Belief

“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.” 
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

George MacDonald wrote the shortest poem ever...

George MacDonald was born in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in 1824. After studying Moral Philosophy and Sciences at Aberdeen University, he trained for the Congregational church, but his liberal views prevented him from being successful as a minister. He was, however, successful as a writer, giving expression to his religious beliefs through allegorical novels and poetry, notably Phantastes (1858). Although best know now for his classic books for children, poetry started off his life of prolific production and continued to feature during the following four decades.

George MacDonald wrote what must be the shortest poem ever. It has only two words. The title is longer than the poem itself. 

The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs by George MacDonald

Come

Home. 

------------
That is it!



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A Broken Prayer - by George MacDonald

O Lord, my God, how long

Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy?
How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear
The murmur of Truth's crystal waters slide
From the deep caverns of their endless being,
But my lips taste not, and the grosser air
Choke each pure inspiration of thy will?

I am a denseness 'twixt me and the light;
I cannot round myself; my purest thought,
Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth,
And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will.

I would be a wind
Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing,
All busy with the pulsing life that throbs
To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing
That has relation to a changeless truth,
Could I but be instinct with thee-each thought
The lightning of a pure intelligence,
And every act as the loud thunder-clap
Of currents warring for a vacuum.

Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe;
Purge me with sorrow; I will bend my head
And let the nations of thy waves pass over,
Bathing me in thy consecrated strength;
And let thy many-voiced and silver winds
Pass through my frame with their clear influence,
O save me; I am blind; lo, thwarting shapes
Wall up the void before, and thrusting out
Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon
Down to the night of all unholy thoughts.

Oh, when at midnight one of thy strong angels
Stems back the waves of earthly influence
That shape unsteady continents around me,
And they draw off with the devouring gush
Of exile billows that have found a home,
Leaving me islanded on unseen points,
Hanging 'twixt thee and chaos-I have seen
Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts,
And they have lent me leathern wings of fear,
Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust;
And Godhead, with its crown of many stars,
Its pinnacles of flaming holiness,
And voice of leaves in the green summer-time,
Has seemed the shadowed image of a self!
Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find
And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps
Of desolation.

O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well
Clad round with its own rank luxuriance;
A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for,
Sinking the lustre of its arrowy finger
Through the long grass its own strange virtue
Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal:
Make me a broad strong river coming down
With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts
Throb forth the joy of their stability
In watery pulses from their inmost deeps;
And I shall be a vein upon thy world,
Circling perpetual from the parent deep.

Most mighty One,
Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good;
Help me to wall each sacred treasure round
With the firm battlements of special action.
Alas, my holy happy thoughts of thee
Make not perpetual nest within my soul,
But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoop
The trailing glories of their sunward speed
For one glad moment, filling my blasted boughs
With the sunshine of their wings. Make me a forest
Of gladdest life wherein perpetual spring
Lifts up her leafy tresses in the wind.
Lo, now I see
Thy trembling starlight sit among my pines,
And thy young moon slide down my arching boughs
With a soft sound of restless eloquence!
And I can feel a joy as when thy hosts
Of trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands,
Roar upward through the blue and flashing day
Round my still depths of uncleft solitude.

Hear me, O Lord,
When the black night draws down upon my soul,
And voices of temptation darken down
The misty wind, slamming thy starry doors
With bitter jests:-'Thou fool!' they seem to say,
'Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; all
Thy nature hath been stung right through and through;
Thy sin hath blasted thee and made thee old;
Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it dead,
And with the fulsome garniture of life
Built out the loathsome corpse; thou art a child
Of night and death, even lower than a worm;
Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self,
And with what resolution thou hast left
Fall on the damned spikes of doom!'

Oh, take me like a child,
If thou hast made me for thyself, my God,
And lead me up thy hills. I shall not fear,
So thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sin
With the terrors of thine eye: it fears me not
As once it might have feared thine own good image,
But lays bold siege at my heart's doors.

