An attempt at some kennings "en français"

What follows is a list of some my attempts at kennings in French. It's not a form that should work in a romance language but it was helpful for our feminist theology group last night and made us think about language for God and faith in different ways. I'm not sure the resutls are really French - what would the Académie française say about such neologising! Of course because of the way French works the kennings are the other way around to in English or German. These are all loosely inspired by Jesus in the gospels.

Pêcheur d'homme et de femmes
fouetteur d'injustice
Raconteur de paraboles
Quitteur de tombeau
Chemineur de route
parleur de vérité
ballayeur de poussière
metteur de lumière
prometteur de l'Esprit
assureur de paix
maudisseur de figuiers stériles
pasteur de brébis perdu
aube pascal
levure de farine
ensemenceur de champs
lecteur de la synagogûe
chasseur de vendeurs
prieur de Gethsemané
rompeur de pain
verseur de vin

You can find some kennings in English here and here on my blog.

The triumph of life - a poem by Marjorie Pizer

The Triumph of Life
I am emerging from an ocean of grief,
From the sorrow of many deaths,
From the inevitability of tragedy,
From the losing of love,
From the terrible triumph of destruction.
I am seeing the living that is to be lived,
The laughter that is to be laughed,
The joy that is to be enjoyed,
The loving that is to be accomplished.
I am learning at last
The tremendous triumph of life.

Marjorie Pizer

This is one of the poems in a book called Ths too will pass which I bought in Jamaica. It's the sort of book I rather depise normally, beige tinted photos, meaningful quotes, Hallmark style homilies, a feminine rather than a feminist kind of book. Yet it has been good for me to be tempted out of my inherent snobbishness into buying this. I knew nothing of Marjorie Pizer from Australia and her poetry, or political engagement. She sounds like my kind of person.
Sometimes it's good to listen to voice of intuition and just buy what the heart says you should go with, in the end this was not a tawdry book, quite the reverse for someone wrestling with the real perils of depression like I have been. Even if I felt pathetic crying over some of the more home-spun quotes.

Reading this made me realise that yes I have been dealing with this kind of grief ... and of course what I have been confronting has been nothing like grief at all - apart from to me. As my dear friend Nyambura said to me "Nobody died ... and even if they had we believe that is not the end." It has been terribly hard for me to piece my way back to resurrection again. Perhaps I am getting there, slowly but I hope surely ...

The Triumph of life is the title of a much longer and earlier poem written by Shelley shortly before his death. It remains unfinished. Just that fact speaks to me, but also the wonderous idea that the triumph of life comes back to inspire poets across the generations. May it also finally call me away from my tears, for no one has died and even had they, then I believe that is not the end.
This too will pass ...

Reading the Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse - the Duties of Womanhood by Mirta Yañez

I treated myself to The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse from the University bookshop on my first day in Jamaica, now I finally have a moment to read some of it. Actually poetry is the perfect reading companion for a conference like the IEPC, it transports to other realities and requires short bursts of concentration but not too much sustained attention.
It has some wonderful poems in translation and I'm looking forward to reading more on the plane this evening. For now though this has really touched me and made me smile, perhaps a little sadly. Several of our colleagues have now travelled to Cuba for the 70th anniversary of the Cuban Council of Churches, maybe one of the reasons I started reading the Cuban verse in the collection first. I've just noticed a poem called Liberation theology - better read that next! I give thanks for those who labour to write poetry, offereing us all fragments of deep understanding of our lives.

The Duties of Womanhood - Mirty Yañez

We learned the duties of love and silence,
of obdurate loneliness and anguish,
our duty to witness fear and death
and the arduous task od structuring dreams

We learnt the duties of twilight and desolation
the labour of poetry
of gregorian chants
the mysterious firmament of the stars
the inexorable rituals of waiting
the ceremonies of terror and valour
the secrets of the bow and its invisible arrow
of the night and the fires illuminating it.

We learned of joy
of smiles
light and shadows
magic and science
a tree, an apple, a paradise,
the serpent, a flight of birds,
Mythology and enigma.

We learnt men's ways
an seized others meant only for gods.

Now That We Have Tasted Hope - a poem by Khaled Mattawa

Listen to Libyan poet and recent winner of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Khaled Mattawa read his latest for the revolution in Libya on BBC’s “The World Today”

Now That We Have Tasted Hope

Now that we have tasted hope
Now that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?

