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. 

Pain and Sweetness

Eleanor Peers

The Flower by George Herbert

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;

         To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

                      Grief melts away

                      Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

         Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

                      Where they together

                      All the hard weather,

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                      We say amiss

                      This or that is:

         Thy word is all, if we could spell.

         Oh that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!

         Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

                      Nor doth my flower

                      Want a spring shower,

         My sins and I joining together.

         But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,

         Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone

                      Where all things burn,

                      When thou dost turn,

         And the least frown of thine is shown?

         And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

         I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing. Oh, my only light,

                      It cannot be

                      That I am he

         On whom thy tempests fell all night.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

         Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;

                      Who would be more,

                      Swelling through store,

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

This poem for me catches the pain and the sweetness of Lent – a pain and sweetness you feel as much in the halting onset of spring as in the Lenten liturgy and fast. The final verse takes us to the fulfilling of that sweetness – a fulfilment that takes us beyond any oscillation between growth and decay, pleasure and pain, or life and death. We start to perceive the divine love that lay behind even the phases of suffering and futility. This love is both fierce and wise, beyond anything we can imagine or express. In fact, this love is so vast as to be everything that is. God nurtures us into understanding – despite ourselves – that we are as fragile and helpless as tiny flowers, gliding on his love. And so this poem accompanies us through the painful confrontations of Lent and the violence of Holy Week, to bring us to the Easter Resurrection: Christ has lovingly prepared a garden for us, through his own flesh and blood.

Alec Roth recently set four verses to music. Here is a recording by the choir of Salisbury Cathedral:

My cup overflows

Katharine Ames-Lewis

When I was a student, I remember visiting a room in another college which belonged to the conductor of a small choir I had recently joined. It was late February. On the outer door of his room was a poster – a picture of a bunch of daffodils, and the words:                        

                                                 It is spring!

                                                It is also Lent!

I have often thought that the second statement seemed to be there to tone down the exuberance of the first. The energy of Spring needed to be brought to its sober senses. But, on second thoughts, perhaps the link between the daffodils and Lent, rather than with Easter, can give us some useful hints.

Of course, we may well associate the trumpeting joyousness of the yellow daffs more with Easter celebration rather with the sobering thoughts of ‘Forty days and forty nights’. 

Our church is traditionally undecorated with flowers until Easter Eve, except for the breathing space of Mothering Sunday – or Refreshment Sunday as it is otherwise called – when we relieve the bareness with little posies of spring flowers. 

But another name for the daffodil is ‘Lent Lily’ and ‘Lent’ is a word synonymous in Old English with ‘Spring’ (Lenz in German). So perhaps we can usefully look to the flower for some insights in the keeping of a good Lent.

I like to think of the daffodil as a brimming cup as much as a trumpet. The cup is open to receive and to be filled, just as we can be open to God’s presence in prayer. The cup also suggests our longing for community, for hospitality, for good things shared with others. Perhaps its chalice-like shape may express our longing for the sharing of the Common Cup of the Eucharist, and even remind us of the cup of suffering Christ drank for us at the crucifixion. Our cup may ‘overflow’ with blessings.

The flower cup will also proclaim joy and hope, its petals flung back in triumph at the Resurrection.

Spring does not need to be muted by Lent.

Can I let myself be filled this Lent with God’s glowing presence and the energy of spring so that I can sing out Alleluia at Easter?

Considering the Lilies

Jenny Harris

Christ in the Wilderness - Consider the lilies | Stanley Spencer

For the flowers are great blessings.

For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily.

For the angels of God took it out of his hand and carried it to the Height.

For a man cannot have publick spirit, who is void of private benevolence.

For there is no Height in which there are not flowers.

For flowers have great virtues for all the senses.

For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.

For the flowers have their angels even the words of God's Creation.

For the warp and woof of flowers are worked by perpetual moving spirits.

For flowers are good both for the living and the dead.

For there is a language of flowers.

For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers.

For elegant phrases are nothing but flowers.

For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

For flowers are medicinal.

For flowers are musical in ocular harmony.

For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven. God make gard'ners better nomenclators.

(An excerpt from Jubilate Agno, by Christopher Smart)

On Ash Wednesday we remember that we are dust. And this dust and clay of the wilderness is also soil, from which God makes the flowers grow.

Lent prepares us to walk the way of the cross, but it also prepares us for the flower-strewn walk into springtime at Easter. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fasting period of Lent coincides with what is traditionally called the ‘hungry gap’: the period in the agricultural year when the winter stores are depleted and not much from the new season is ready to eat. The crops, the fruits and vegetables, may not be ready yet, but the blossom on the fruit trees is a promise that they are growing, and they will ripen.

