Good Trouble

Alexander Massmann

Biblical scholars famously describe the Gospel of Mark as a ‘Passion story with an elaborate introduction’. It appears to be a story full of trouble. However, in my copy of the Bible, Mark narrates the events of Holy Week on only four pages (Mark 14–15), out of the Gospel’s entirety of twenty-four pages. A lot of things take place before the Passion – certainly more than a mere introduction. How do those other stories figure in our account of who Jesus is? Can the cross, the classic symbol of the Passion, stand in for his entire life before Easter?

Although exaggerated, the view of Mark as a ‘Passion story with an elaborate introduction’ also captures a grain of truth. The story of Jesus has hardly begun, and already in chapter 3, Mark tells us of an outrageous scheme against him: the religious elites ‘immediately conspired … against him, how to destroy him’ (v. 6). In a quick burst of activity, Jesus had stirred up a lot of dust: he had exorcised a demon from a possessed person, healed four individual people and a smattering of others, including an unclean leper, and he delved right into dicey disputes with the keepers of the law. After his visit with a despised tax collector, the religious leaders see that trouble is brewing: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ (2.16)

Jesus throws our standards of social respectability into disarray: he attends to those whom we shun; his understanding of established rules is unusual and provocative; and he heals those ill people that society has written off. Jesus also presents himself in bold, extraordinary ways: he is the ‘bridegroom’ at the wedding feast of life, or the enigmatic ‘son of man’. Very often, however, the spotlight is not on himself but on the things he does. He presents his whole life in a nutshell with the words: ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!’ (1.15)

All of this is indeed good news. However, it is also ‘not the way things are done around here.’ Shake up the customs and unwritten rules of society, and you will reap trouble. Question the governing assumptions about who is ‘in’ and ‘out’ or who settles moral disputes, and people will turn against you. There will be conflict, so it is no coincidence that the ‘good news’ of God’s kingdom implies the call to turn our lives around (‘repent’). Yet many do not follow Jesus’ call, and we hear how a world of trouble will bear down on Jesus. The good news also means trouble.

So we must hold together two things during Lent: Jesus not only endured this trouble, but the trouble arose primarily because of the good news he had already brought. It is good trouble. With forgiveness, healing and the social inclusion of outsiders, things change in the way the community operates; something new is taking place. Jesus is a ‘physician’ who brings healing – socially, mentally and bodily (2.17). His healing benefits ‘those who are sick’: the ill and those considered dishonourable. Mark’s gospel highlights powerfully how God’s kingdom brings deliverance in Jesus’ words and deeds. The entirety of Mark’s gospel is then a passion story, narrating how Jesus remains faithful to this good news, although for him, it spells trouble.

Do you love me?

Christie Gilfeather

At the end of John's gospel, in chapter 21, Jesus asks Peter three times 'do you love me?'

It is a question that cuts to the heart of our faith. In the season of Lent, when we spend time pondering our sin and our deep need of forgiveness and restoration, there is no question more important.

But this Lent is different. The pandemic has made us keenly aware that we are 'but dust'. Our frailty and fragility is on display alongside our failure and sin.

'Do you love me?' Jesus asks each of us.

During the latter part of our journey through Holy Week, we will hear of Peter's denial of Jesus.

Three times he is asked if he is a companion of Jesus, and three times he denies it. The cock crows. He remembers Jesus foretelling of exactly this event. He weeps.

The bitterness of feeling that you have let yourself, those you love and God down is particularly cutting. Most of us have borne the weight of this feeling some time in our lives. Perhaps in this season of Lent we are dwelling with a particularly powerful memory of failure. 

'Do you love me?' Jesus continues to ask us.

The denial is certainly the lowest moment that we read about in Peter's story, and he would be forgiven for thinking that there was no coming back from his denial.

Jesus, however, knew differently.

In John 21 Jesus arrives on a beach while some of his disciples are fishing in the nearby water. He builds a fire, prepares a breakfast of fish and bread. At the same time, he multiplies the yield of their fishing excursion to the point of overwhelming abundance.

Our faith is one which is focussed on several abundances. God's love, mercy and forgiveness are abundant. His mercies are new every morning, or if you like, every breakfast time.

At this particular breakfast, Jesus asks Peter 'do you love me?'

Three times he asks. One for each denial - each one wiped away with Peter's assertion that, yes, he does love Jesus. Each one unburdening Peter of the great failure of his great denial.

—

Pandemics are hard. Lent is hard. Lent in a pandemic is harder.

It is good for us to dwell fully in this period of fasting and praying, remembering that we are 'but dust'. But, in this particular moment, perhaps we need to hold the abundance of God's love and forgiveness which is for us closer than usual in the season of Lent.

The events we have seen in the last year have reminded us in no uncertain terms that we are 'but dust'. Lives lost in numbers beyond comprehension remind us of this inescapable reality.

In many ways, we have experienced a period of perpetual Lent over the last year.

On this journey, then, take extra sustenance for the road. Linger a little longer at breakfast before turning toward the darkness and difficulty of Calvary. Both are present to us. Both are necessary. In both places Jesus continues to ask us 'do you love me?' and both help us to move toward a 'yes Lord', said with our whole hearts.

Unbind him

Lucie Spiers

Standing in the ante-chapel of New College, Oxford is the last major carving by the sculptor Joseph Epstein. A formidable piece capturing the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, this figure holds us in the moment that Jesus calls him out of the grave. Its head is turned as though listening; poised between death and new life, burial and rebirth, at the moment when a heartbeat would spill breath back into him. At first sight, this sculpture captivated me with its uncomfortable tension, presenting us not with a triumphant and rejoicing Lazarus, but a man pinioned, arrested in motion, urgent for life.

