Eucharistic hymn

This is your body, for your people giv’n,
We break the bread, and voice the sacred song;
Food of the angels, taste of highest heav’n,
crumbs dropped for all who fear we don’t belong:
We are your body, help us dare to share
all that we have, and offer all we are.

This is your blood, the pain that makes us whole
With love was pressed from this live-giving vine,
The smallest sip can warm the coldest soul,
And fill the human heart with fire divine:
We are your body, help us yearn to share
all that we have, and offer all we are.

We are your body, fed with heavenly food,
Washed through the blood that flows with heavenly love,
And then you send us, by that love renewed,
to find that earth is full of heav’n above.
We are your body, in your grace we share
all that we have, and offer all we are.

(Tune: Finlandia)

I wrote this one last month too, and forgot about it. Again, sorry.

Mothering Sunday – art

Here are some of the paintings I’ve done that might possibly be useful for Mothering Sunday, if you half shut your eyes. Help yourself if you like them.

Mary hugging Jesus after the resurrection when he comes downstairs from seeing the disciples in the upper room.
It’s a hug. It could be the holy family, or the Trinity, or just a hug.
Ruth and Naomi
This one’s called ‘the one with the crumby dog’ and features the woman with the sick child who answered back. You go, mamma bear!
This is Mary and Joseph, just after Joseph wakes up from the dream in which the angel tells him they have to leave everything and run to Egypt.
Another Holy Innocents picture – hiding from the soldiers
If you really look you can see the four women who each played a vital part in saving the baby Moses. But you might not find them because women’s roles in salvation history aren’t always celebrated.
Mary and Elizabeth, both discovering that mothering is best done in solidarity rather than alone.
From my line drawing Stations of the Cross – Mary and John are made into a new family

How big is a tree?

How might we measure
a mustard tree, Lord?
By metres or cubits?
Why, no, he replied,
For the measure that matters
Is this: hospitality.

How big is a tree?

Can it offer a perch to bird on the wing?
Can the pair of small sparrows
(once bought for a penny)
Have room here to build
an affordable nest?
Can they nurture their young,
In safety away from the predators
Prowling the night?
That is the way that we measure a tree.

Like the wilderness oaks
That offered their shelter
to Abraham, Sarah, and all that they had,
In order that he would be able
to offer the same to the visiting strangers
Who brought them the promise of hope
And the chance to fulfil the command
To be fruitful and fill all the land.

Like the wilderness broom bush
That gave to Elijah permission to stop,
And to sit and give voice to his grief and despair,
a place to find rest and be nourished
So he could continue his journey
To and come to the cleft in the rock
Where he met God in silence.

Like the sycamore tree
That was sturdy enough
To carry the weight
of a man who was rich
but had nothing of worth.

Like the tree that was felled
To be shaped like a cross
And offer a place
For all the world’s pain
to be faced and embraced
by the man who said,
That’s how you measure a tree.

When we measure with numbers
And money and cost
And reduce all the value
To what can be counted
We’ll find we have lost
All sense of what counts:

Our chances to offer the shade of a tree in the heat of the sun;
the grace to receive, sit down and admit that we cannot go on;
a way to stand tall when we’re burdened by all of the things we have done.
A place to feel safe, to love and be loved: a place to call home.

Hands holding a hazel nut

The seed is so small.
It’s a universe held
in the palm of God’s hand.
A hand that’s the only hospitable scale
for the measure of worth
For the God who loves everything.

 

It exists because God loves it

A painting based on Julian of Norwich’s vision of the hazel nut.

Hands holding a hazel nut

“In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought “What may this be?” And it was generally answered thus: “It is all that is made.” I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.”