Stanley Spencer depicts Jesus in the wilderness enjoying flowers, specifically these daisies. Christ fills the entire frame, paying close meditative attention — adoration, even — to this simple wonder of creation, as I hope to also in March, when the daisies miraculously reappear.

We do not (usually) eat flowers, but they are nourishing nevertheless. I have certainly felt, looking today at the snowdrops and aconites that irrepressibly show their faces through the snow, that the flowers are great blessings. I might go so far as to say that they are medicinal.

When we take time to reconnect with our place in the natural world, when we call the flowers by their names and receive their blessing, we participate in the continual adoration of the angels, and we are reminded that, like the lilies and the daisies, we do not live by our own efforts, but are fed and clothed in due season by our loving God.

Poet and mystic Christopher Smart understood a thing or two about lockdown. Between May 1757 and January 1763, he was confined to a private asylum in London [1]. Prior to this he had written metrical, sometimes satirical poetry, but while confined he wrote a long, deeply strange poem modelled on the psalms, probably by writing a few lines every day.

Smart’s consolations in his confinement are his joy in language, particularly the language of the psalms, and the consolations of nature, including his famous lines about his cat Jeoffry, as well as this less well-known section about flowers that I have chosen to excerpt. Like many of us, he turned to gardening in his confinement. For Smart, language and nature are intimately and inseparably connected.

When Smart writes ‘For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven. God make gard'ners better nomenclators.’, he evokes Adam, who first yoked nature to language by naming all the animals and plants of the garden. But Smart asserts that language is not in fact human, but rather divine, and as such as unknowable to us in its essence as any part of God. The ‘right names of flowers’ can only be discovered via divine revelation. And any mystic knows that revelation has to be preceded by contemplation.

Like Spencer’s Christ, and like Christopher Smart, let us spend some of our time in the wilderness on a contemplation of God’s creation. By our adoring gaze on the spring flowers, let us learn the truth of God’s fathomless love for flowers, and God’s fathomless love for us, and so come to understand the Passion, and the cross, flowing out of that love as inevitably as the March daisies spring from the cold earth.

---

[1] Dr Johnson wrote about this: “Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place.”

The Saviour’s Endurance

Clive Wilmer

Man of Sorrows, by William Dyce

The Man of Sorrows is by the Victorian artist William Dyce. It depicts the temptation in the wilderness but, perhaps surprisingly, includes no representation of the tempter. Jesus turns away from the centre of the composition, as if there were a figure to turn away from, and the harsh rocks remind us of the devil’s first temptation: ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’ I imagine Jesus as being about to reply: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’

Dyce was a serious Christian who, as a painter, eschewed the supernatural. The bleakly naturalistic landscape, painted not in Palestine but in his native Scotland, exemplifies a more than passing interest in the science of geology. But in that age of doubt, the geological record represented a challenge to the Biblical account of Creation and therefore to the strength of Christian faith. Compare a quotation from Dyce’s contemporary John Ruskin: ‘If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.’ So the rocks represent a further temptation, one that forces me to re-examine what we understand by ‘every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’.

 Like many Victorian artists, Dyce believed that the close study of nature would reveal sacred truths, though it seemed to risk undermining them. Where landscape was concerned, close study meant painting in the open air. But the study of the human body could only take place in the studio and under a different light. Some would say it is a fault in the picture that, because of this, Jesus does not quite belong in the landscape or indeed in natural light. To speak personally, it strikes me as true to the Gospel story that Jesus should appear both as a human body in the world and as a spirit haunted by desolation. Grim as the image is, it seems to offer us, through the Saviour’s endurance, a release from emptiness. Looking at it as we embark on the season of Lent, I am reminded of a prayer from the service of Evensong: ‘O God… give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give.’

Wilderness-21

Andrew Welchman

There is a space between the bedroom and the spare room where the wilderness begins. 
It is not a wasteland, desert, or a tundra, 
but a dry place of screens and routine.

 
The onset of the camel carpet signifies mediated meetings 
through electronic-everythings 
with legless colleagues and acquaintances,
whose powerpointed thinking 
reminds us that the devil lives in detail.

 
The echoes of camaraderie have become passing saccharine,
a smile instantly wiped as the camera stops.
And as the day wears on,
this wilderness bears witness to the prodromal twitches
that a nice glass of white will make it all right.

Last year’s muted Paschal triumph became a comma,
the demarcation of Lent lessened by ongoing similarity.
And the purple, red, gold and green beats of liturgy cycled on an electronic whirr.

 
But now we pause again to start at alpha,
and must weave home comforts into spiritual refreshment.

 
The wilderness is reborn through repentance and baptism,
striking dry rocks lets forth the mellifluous Word,
and the beating wings of prayer create the heavenward throng.

 
The path we walk is guided,
with a miracle far greater as our prize.
Let us gird our loins, shoe our feet, with our staffs at hand.