In the raising of Lazarus, as we witness Jesus’ divinity, we also see his humanity. This man is the good friend and intimate of Jesus, with whom he and his sisters, Martha and Mary, shared a close relationship. When Lazarus fell ill the women had such faith in Jesus that they called for him to come, ‘he whom you love is ill’.

But Jesus waited two days before he answered their call. He could have prevented the death of Lazarus, but he knew that this illness would not lead to death, instead it was ‘for God’s glory, that the Son of God might be glorified through it’. In this miracle we see prefigured not only the resurrection of Christ but also the new life of each baptism and the resurrection of all. By delaying his arrival, Jesus shares in our intense pain, grief and loss at the death of a loved one, weeping for Lazarus and perhaps for his own journey which will lead him to the cross.

When even in the midst of her grief Martha declares her faith, saying ‘even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him’, Jesus replies ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.’ He raises Lazarus from the dead, calling loudly, 'Lazarus come out!’ and Lazarus emerges, still wrapped in his grave clothes for Jesus to then say, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’.

Epstein’s sculpture is an unsettling reminder of what Jesus’s followers encountered at Lazarus’ tomb, and the enormity of what they were asked to do. As they do Jesus’ bidding, they overturn the old law, for they touch what is ritually unclean; through this they accept the new law of the new covenant. They act as agents of Lazarus’ release from death, unbinding him from the vestiges of the imprisonment and darkness of the tomb. We too as followers of the risen Christ must seek to liberate others, knowing from experience that we can be ‘dead’ even in the midst of living; hoping for a call to life and a community that will help raise us up.

As we journey through Lent let us pray for all those who grieve, like Martha and Mary, for all that has been lost during this pandemic, and let us pray for ourselves too - what is it that we need to be unbound from? For faith in God will liberate us. Faith in He who called light out of darkness; who calls us, as he did Lazarus, from death to urgent new life.

The God I long to know

David Theaker

‘Praise the Lord, O my soul:
O Lord my God thou art become exceeding glorious;
thou art clothed with majesty and honour.

Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with a garment:
and spreadest out the heavens like a curtain.    Ps 104

How to put into words what no words can truly express?

The Creator              The Immortal                  The Almighty

        Awesome      Glorious      Worshipped     Adored

To whom will you liken me
With whom can you compare me?
I know no one – there is no other.

There is but One worthy of all worth-ship.

 Who do you trust, to whom do you turn?
To the One who is beside you every step of the way, every day of your life. 

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, not to condemn – but to save.
Our God is merciful. 

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty. 

For the love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.

Our God IS Merciful.

You declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity.
You are always more ready to hear than we to pray.

 Last, but by no means least – God is Kind.

 Time and time again the Psalmist tells of the ‘loving-kindness’ of God,
who knows our frailty only too well.

He knows that, in words familiar to me since childhood:

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.
We have done those things which we ought not to have done
And there is no health in us.

But God is the One to restore our health and bring us back to his heart of love.

Some 30 years ago, W H Vanstone, parish priest and theologian wrote, in ‘Icons of the Passion’

                            Loving itself is a beginning, an invitation, an offering,

                            For the receiving which it invites but does not compel

                            Love can only wait

                            And to wait no longer is to cease to love.

God does not, cannot, cease to love, it is his essence, nor does he cease to pour upon us his loving-kindness.

He waits for us to see the truth, the life, the love which is in Jesus our Lord.

He stretches out his hand and invites us to his Heavenly Banquet.

The Lion’s Claw

Jacqui Drewe

‘A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful in his reading.’

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Some of us will have memories of reading C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia when we were young. Others, like me, did not take tea with Mr. Tumnus in the snowy woods until we were older. Some may have come across the stories for the first time in the recent film series; and some are yet to discover the joy of journeying ‘through the wardrobe’.

Lent is the perfect time to visit – or to revisit – the world of Narnia. At the heart of the stories are themes of repentance and renewal, of children and grown-ups who turn away from fears and self-serving falsehoods to discover the surprising joy of divine Truth. These moments of transformation happen face-to-face with Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure, as the characters discover to their relief that are not alone in facing their fear and darkness. As Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote in The Lion’s World (2012), ‘Lewis is trying to communicate – to a world that frequently knows what faith is – the character, the feel, of a real experience of surrender in the face of absolute incarnate love.’

One scene that has a powerful impact is the story of Eustace and the dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The boy Eustace is sulky and resentful at being whisked away from his comfortable life in Cambridge; he is unwilling or unable to see the ‘magic’ of Narnia and threatens to report the matter to the British consul! When Eustace falls asleep on a pile of enchanted gold with ‘greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart’, he wakes up to discover that he has turned into a dragon.

It is Aslan who comes to the dragon’s aid. Aslan calls for Eustace to follow him, even as Eustace tries to resist his gaze. Aslan leads Eustace to a pool, where Eustace begins to peel off the scaly outer layer of his dragon skin as one getting undressed to bathe. He peels off layer after layer, but to no avail. He realises he cannot do it without Aslan’s help. And being ‘near desperate by now’, Eustace lies down and surrenders to the Lion’s claws. The pain Eustace feels as his deepest layers are peeled away is ‘worse than anything.’ But the pain disappears when he is tossed into the pool and gently reclothed by Aslan. Eustace is human again.

As well as the rich baptismal imagery, the significance of this scene is that the rediscovery of human identity is not something we can do in our own strength. ‘How many skins do I have to take off?’ asks Eustace. We cannot answer that for ourselves. ‘We can only signal that we want help to be stripped in that way,’ as Rowan Williams writes. Aslan cannot protect us from the pain that this entails, or the discomfort of baring our ‘self’ in the presence of complete Truthfulness. But any attempt at self-understanding is necessarily limited without it. It is only in relation to that Truth that we can be said to have a real self.

