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Oh Yeah Now That’s a Table

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georgemesso's avatarGeorge Messo's Blog

A man filled with life’s joy
Placed his keys on the table
Put down flowers in a copper bowl
Put down his milk, his eggs
Placed light coming from the window there
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel
He placed there the softness of weather and bread

On the table the man
Put things that occurred in his mind
Whatever he wanted to do in life
He placed it there
Who he loved, who he didn’t love

The man put them too on the table
Three times three equals nine
The man placed nine on the table
He was next to the window next to the sky
He reached out placed infinity on the table
For days he’d wanted to drink a beer
He put the pouring of beer onto the table
He put down his sleep his wakefulness
Placed there his fullness his hunger

Oh yeah…

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Holiday plans – some sermon notes for St Nicholas, Burton – Proper 11B/Ordinary 16B/Trinity 7

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July 19th 2015  – some notes for sermon for St Nicholas, Burton

Proper 11B/Ordinary 16B/Trinity 7.

There is only one reading: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 (In my mind is the verse from Psalm 127, Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.) The other readings which could have been used are about God’s building (he doesn’t want David to build him a house, he wants to do the building for David – and all his house)

I thought we would plan some holiday this morning.

The run for the sun has begun – I think most schools finished on Friday. I distracted a boy when I was walking our dog the other morning. The boy was riding his bike to school. His trousers caught in the chain. I noticed he’d ripped them and asked if he would be in trouble. He said “no, it’s only another 3 days”.

Muslims have been holidaying this weekend. The sighting of the new moon heralded EID, marking the end of Ramadan.

It is time to be thinking of holidays.

First Choice and Thomas Cook could have lifted a verse from today’s gospel to sell us their holidays. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”.

Do you ever catch yourself saying “I haven’t got time for this that or the other”? I suspect that as long as we are saying that we need to be hearing those words that Jesus spoke to his disciples – and what a week they’d had! EXPLAIN

We talk about “time poverty”, where we struggle to fit in all that we are committed to – work, family, interests – and with holidays we find time.

For the disciples, the rest time they are given is a gift of Jesus – it’s how God cares for his people, then (after all they had been doing) and now (with all our business).

“Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Sabbath

For one rabbi (Heschel), the Bible is more concerned with time than with space (history more than geography. It’s the time of rest that is more important than the place of rest.

For this rabbi, the Sabbath is a spirit that is lonely and that comes looking for us.

Let it come, I say. It’s not so much that we long for rest, as rest longs for us.

Heschel writes

  • that unless we learn how to relish the taste of rest we will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.
  • that the world’s survival depends on the holiness of the 7th day. The task is how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit.
  • “Six days we wrestle with the world. ringing profit from the earth: on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.”
  • that the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals – time that is our own, for us to walk around in

….. days of rest that are holidays that can make holy days ….

Letting Go and Letting Come

I don’t know about you, but my best ideas happen when I’m not working. It’s when I’m in the shower, or out walking, or just waking, or suddenly hearing or seeing. It’s when I’m not trying – it’s when I’ve let all that busyness go. And isn’t that ironic? It’s when we let go of our work, when we put down our clever, when we are off guard – that suddenly we realise – and we use words like “the idea came to me” – we aren’t doing anything, and the idea just came to me. This is what I have to do. This is how I have to be. This is what life is all about – it’s just come to me.

We need to sleep on things.

We have to let go …… to let come

It’s at holiday that we let go, and that we let come those things which transform the way we look at life and the way we live our life.

And so we should pray for those on holiday, for those planning a holiday, that those things which come to them do transform their lives, and that when the holiday ends it’s not a case of busyness as usual.

And we should pray for those who aren’t able to holiday, who can’t see their way to having a holiday – because they don’t think they can afford one, either because they haven’t got the time, or because they haven’t got the money. What should we pray for them? That they do find rest, that they do know that God wants them to rest, that he wants them to have holy days to sanctify their other days.

There is a quote that I love to repeat:

The world longs for the generosity of a well rested people (Wayne Muller)

Things come to well rested people. If rest is the ministry of God to us, it is not much of a stretch to think that those things that come to well rested people are what Paul describes as the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (Gal 5:22f)

I dare say that they don’t come to those who don’t rest – because they haven’t let go to let come those gifts that so transform ourselves, relationships and society.

I also dare say that the contrasting works of the flesh (as listed by Paul – Gal 5) are seen as a result of an absence of rest. Check that out from your own experience and behaviour as I read through some from the list:  impurity, envy, drunkenness, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, factions.

I mentioned Ramadan earlier – I think it is worth us understanding more about Ramadan. Ramadan is a rest that Muslims plan for and look forward to – in spite of the rigorous disciplines that last for a month. Ramadan is a gift from God, a time of prayer, fasting and learning scripture. The intention is that they accept God’s gift, and that they learn and change as a result.