Apparently not doing very much

Eona Bell

Christ in the Wilderness - The Hen | Stanley Spencer

This painting is one of a series which Stanley Spencer made to explore the time which Jesus spent in the wilderness. He planned forty images, one for each day of Lent, but only eight were completed.  The Gospels tell us very little about what Jesus did in that time, and Spencer’s pictures imaginatively fill some of that gap, with scenes which depict Christ’s encounter with creatures living in the desert – foxes, eagles and these hens – which symbolically point to his future ministry and teaching.

I struggle with the idea of deliberately ‘going into the desert’ to come close to God. The thoughts which can flood in when I remove myself from distractions may be terrifying and painful. Why would I want to lay myself open to hurt and acute awareness of my own failures?  Why not protect myself instead with a comfortable padding of busyness and feel safe doing ‘good works’ for the Lord?

Certainly, I can recall times in ‘desert places’ when God has blessed me not with temptation or challenge but with a profound sense of peace and awareness of his eternal goodness. I think of moments of utter stillness, often experienced during holidays which have left me with memories of sights and sounds to which I can return in my imagination when I need refreshment.

On the other hand, I rebel mentally against the notion that only by leaving the duties and business of ordinary life can I truly meet God and discover who he wants me to be. If God is in all things, is he not in the mess and banality of my family life, and in the daily struggles of many millions of people in the world who must work without respite for their basic survival?

That is why I like Spencer’s image of Christ, the hen and her chicks.  There she sits, apparently doing not very much but actually hard at work minding her babies, stretching out her neck to see what they are doing, a calm but watchful and secure presence as they scratch and peck and nestle in her feathers, doing their important work of feeding and growing to maturity. Her world has shrunk to the short distance the chicks can waddle, while in the meantime the cockerel struts off to another world, beyond the dunes, which she can only imagine. She mustn’t let her mind stray to bigger, deeper thoughts, because the minutiae of her chicks’ lives demand all her attention.

And Jesus sees this. There is Christ, watching the chicks with the mother hen, and watching over her too, sheltering them all in his massive, all-embracing, living form.  What love there is in his eyes as he gazes at them, and it almost seems he expects nothing more of them than that they simply be as they are. There is more, though, because the little bird flying in towards the hen is not her chick but a brown sparrow. Gently, by his example, Christ invites mother hen to welcome this stranger, expand her brood and share in his work of love, simply by being who she was made to be.

A Lenten Gift

Jenny Walpole

I want to lay something down for Jesus
A small offering to bring, to lay at His feet
Like a curious squirrel with a modest sized nut
The gift has some meaning but not very much
Something I clasp in my hand which I think that I need
And replace it with something to hold in my heart
Then sit under a tree, on a sofa or pew
And ponder the love that is always abound
I wait for the earth to call out my name
Then I’m back on the treadmill of living again
 

This Lent I am aware of how much we have already given up, and thoughts of further sacrifice and self-denial make me wonder when it will all end. At the same time, I recognise that Lent is a penitential season and I do want to reap the spiritual rewards that come from fasting and prayer. As I sat staring out of my window wondering if I had anything worth reflecting on, I saw a squirrel running up a tree. I imagined this busy little creature holding a nut, and Julian of Norwich sprang to mind. God showed her the image of a hazelnut, as a symbol of the whole world, and God loves it. The way that a squirrel holds a nut in its paws, looks like the nut means the world to the squirrel. Perhaps the things we give up are like the nut; they mean a lot more to us than they need to. Still, God accepts this gift of sacrifice and loves it anyway.

For Lent I am giving something up that has not been enforced by the circumstances of lockdown; it is fairly inconsequential but not entirely trivial. I want to give something up to lay at the feet of Jesus, and to consider this offering not as a burden but as a gift, a small gift. Each year when the season of Lent comes around, I try to respond in a meaningful way but the action never quite matches the whole-hearted intention. This year I seek again a connection with God and try to create some space, and wait for the earth to move beneath the surface. Signs of spring are always welcome, and as the sunlight warms the frozen garden, the hope of Easter is on my mind.

The lockdown has allowed me some respite from an unrelenting pace; this won’t be everyone’s experience but is something for which I am grateful. The final line of the poem conveys the idea that returning to the busy-ness of life after spending time in prayer is a grind but an inevitable part of our human experience. Spending time in prayer and engaging with Lenten practice, however modest is still a sacrificial offering and our gift of love. 

The Chosen Fast

Ryan Gilfeather

Is not this the fast that I choose

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them?