Lent is the season to submit ourselves anew to a real experience of surrender in the face of absolute incarnate love. ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!’ (2 Cor. 5:17) As Eustace learned, this ‘renewal’, the liberation of our human identity from all that is not life-giving – from darkness, from dehumanising greed, from doubt and fear and shame – is not something we can ‘achieve’ for ourselves. There is only the grace of Aslan, and our willingness to follow his call. There is only the love of Christ, and our readiness to meet him face to face. 

—

Narnia quotes from C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (London: Harper Collins, 2015, p. 85-87)

Undeserved Redemption

Heather Hutchings

Bless the Lord, my soul.
And bless God’s holy name.
Bless the Lord, my soul,
Who leads me into life.

It is God who forgives all your sins,
Who heals every one of your ills,
Who redeems your life from the grave,
Who crowns you with love and compassion.

The Lord is compassion and love,
Slow to anger and rich in mercy.
God does not treat us according to our sins,
Nor condemn us according to our faults.

As a father has compassion on his children,
The Lord has pity on those who fear him.
For God knows of what we are made:
God remembers that we are dust.

Bless the Lord, my soul, a setting of Psalm 103, has been my favourite Taizé song ever since I first encountered it several years ago. The peaceful chant and pretty counter-melodies make it a beautiful piece of music to sing, yet it has always been the rich theology in the verses that struck me.

In the first verse, we are reminded of our dependency. Personally, I find it can be all too easy to rely on our own resources in life, forgetting to look to God. It is even sometimes tempting to think that we might earn salvation and love by our own actions or strength of faith. But any such attempt is both misguided and impossible. We can never do enough to earn redemption: it is God alone who saves us.

In the second verse, we are reassured that we are not condemned or punished, despite our inadequacies. We need not fear judgement nor be crippled by guilt for our own failures, because God is merciful and forgiving. I find this a comforting thought.

And then we come to the third verse, with its exultant conclusion: For God knows of what we are made / God remembers that we are dust. Perhaps naïvely, I initially struggled to reconcile these lines with the rest of the piece. It always seemed to me incongruous, or at least irrelevant, to pair the reassurance of God’s care for us with a reminder of human mortality. It is only upon more recent reflection that I have realised that this final couplet does indeed belong. Our condition as creatures of dust is intimately connected to God’s compassion towards us.

We are imperfect creatures, limited by our very nature. We will always face temptation and we will often fail. Yet the Father who formed us understands our weakness and regards it with compassion. We are dust, and God loves us not in spite of but because of it.

Indeed, it is in our very imperfection that Jesus comes to meet us, becoming like us a creature of dust to experience our frailty face-to-face. In Lent we walk with Jesus in the wilderness. Or rather, he walks with us in our wilderness, as he came to do. The Son of God comes to share our temptations, to overcome them by his own perfection and, ultimately, by his sacrifice on the cross.

And so with the psalmist we praise the Lord, grateful that He understands us in and rescues us from our weakness, and we look to Easter with its promise of undeserved redemption.

A Voice in the Wilderness

Geoff Maitland

In thinking about the wilderness many of us will have experienced since Lent last year, as a result of coronavirus and the restrictions it has brought, a song from 1960 by Cliff Richard came to mind.  It is a song of lost love, of regret, of apology and forgiveness. It tells a very human story with a haunting melody – give it a listen above – but the words that always stick with me are:

And though there was no one, nobody to see,
A voice in the wilderness brought comfort to me;
Believe me and you’ll hear it, the voice from above,
A voice in the wilderness, the voice of true love.

 The wilderness can be lonely and dark but ultimately it can be the road to light and love.  So as I sit down to write in the midst of our third Coronavirus Lockdown, I reflect on the devastation that has been wrought by Covid-19 over the past year and ask ‘What light can we find amidst all this darkness?’.

 In our journey through Lent during ‘normal’ times, amidst the hurly-burly of everyday life we would aim to set time aside for personal reflection and self-examination, and maybe imagine the solitude of our Lord in the wilderness as he prepared himself for his ministry and for his ultimate sacrifice.  This year, there is no shortage of time to ourselves, trapped in our own version of ‘Not Going Out’, and we are experiencing that solitude with Him. There have been ups and downs of course, but for long periods we have been isolated on our own extended retreats.  So perhaps this year we do not need to think too much about what to do without, or to do differently, to bring us closer to Christ as we travel with him through the wasteland on the way to the cross.  This has been a year of personal and collective sacrifices and deprivations; so perhaps we can build on these for our Lenten journey.  How does Christ’s light shine through our darkness in lockdown?  I have picked out three rays of hope.

One shining light has been how so many people are helping each other to get through this - how in isolation and our socially distanced world we have been surrounded by so many examples of people caring for one another and of communities coming together.  From the front-line workers in the NHS and key services working to exhaustion to save lives, to neighbours helping with shopping, door-stepping for a chat or picking up the phone to check on people unable to get out – we have all seen or experienced ‘love thy neighbour’ in action.  By being apart and experiencing what that means, we see more clearly what others may be experiencing all the time.  Coronavirus has been a great leveller; we are all in this together and for so many the priority has been looking after each other, physically and mentally.  The focus on self has changed to how we as a community cope and survive.  So one legacy of all this will hopefully be a greater awareness of the mutual value of caring and how many different ways we can care for each other.  Lent helps us see how important a part prayer plays in this as well.

