What does God require in the first, second and third commandments? First, that we know and trust God as the only true and living God. Second, that we avoid all idolatry and do not worship God improperly. Third, that we treat God’s name with fear and reverence, honoring also his Word and works. (New City Catechism) The Beginning of all things, begin with Him: know, trust, serve. What breath have you that did not pour forth from His mouth? what life, what sight that did not emanate from Him? Is He contained within the stars, the moon, the patterns of the soil that you may draw a set of lines on a cave's wall and declare, here He is! or carve His likeness out of wood? And what is His name that you can barter, beg, lie, steal armed with it in your carry-bag, a totem, a charm, a licence to twist and turn His will as though He were potters' clay. You are the clay. Remember, children of Adam, the soil, the breath, the hands that shaped and formed. And bow; you are His likeness. Be before Him as His image; bow before Him and begin.
“Hosanna” – Streaming Page CXVI Day 6
Monday Before Lent Atrophied your knees, Weary your feet, Rusty the locks of the ancient gates - Prepare the way. Cry, Blessed is He! as He comes, To save, to rule, to save. Stagnant your hopes, Vacant your dreams, Silent and silenced the voice which cries - In the wilderness prepare the way! See, He comes. The donkey's steps near, Four-centuries-dormant longing yawns... Bowing your hearts, Waving your palm fronds, Whispering your hearts - Hosanna, save...Hosanna... Open now the gates of day; Prepare the fallow way.
“Your hearts and minds, prepare them…” – Streaming Page CXVI Day 5
The moment in the Easter narrative that always captures my attention most powerfully is the story of Palm Sunday, of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, hailed as king yet his death from that moment assured. This is the theme of today’s Page CXVI song, the beautiful “This Blessed Day”, accompanied by my new poem for the day. May both help us draw nearer to our servant king this Lent.
Sunday Before Lent Sons of men: the king is here; he calls, he calls your crowns and songs – Daughters, sing: behold him come; he rides, he rides adorned in humble praise – Prepare the way: lay your crowns, lay your palms, lay your souls, your soles, your steps toward him – Behold his crown: adorned with thorns. Behold his brow, adorned with shame. Behold him ride – Hosanna, praise: the king who rides, who writhes, who prays forgiveness in His name.
An Absolutely Ordinary Poet
February now over, it is time to offer one final celebration of Les Murray’s poetry, before moving onto our next – and final – poet in the 12 Poets Project. Here is a short reflection on some of the qualities I value most in Murray’s work. I hope it is a fitting conclusion to our month spent in his work.
Les Murray – An Absolutely Ordinary Poet
And as March gets under way, it will soon be time for us to open up the work of a quite unexpected poet: former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, the Welsh-born theologian and writer Rowan Williams. I first encountered Williams’ affinity with poetry through his translations of his eighteenth-century countrywoman Ann Griffiths’ work, only to find that he had written much of his own. I am looking forward to sharing it, and my responses to it, with you this month.
“Fast from… Feast on…” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Four
When I was younger, comfortable in low-evangelical churches where Lent was not observed, the season and its observances always seemed a semi-Catholic imposition. Our school chaplain would wear purple and people gave up eating sugar. That was mostly all I knew about it.
When I came slowly to understand its value, it came with the recognition that you gave up in order to take up. You ate less sugar and prayed more; you gave up time-consuming activities to study the Bible. It was not a matter of fasting for fasting’s sake. It was a matter of fasting from that which was not helpful to feast on that which was.
This is the theme of today’s song from Page CXVI‘s forthcoming “Lent to Maundy Thursday” – a magnificently beautiful song which takes as its theme the kind of sentiment expressed in this meditation by American pastor and writer William Arthur Ward. I hope that this song and my accompanying poem can help you think through what ways you might draw closer to God this Lent and how we can better feast upon Him.
Saturday Before Lent
So wake:
the world’s asleep with sirens and
the truth is whispering through the sleepy day.
Stand fast:
sweet doom abounds in sinking ground
and quicksand-dreams’ oblivion draws you.
Hold fast:
your hands are slippery and the night
will try and try to snatch day from your grasp.
Keep alert:
false comforts and discomforts come
to seize the fallow mind. Pray; stay awake.
And feast:
the bridegroom’s near; He gives us food
for every need. So find your fill in Him.
“Were you there…?” – Streaming Page CXVI Day Three
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? None of us today can answer “yes”. Yet the truth and power of that moment is never diminished, how much time stretches between us and it.
Today’s track from Page CXVI’s “Lent to Maundy Thursday” combines two old hymns: “Were You There?” and “O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”. May it help us keep preparing our hearts for the truth of Easter.
Friday Before Lent
I was not there;
my heart cannot prepare
for sights like these:
the way Love trembles on its throne,
and mercy sweats blood.
I was not there,
and in my absence there is guilt:
the nonchalance of one who sits
a safer distance from the fright;
yet Love knows I would have been
as blood-thirsty as the rest.
I was not there,
yet Love draws further
than the bounds of space and time,
into my desperate present where
the love of Jesus lives.
I was not there;
my soul cannot prepare
itself for what it finds:
mercy thick with knowledge, rich
in wisdom before time, grounded, deep
into each present cry.
