From whence comes Joy?

From whence comes Joy?       

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.                          Tagore

                                                                             

The Sparrow Family had bathed in the sandy dust of a hot summer’s afternoon and now, wings spread wide to trap  the cooling air, sat close to their nests in the shrubs beside the iron railings.  The Patriarch, while pretending to sleep, was keeping a  sharp bright eye on his extended family.

    “What in the name of Rhiannon is that boy doing?” he demanded.
    “Who, Papa? Oh him! it’s Eldest Son.” said Eldest Daughter. “He’s making a chart showing his  evolution from some flying monster who disappeared a million years ago.”
    “Why’s he doing that?” the Pariarch asked.
    “Search me”  said Eldest Daughter.
    “I know,” cheeped a Grandson, who was dissecting a particularly succulent worm, “it’s Science.”
    “It’s boring.” said his fluffy big sister. “He’s stopped singing, he’s stopped teasing Seagulls, and he hasn’t time any more to visit the Venerable Old Bird in his evening nest of a thousand sky blue flowers.”

    “True,” said a Cousin, “but he’s really devoted to this Evolution thing.  He says it’s ‘Logically beautiful’ and ‘The intellectual Key to the mystery of our being.’ Very posh.”
    “But does he find any joy in it?” asked the Matriarch.
    “Not joy, perhaps,” said the Cousin, “but lots of satisfaction from the patterns he’s found  in his chart. He says the answer to the whole enigma of life is there - who are we, what  are we, and why are we.”
     “Maybe.” said the Matriarch. “But we need nectar for the soul as well as grist for the mind.”
  
    She fluttered across the grass to where her Eldest Son  huddled over his extraordinary Chart.
    “May I see?” she said.    Eldest Son looked up amazed.
    “Do you really want to look at this ‘boring old thing’?”
    “Yes I do, because it matters to you.”  She stared wide eyed at the Chart, and then  said
    “I wonder if you can look up at Science and say:  ‘You are the delight of my heart, my consolation in  sorrow, a light that guides me through  the dark of the storm.  You shelter me from the fierce heat of Summer, and in Autumn you share with me the bounty of the harvest. You warm me through the bitter days of Winter, and in Springtime you invite me into the Circle of Life which is a dance eternal.' "

    Eldest Son shrugged.  “No, not really.” he said. “When I look at Evolution, I begin to find answers to my questions about real life - about yesterday, today and even tomorrow. There are a thousand questions still unasked, and I shall never find answers to most of them, but I cannot stop looking.  Something drives me on, but I can’t tell you what. I don’t  look into the heart of your Holy One, whom I have yet to meet. I’m not a poet like you Mama.”

    The Matriarch chuckled. “No poet. Just a plump old bird  in a faded old motley brown coat, who has caught a glimpse of the Divine One mirrored in the fiery face of the Sun and the sweet silvered features of the moon.  He is both the source and the end of my being.” She smiled at Eldest Son “Between us, you and me united, together we might one day bring a little extra Joy to the world.”

Naomi

Threnody on a Parting of the Waters

Threnody on a Parting of the Waters

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea

The wind blown waters parted
and the Red Sea turned upside down.
Sucked into this watery vortex,
birds hurtled  from sheltering clouds,
serrated pallid bill and feathered brown carapace
entwined with black pinioned hood
and narrow blood scarlet beak,
white-eyed gull and brown booby fallen as one
 in a fragile unpremeditated sacrifice.
Striped angel fish flew high into the troubled air,
whirling and dancing in a crazy spiral.
Piebald manta rays soared and shimmered into the sky,
and like ragged broken parachutes
fluttered gently down onto hard spiked coral,
stranded now by the primordial waves
retreating across the shallow ocean floor.

Along this path of feather, blood and bone,
went the Israelites full of hope,
going to Canaan, the land of milk and honey
long promised by their Lord.
No psalms of lamentation were sung
for the passing of  brown booby and angel fish,
manta ray and white-eyed gull,
no mourning for the creatures of water and air -
secret victims of an ineffable power,
or of the vagaries of a mighty storm.
In the reed beds only the wind sighed,
while the dark clouds of a moonless night
stripped outer space of every shadow,
and with these weeping veils overhung the stars. 
Silent flutes played a Lux aeterna for them,
and thus they were remembered. 
                                                                  Naomi

              Half Full or Half Empty?

              When you go down to the shore’s edge my friends, what do you see?

    1st Voice:    I see rock pools full of storm dirty grey water,

            red plastic rubbished, crumpled and torn,

            a sightless fish stripped stark ugly to the bone,

            thong weed fronds garishly slimy bright,

            viridian treachery of algae paths underfoot.

    2nd Voice:   I see rock pools teeming with microcosmic new life,

            a sweet peony shore-blown to its resting place,

            a delicate skeleton marvellous in its symmetry,

            kelp and bladder wrack decorating the sands,

            green algae finely patterned against the rocks.

    1st Voice:    I see men with faces harsh with bleak despair

            mirrored in a sky dark with swirling clouds,

            tearful children grapple with sharp edged rain,    

            small boats founder amongst scum tipped waves

            in an ocean polluted by an uncaring world.

    2nd Voice:   I see men take to the sea beneath the dark sky,

            speeding their orange craft through the pounding waves

            to recover the small boats’ foundering,

            and children laugh as they pit their small strength

            against the whirling rain’s boisterous battle cry.

    1st Voice:    I see a thousand fall exhausted on this sad shore,

            and the poisoned ocean give up its dead

            to a land dying of neglect under a fiery sun,

            men and children lost to a cruel oblivion,

            and my glass half empty dashed against the rocks.

    2nd Voice:   I see a shining time laid out before us,

            life and love prevailing the shore lives again,

            our glasses half full shall be replenished,

            our land once desolate will blossom anew

            and a great Te Deum fill the wide sky with glory.

                                               Naomi

Barn Owl

Naomi

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