Another beacon shines a bit more in the distance – what might happen as and when we all emerge from this? We all comment that the world will not go back to where it was – is it too much to hope that ‘every nation may be directed in the ways of justice and peace, that we may honour one another and seek the common good’? The opportunity for the world to re-set arises rarely – is it too much to expect that, as in the 1950s, the 2020s will see a re-setting of the world, a chance for the fruits of the Kingdom to have greater visibility here on earth?  Just dream for a moment: a more caring society which seeks the common good, between cultures and between nations; justice and reconciliation starting here at home let alone in countries torn by oppression and strife; a global determination to prevent catastrophic climate change and embrace the sustainable stewardship of our planet and its resources - clean water, sufficient food, education and social opportunity for all; and unconditional respect for every individual whatever their background.  We have been to the abyss, to the edge of the precipice, had the biggest wake up call for almost a century – will we listen?  In the face of such challenges, as individuals we seem so helpless to make all this happen.  But Jesus in the face of similar massive challenges showed the way – how everyone can be loved because God loves us first.  In the wilderness he charged his batteries to achieve his mission – we can do the same.  We are charged to reflect that love, a beacon out of the darkness, fuelled by his sacrifice in which we prepare to share.  We can emerge from the darkness of lockdown renewed and refreshed to bring about His Kingdom here on earth.

A third ray of hope in the darkness is the fruit of the creativity and ingenuity of humanity.  This has brought us the vaccines and will help us overcome all our challenges. The green shoots of a sustainable, caring and inclusive post-Covid era are there; we just need to direct our individual and collective energies to loving our neighbour in all we do, through our actions as well as our words and prayers. As individuals we can all play our own small part to drive this re-set.  More than that, just as through this last year we at St Bene’t’s have loved and supported each other as a community, so as a congregation we can do so much more together.  We may only scratch the surface, but chaos theory tells us that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can ultimately affect weather patterns in Europe; in our complex world, small changes can ultimately give rise to large effects. So our unpromising immobile life as a caterpillar in lockdown can be transformed into a thing of beauty whose flight knows no bounds. St Bene’t’s Development Action Plan is a blueprint of what we can do together; when we finally emerge from the solitude of this pandemic, let us pool our individual learnings and insights and put this plan into action as our small part of the world’s re-set.  We have given up enough over the past 12 months, so this Lent let us not necessarily give something up…let us give something back.

Tongues set free

Eleanor Lancelot

Not all composers have set the Miserere, based on Psalm 51, in its entirety. Many will be familiar with the setting by Allegri, but James MacMillan’s Miserere also encompasses the complete text. The work opens with the lower voices in E minor, capturing the heavy-to-bear weight of the sin that ‘is ever before me’. Throughout the second part of the work MacMillan’s pared-back texture, with plainsong over sustained notes, speaks to the simple but exposing requirement for ‘truth in the inward parts’. 

A shift comes at ‘Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus’ (‘The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit’) and soon we hear again the opening theme (now transformed, shimmering in E major), the listener’s focus moved from penitence to hope. The piece is technically demanding – a feature which perhaps evokes the excruciating hardship of the journey of the cross (and indeed of journeying through a world marred by sin) – but the final jubilant, liberated phrases are redolent of tongues set free to ‘sing of thy righteousness’. 

Hope burns on

Richard Wells

Primordial Light

 O red rose,
Man lies in direst need,
Man lies in direst pain,
I would rather be in heaven.
I then came upon a broad path,
An angel came and sought to turn me back,
Ah no! I refused to be turned away.
I am from God and to God I will return,
Dear God will give me a light,
Will light my way to eternal blessed life.

Urlicht

 O Röschen rot,
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not,
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein,
Je lieber möcht ich im Himmel sein.
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg,
Da kam ein Engellein und wollt mich abweisen,
Ach nein ich liess mich nicht abweisen.
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott,
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis an das ewig selig Leben.

Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)
Music: Mahler’s Second Symphony, Movement IV “Urlicht”

Laetere Sunday[1] is always a special moment in Lent, but this year it will have a particular resonance. It represents a moment of relief in Lent, where at last we dare to peek forwards to Easter and the joy it brings. But this year, Laetere Sunday comes in the midst of a year of darkness during which we have come to yearn for a great deal that we always took for granted – but also at a time where we might just start to dare looking forwards in our everyday lives, too, to a time where our lives are safer and less restricted.

 Mahler used many traditional poems, biblical references and folk stories in his works, perhaps most memorably in his second symphony. They blend religious themes and secular stories to create a hero that lives both in the earthly and the heavenly spheres. The second symphony tells a tale of Mahler’s hero that resonates powerfully with the journey through Lent and into Eastertide – a journey from pain and suffering to resurrection. But it has plenty to say on Laetere Sunday in particular, this moment rooted in both past and future, with all the complexity that goes with it.

 In the Urlicht, a passionate movement where the orchestra is joined by a solo alto, the hero (and with him, all of humankind) lies in “direst need” and “direst pain”: he is deep in the wilderness of Lent. At the end of the preceding movement we hear what Mahler called a cry of despair, or even a death shriek. All of the musical scenery tells the story in a way that words alone never could. The key of this movement (Db major) is miles away from home (C minor), which makes its ethereal opening all the more unsettlingly beautiful. The narrative is full of unexpected twists and turns, with themes appearing only to slip away and reappear when least expected. The brass chorale at the opening leads us to expect fairly conventional development – the middle section throws us entirely off course, not quite knowing where we are headed with chromatic swings in tonality. The time signature drifts to and fro. It is both beautiful and entirely unsettled, sitting as it does in limbo - looking backwards trying to comprehend a cry of agony that still echoes around and yet being urged ever onwards, towards resurrection, light, joy.

 And yet, despite the pain, despite the confusion and the conflicting emotions – despite everything, the hero refuses to be turned away from hope. Hope burns on.

He refuses to lose sight of the light that God has promised even though precious little of it dapples his path or warms his face. Notice that all of the verbs in the final two lines are in the future tense. It’s not burst into being yet, this great promised gift – but that does not douse the fire. Whenever I hear this work, I am reminded of the inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne, painfully carved by an unknown hand amongst a group of Jewish escapees hiding from the Nazis: “I believe in the sun even when it does not shine; I believe in love even when I do not feel it; I believe in God even when He is silent”. Hope burns on. 