The Meaning of Flight
It is a little over a year since a family friend – only a few years older than me – took his life by jumping in front of a train. I wrote the poem “Silent Screams” in response to his death, and also dedicated my collection of poems, “Imperceptible Arms”, to his memory. It has been a while since my writing here has dealt with issues of mental health, but the memory of my friend’s death and my own ongoing struggles with mental illness have prompted me to revisit these ideas. May God’s presence and grace be with everyone who knows these same struggles.
The Meaning of Flight
In dreams I am encumbered,
like legs have lost their firmness and
cannot move of their own accord,
as though I must
lever myself
along the ground
with arms ill-equipped for this purpose.
On ground, awake, I
move freely,
bound only by time,
gravity, injury, the
limits of body and strength –
only shackled by
the weight of mind
making each
lap, each step a
motion further sometimes
into the ground.
And in
dreams of flight, my
unbound state terrifies; I
soar too quick across
the tops of trees
and fling
into the air where
nothing can
contain my motion.
Bound, I am weighed down,
but free – I am without weight, without –
what? The anchor
needed to give meaning to my flight?
Angel with
sunken wings that atrophy beneath
a sunken gaze –
look up to where
the sun dances
in starshower and
the fraught geometry of time
and space
are rendered nothing in
your living, endless,
ever-purposed
flight.
“Before the throne of God above…” – Streaming Page CXVI Day 2
Well, as Lent approaches, so does the release of Page CXVI’s “Lent to Maundy Thursday”, and so it is with great excitement that I am posting the second track of the album, one of my favourite hymns: “Before the throne of God above”. When we could use this season before Easter as a time to make sure we are right before God – and this is certainly a good thing to do – the best thing we can remember is that God has made us right with Him, and so we can approach Him confident of this, whatever our state right now.
Thursday Before Lent Should we wait, uncertain, at the place where glory sits, hesitant to see His face, hesitant to hope? Should we kneel or should we hide? Should we walk at all before the throne, before the face of holiness and light? Can we dare to face the truth that who we are is known? Can we plead? What is our plea, the ground on which we stand? Enter, confident, for this Most Holy Place is now opened up; the throne calls you to bring your tears and crowns.
“And can it be that I should gain…”: Streaming Page CXVI’s “Lent to Maundy Thursday”
What is the first note of Lent? Ash Wednesday – this year on March 5th, next Wednesday in fact, will in most churches sound a low and melancholy tone, pregnant with penitence and reflection. But contemporary hymnsters, Page CXVI, begin their “Lent to Maundy Thursday” with jubilation: Charles Wesley’s classic “And can it be that I should gain”, a reminder to all for whom the forthcoming season of Lent is a time of repentance and reflection, that Christ’s is our one sufficient sacrifice.
For the next week at The Consolations of Writing, we will be streaming an advanced preview of the next instalment in Page CXVI’s sequence of songs working through the church year. The album will be released on Tuesday 4th March. You can find out more about the album and related projects through the band’s blog here. Be sure to buy your own copy of the album when it’s released.
As an extra feature for these seven days, I will also be releasing a number of pre-Lent poems: a chance to think about who Jesus is and how He changes lives. Here is the first, to accompany the first song from “Lent to Maundy Thursday”. Happy listening.
Wednesday Before Lent The Cross breaks expectations. Mine I bring limply, tacitly, proudly – as though I can change time and history to my ends. And yet You, ever surprising, rebuke and restore in seamless, swift defiant fulfilment of law within Your flesh. And can it be? Your eyes, staring deep into souls' past and posterity, rich with wisdom’s grace, know full well it can.
Sprawl: For Les Murray (and Bach)
February is a short month, and so sadly I am having to speed up our journey through Les Murray’s poetry. My final poem for the month is an original work written in response to this interview with Murray from Image (Winter 2009-10) as well as Murray’s own description, in a personal letter, of his visit to a Lutheran church in Leipzig. My poem also draws on a number of Murray’s own poems. I’ll leave the eagle-eyed to find which ones, but the direct quotes from Murray are all in italics, to show they aren’t my own words. All in all, it’s a tribute to a man whose philosophy I do not wholly agree with yet always find compelling.
Sprawl: For Les Murray
God, at the end of prose,
somehow be our poem –
(Les Murray, “You Find You Can Leave It All”)
No pinched-arse Puritan, you could walk, I
suppose,
into the church in Leipzig with J.S. Bach
thundering away,
differing perhaps in dogma yet relishing the
plenitude of song.
What did you hear that day in St. Thomas’?
Some mighty Cantata? The gospel set to words, to
music,
set to heart again? The world, you said once,
reverberates with Muzak and Prozac. The mind
craves
some analgesic sound to cool the air; yet souls
desire organs.
Yours that day resounded with the thump and hum
of what,
when Reformations raged, was controversy:
the heavens, all seemed to agree, will roar with
voice and instrument,
yet some still debate where earthly Temple-lines
are drawn.
Heaven invades earth as molecules of grace; yet
to you
the Presence has always been Real: enacted in
bread
passed hand to hand, and in sprawl
of shirtsleeve nobility, giving with no thought
of reprise,
no heed of destiny. Whispered in poetic diction,
felt, danced and dreamed, God breaks the banks
of hearts sunk enough to receive Him, who
enter church, not to proclaim what’s already
known,
but in desperate, grateful hopes of being wrong.
The Consolations of Writing 