Oh, I have seen a thing of beauty stand
In the young moonlight of its upward thoughts,
And the old earth came round it with its gifts
Of gladness, whispering leaves, and odorous plants,
Until its large and spiritual eye
Burned with intensest love: my God, I could
Have watched it evermore with Argus-eyes,
Lest when the noontide of the summer's sun
Let down the tented sunlight on the plain,
His flaming beams should scorch my darling flower;
And through the fruitless nights of leaden gloom,
Of plashing rains, and knotted winds of cold,
Yea, when thy lightnings ran across the sky,
And the loud stumbling blasts fell from the hills
Upon the mounds of death, I could have watched
Guarding such beauty like another life!
But, O my God, it changed!-
Yet methinks I know not if it was not I!
Its beauty turned to ghastly loathsomeness!
Then a hand spurned me backwards from the clouds,
And with the gather of a mighty whirlwind,
Drew in the glittering gifts of life.

How long, O Lord, how long?
I am a man lost in a rocky place!
Lo, all thy echoes smite me with confusion
Of varied speech,-the cry of vanished Life
Rolled upon nations' sighs-of hearts uplifted
Against despair-the stifled sounds of Woe
Sitting perpetual by its grey cold well-
Or wasted Toil climbing its endless hills
With quickening gasps-or the thin winds of Joy
That beat about the voices of the crowd!

Lord, hast thou sent
Thy moons to mock us with perpetual hope?
Lighted within our breasts the love of love
To make us ripen for despair, my God?

Oh, dost thou hold each individual soul
Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose?
Or does thine inextinguishable will
Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand
Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space
With mixing thought-drinking up single life
As in a cup? and from the rending folds
Of glimmering purpose, do all thy navied stars
Slide through the gloom with mystic melody,
Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul,
Hung like a dewdrop in thy grassy ways,
Drawn up again into the rack of change
Even through the lustre which created it?
-O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through
With scorching wrath, because my spirit stands
Bewildered in thy circling mysteries!

Oh lift the burdened gloom that chokes my soul
With dews of darkness; smite the lean winds of death
That run with howls around the ruined temples,
Blowing the souls of men about like leaves.

Lo, the broad life-lands widen overhead,
Star-galaxies arise like drifting snow,
And happy life goes whitening down the stream
Of boundless action, whilst my fettered soul
Sits, as a captive in a noisome dungeon
Watches the pulses of his withered heart
Lave out the sparkling minutes of his life
On the idle flags!

Come in the glory of thine excellence,
Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light,
And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels
Burn through the cracks of night! So slowly, Lord,
To lift myself to thee with hands of toil,
Climbing the slippery cliffs of unheard prayer!
Lift up a hand among my idle days-
One beckoning finger: I will cast aside
The clogs of earthly circumstance and run
Up the broad highways where the countless worlds
Sit ripening in the summer of thy love.
Send a clear meaning sparkling through the years;
Burst all the prison-doors, and make men's hearts
Gush up like fountains with thy melody;
Brighten the hollow eyes; fill with life's fruits
The hands that grope and scramble down the wastes;
And let the ghastly troops of withered ones
Come shining o'er the mountains of thy love.

Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening down
Upon my head like snowflakes, shutting out
The happy upper fields with chilly vapour.
Shall I content my soul with a weak sense
Of safety? or feed my ravenous hunger with
Sore purged hopes, that are not hopes but fears
Clad in white raiment?

The creeds lie in the hollow of men's hearts
Like festering pools glassing their own corruption;
The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval,
And answer not when thy bright starry feet
Move on the watery floors: oh, shake men's souls
Together like the gathering of all oceans
Rent from their hidden chambers, till the waves
Lift up their million voices of high joy
Along the echoing cliffs! come thus, O Lord,
With nightly gifts of stars, and lay a hand
Of mighty peace upon the quivering flood.

