Holy Mother of God, here we go again!” as Ted Hastings might put it. But at last a headline to hang on to: yes, the ‘cash for curtains’ scandal! We have sleaze and snobbery and the disquiet of the powerful all combined to cause both entertainment and serious questions.
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This was the old king’s favourite time of year. He would slip away from his household before the business of the day got under way and come out on the battlements to pray, and of course, to be truthful, to do a bit of birding. The swifts would be here any day, a cuckoo called in the beech forest below the castle, and red-rumped swallows were renewing their tunnelled mud nests under the walls. But of course the king’s peace didn’t last long; a well known lunatic came along the battlement and fixing the king with his dark and shining eyes demanded to know whence came hope.
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The Divine Rescue
Shame on shame is the Devil’s work. He trips us up and takes us down
The gliding serpent took our wills and turned us from our Lord and Maker
Sent from paradise, condemned to pain, no longer Eden’s kings and queens
Pontius Pilate traded us, but our God had an endless plan to rescue us
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I’m very hesitant about writing this; you’ll see in a moment. All friends (I thank God for them) and many neighbours and acquaintances know. So it feels a bit indulgent and repetitive to talk about it here; but I feel there are things worth sharing.
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Just past the winter solstice, ground as hard as iron, night sky swept clean and black with a firmament of bright stars, no moon, still still celestial night slowly turning. A wolf spoke far off, then another and another. The dogs’ ears pricked; the flock lay still. He pulled his long sheep skin tighter against the intense cold. He liked this place, its perfect symmetry of volcanic rock (we know it as Hanter).
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Should we be entertained or terrified by the spectacle of the US presidential election? Donald Trump’s desperate and dangerous attempts to throw a legal and democratic vote have transgressed all conventions and norms of the last 100 years. A Wisconsin placard captured both the risible and the sinister in this spectacle with “Make Orwell fiction again”.
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My Dearest Sara, This is your shepherd Isaak, writing to you from the Judean hills with strange news! Just two nights ago I was keeping watch when it was cold and silent, and I felt a great joy at the blackness and the brightness, the unreachable mystery of the stars. As I sat by the dying embers, a great light appeared, a shining beyond all shining.
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Our government came in almost a year ago with an unarguable majority to get a lot of things done, most obviously and controversially Brexit. But featuring prominently among the issues that Brexit is expected to resolve is immigration; and our Home Secretary is floating a raft of policy ideas likely to make thoughtful and compassionate citizens (including most Christians) dismayed.
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Our middle daughter is getting married this month; that’s a milestone and happy event for any parent, and if you’ve been happily married yourself for a long time, you long for your children to be similarly blessed. Is it mostly luck that you find the right partner, that the ingredients are right?
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In the last week of July I am already scanning the sky for reassurance; summer is still here. By the end of the first week of August it is all over; the wonderful swifts have almost all left until next spring.
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The slow killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman while others stood by was deeply shocking and rightly set the world ablaze. The most of us who have never lived in America probably underestimate the influence of the “frontier society” where guns, violence and aggressive market economics have a recent painful history. Black lives matter, and all lives matter to God who made us, black, Asian, white, in his own image.
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Dafydd ap Dafydd drew his scythe in long strokes through the churchyard grass; in the heat and silence there was little other sound than the whisper of steel to earth as a crop of wild flowers of all hues lay in sweet smelling rows on the ground.
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Before the lurking and unseen peril of Covid-19 holed our vessel causing the world to list and have a reluctant think, only 20% of air travel was said to be for business; the rest of it was recreational, tourism and ‘love miles’ connecting our globally scattered families.
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With the arrows of pestilence flying over our heads, at the time of writing we wait to see how many land amongst us. It’s perhaps right to acknowledge an apocalyptic view before looking to the positives. Scientists and environmentalists have for decades been warning of the consequences of abusing the earth and its complex web of glorious life.
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The good Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. He was a leading Pharisee and cared for his reputation. They have a bad press, the Pharisees, but we should have some sympathy for them. Very strict keepers of the Law, orthodox and tireless in their religious devotions
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Land use ebbs and flows and always has done over the generations. In the 19thC the repeal of the Corn Laws brought imported grain and cheaper bread for the growing industrial population. Consequently, marginal land such as the Brecklands of East Anglia, returned to grazing and scrub; today they are still home to plantations of pine and herds of deer.
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It was still the dark time of winter and biting winds tormented everyone in the palace; none of this helped the old king’s mood. But nevertheless, he mused, there were always signs of hope. Tiny wrens were busy hunting for spiders under the wreckage of last summer’s flowers, and he could even hear the faint drumming of a woodpecker in the naked winter woods below the walls.
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As this goes to press we are waking up to a new political landscape after an election that is setting our course for a generation; many jubilant and others deeply worried. Someone must have said, long ago and often, in democracy you get what you deserve; that leaves us all with something to think on, but for now, urgently, we must move forward and work together to make our democratic institutions function as honestly and effectively as possible.
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When working in the Highlands we didn’t get a public holiday on Good Friday; Reformed Scotland thought it safer and more pragmatic to reward people for taking gratitude and celebration seriously by giving them 2 days off at the New Year. There is something to be said for that. The cross is where it is all leading, but it is the incarnation, so audacious and scandalous, that turns the world upside down. God the Creator wired us for eternity; we yearn for spiritual connection, for our maker and God. All religions and spiritualities reach up or out or in to God; but in Christianity –and perhaps Jews would include themselves in this- God uniquely comes to meet us right where we are in our grisly mess.
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Should we talk about Brexit? It’s mesmerising, and a storm that is shaking our democratic institutions. Or do we talk about carbon? Our comfortable and familiar habits are hastening climate breakdown. The first is urgent, and neighbours from Kington have been marching for a people’s vote to resolve it, but the other towers over us dwarfing all other man-induced threats; other neighbours have been demonstrating more dramatically with Extinction Rebellion. Both threats are existential and dire.
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