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  • Christmas Day 2013

    Feel good or factual?  This has been my dilemma over the past week or so as I've prepared for this morning's worship.  In the end I think, hope, pray, I have found a middle way that will carry honest hope into a weary world.

    For so many this will be a difficult Christmas - floods and power cuts; sickness, bereavement and tragedy; poverty and debt... the list grows and grows, both in the braodcast news and in our private spheres.

    So, I sit safe and warm in my third floor flat, power supply secure, breakfasted, parcels unwrapped and count my blessings...

    Then, soon, I will head churchwards to celebrate the birth of Christ, the baby who bore hope into the world and, as a man, would bear despair out of it.  We will sip coffee and nibble treats round the table beautifully set in readiness for our annual Community Lunch, to which people of all types and conditions will be drawn (and, if true to form, some surprise and surprising guests).  And after the festive feast, I will slip on my clerical collar and head to the nearest hospital to see a couple of folk spending the holiday season there.  It all meets and muddles or melds - that's the reality I strive to express.

     

    Whatever you day brings, whatever the circumstances in which you spend it, may you be blessed with moments of unbridalled joy and renewed hope for whatever the future holds.

  • "Haphazard by Starlight" - Day 25

    BC:AD

    by U A Fanthorpe

    This was the moment when Before
    Turned into After, and the future’s
    Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

    This was the moment when nothing
    Happened. Only dull peace
    Sprawled boringly over the earth.

    This was the moment when even energetic Romans
    Could find nothing better to do
    Than counting heads in remote provinces.
    And this was the moment

    When a few farm workers and three
    Members of an obscure Persian sect
    Walked haphazard by starlight straight
    Into the kingdom of heaven.

  • Harold Hark - the Angel Who Couldn't Sing!

    013.JPG Messy Watchnight

    Families Watchnight

    Whatever description you prefer, it was a wonderful afternoon with around 20 children aged zero to ten years of age, parents and grandparents.

    After devouring Christmas tree pizza, haribo cakes and other assorted treats they busily deocarted angel biscuits, made gift boxes and angel decorations before hearing the story of Harold, the angel who could not sing.

    A wonderful way to spend a wet, windy and raw cold afternoon, and seems to have been much appreciated by those who came.

    Thanks to the angels A, B, G, M and M whose efforts made it all possible.

    Now I am relaxing at home ahead of tomorrow's festivities.

  • "Haphazard by Starlight" - Day 24

    In the days of Caesar

    By Waldo Williams tr. Rowan Williams

     

    In the days of Caesar, when his subjects went to be reckoned,

    There was a poem mad, too dark for him (naïve with power)

    to read

    It was a bunch of shepherds who discovered

    in Bethlehem of Judah, the great music beyond reason and

    reckoning:

    shepherds, the sort of folk who leave the ninety-nine behind

    so as to bring the stray back home, dawning toward cock-crow,

    the birthday of the Lamb of God, shepherd of mortals.

     

    Well, little people, and my nation, can you see

    The secret buried in you, that no Caesar ever captures in his lists?

    Will not the shepherd come to fetch us in our desert,

    Gathering us in to give us birth again, weaving us into one

    In a song heard in the sky over Bethlehem?

    He seeks us out as wordhoard for his workmanship, the laureate

    of heaven

  • Memories Stirred

    Today's 'Haphazrd by Starlight' poem, which I loved, stirred memories of this poem I encountered in one of the 'anthologies for schools' we had back in the 1970s.  I had some fun and games with the formatting, but the font that shows seems very approrpiate - reminding me of the old teletype character sets

    The Computer's First Christmas Card
     
    by Edwin Morgan
    jollymerry 
    hollyberry
    jollyberry
    merryholly
    happyjolly
    jollyjelly
    jellybelly
    bellymerry
    hollyheppy
    jollyMolly
    marryJerry
    merryHarry
    happyBarry
    heppyJarry
    bobbyheppy
    berryjorry
    jorryjolly
    moppyjelly
    Mollymerry
    Jerryjolly
    bellyboppy
    jorryhoppy
    hollymoppy
    Barrymerry
    Jarryhappy
    happyboppy
    boppyjolly
    jollymerry
    merrymerry
    merrymerry
    merryChris
    ammerryasa
    Chrismerry
    asMERRYCHR
    YSANTHEMUM