Our own gospel reading, inadvertently I think, gives us a clue about what rest does. It had been busy, and it goes on to be busy doesn’t it? They thought they’d escaped the crowds, but the crowds catch them up. But there is no compassion fatigue in Jesus. He doesn’t wince of flinch when he sees the great crowd. He has the generosity of a well rested man – who draws breath, who lets himself be wrapped in God’s sending love – of whom the evangelist is able to say “he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.”

The world longs for the generosity of a well rested people.

How can we help ourselves to rest? How can we encourage each other to find the rest that we need, and that those around us need us to have? This is holiday planning.

In rest, we discover what God is building. It’s a rather different market place than the ones that have been constructed by ourselves – that are for those with money (look at London). In the gospel, the tables are turned – the sick are laid in the market place – the poor, the needy ……..

Blessing of Rest (this is how God cares for his people – “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”

Curl this blessing
beneath your head
for a pillow.
Wrap it about yourself
for a blanket.
Lay it across your eyes
and for this moment
cease thinking about
what comes next,
what you will do
when you rise.

Let this blessing
gather itself to you
like the stillness
that descends
between your heartbeats,
the silence that comes
so briefly
but with a constancy
on which
your life depends.

Settle yourself
into the quiet
this blessing brings,
the hand it lays
upon your brow
the whispered word
it breathes into
your ear
telling you
all shall be well
all shall be well
and you can rest
now.

Jan Richardson: The Painted Prayerbook

Trust in the slow work of God

David HerbertLeave a comment

Thanks to Jenny Bridgham for finding this poem by Pierre de Chardin who says it so well. There’s no short cuts to the kingdom.

Jenny Bridgman's avatarWhat Remains

Jesus also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

Mark 4:26-32…

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Dresden and the history of bombing

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A moving post from Gerry re-membering the bombing of Dresden and other bombings.

Gerry's avatarThat's How The Light Gets In

Dresden after the firestorm

Dresden after the firestorm

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist… It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5

In Dresden on 13 February, they commemorated the 70th anniversary of the RAF air raid that reduced the city to rubble.  The RAF attack – carried out by 800 bombers on a cloudless night – was  the most destructive raid of the second world war. In the firestorm  that was unleashed around 25,000 people, mainly civilians, were killed in a few hours. It remains by far the most controversial British wartime act.

The horror of that night is almost over now. The ruined buildings and the mounds of roasted bodies and  blackened skeletons exist in the memories of those who survived, but they…

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Watching migrants drown: ‘there are lines which, if crossed, make us immoral’

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Great post and collection of responses to a shocking decision.

Gerry's avatarThat's How The Light Gets In

Martin Rowson 29.10.14

Martin Rowson in today’s Guardian

A few days ago I posted a piece about the photo of desperate migrants perched on top of the border fence that surrounds the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the north African coast.  Now we learn that the British government has supported, and the EU justice and home affairs council has adopted a policy of leaving migrants to drown.

For the past year the Italian navy, with EU financial and logistical support, has operated a search-and-rescue operation called Mare Nostrum for migrants in danger of drowning in the Mediterranean which has saved the lives of an estimated 150,000 refugees. It is to be replaced with a much more limited EU ‘border protection’ operation codenamed Triton which will not conduct search-and-rescue missions. The justification given by both the UK government and the EU for this inhumane decision is that Mare Nostrum exercised a ‘pulling factor’, encouraging economic migrants to set sail for Europe.

Amnesty International’s UK director, Kate…

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Through Jesus Christ – various openings: a sermon for Easter 4A

David Herbert1 Comment

20140511-093944.jpg

A sermon for Easter 4A at St Alban’s Church, Offerton.

We were lucky enough to be able to go to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Barnsley last weekend.

This is one of the photos I took. It does reflect the beauty of the landscape, at bluebell time. I thought it would help us to think about today’s gospel which is about openings and doorways.

There were a lot of sheep and lambs around at the Sculpture Park – in the pasture outside this walled and sheltered area. There is a gateway here for the sheep to find shelter if they need it – and I can think of many cold Yorkshire days when they would need the shelter of that stone wall.

Jesus talks about this gateway in our gospel reading (John 10:1-10). He talks about the sheep being sheltered, and the sheep finding pasture – the gateway is for their comings and goings, for their to-ing and fro-ing.

But it’s not quite an open gateway. An open gateway would be dangerous. There is a gate. Jesus says “I am the gate”, “I am the door”. Perhaps you can picture Jesus in that gateway in the photo. For me, I see him sat on the ground, sideways on, with his back to the gatepost, one leg bent up and one leg stretched along the ground, looking out for danger and looking in with care.

Today is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. This image of Jesus which John has given us in his gospel is what we celebrate and love as the Good Shepherd.

It is an image that captures our imagination. For example, there is a Hospice in Chester called The Hospice of the Good Shepherd – a name which may have appealed to its founders because of their faith that Jesus guards the door in and out of life, and the promise that if we go through Jesus Christ, our Lord we enter into life that is fulfilling, complete and in which we want for nothing.

