Category: random thoughts

Harvest festival poem

church resources, poems, random thoughts

I posted a version of this poem rather after all the harvest festivals last year, so I thought I’d post this shorter version again in case it’s any use to anyone planning harvest songs-of-praise type services in which you need multiple readings!

We bring the spare we do not really need
(for surely God will honour all we bring
although it cannot make up for our greed).
And place into Christs’s hands our offering:
“Turn water into wine again,” we say,
“and multiply my token loaves and fish
to feed another hungry crowd today.”
Our gifts, we know, will put some flesh
on words of charity. Then into those
twelve empty baskets, let us place the gifts in us
that need to be increased and shared
with greater generosity than we may be prepared
to offer on our own account.
For we are God’s most rich and splendid bounty,
sown as seeds in every place
the human race:
the crowning glory
of the ever-evolving creation story.
We thank God that he does not only separate the wheat from tare,
but takes our very best then turns us into far more than we are.

A Psalm of repentance (ii)

poems, random thoughts

Again with apologies and thanks to whoever wrote Psalms 22 and 139.

My God, my God, why do I forsake you?
When your salvation was so near,
so near to the words of my distress?
O my God, you cry to me in the daytime,
but I have not answered,
by night also, but instead I took my rest.
Yet you are the Holy One of Israel,
enthroned on their praises,
my forebears trusted in you
and you delivered them.
But as for me I am a worm and no man,
worthy of the people’s scorn.
Why do those who see me not laugh me to scorn?
Why do they take pity on me, saying,
“If only she would trust in God,
for God delights in her, and will deliver her.”
For it is you that took me out of the womb,
and laid me safe upon my mother’s breast.
On you was I cast ever since I was born,
you are my God even from my mother’s womb.
And you are never far from me,
even when trouble is near at hand,
especially when trouble is near at hand.
But instead I run to the mighty oxen,
and to the fat bulls of Bashan.
I have poured out myself like water,
and I have put my own bones out of joint.
I have turned the heart of flesh you gave me
into a heart of stone.
My mouth and my tongue are free
Yet I chose to choke on the dust of death,
And have not called on you for help.
I have joined with the hounds and with the pack of evildoers,
And I have pierced your hands and your feet.
I cannot look on as your bones accuse me,
While I cast lots for my own life.
And yet you are not far from me,
You are still my strength when I call upon your name,
Deliver my soul from myself,
My poor life from the snares that I have laid myself,
For you have always answered me:
My God, my God, why have you never forsaken me?

A Psalm of Repentance (and thanksgiving)

poems, random thoughts

With apologies to whoever wrote Psalm 22 and Psalm 139,
and to the writer of John 21.

My God, my God, why have you not forsaken me?
For you, and you alone, see me as I am, as a worm and no man.
You see the sin in my heart, in my hands and on my lips;
You see me every evil doing
And you see the excuses that I offer to my own soul.
You have never forsaken me,
But you have chosen me, called me by name,
And invited me to share in your work!
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
And I cannot attain to it.
How can I feed your lambs?
Only with the bread of heave, the bread of life.
How can I tend your flock?
Only by the inspiration of the One True Shepherd.
O my God, make me into an instrument
Of your love for all your children,
For I cannot love them enough by myself.
I depend on you for my every breath,
For my every step, for my every word.
Breathe through me, guide me, speak through me,
For I am yours alone
And without you I am nothing at all.

Love life live Lent Monday of week 4: tidy up and find lost things!

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

I could quite usefully do this action every day – and I suspect I’d still never run out of mess to sort out.  Tidying up in our house is like painting the Forth Bridge: a never-ending task.

One of the reasons why my study in particular is always a messy place is that I never seem to get my act together to put things away when I’ve used them – I love creating interesting visual and tactile aids to preaching and prayer, but at the end of a long Sunday, everything is in bags and boxes on the floor and I simply don’t have the energy to do anything with them. I am pretty sure that there have been times that I’ve re-done whole resources simply because I can’t find what I already had made – and it was probably somewhere in the pile of stuff.