If you are reading this thinking that Mahler is not your thing – countless others have explored the same ground with equally compelling results. Try some of my favourites – have a listen to Puccini (whose cold­-hearted princess nonetheless gazes transfixed upon “the stars that tremble with love, and with hope” in Nessun Dorma) or The Greatest Showman (where P. T. Barnum sings as a homeless child, “I think of what the world could be / A vision of the one I see / A million dreams is all it’s going to take”). Or explore Sam Cooke (“It’s been a long time coming / But I know, a change is gonna come”). Why not listen to Gregory Porter’s “Take Me to the Alley” – it’s a song of pure hope and trust. Hope burns on.

The hero knows that the triumphant final movement is coming – but he has yet to hear it, and anticipation crackles in the silence, mixed with the fear and suffering which will never be quite gone. We too must wait for the final movement – we must wait both for Easter, and for easier times in our everyday lives. But we know that both are coming, and whilst we are rooted in Lent’s introspection still, it is right – above all on Laetere Sunday – to rejoice in the knowledge that we are journeying together to joyful times, bound as one body by empathy and love. Hope burns on.

---

[1] Laetare Sunday is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Marking a moment of joy and celebration amid the austerities of Lent, it takes its name from the Introit set for the day in the Roman Mass: Laetare Jerusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam: gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis (Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her: rejoice with joy, you that have been in sorrow) – from Isaiah 66.

The Jewels of Friendship

Joy Parke

I read very few books in my childhood but when I read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (illustrated by Ota Janaček) it moved me profoundly and still resonates today.

There is a beauty that flows through the narrative revealed in the friendship of the Happy Prince and the Swallow that leads to a tragic end for both in this world.

As the friendship unfolds there are layers of meaning -  sympathy, service, sorrow, companionship, devotion and finally sacrifice – each layer with a beauty and colour of its own.  In the Happy Prince, I discover again, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’

These jewels of friendship, luminous and iridescent, are within Jesus….

….and these jewels, a gift, are within me glistening brightly and waiting….

….waiting to offer beauty to my narrative….opening my heart to the possibility of today….

What do you want me to do for you?

Neil Petersen

Agony in the Garden, Andrea Mantegna

What do you want me to do for you?

 This is the question Jesus asks the two blind men who address him with the words: Lord, have mercy on us (Matthew 20:29).

This Lent I will try to hear more clearly Jesus asking that question of me. This Gospel passage records two blind men making the appeal to Jesus. Our journey of discerning God’s openness to us is something we do corporately as well as in the intimacy of our own prayer. The centrality of the personal encounter, however, is the common theme of the transforming events in the Gospels: we may think of the unfolding insight through question and answer in the exchange with the Samarian woman at the well, the compassion in curing the leper, the encouragement given to the lame man to regain the confidence of mobility through the invitation to stand up. Putting ourselves in the position of those supplicants we can begin to experience the freedom that the encounter brings.   

So let us return to the blind men. Jesus touched them and they regained their sight: they had not always been blind, but were able to see again by his healing touch. Perhaps our own spiritual sight has been dimmed by the immediate pressures of recent times: anxiety, deprivation, physical and mental abuse, worry - all arising more acutely due to the pandemic. May we by grace bring these burdens to Jesus and seek forgiveness for thinking first of self, and not of others. Jesus had compassion for all in their suffering, and gained salvation for us by his own sufferings. In answer to his question, I will seek the grace to grow into his compassionate mind, and to respond in love to others as he did, whatever their need and wherever they are.

From the Gospels we know Jesus wrestled with issues of the moment and what God’s will might be in response to them. The events leading to his Passion brought that struggle to a climax at Gethsemane. This Lent we may be helped by a visual image of Jesus confronting the approaching reality: Mantegna’s painting Agony in the Garden in the National Gallery shows Jesus at prayer, seeking the will of the Father in the face of looming suffering. 

He was facing something brutal, humiliating and deadly however much the artist may have tried to soften the depiction of that coming suffering by including angelic beings supporting its representative symbols. It challenged faith to the utmost.

So in response to the question, my unworthy reply is: Jesus, have mercy on me in my doubt and struggles, and by grace enable me with the Psalmist to say at the end of this penitential season: You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever (Ps 30:11-12).

Seeing with the heart

Susan Jourdain

In The Heart of the Hunter Laurens van der Post describes a meeting with a South African judge who enjoys guessing the profession of people in the street: solicitor, midwife, young woman typist.  Post points out that the judge has not even seen the cleaner who is black; he is seeing only half the population, only those who impinge on his own life.  We all have our blind spots and prejudices – even me – and see only the surface of things in public places.  Laurens van der Post asks us to see with the eye and the heart.

 Where are the homeless now: are they happy in a hotel?
Who is unable to pay the rent due to no fault of their own?
Who is obeying the strictest rules until they have lost confidence in themselves to have a two-way conversation with equals?
Or maybe they are fine, will you ever know?
Is the man without a mask irresponsible or has he asthma? Is the burglar just hungry?

What am I missing and do I need to know other people’s business?
What does it mean to see with the heart?

Lord God, send your Holy Spirit to comfort and encourage those of your children who are limited, afraid, ashamed and worried sleepless. Reveal to them the words of your Son, Jesus, which can give them hope for resolution.