And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled with prayers and consolations,
What would their torn parts be other than flesh?


Now that we have tasted hope
And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our oneness
Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut on the wine
That swilled inside them?

Having dreamed the same dream,
Having found the water that gushed behind a thousand mirages,
Why would we hide from the sun again
Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of darkness,
Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?

Listen to me Zow’ya, Beida, Ajdabya, Tobruk, Nalut, Derna, Musrata, Benghazi, Zintan,
Listen to me houses, alleys, courtyards, and streets that throng my veins,
Some day soon
In your freed light and in the shade of your proud trees,
Your excavated heroes will return to their thrones in your martyrs’ squares,
Lovers will hold each other’s hands.

I need not look far to imagine the nerves dying rejecting the life that blood sends them.
I need not look deep into my past to seek a thousand hopeless vistas.
But now that I have tasted hope
I have fallen into the embrace of my own rugged innocence.

How long were my ancient days?
I no longer care to count.
How high were the mountains in my ocean’s fathoms?
I no longer care to measure.
How bitter was the bread of bitterness?
I no longer care to recall.

Now that we have tasted hope,
Now that we have lived on this hard-earned crust,
We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life,
Any other way of being human.

The deep consolation, the laughter and tearfulness of reading poetry

For the past few days I've been reading the wonderful poems in Neil Astley and Pamela Robinson-Pearce's great anthology of hope Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds.
It is a read that is a voyage of discovery: moving, funny, profound there is real food and hope for starved souls in the 150 pages. We are so saturated and stuffed with images and music, yet here simple well-honed lines keep bringing us back to essentials. Few of the poems are long, many are very short.
I'm grateful for the many poems in translation that are included, opening up not only other languages (truth called "he" rather than "she" or "it") and cultures, but also completely different ways of structuring thoughts, poetry and hope itself.
Dr B even found one to read aloud to me last night, this by the fabulous Carol Ann Duffy, only a Radio 4 listener or a sailor would understand the final line!

Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims1 sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

copyright Carol Ann Duffy

Meanwhile I have this evening been entranced by some poems by Jane Kenyon, in particular the one called Happiness below. It seems quite right that a poet who struggled all her life against depression should write on such a theme. Now I shall have to track down some of the works she translated. I'm always interested in poets who also translate.

Happiness There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. copyright Jane Kenyon

Anyway, although reading poetry might seem to resolve nothing, it does offer a structure that might be called joy or understanding, consolation or perhaps even hope. Gradually words are beginning to put me back together again, perhaps that is resolution of a kind ...

A poem by Charles Causely as we meditate the cross ...

From a Normandy crucifix of 1632

I am the great sun

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away.
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain but you will not obey.

I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay.
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.

I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
I am your lover whom you will betray.
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.

I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

Charles Causley

Ways of meaning on Good Friday

In German it's called Karfreitag - "Kar" it would seem is derived from an old-high-German word "chara", which means complaint, misery or mourning, so "grief Friday" or "grieving Friday". I can almost hear the keening or the lament in "chara". In English we call it Good Friday - good also has the meaning of "pious" or "holy". In Norwegian it's called Langfredag - long Friday, perhaps because of the unbearable time spent watching and waiting for death, or perhaps just the long time spent in church services in centuries gone by ... In French the day is called vendredi saint - holy Friday...
These bits and pieces of meaning and translation all contribute to my sense of this day in the Christian calendar. In addition there are the memories of other Good Fridays, of my father carrying the cross on the walk of witness into the town centre in the year that he was mayor, of my mother playing passion chorals on the violin, of preaching, of praying, of music and silence. And of Hans Ruedi Weber's book "On a Friday Noon", given to me for my 18th birthday. Christ's generous suffering and death speaks of so many other deaths, due to human violence and intolerance ... have we learnt from the passion story, have I learnt? Was I there when they crucified my Lord? ... well no, but in many ways I am still there for he is still being crucified, raped, violated, stoned, strung up today.

What do you hold in your hands at the beginning of Holy Week - nails or palm branches?

For the beginning of Holy Week the service this morning in the ecumenical centre was called "From hosanna to crucify him".
In the meditation I asked - what do you have in your hands? Palm leaves, palm crosses, branches to greet the coming king? Or nails to crucify him?
There is such hope among the crowd as they strew their garments and give Christ the red carpet treatment - Hosanna is a cry of wanting to be saved, save us, be our saviour ...
Do the same ones just a few days later scream crucify him?
This movement from the jubilant expectant hopeful crowd to the murderous mob is one of the aspects of the passion story I find most difficult to bear and contemplate, am I too so unable to remain faithful even for a few days?
As I reflected this morning I realised that I hold both nails and celebratory branches in my hands - the capacity to be part of the murderous mob and the hopeful crowd.

