Dover Beach
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Dover Beach
The Absence
by R. S. Thomas
It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.
I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
Another action-packed day in propsect...
Morning worship
Sunday School party
Evening worship
All good fun... tis hte season to be busy falalalalalalalala ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Well, what a week this has been! Or just over a week, strictly speaking.
The tragedy of the helcipoter crash at Clutha Vaults, swiftly followed by high winds across Scotland and tidal surges and flooding in England and Wales, then, as the week drew to its close, the death of Nelson Mandela. And that's just the high profile, public stuff.
To be honest, I've found the poetry selection of 'Haphazard by Starlight' for this week rather dark too - not just physically dark, not merely short hours of daylight, but a forboding, pernicious kind of darkness that seeps into the soul. Perhaps others have found that darkness resonates with their feelings and experiences, but I've found it rather hard-going.
It has also been a very busy week - even with one evening meeting being cancelled, I was still out three nights in succession, and the days ended up being rather lengthy one way and another. From taking communion with eldery housebound folk to visiting someone with an advanced and advancing incurable condition, to drinking coffee with folks for whom life plods along, perhaps the heart of this week has been its pastoral focus. I always claim this is the weakest area of my ministry, the part I find most difficult because small talk is not my thing (even if I can blether for hours otherwise), but this week it has proved a gift amidst what has at times felt like relentless pratical stuff that "they don't teach you at vicar school".
Last night, not atypically, I was awake for a couple of hours, and I made a point of thinking back over the week and naming in prayer people and churches and places and situations that had been part of my week.
Today has been no less demanding - I have worked out how to download MP4 and MP3 versions of video on You Tube (legitimately) in order to work them into a PowerPoint presentation for the person who is leading tomorrow evening's worship. I have wrestled the all age part of tomorrow's service into some sort of shape, and feel that things are now just about 'there'.
Having done all this, I took myself down the road to a coffee shop where I indulged myself in a mincepie with cream and a large steaming mug of hot chocolate (on the grounds that, just this once, I'd live with the possiblity of soy) with all the trimmings!
Overall, I've had a good week, and the little candles of hope have defied the darkness at every turn. As I anticipate the second week of Advent, I hope the the glimmers of dawn will begin to tickle the horizon... time will tell!
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark
We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -
A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -
And so of larger - Darkness -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -
The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -
Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.