Exult, dust and ashes

Anne Kettle

Jerusalem the golden,
with milk and honey blest,
beneath thy contemplation
sink heart and voice opprest.
I know not, O I know not,
what social joys are there,
what radiancy of glory,
what light beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Sion,
Conjubilant with song,
and bright with many an angel,
and all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,
the daylight is serene,
the pastures of the blessèd
are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David,
and there, from care released,
the song of them that triumph,
the shout of them that feast;
and they who, with their Leader,
have conquered in the fight,
for ever and for ever
are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessèd country,
Shall I ever see thy face?
O sweet and blessed country,
Shall I ever win thy grace?
Exult, O dust and ashes!
The Lord shall be thy part:
His only, his for ever,
Thou shalt be, and thou art!
 

The origin of this hymn, Jerusalem the Golden, was Latin verse written by Bernard of Cluny in the twelfth century. It was translated into its current form by the Revd J.M. Neale in the nineteenth century.  The imagery is taken from the heavenly Jerusalem depicted in Revelation and is one of great joy. We are shown, ‘the radiancy of glory’, ‘many an angel’, ‘all the martyr throng’ and those who ‘have conquered in the fight’. There is feasting and music; so what does this have to do with lent, surely it’s more suitable for an Easter celebration? But then, in the last verse there are searching questions, and doubt, ‘Shall I ever see thy face?’, ‘Shall I ever win thy grace?’  Most of us know, and probably hope, that we will not join the martyr throng, neither are we engaged in a fight to conquer. We are heading for the ignominy of ‘dust and ashes’, so why exult? Those last three lines say it all. It doesn’t depend on our own actions, Jesus has already won the battle for us. Our lives, present and future are safe with Him. What mind blowing words: His only, his forever,/Thou shalt be, and thou art! So, remember those words this Lent, and Exult, O dust and ashes!

Under his wings

Margaret Whittaker

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord : “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God , in whom I trust”.
Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

Psalm 91

 We are now living through our second Lent, under the shadow of many deaths, in isolation and lockdown and each one of us has worries and griefs and fear to deal with. At the same time we are powerless to help all the exhausted hospital staff fighting for us at the front line of the battle.

The whole world is suffering together with us and we know we are collectively guilty of the damage done to our planet and to ourselves in relatively recent times.

 This Lent we have more than ever the need to repent and pray for help to change the future. It is a tremendous challenge to face the changes we must make to heal ourselves and our beloved home.

 Our Lord is calling us to be vigilant and faithful in whatever ways we can; in prayer, in quiet witness, in acts of love for each other, in letting Him nudge us along the right path.

 I look for comfort in the psalms especially Psalm 91, and in the gospel assurances that He is with us always, that He won’t leave us comfortless.

 I look too for examples like St Peter, the simple working class man, who weeping and ashamed after his betrayal of Jesus, built on his repentance to complete the seemingly impossible result of becoming the leader of a movement which in his own life-time had spread across the then known world.

 Or to St Paul the clever and arrogant academic who after his conversion faithfully endured years of mistrust and hatred until he was accepted to be the apostle to us, the gentiles.  Reading Acts shows what God can do and achieve with unlikely material like us!

 And I also look for joy and togetherness by playing on YouTube the Song and Dancing Prayer Jerusalema, which is sung in the Zulu language and danced around the world. It is translated as, ‘Jerusalem my home, Guard me, Walk with me, Do not leave me here.’

 This Lent I pray, for faith and trust, endurance and help.

The Fast I Choose

Austin Stevenson

Having grown up in a non-liturgical tradition that practiced neither Lent nor fasting, I always enjoy learning more about the nature of the liturgical practices that I have come to love since becoming Anglican. For those of us fasting—either from food, or from things like social media, alcohol, or Zoom (I wish!)—I thought it might be helpful to consider what my favorite theologian, Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), has to say about fasting. He discusses the topic in various biblical commentaries and devotes a question of his Summa Theologiae to the topic (ST II-II, q. 147).

Aquinas argues that fasting is an act of virtue, because it is directed by right reason to a virtuous good. In fact, multiple virtuous goods, including the fact that fasting cools our lust for physical things and aids our mind in rising more freely to spiritual things. However, he notes that ‘an act that is virtuous generically may be rendered vicious by its connection with certain circumstances’. Here, he reminds us that the value of the act of fasting is derived from the reason for which it is undertaken. Hence the admonitions in Scripture to fast in private (Matthew 6:18), for when the end of our fasting is turned to vanity, it becomes an act of vice. The virtue, of which fasting is an act, is that of abstinence. And while, properly speaking, fasting is abstinence from food, it is also suitably said to be an abstinence from all manner of lust (which is why it is acceptable to fast from Twitter instead of food, if that is what most inordinately captures our attention and desire).

Thomas also notes that ‘right reason does not retrench so much from one’s food as to render them incapable of fulfilling their duty’. To fail to act in accord with virtue because we are “hangry” is, it seems, to undermine the purpose of our fasting. Our abstinence is not a fitting excuse for a short temper, and we do better to break our fast in order to act with kindness than to act out of anger to keep it. Importantly, Aquinas notes that ‘fasting is instituted by the Church in order to bridle concupiscence, yet so as to safeguard nature’. The goods of fasting should not be sought at the expense of the health of our bodies. (This is why fasting from sleep is not generally advisable, given what we now know of the significant and largely irreversible effects of sleep deprivation on the human body).

For those who like numbers, Aquinas notes that there are thirty-six fast days during the forty days of Lent. Roughly one tenth of the year—an annual tithe of our days to God.

In short, Aquinas’s hope for us is that our season of fasting might be directed by right reason toward the good and draw us closer to God through the restraint and instruction of our attention and desires.

I will find you

Trish Worsnip

Landscape Arch, in the Devil’s Garden Section of Arches National Park, is believed to be the longest stone arch in the world

Public domain photograph by David Hiser, The U.S. National Archives

The Call of the Wild, Robert William Service

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
 

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

 This poem would usually inspire me into the wilderness of Lent. But this year it reminds me of Ian McCullen’s words:

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a season
and that we are in its
final hour? 

