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A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life - Page 481

  • 'Haphazard by Starlight' - Day 9

    Dover Beach

    By Matthew Arnold

    The sea is calm tonight.
    The tide is full, the moon lies fair
    Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
    Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
    Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
    Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
    Only, from the long line of spray
    Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
    Listen! you hear the grating roar
    Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
    At their return, up the high strand,
    Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
    With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
    The eternal note of sadness in.

    Sophocles long ago
    Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
    Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
    Of human misery; we
    Find also in the sound a thought,
    Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

    The Sea of Faith
    Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
    Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
    But now I only hear
    Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
    Retreating, to the breath
    Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
    And naked shingles of the world.

    Ah, love, let us be true
    To one another! for the world, which seems
    To lie before us like a land of dreams,
    So various, so beautiful, so new,
    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
    And we are here as on a darkling plain
    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
     
     
  • 'Haphazard by Starlight' - Day 8

    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?

  • Second Sunday in Advent

    Another action-packed day in propsect...

    Morning worship

    Sunday School party

    Evening worship

    All good fun... tis hte season to be busy falalalalalalalala ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

  • Advent 2013 - The First Week

    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!

  • 'Haphazard by Starlight' - Day 7

    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.

    Emily Dickinson