In the moment
Andrea Harrison
St Enodoc, Trebetherick, Cornwall
The voice in this poem is that of a ‘little church’ situated away from ‘the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities.’ The church is ‘at peace with nature’ and ‘the shortening or lengthening days, sun and rain’. It awakes to ‘a perfect patience of mountains’. This might suggest a retreat from the often harsh realities of life but the prayers of the ‘little church’ are those of ‘earth’s own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children.’ The ‘little church’ is content to be in the moment, whatever that might be, a rather pertinent hope for many of us in this third national lockdown.
For the last 20 years (excepting 2020) our extended family has taken a holiday together on the north Cornish coast. There is a walk from Rock beach to Polzeath over the cliffs and around Brae Hill that I love. In many ways the walk represents a place of escape or retreat for me and not being able to go made me long for it even more last year. About halfway along the walk, situated in the wind-swept dunes, is St Enodoc church. No road leads to it and the dunes on two sides are almost level with the building. It is easy to miss as you walk the coastal path but then suddenly the crooked spire comes into view. John Betjeman is buried in the churchyard and he made the church famous in his poem Sunday Afternoon Service in St Enodoc Church, Cornwall:
Come on! Come on! This hillock
Hides the spire,
Now that one and now none.
For hundreds of years the church was almost entirely hidden, buried in those sand dunes, until it was excavated in the mid nineteenth century. The setting seems idyllic but for a long time being in the moment was being almost submerged by sands whipped up from the North Atlantic winds.
The passing of time during this pandemic will have been experienced differently for each of us but perhaps the feeling that days are blurred is probably common to many. And for some it’s been a bleak time. The spire of E ee cummings’s ‘little church’ lifts to ‘merciful Him whose only now is forever’ and so we can be reminded of the ‘deathless truth’ and timelessness of God’s promise to be with us always, however we experience this time.
The spire in this poem and the spire of St Enodoc’s are ‘diminutive’ but nonetheless they are a witness to God, pointing heavenward and ‘welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness’. In reflection I wonder about our witness during this Lent.