O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee?
I am a child lost in a mighty forest;
The air is thick with voices, and strange hands
Reach through the dusk, and pluck me by the skirts.
There is a voice which sounds like words from home,
But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems
To leap from rock to rock: oh, if it is
Willing obliquity of sense, descend,
Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand,
And lead me homeward through the shadows.
Let me not by my wilful acts of pride
Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow
A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on
Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth
And leaden confidence.

(George MacDonald was a 19th century minister and author from Scotland)

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Lent poem by Katherine Middleton

Forty Days 

A poem by Katherine Middleton*

A journey lasting forty days

through barren country, bare of shoots,

still in the grip of winter's chill,

where plants lie frozen at the roots.

Take us, as days grow longer, and

the sun gains strength to melt the frost,

onward towards Jerusalem,

where one man's death redeemed the lost.

Though all seems dead, the buds break through

and bright Lent lilies nod and wave,

as from the gloom of Lent's dark days

he springs victorious from the grave.

* This Katherine Middleton is different to the one who married into the English Royal family.


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Keep it simple...

"Franciscanism is sometimes called an alternative orthodoxy because it invites us all to sit at God's One Abundant Table, while much of the Christian tradition has set a scarce table for very few. The Church too often assumed that people were very simple and so we had to make the laws complex to protect them from themselves. Jesus and Francis recognized that people are endlessly diverse, complex and mysterious, and we had best make the law very simple. Just love your neighbor exactly as you love yourself."

from Gateway to Silence by Richard Rohr

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February thanksgiving prayer

Thank you God

for the noticeably lengthening days

the lighter mornings and evenings

and the sense of expectation

from the sense of edging slowly towards the cusp of spring.

As the dark days of winter recede

we see the promise of spring

in the budding bulbs

popping up in the still cold earth.

For your faithfulness

shown in the rolling round of the seasons

we give you thanks.

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A prayer for Lent

It is my Lent to break my Lent,

To eat when I would fast,

To know when slender strength is spent,

Take shelter from the blast

When I would run with wind and rain,

To sleep when I would watch.

It is my Lent to smile at pain

But not ignore its touch.

It is my Lent to listen well

When I would be alone,

To talk when I would rather dwell

In silence, turn from none

Who call on me, to try to see

That what is truly meant

Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be

It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.

-Madeleine L’Engle  

Enfolding

God to enfold me

God to surround me

God in my speaking 

God in my thinking 

God in my sleeping

God in my waking

God in my watching

God in my hoping

God in my life

God in my lips

God in my hands

God in my heart

God in my sufficing

God in my slumber

God in mine ever living soul

God in mine eternity

- Ancient Celtic Prayer

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A prayer for the beginning of Lent

"Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your loves sake. Amen." 

(Book of Common Prayer)

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Prayer for before a nativity play..

Today we praise you father God

in words and in music

and through the creative retelling of

the old familiar Christmas story.

This is a story we have heard from childhood

a story that has become part of us through repetition

It is a very familiar story

yet still we find we wonder and praise God

at the immensity of the story behind the tales of shepherds, angels and kings.

It is the story of the mighty God, the creator of heaven and earth

coming to earth in unbelievable vulnerability

as a baby

born in an insanitary and dangerous place and time

in a borrowed cowshed

where danger lurked in the shadows cast by Herod and Rome.

And as we ponder on this amazing initiative by God

we realise that this is always the way that God works:

coming in seeming weakness

speaking through the small and vulnerable.

God's way is a path that is often difficult for us to follow

for it goes against the accepted ways of the world:

The path of following Jesus

brings great reward but does not promise an easy journey.

Written by me December 2015

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Risk

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool,
To weep is to risk being called sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk showing your true self.
To place your ideas and your dreams before the crowd is to risk being called naive.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure

But risks must be taken, because the greatest risk in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom.
Only the person who risks is truly free.

An inspirational piece of writing by Janet Rand.

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Love yourself too...