And when the resurrection comes it is not in the first place to crowds but to individuals, small groups of doubting, stunned, hopeless believers. Hosanna ...

After asking my question about the nails and the palms I read this wonderful poem which my colleagues Manoj Kurian wrote in 2008. And we kept silent as the sun streamed into the chapel before singing "Jesus Christ is waiting ..."

Are we part of the crowd or are we among the witnesses?
Are we part of the crowd ?
Swayed by the influential and the appealing?
Making convenient compromises,
Preserving and expanding our power and status;
Oblivious of the Messiah among the vulnerable and the poor;
Broadening the highways of our selfish desire;
Obstructing the narrow paths;
That lead to the reign of God.

Are we among the witnesses?
Striving consistently to know God;
In creation, community, in the other and in oneself;
Reflecting truth in our own lives and all that we do.
To recognize the crucified Christ amongst us;
To be with and work with the suffering and the tortured;
For the liberation of all creation;
From the shackles of greed and exclusion.

Striving consistently to see the risen Lord;
In creation, community, in the other and in oneself;
Working for liberation in all we endeavor.
Humbly persisting to be transformed, to transform the world.
In victory and in failure;
In joy and in pain;
In solidarity and in betrayal;
Are we among the witnesses or are we with the crowd?

copyright: Manoj Kurian / WCC

So do you take off your shoes or eat blackberries? The solace of poetry

... Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God[de]:

But only s/he who sees, takes off [her] shoes,

The rest sit around it, and pluck blackberries...

From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The quote above came to me today at the bottom of an email from a friend and it sent me off reading Elizabeth Barratt Browning's poetry on the net. I realised that I have hardly read any Barratt since school and that I do not have a collected version of her poetry, something to treat myself to very soon. It is powerful stuff.
Spingtime is not at all the time to think of the autumn harvest of the hedges filled with the finger-staining dark fruit that are blackberries, bringing sweetness just before the winter. I love the flavour and fragrance of the humble blackberry - though given the choice I would probably still opt for the raspberry.
But the quote in this fragment (really that word seems to be one of the major subthemes to my blog these days) of the poem is actually a judgement on those sitting around gorging ourselves thoughtlessly on late summer fruits. The bramble, like the biblical burning bush, is full of thorns. An invitation, a reminder ... of God's grandeur, of humility, of the possibility that like Moses before us, we too could remove our shoes as we remember we are on holy ground.
I glimpsed some of the immensity and beauty of creation this evening, walking through the wonderful trees, smelling the sweet violets and listening to the wonderful birdsong as the sun persisted in picking out the primroses in the grass. With every step I gave thanks for the burgeoning season that is spring - these early flowers speak of fruit to come. Truly a miracle. God turns not only water into wine but petals into fruit and pollen into honey - earth is surely crammed with heaven!

Pretty little books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky

I managed to resist the first time I saw these lovely mini books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky but when in Paris last week I gave in and bought myself these 25 tiny little books, which are beautiful reproductions of books first published in the 1940s.
For me they are very evocative of the drawings and commentaries that my aunt used to do first in Berlin and then in London at the same period. Here books of drawing were bigger than these but have a similar flavour, Ivanovsky, like my aunt, was also a migrant. Perhaps that's part of what this style evokes for me.
Anyway, these really are books as works of art and I treasure them and love them. Tiny, pretty, pointless books that speak to me of fun, beauty, attention to detail, poetry and art. Looking at them makes me happy.

Believing in the little things - a lenten liturgy of fragments and cherry blossom

This morning we tweeted as part of worship - you can read our tweets at http://twitter.com/oikoumene. It was an interesting experiment, we did low tech tweeting with pencil and paper and I typed the tweets into the site in themed groups in free moments during the day.
Tweets are of course just little things, fragments of communication, yet even in just 140 keystrokes you can say something meaningful, you can link to a photo or audio file, to an article or video. You can try to "hook" people, you can make statements and of course you can also preach and pray using the medium.
Today I tried to get people to tweet in four ways - first a tweet of confession of brokenness, after that a tweet of hope for just peace after hearing the assurance of forgiveness and listening to Isaiah 52, then a tweeted biblical reflection on Matthew 6 25-33 - the lilies of the field; and finally prayer tweets of intercession for peace and justice.
We had a group of people from the Danish churches so many of today's tweets were in Danish, others were in German, French, Swahili and Tagalog (I think ...) so I had an interesting time typing them up - especially as Twitter was painfully slow this afternoon.

