Friday 27 March 2020

Hope - Emily Dickinson





A year or so ago, I decided to try and learn a poem every week - or so.

It wasn't entirely successful as a plan. A few weeks in, and I discovered that the poems I learned at the beginning of the month were more or less fully evaporated by the end. 'Hope is the thing with feathers', along with 'Prayer (1)', which I've already posted, was one of the many poems I learened and forgot.

It's good to revisit the poems some time later -they acquire new resonances and depths of meaning as life affects the way you see things.

Wednesday 25 March 2020

Dangerous Weathers


Image result for wild weather creative commons image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Storm_clouds.jpg

God,

ransack the littled ordered rooms of my dignity,

and cast me out into the wide and dangerous weathers of 

my deepest needs.



Author unknown, from Prayers for Hard Times collected by Becca Anderson, via Rev Andrew Dotchin Lent course 19th March 2020  


Ship


Heart




Prayer (1) George Herbert

PRayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
     Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
     The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre,
     Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
     The six-daies world transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and  blisse,
     Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
     Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The Milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

     Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,
     The land of spices; something understood.

 George Herbert - from 'The Temple' 1633