"Love is the centre and the core of everything, and that Self is the place where all love must begin. Those who love others grandly are those who love themselves grandly. Those who have a high toleration and acceptance of others are those who have a high toleration and acceptance of themselves. You cannot show another a part of you that you cannot show yourself. Therefore, begin where all growth, where all evolution, where all love must begin: with the person in the mirror.

Will you not love yourself grandly today? For the world's sake?"



Neale Donald Walsch

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summer prayer

Under the warmth of the summer sun
the world awakes and blossoms into every imaginable color.
You created a garden for us to enjoy
and within it planted the most magical of flower and trees.
You needed no horticultural training to plan your color scheme,
no gardening expert to recommend variety or design.
Your garden is perfect its colors harmonious its scale immense
spoilt only by the clumsiness of those who tend it.

Creator God who breathed this world into being
who is discernible within the harmony of nature,
the perfection of a butterfly's wing,
the grandeur of a mountain range,
and the soaring eagle and humming bird,
thank you for this world which you have created.
Thank you for summer sun which reminds us
that your creative breath is still alive and active.
Thank you for the warmth of your love
sustaining this world: your garden.
- John Birch, Summer prayer

Glory

Glory to you for flowing air.
Glory for light beyond compare.
Glory for water as it flows.
Glory for soil and all that grows.
Glory for life and love and birth.
Glory to you, Lord of the Earth. 

- David Adam,' The Open Gate: Celtic Prayers for Growing Spiritually'

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Summer prayer

Father, Creator of all, thank You for summer!
Thank you for the warmth of the sun and the increased daylight.
Thank You for the beauty I see all around me
and for the opportunity to be outside and enjoy Your creation.
Thank You for the increased time I have to be with my friends and family,
and for the more casual pace of the summer season.
Draw me closer to You this summer.
Teach me how I can pray no matter where I am or what I am doing.
Warm my soul with the awareness of Your presence
and light my path with Your Word and Counsel.
As I enjoy Your creation,
create in me a pure heart and a hunger and a thirst for You.
Amen

- Summer prayer from ‘Ignatian spirituality’

 Image "Yellow Cosmos Flower And Blue Sky" courtesy of Sura Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A summer prayer

Father, Creator of all, thank You for summer!
Thank you for the warmth of the sun and the increased daylight.
Thank You for the beauty I see all around me
and for the opportunity to be outside and enjoy Your creation.
Thank You for the increased time I have to be with my friends and family,
and for the more casual pace of the summer season.
Draw me closer to You this summer.
Teach me how I can pray no matter where I am or what I am doing.
Warm my soul with the awareness of Your presence
and light my path with Your Word and Counsel.
As I enjoy Your creation,
create in me a pure heart and a hunger and a thirst for You.
- Summer prayer from ‘Ignatian spirituality’

(Photo by me.)

I wish you...

"I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys 
in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final goodbye."

- Unity Church, 'I Wish You Enough'

Image "Family" courtesy of arztsamui  / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

peace

“Peace is not the product of terror or fear.

Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.

Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.

Peace is the generous,

tranquil contribution of all

to the good of all.

Peace is dynamism.

Peace is generosity.

It is right and it is duty.” 

― Oscar A. Romero

photo by me

Looking ahead

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;
Rather look to them with full hope that as they arise,
God, whose very own you are,
will lead you safely through all things;
And when you cannot stand it,
God will carry you in His arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
The same everlasting Father who cares for you today
will take care of you today and every day.
He will either shield you from suffering or will give you
unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace and put aside all anxious thoughts
and imaginations.
- St. Francis de Sales

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Using time

May the God of time and eternity
who gave us twenty four hours in each day. 
Enliven your senses so that you may truly 
See what you are looking at 
Taste what you are eating 
Listen to what you are hearing
Face what you are suffering 
Celebrate the ways that you are loved 
And offer whatever you are doing to God. 
So that the water of the present moment 
may be turned into wine. 
- Ray Simpson, Prayer Rhymes for busy people

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