And then there is the problem that some things simply don’t have a place to go. Take the giant crib set that one of my churches was given just before Christmas.  It doesn’t belong anywhere so it’s spent over two months sitting in a huge cardboard box in the middle of my floor. I’ve stubbed my toe on it, I’ve tripped over it… but I haven’t found anywhere permanent for it to live!

But more crucially, in a job like mine there are many, many small bits and pieces of paperwork, messages, notes, and more, that aren’t just bits of paper.  They are   people who are sick and need prayer, they are wedding couples wanting a call back about their big day, they are funeral families who are struggling.  Losing one small piece of paper in a whole pile of paperwork can make a huge difference to the person whose name and situation was scribbled on it as I rushed in from one thing and out to the next.

I, along with most vicars, I suspect, live in fear of losing people.  We can’t trust our memories, not completely, and not infallibly. And we don’t get the administration right all the time either. I read the ‘lost’ parables in Luke 15 and they remind me of the need to keep my eye on the ball, to count my coins and my sheep, and to invest the time in caring for them and looking for them.

But I also remember those wonderful words of Jesus in John’s gospel, about how God the Father has entrusted us into his hands, and ‘not one of them shall be lost’.  That is my prayer. That what slips through my fingers will be caught by the  much bigger hands of God, and that the sheep I lose will be found by the Good Shepherd.

And in the mean time I’ve typed all the information on forthcoming weddings into a spreadsheet instead of leaving it on paper sheets, because although I know God has it all in hand, I need to have it in hand too…  Not that I’m confessing to have ever lost any wedding booking forms.  I’d never do that. Really…..

Love Life Live Lent Friday of Week Three: do something different

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

Tomorrow’s action is to do something different by trying to have a screen-free day – which is why I’m writing this now!

Tomorrow is my day off, as it happens. I’m not morally obliged to answer emails, and it should be possible for me genuinely to have a screen-free day – any other day of the week and I’d really really struggle. But from the tweets that have been coming in today in anticipation of this particular challenge, for many people the idea of having a screen free day is something they long to do, but genuinely can’t. If you’re working and your work demands that you spend most of your day looking at a screen, and if most of your human contact comes via electronic means, then this challenge may feel like adding insult to injury.  You’d love to spend a day without being a slave to your laptop or tablet. But you can’t.

But remember, the actual heading for the LLLL action is, ‘Do something different’.  The challenge to do without the computer is an example of what this might mean – and for those of us who don’t absolutely have to engage via technology, but are just a little bit addicted to it, it’s a challenge that is well worth trying, and might well be a hugely life-giving thing to do.

But for those who really are chained to their computer all day, the challenge to do something different remains. What that looks like in real life is worth spending some time thinking about.  Fundamentally, the challenge is to dare to break the habits and patterns that we’ve got stuck in, and that have ended up controlling our lives.  The challenge is to confront those habits and patterns and to ask ourselves whether we have become a slave to them, and if we have, to work out ways of regaining some freedom.

So if you’re stuck with the screen during office hours, what about when you take a break?  Do you have the option to leave your desk and go outside at lunchtime? To go for a walk or take a different route to and from work so you see different people and landscapes?  Eat something different, or wear something colourful that you wouldn’t normally wear, try out a different perfume, or do something different with your hair – anything to stimulate your senses and keep you alive to the world beyond the screen.  So many of us get stuck staring ahead of us at a glowing rectangle, all day, every day, but we are people with bodies, with a sense of taste and touch and smell as well as the sight or hearing we use to engage with people via technological means.  This challenge, to do something different, could be a way of noticing all over again who you are and what matters to you.

And if slavery to the screen isn’t your particular form of slavery, this challenge is still a chance to work out what is.  What habits and ways of being are keeping you captive? And if you forgo them for a day, what new joys and discoveries will rise up to fill the gap?

So many of us get stuck in routines and don’t dare to think about what could be different.  Yes, it’s a risk. If we’ve always done something one way, what happens when we don’t?  Yet it’s essential to being a living being that we change and grow and respond to our environment, learning new things about ourselves and about the world around us all the time. Accept the challenge to do something different and this could just be the first day of the rest of your life.