we awake and discover the land anew, and understand now
our part as stewards of God’s creation, not lords - but humble tenants.
The Island gives thanks, and dreams of Paradise.

Amen. So may it be.

Naomi

Hunting Aurochs from 'The Canterbury Chronicle', a mural painted  by Oliver Postgate for Eliot College, the University of Kent
Louisa Bay Broadstairs,  from old postcard 

 ROOTS

 

“King Jesus hath a garden, full of divers flowers”        

Geestlijcke Harmonie, 1633

In Europe, parts of Russia and modern Turkey  the civilisation of the Post Roman Empire was firmly rooted in the Judaeo-Christian values and tradition which profoundly influenced every aspect of human life.  Law, social organisation, ethics, education, care of the sick, literature, the graphic arts, architecture, music - all sprang from and were widely nurtured by the Christian Churches: Roman Catholic, Holy Orthodox,  Protestant, mainstream and heretical offshoots alike.  Pockets of Judaism established throughout Europe, and Islam in the Iberian Peninsula had their parts to play, but sixteen  hundred years of Christian faith and practice remained the platform on which our whole culture and values, our taboos and justice were founded. 

    With the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ intrusion of Theism and Deism, of Rationalism and Utilitarianism, of secular philanthropy and the increasing secularisation of education, of  aggressively  secular political theory and organisation into European and American thinking and society,  our Christian foundations came under prolonged attack.  Out of this maelstrom of new ideas advanced and old beliefs cast aside, there also developed on the one hand more liberal and less hierarchical new religious organisations - the Society of Friends for example, but on the other hand a tendency for some of the existing churches of the Reformation themselves to be reformed - amongst others Anglicans into Methodists and Unitarians. But whatever the new organisations or theologies the majority of the new denominations regarded themselves as Christian even if the old establishment condemned them as heretical. 

    It was I suppose inevitable and reasonable that over the next two hundred years when oppressed people revolted against all the institutions of the illiberal state, including against the churches established and supported by those illiberal states, Christian teaching and preaching became the butt of the new scientists, political thinkers and radical activists.  Many Christian folk responded by proclaiming and acting out “the social Gospel” - Evangelicals, Christian Socialists, Congregationalists, Quakers, the Salvation Army, and Unitarians.  The Christian foundations may have been rocked, but remained more or less intact.

   

    Soon the demarcations of the Christian denominations became even more complicated.  Universal principles gained ground in both main stream and fringe churches; tolerance of individual and “different” beliefs became increasingly important.  Ideas new to the West were infiltrating from eastern religion and spirituality into European and American chapels and churches; God Himself was denied by agnostic theologians and militant atheists; whole denominations  became hotbeds of controversy and secularism laughed to see the infighting  amongst Christian denominations.  A disgruntled Quaker lady Universalist said to me: “These Christocentrics within the Society are very hurtful people.”  While another told me “Of course I’ve had a lot of trouble with the G-word.  I don’t use it in my writing now.”  I might have laughed, but I thought perhaps the circumstances were too tragic - their wonderful respectful tolerance to all faiths, and none, was being eroded now by tired old factionalisms, and fresh prejudices. 

    One Sunday morning in Canterbury Cathedral amidst a great company of folk at the Sung Eucharist I realised that in conscience I could no longer recite the Nicene Creed.  In the words of  Norbert Fabian Capek in a letter written in 1910 to Thomas Masaryk the first President of Czechoslovakia describing his deconversion from the Baptist church:

“I did not believe that Jesus is God, and that Jesus’ father, as the first person in the holy Trinity, asked his son to become a human being and to shed his innocent blood in order to appease God the Father for people, that is to say, those who believe in Jesus in this sense. I did not believe in the infallibility of the Bible …  I did not believe that God condemned the whole humankind for Adam’s sin, and I did not believe either in hereditary sin or never ending suffering in hell, and other orthodox doctrines.”

    So I slipped out of the Church of England, and eventually into the un-gathered congregation of the National Unitarian Fellowship.  I had held very dear the rituals of the Anglo Catholic Church of England,  the drama of the celebration of the Mass, the sense of two thousand years of continuity of worship and love, and I still do.  But I believe that Jesus was a man, a spiritual teacher and leader of immense power and influence,  and he always was and still is my prophet and spiritual director.  Thus as a disciple, a student of Jesus Christ, I nominate myself as a Christian.  I nominate myself as an Unitarian because it was my un-belief in the Nicene Creed, and most particularly in the doctrine of the Trinity, which brought my worshipping membership of the Christian Church to its end.  I did not leave to escape from Christ but rather from the promulgations of the Early Fathers and the Council of Nicea.  I did not slip onto the Unitarian Raft to denigrate Christianity and abandon my Teacher, but to pursue my own individual spiritual search in the company of open minded, tolerant, careful and caring friends.  Such friends I have found in our virtual congregation and I thank God for them. 

    I do have the greatest sympathy for those Christians who have escaped from Christian denominations and individual churches where the weapons of choice are submission and fear and spiritual blackmail, and who have small wish to be reminded of those horrors here in the safety of our open Unitarian Fellowship. Nor would I expect them to subscribe to a neo-Christian identity. The Christian institutions and the hierarchies I left behind were mercifully benign and I am able still to honour my Judaeo-Christian roots and the teaching and example of the Man of Peace who lived and died in Galilee two thousand years ago.  Would that this were so for all of us.

   If you find a flower, an Oxeye Daisy an ancestor of whom once gave you a rash, now encroaching on the margin of a smart new  bed of  low pollen hydrangeas, do you dig it up and chuck it into the efficient eco-friendly incinerator? Or do you forgive the bitter memory of its great grandmother and make room for both the modest daisy and the opulent hydrangea in your tidy court-yard garden?  Do you poison the roots of the centuries old Derbyshire Newton Wonder apple tree to make way for the new Japanese Sayaka variety, or do you love and nurture them both in a sunny corner of your quiet orchard, side by side and harmonious in their differences?

“The Crown Imperial bloometh too in yonder place,

'tis charity, of stock divine, the flow'r of grace.”

Naomi

Illustration:  Fritillary 'Imperial Crown'    from John Edwards' British Herbal , 1769

Prometheus

A fulmar, high above the cliff top railings, banks and turns
into the breeze, marbled wings slender and delicate,
a mosaic of airy platinum and filigree steel.
Westward he flies across the bay over the shimmering waves gilded
by a burnished amber sun,
and soars into the haze, mother of pearl where the watery horizon
kisses the melting sky and merges into eternity.
For one magnificent moment he is silhouetted shadow dark
against that fiery solar vortex where the souls of the dead are gathering,
and the resurrection trumpets sound.
He is gone like smoke absorbed into darkness unseen,
a silent echo of a song as yet unheard, palpable memory of a forgotten dream,
jubilant spirit into the shining air of a new morning,
unbound and free.

Naomi

Dedicated to the memory of Dr Jim Fowler, member of the National Unitarian Fellowship, 
died  2011

The Invitation

 
Across the green of the sea kissed downs, flies my bird,
Cushioned on winds first warmed by desert sun
Where camel and Beduin for ever walk
Into a shimmering horizon, mysterious and bright.
 

Up and up he rises, my bird, a speck of dark light
In a sky of cerulean blue, a day star in the stillness
Of a summer afternoon. He hovers now, my bird,
Oh so gently, like an idle leaf in the soft June air.
 

Then, tumbling from the sky, stalling and whirling,
An acrobat exuberant, my bird beckons,
A pinioned king wonderful in his dignity and power.
And I can only marvel at this Malachi pointing me to heaven.

Naomi