In this pandemic era the approach of Lent looks dismal: ashes, 40 days of the freezing cold and burning hot wilderness, discipline, fasting, penitence, hair shirts, deprivation, giving up, taking on, preparation through repentance. Then the heaviness of Holy Week.

But instruction and experience know that the real joy of Easter follows a Holy Lent. So (how) can we do it? Shall we just let forty days pass (and honour Sundays as exception) and look up towards Easter with hope? “Lent light”?   

Encouraging ourselves and others to keep a holy Lent is particularly counter-cultural this year. We read top tips to take care of health. There is an explosion of mental illness in every age group. Eating disorders have multiplied 5 times since this time a year ago. No CPN would ever suggest making difficult times worse, certainly not beating up oneself, dwelling on guilt and shame, going into dark places.  

 So what should we set ourselves and others to do? Fasting where there are homes where mothers don’t eat so their children can eat? Restrict treats which bring small comfort? Avoid social media when that’s the only way to break isolation? Live quietly in solitude when isolation is dangerous or it’s impossible when you live in two rooms with three children home day and night? Taking on more unpaid work to support others when what we already do is no longer possible to risk others as well as ourselves and families?  Giving extra to charities when facing employment and fears of our old age? 

 But is there something we can learn this year?

 Furthermore we wonder whether the deprivations imposed on us are not the same as the self-discipline we have drawn strength from in previous years. Is the point to have chosen to go into the wilderness, like the desert mothers and fathers?  We haven’t chosen our present situation.   In “our” wilderness we lack control, we feel ignorant and feel useless with uncertainty.

 But is there something we can learn this year?

 What were we trying to do in previous years that might guide us now? 

• Mark a special period of time with healthy rules (as St Benedict)

• Share what we have with others

• Forgive - self and others

• Embrace who we are - and resist pride over others

• Be kind - to self and others

• Seek what we have lost in nature

• Learn about ourselves, others and God.

These tips point to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. 

Is this “Lent light” good enough? At least a start. Each of us has to decide for themselves. 

How to practise this during Lent? Determination? Steel our will? 

 How about through attention, described by Simone Weil?

“The attention over the will is the ultimate tool of self-transformation. 
We have to cure our faults by attention and not by will.
Attention, taking to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. 
It presupposes faith and love. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”  (Gravity and Grace)

 And what God might say to us in the wilderness this year?

When I was a kid my father would say…

“…if you get lost, don’t look for me.
Stay there. Stay there and I will find you.”

Solitude and Struggle

Alastair Hale

The Temptation in the Wilderness, by Briton Rivière (1898)

Twelve months ago I thought solitude was a luxury. After a few busy months of meetings and social engagements, I began Lent 2020 feeling somewhat tired and overstretched. If I’m honest, I was secretly looking forward to the opportunity which Lent seemed to offer for “escape” from the world. It was in this spirit that I booked myself in for a silent retreat at a monastery on the other side of the country—partly to deepen my faith, and partly to get some peace and quiet. I remember reflecting on how infrequently opportunities for solitude of this kind come along. I had no idea how soon that would change.

There are many people for whom the last year has been anything but solitary—carers, health-workers, home-schoolers, and more. For others, however, this year has been characterised by a surfeit of solitude: by separation from friends and family, by isolation and by loss. For me, the concept of “solitude as luxury” doesn’t seem quite as resonant in 2021. The things which I now prize the most are the things which, a year ago, I was trying the hardest to escape from.

Jesus often sought solitude—for example, before His arrest at Gethsemane, or before the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus also makes it clear that we should follow His example: He instructs us to “go into your room and shut the door” when we pray, rather than standing “in the synagogues and at street corners.” Solitude, in many of these examples, is a way of overcoming distraction to make a purer and deeper connection with God. In this reading, solitude is a valuable commodity for the Christian life—even, perhaps, a “luxury.”

However, this is not the only kind of solitude in the Gospels. Matthew tells us that, at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” not to escape distraction or to connect with God, but “to be tempted by the devil.” This solitude is not a luxury but a torment, a solitude of vulnerability and struggle—perhaps reminiscent of the solitude of the cross where Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

In the wilderness, Jesus is challenged by the tempter to demonstrate his power and identity as the Son of God. Alone, isolated from the reference points of his earlier life—from his teachers, family and from his cousin John—Jesus is at His most vulnerable. In the solitude of the wilderness, it almost seems to be madness to resist these temptations. What could be more seductive to a starving man than the ability to turn stones into bread? What could be more attractive to the isolated outcast than the power to rule the world? But Jesus responds to the devil only by quoting scripture, reaffirming the identity and destiny which was proclaimed by God at his baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is upon this foundational struggle with the forces of evil that all Jesus’s ministry, death and victory are built.

 In solitude, we all face struggles of identity. In prolonged isolation, when we cannot leave our homes, hug our loved ones, or receive the Eucharist, we can feel lost, forgotten, vulnerable. This solitude is a struggle, not a balm. And yet, in the deepest wilderness God is with us, and we are His beloved. Our hope, our identity, our destiny, as Christ’s pilgrim people, is founded on the identity we claimed at baptism. “God knows each of us by name and we are his.”

4:45 pm

Katharine Russell

It’s 4:45pm again. That time when I’m not quite sure whether it’s a justifiable time to switch into evening mode and start thinking about dinner, tv, or maybe even a bath if I feel like treating myself. 

In the moment, I often find it an uncomfortable time, when I have a mini productivity panic about whether or not I’ve achieved my list for the day, or whether or not I should be going out for another walk or working some more, but despite this I think it’s a twilight pause that I will miss once lockdown is over.