And that is how we say our prayers isn’t it? Our prayer to God is “through Jesus Christ, our Lord” …..

Jesus is the door, the gate. He is the way, the truth and the life…….. If we let him.

This next image is of the famous painting by Holman Hunt called the Light of the World. The painting is in the Manchester Art Gallery.

This is a painting about another door – the door is the door to our lives, the door to our soul. It is a long time since that door has been opened. Look at all the weeds that have grown round the door.

The painting is a reminder of what Jesus said. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.”

He knocks and waits. The door has no handle on the outside. There is no way in for the light of the world until the door is opened from the inside.

Are we going to open up?

We have been talked into a fearful way of life in which we lock our homes away from others.

It is a long time since we dared to leave our back door open. We’ve put some extra bolts on as well – and alarms. And there’s a code for getting in, and a code for getting out. We triple lock things.

But do we lock ourselves away as well?

Are we too busy to respond to our neighbours when they are in trouble? Sometimes we’d rather not know. We don’t want strangers knocking on the door. We don’t want people selling us things. We don’t want political canvassers – and we don’t want religious callers. No thank you. That door is going to stay closed, and if we hear anyone knocking we are going to pretend that we’re not in.

Jesus stands at the door and knocks.

Where there was once openings there is now just brick walls, dead ends, no go areas.

But that has always been the case, back to the day when Adam hid himself in the garden, back to the day of resurrection when the disciples locked themselves in because they were afraid of who might come looking for them. Jesus stood at those doors and knocked, though that time couldn’t wait for them to open up for him.

Where there was once openings there is now just brick walls, dead ends, no go areas. And that has always been the case.

But where there was just dead ends, brick walls and no chance, there is every chance, possibility and new openings. And that has always been the case as well.

Fists that are clenched are being opened. Minds that are closed are being opened. Hearts that have hardened are being softened. And it is happening all the time. We are amazed when we see it happening, aren’t we?

Yesterday, I was just pulling out from a parking space in Ellesmere Port when someone cut in to the space in front of me. I thought he’d come in tight – and then drove off. Then I saw the driver of the car run to the corner where I was turning, signalling me to pull over. He told me that he had damaged my car. He needn’t have gone to that trouble. He used that moment well. I told him that I appreciated what he had done.

These are the moments to write home about. These are the openings that we have in our lives. These are moments of grace and opportunity.

I was amazed.

Similar amazement is written all over our first reading (Acts 2:42-47) because of the devotion and fellowship of those who followed the apostles teaching. All that they managed to do, the way they shared everything, their generosity of heart amazed everyone. They had the goodwill of all the people.

There may well have been a lot of comings and goings in our lives, and it is understandable that many people become less trusting, even bitter ……. as a result.

But, it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a way out. That way out is offered by Jesus as the door, as the Good Shepherd.

Jan Richardson offers a way of blessing for this day. She says:

Press your hand to your heart.
Rest it over that place in your chest that has grown closed and tight, where the rust, with its talent for making decay look artful, has bitten into what you once held dear.
Breathe deep. Press on the knot and feel how it begins to give way, turning upon the hinge of your heart.
Notice how it opens wide and wider still as you exhale, spilling you out into a realm where you never dreamed to go, but cannot now imagine living this life without.

Why be our own doorkeepers and safekeepers when Jesus Christ offers himself as our gateway? As the Psalmist says, “The Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time on and for evermore.” (Psalm 121:8)

Through Jesus Christ we have amazing grace. Through Jesus Christ we have new openings, all the time and any time.

The Fault in our Stars by John Green

David Herbert2 Comments

The Fault in our Stars is the first book I have read by John Green. It is a book that gets in the skin of teenage cancer survivors who under varying degrees of duress attend a support group “at the heart of Jesus”. They are a community set apart by their cancer. The book is about Hazel and her friends Augustus and Isaac. Their relationships are intense, beautifully romantic and tragically short-lived. Their conversation is full of witty repartee and honesty. Each of them is a “grenade”. They are well supported by their parents whose own pre-mortem and post-mortem plights are understood through Hazel’s sensitive understanding and fear of them. The book is a delight.

Spoiler alert: Gus’s funeral doesn’t go as well as the pre-funeral in which Isaac and Hazel had been able to speak their hearts out in front of Gus. The funeral is constrained by inter generational expectations and the priest is seen to totally miss the mark with his pious platitudes. What could he have done differently? (That is the same question as what could I have done differently so many times in similar situations?) He took the easy road to consolation, which of course is a road that goes nowhere. He could have taken his directions from Hazel and Isaac. He could have listened to them. He could have read the book that had inspired first Hazel and then Gus, and he could have had his eyes opened by their discovery that some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Hazel, in her pre-funeral eulogy didn’t know what to say. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and of, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

The book has been turned into a film which is due to be released in June. I can’t believe that the film is going to be able to match the book, but here’s a trailer anyway.