I did not preach but as an invitation to the biblical reflection I took with me a small branch of a pink flowering prunus. The gospel reading we listened to - in French - was of the lilies of the field. Yesterday I read this moving and beautifully written article by Joji Sakurai on cherry blossom and transience as a source of strength. She wrote:

For the Japanese, it will be a particularly poignant sight. Even in normal times, the flowers are a cause for rejoicing tinged with sadness, because they fall at the moment of their greatest beauty. They are the embodiment of a notion that is central to Japanese culture — "hakanasa," a hard-to-translate word that conveys the fragility, or evanescence, of life.

I was moved to learn that the cherry blossom is also the symbol of valour for the Samurai. this prompted me to think about how we so often have such grandiose plans for our projects - our peace-making and events too. Our work for a just peace today needs somehow to be like cherry blossom willing to bloom beautifully and then let go. Just-peace can never be about something set in stone. I believe in the little fragile things, in the arpilleras of the stitching peace exhibition, in the petals that gently fall and look like snow, in folk who find time to have a meal with one another and in the transience rather than in the permanence of our witness, in the God of small things. Like the cherry blossom, Christ too was at his most evanescent just before his life ended - how else can you read and understand his passionate words and actions, his foot washing in John's gospel, if it is not in some way about a vital fragile blossoming: "That all may be one".

If the blossom does not fall there will of course be no fruit. Only sacrifice bears fruit.

Here are two tweets written by someone at this morning's service, they sum up fragmentally but succinctly some of what I'm trying to say.

#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient lives contributing to the justice mercy & peace on earth
#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient blooms that bring everlasting beautiful memories

I grew up in blossom country in the Vale of Evesham, and thinking about the cherry blossom reminded me of A. E. Houseman's Loveliest of trees the cherry now ... which has its own strong intimations of mortality and celebration of nature. I like the idea of spring and winter almost being one in terms of the beauty, how the snow reminds of the springtime blossom. How sad that when I was studying it at school I never quite reached such gentle understanding of it. Now I can see how this deep human understanding of passing seasons and transience links east and west, north and south.

This evening coming home on the bus I realised that I shall never really be a systematic theologian but always a fragmentic theologian. Outside the main entrance to the Ecumenical Centre a prunus is in flower next to the white cross outside the chapel, it always makes me smile to see that in springtime, even on a wet grey morning like today. And seeing it reminded me of this which we sang in the chapel at the end of last winter, when spring was merely a vague promise, but nevertheless on the way:

“O make our barren trees to grow, our hands to blossom,
and let our lives bring forth such fruit that heals our neighbours’ grief and pain.”

It's by a Norwegian artist and hymn writer called Svein Ellingsen.

Poetry about blossom, thinking about the transience of blossom gives me strength, reminds me of the orchard in the garden at home and pure pleasure at beauty. It also offers a slightly subversive paradigm to my understanding, one that is glorious, mystical and filled with both pain and perfume. It is good to be a fragmentic theologian, a source of tearful strength.

Le miel du rocher - concrete turns to honey in St Denis

We came back from our afternoon wandering around the multicultural streets of St Denis with some little pots of miel béton - concrete honey! Far from being concrete the honey is runny and fragrant. It comes from the "banque de miel" which has some buzzy and bee-like qualities on its website and also has a blog. So you've got the idea this is urban honey, these days with all the worries about the health of bees, urban bees are often those who seem to show the least dign of illness - partly because tehre is little chance of them feeding on monocultures.
Anyway if we do end up living in St Denis I think I'll try and invest in heaven (investir le ciel) and become part of this brilliant project which makes sweet honey come from the concrete rock. I love the fact that the banque de miel is run by the "parti poétique"! Now of course in secular France I should perhaps not point out to them that the image is straight from those poems in the Bible called the Psalms - le miel du rocher Psalm 81.16 - I think a modern translation would be honey from concrete.
Long may the urban bees produce honey for us.