Isaiah 58.6-7

 About three hundred years after Christ died, Macrina the Younger was born in the far reaches of the Eastern Roman Empire, with every advantage and privilege. She was a wealthy slave owner, entitled by birth to marry well and pursue a life of comfort. But, she chose the better path. When Macrina looked at her mother, she saw a gentle loving Christan woman, but she also noticed the luxury, excess and injustice. This woman’s estate was so large that it stretched over three different provinces of the empire, her brood of sons travelled to Athens to attend the finest schools in the land, and her table overflowed with every kind of food and wine, whilst enslaved bodies toiled to maintain this ostentatious existence. Seeing all of this and knowing that she was entitled to follow in her mother’s path, Macrina set herself before God. As Macrina sat in the stillness of prayer, God showed her how luxury was wrong when it is sustained by injustice. So, Macrina chose her fast, she renounced this life for herself but she also slowly encouraged her mother to do so too, until they both embarked on a simple life together, freeing their slaves and living alongside them as equals.

Macrina can be a beacon for us today, her story offers us a grace which we can transfer into our own lives. Lent is a time when the church collectively fasts as we prepare for the death and resurrection of Christ. However, fasting takes a different shape and shade of meaning for all of us, some wish to build discipline whilst others use it to draw close to God. As we heard above, Macrina’s fast seems to mirror God’s instructions in Isaiah: “Is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of injustice... Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” Macrina gives something up just as we do in Lent but she also uses it as an opportunity to break the bonds of injustice and to benefit the marginalised. There are a couple of ways that we might follow her path. On one hand, if we save money as a result of giving something up this Lent, we could donate it to local food banks. And, on the other, we could choose to give up foods which harm the environment, like meat and dairy, because the economically marginalised are disproportionately affected by climate change.

Any kind of fasting we choose this Lent is good and will draw us closer to God. However, the reading from Isaiah and the story of Macrina ask us to do things differently this year: to fast in such a way that benefits those who suffer most from injustice and poverty.

Be Still

Heather Boyd

My sister sent me this piece of music last week. As I listened to the introduction for the first time, I thought ‘I wish this piece would get a move on!’ 

Here I am in lockdown with 14 pressure-free waking hours every day, willing a 5-minute piece of music to get a move on! 

But as I continued to listen, I noticed my breathing slow down, the words lulling me. I was like a baby being soothed. I needed this pace.

Be still (my Love), and know that I am God.

Eight simple words that take me deeper in this moment than the many spiritual books sitting on my bed side table.

It doesn’t take very much to rescue us from our harried lives, our fretful thoughts, our compulsion to fill our days with what we perceive to be meaningful tasks. 

A poem, birdsong, a sunset, a loving phone call, or in this case a song. 

And as the piece ends, I don’t move. I want to savour the stillness it has gifted me.

 Be still (my Love)and know that I am God.

How is it that so slow and simple and unsophisticated a tune, with words I have heard a hundred times before, has recalibrated me today? I might even say it has re-tuned me.

Inadvertently, almost reluctantly, I have been given what I most need today. I HAVE been stilled, and beyond my searching, analytical mind, today I DO know...

What might help you to slow down today?

What would it be like to live today in tune, with God, yourself and others?

What words do you need to hear?

Bright Sadness

Katherine Stevenson

This time last year my husband, Austin, and I had just found out that we were expecting a baby - we were overjoyed. But by the time Ash Wednesday came around, the pregnancy nausea had really begun to kick in. I remember sitting in the Corpus Christi chapel, head in hand, chewing on a ginger candy to fight the nausea and willing myself to make it through the service. When we started singing the hymn ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights’ one particular verse stuck out to me:

 Let us thine endurance share 
And awhile from joys abstain
With thee watching unto prayer
Strong with thee to suffer pain 

I remember being struck by the thought that it was fitting to be entering the Lenten season at the same time I was going through my first trimester: endurance, abstention & suffering all with the anticipation and hope of what’s to come. This formed in me a ‘bright sadness’. (I still have the photo I quickly took of the hymnal to mark the moment).

Forty days and forty nights came and went, and my extreme nausea carried on, painful and debilitating—the expected reprieve didn’t come. At the same time, Easter morning came and went without us gathering together to celebrate the joy of the resurrection. My nausea continued for another 12 weeks, the pandemic raged on unabated; Lent, it seemed, had never come to an end.

Seasons of suffering don’t always end in complete relief and the immense joy of a new life, but this one did with the birth of our daughter, and for that I’m ever thankful. There are those facing prolonged suffering with no hope of reprieve and many are still feeling the struggles of 2020. The lessons of Lent – abstention, endurance, and even suffering – draw us closer to God and open our eyes anew to his grace. Lent gives us a chance, not to embrace our suffering as if it was good in itself, but to direct our suffering to goodness. It also reminds us of the needs of those who suffer in our midst.  

Keep, O keep us, Saviour dear
Ever constant by thy side
That with thee we may appear
At the eternal Eastertide