In normal times, there’s no question that 4:45pm would ever count as evening. It is almost always still a work time, with real evening time pushed back to at least 7pm.  In fact, this is one of the things I may look back on with nostalgia after lockdown. It’s all too easy to lament what freedoms we do not currently have, and there are so many experiences that we feel the lack of so keenly right now. But I have been trying, throughout Lent, to try to anticipate what future me will miss about this period, and therefore to be fully present to those small moments which constellate these long lockdown days. Like the first, then second breakfast; calls from people on their daily walk; seeing the same joggers pass your house each morning; good recipe recommendations and then having time to cook them; re-watching films you’ve seen before and realising you’d misremembered; walking in the gloaming and seeing through brightly lit windows that most people are doing the same things you do. R.S. Thomas had it right when he noted that ‘Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush’.

I wonder what a God’s eye view of the way our prayers have changed would reveal. From desperation, to boredom, acute pangs of grief to weariness, grateful acceptance to grumpy impatience, to radio silence. I’ve often felt like I have more time to pray but less to pray about. And so as we are poised again, at a macro version of 4:45pm – between the struggle of the pandemic existence and the promise of a brighter time ahead – might we rest, and enjoy the in between, knowing it is right where we are meant to be, and in the future, we might miss it. For God is here with us in our ordinary, if we might only turn aside. 

Faith on Foot

Matthew Bullimore

One of the consequences of the lockdowns has been an upsurge in the number of people out walking. It is a good way to exercise and, because we can exercise together, it is one of the few ways that we can meet others (socially-distanced, of course). You will have noticed, too, that it has become the means by which pastors are able to shepherd us. They take us for a walk.

Walking has many benefits. We might even go as far as to say that it fundamentally changes our experience of living.

They say that walkers live longer, and not just because of the health benefits. Walkers live longer because things take longer on foot. Time slows down. There seems to be more of it altogether. We notice things that we wouldn’t see if we were rushing around. It grants us a heightened awareness of our surroundings. Walkers find time to listen. That might be to a companion but it might also be listening to the sounds of our immediate environment. And so, overall, walking seems to intensify our experience of living in the world.

Thinkers across the centuries have often been walkers, professing that the rhythms of walking somehow aid the mind to find its own rhythm. Thinking takes time and time is precisely what walking gives us.

Walking also makes us aware of our bodies. We feel our bodies loosen and warm up. We will feel them tire. We are aware of the weather, the heat or the cold. And we might begin to notice when we hunger or thirst. Walking reminds us that we are physical creatures. We are embodied. Out walking we begin to see how our bodies deliver the world to us through our senses. But we also begin to see that our bodies are part of a rich and diverse world. We don’t float free from the world but are part of it.

Setting out on foot is also a spiritual experience. Like all forms of prayer, walking focusses our attention and centres us in our bodies. It sets our minds free to see things in a new light. Walking is an exercise in awareness. And when we become more aware then things are more present to us, whether that is our immediate environment, our bodies, our thoughts, our sense of self or our relationships. In walking we become aware of whom it is we are carrying with us and whom it is who carries us. And through all of these presences, we can become aware of the presence of the One who always accompanies us.

Jesus was a walker. As a child he fled to Egypt and journeyed to the Temple and back. As an adult he was peripatetic, a man with nowhere to lay his head. For it was in walking that he encountered others. It was walking that allowed him to accompany; to be a companion. Soon we will remember his walk along the Via Dolorosa and we will accompany him. But every day, we should be attentive to him beside us, learning to see what he sees, being thankful for what he is thankful for, learning to accompany those he accompanies.

Lenten Treasure

Janice Moore

To Daffodils Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Fair daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attained his noon.

Stay,stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the evensong;

And, having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die,

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

Wild daffodil. Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or its folklore name: the Lent lily. A native woodland plant, whose clumps of nodding yellow flowers gladdened the hearts of the Wordsworths as they walked beside the lakes. The one, bright, sensory indulgence the humble and ascetic Welsh monk, and later Bishop David would allow to adorn his monastery and cell. The national symbol of Wales, its image reproduced in large green and yellow hats and face-paint; its plastic effigies waved proudly aloft at rugby matches. The many picture postcards and visitor photographs taken back home of its larger garden cultivar decorating in swathes the Cambridge Backs. The odd escapees from gardens that punctuate roadside verges, that we glimpse unexpectedly on our way somewhere else. We take such joy in seeing them singly or collectively, outside or inside; where their delicate fragrance incenses our homes. A Lenten treasure, whose bulbs the seventeenth century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper used to heal wounds, believing they had narcotic properties – a view borne out by research done into anti-cancer drugs by the Marie Curie Foundation, whose very recognisable symbol is an open daffodil flower. 

 The poet priest Robert Herrick treasured and celebrated the God-given natural world. He saw fearlessly both its beauty and fragility, making him all too aware of the swift passage of time, and indeed, of life itself. I’ve always loved this poem, with its perfect blend of celebration and pathos, that likens him to the Psalmist: ‘As for man his days are like grass,/ he flourishes as a flower of the field;/ for the wind passes over it, and it is gone.’ (Psalm 103: 15-16). Reflecting on our year since 2020, I was very struck by how I found even deeper meaning and lament in this poem. Largely through the media the sheer scale of how so many cherished individuals were suffering and dying – encapsulated for me by seeing the digging and filling-up of mass graves in the USA, the richest country in the world, to experiencing the current crisis in our National Health Service; the powerful poignancy of Herrick’s poem was overwhelming and I wept with him. But the following two verses of Psalm 130 reoriented me to remember and hold fast to the ‘steadfast love of the Lord’ whose everlasting faithfulness  and righteousness holds together our past time and is promised to go ahead of us, as this 2021 springtime and Lent approaches.