Tea drinking ... and waiting for the right moment

I'm a tea drinker. I do also drink coffee but given the choice I would really rather drink tea - plain, no milk no sugar and preferably not out of a bag.
Because even after Advent and Christmas all times are still waiting times, and because now there is time to drink in rather differently the words from the wonderful anderer Adventskalendar, we are reading the days one more time before putting it away. This evening I have turned it to a page with a photo of a splendidly chaotic Asian tea kitchen and come across this wonderful reflection from the 16th century on the right moments to drink tea, here's my on the hoof translation:

Moments that are just right for drinking tea

When your heart and hands are doing nothing
When you are tired after reading too much poetry
When one's train of thought is disturbed
When listening to songs and melodies
When a song has been sung to its end
When you're home alone on a holiday
When playing Ch'in and looking at paintings
In the middle of the night in deep conversation
Faced with a clear window and a clean desk
When the day is clear and the breeze mild
On a day with gentle rain
In a painted boat near a wooden bridge
When the children are at school
When you've lit incense in a small workroom.
Hsü Ts'eshu

Tea drinking is about taking time out, it's a longer drink that a shot of expresso and more satisfying. My favourite moment for drinking tea is in bed in the morning, listening to the radio - especially if Dr B brings it to me. My second favourite moment is letting the tea go cold, not drinking tea because I have fallen asleep again. Something I can't do unless the tea is actually there to go cold. Some of my favourite cups of tea are the ones I never drink but am nevertheless grateful for.
Meanwhile I realise that I have never known that strange thirst for tea from reading too much poetry, but I do know a thirst from a desire for poetry to be fulfilled - for that I am still waiting. In the meantime perhaps all of us should write a crazy list of moments in life that are just right for taking a bit of time out for a cup of something refreshing.

Kennings for Advent are you a lotus eater or a locust eater?

At morning prayer today I invited those of us there to think poetically in kennings about Advent as we reflected on the reading about John the Baptist from Mark's gospel ... as we meditated in silence our reflection was occasionally broken by a kenning. I think I shall try it again for tomorrow.
Sandal untier, water baptiser, sackcloth wearer, locust eater, honey swallower, truth proclaimer, messiah announcer ...

And as I thought about locust eater I also thought about lotus eater and realised to my shame taht I am the latter not the former.

Later this week I am invited to attend lunch for the 10th anniversary of the Ecumenical Adovocacy Alliance which campaigns on food justice and HIV. May I should suggest the locust eater-lotus eater idea to them. Probably it's too literary to work ...
Anyway at least morning prayer got my brain working.

Another passing fragmentary thought ...

Today we sang Holden Evening Prayer and it was like coming home. I chose some poems on silence by Thomas Merton and R.S. Thomas to accompany the service. There was simple pleasure at gathering and singing, keeping quiet and listening together.

At morning and at evening prayer today I read from Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy a good friend gave me yesterday. I had never come across his writing before and reading his 50 psalms has really been blowing me away to say the least. Very powerful.

But now looking back on my day and given all my recent pondering on fragments, I wonder whether my praying and practice of spirituality are not in some ways mere fragments of longing, for God and for myself. Does that make sense?

Anyway here is one of Leonard Cohen's Psalms (rendered into slightly more inclusive language):

Blessed are you who has given each person a shield of loneliness so that they cannot forget you. You are teh truth of loneliness, and only your name addresses it. Strengthen my loneliness that I may be healed in your name, which is beyond all consolations that are uttered on this earth. Only in your name can I stand in the rush of time, only when this loneliness is yours can I lift my sins toward your mercy.

Silence in the mind - with RS Thomas

I am trying to tidy up and as is so often the case I get sidetracked into actually looking at and then reading and now blogging about what I find in the various prehistoric levels of my desk and office.
Just now it is this poem by R. S. Thomas, it fits in beautifully with Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat Pray Love which I'm reading at the moment and also with conversations I had while at the Church of Ireland Christian Institute in Dublin at the end of last week. Silence, the search for prayer and contemplation, the freedom which that gives.
I once described my desire to live in community to a colleague and admitted that I would of course have been "a noisy, nosey nun". Yet the discipline and the outer quiet of monastic life still appeals to me greatly, partly of course because I know I would take my own inner noise and turmoil with me wherever I may be.

Many years ago at Great St Mary's in Cambridge I attended a poetry reading and conversation with R. S. Thomas. I remember a shy, self-effacing man, who tried hard to give what he felt were adequate answers to the students and professors present that evening, yet the rootedness of his poetry spoke for itself.

Today I came across this in a book I should be putting on a shelf but which I shall continue to flick through for a few moments longer before teh noise of teh mess in my office finally calls me back to attend to it.

But the silence in the mind

But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of teh silence we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-
writer, the bottomless ocean
We launch the armada of
thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our
own fathoms. What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?

Knock knock - is God there?

Our wonderfully upbeat and authentic colleague Faautu Talapusi gave a bravura performance at worship this morning. It was a beautifully simply crafted service with readings from Psalm 121 and Luke 11:5-13. The idea of the neighbour knocking at night time on the door is what set Faautu writing her poetic sermon which was very much also performance art with each knock knock accompanied by knocking on the lectern:

Knock, knock…
Knock, knock…
The times I am facing are rough
The times I am facing times are tough

What I noticed now re-reading the sermon is that somehow as the poem progresses it is no longer an individual in distress knocking but somehow God knocking - hey notice I'm here, see how I try somehow to hold things together for you.

Knock, knock
Knock, knock…
God’s love is ever persistent and unconditional…for you and me

Read the full text here.

Thanks Faautu

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver" - seeing details differently and having time ...

One of the great things about being on holiday is having the time to take things in and appreciate them differently. Opposite the back courtyard where we're staying there is a lovely mediterranean pine tree in the middle of a village garden. It gives me simple but deep pleasure on the late sunny evenings to simplysit and look at it, to watch the play of sun-setting light turning the bark red, to see how the wind makes the outline of the pine leaves move across the blue and darkening sky.
Looking at the bark of the plane trees in the market square or along the canal du midi; seeing the random pattern of the shells on the beach; wondering at the continually changing movement of waves on the sand; seeing the way the leaves of the olive trees move and how the shape of the varieties is different; seeing the asparagus gone to seed in people's gardens and taking pleasure in the way the garlic is plaited and the pumpkins are piled up on the market stalls; seeing the vines changing colour and liking the newly turned ground - all of these things made me think of my irascible English teacher Dan Plim. (Sadly the only online trace I can find of him is his history of Redditch golf club (!) and details on Friends Reunited of his death two years ago.)
I remember him twirling his reading glasses in his fingers and encouraging us to note the poet's eye for detail as we were reading Tennyson's The The Lady of Shallot. The leaves of different varieties of tree behave differently in the wind "Willows whiten, aspens quiver". I was lucky enough to have both a willow and an ash tree in the hedge of the garden at home and so could test what the poet and my English teacher said. And I still get irritated with Dr B for not knowing his oak trees from his willows - though after 20 years in France he can just about spot a plane tree.
There is beauty in majestic landscapes, broad brush strokes and the big picture, but there is also deep beauty in the small almost insignificant details. Artists of the word or brush may capture them for us, Caneletto for instance. But for me this holiday time blesses me with leisure to enjoy details and wide views, to be restored by both and to take that transformative pleasure back into my everyday life. Dramatic sunrises or sunsets, a beautiful autumn leaf or a scurrying lizard searching for fading warmth amongst the rocks, sun from behind the clouds, all help to add a different dimension making life more poetic, less mundane and taking me out of myself. so even when the holiday is over, it won't be over - the poetics of plaisir, loisir et désir will be able to continue. "Pleasure, leisure and desire" was the title of a brilliant Bible study on the Song of Solomon by Jacques Chauvin. Wonderful title and a great holiday ethic it seems to me, more on that theme later.

In sync or out of sync - more from Rilke

"Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you." Rilke

More from Rilke ... this set me thinking about the biblical injunction "to not be conformed to this world", yet somehow Rilke's injunction is more grace filled and much less didactic. Because it is graceful it opens up more possibilities for creativity within me. Wonderful how one short line of prose poetry can open up vistas of meaning.
Then though I went back and re-read Romans 12.2 "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect." and I realised it too is more open and graceful than the way I have internalised it.

Eternity and its values can transform us. Being out of sync and non-conformist can help open us to that, I like that.

Wishes and the future - from Rilke

"Wishes are the memories coming from our future." Rilke

This little quote from Rilke really pleased me as I read it last night. It made me think once more of Jürgen Ebach's wonderful book title Errinerte Zukunft und erhoffte Vergangenheit - A remembered future and a hoped for past.

And our theme in the feminist theology group this year is between the past and the future living in the present.