Giving the Peace

Sitting next to me in the pew there was somebody new in church today. She wasn't new to me.We had met before, a long time ago and since lost touch with each other. It was great to make contact again. It's a lovely congregation isn't it" she said and this made me see my parish church afresh. How it is a place where there is so much love, where every one is made welcome, where when we are invited to say"Peace be with you," to one another, everyone around me gives me hugs and kisses. It made me think about why I attend every Sunday, why in this mixed "rainbow" congregation  I have a feeling of belonging that I do not have anywhere else.

It also made me realise why, in spite of the doubts that often plague me, I am a Christian and have been for most of my life. I see how this wonderful faith, a faith base on love, has inspired ordinary people . My devout parents dedicated their lives to helping others. Seated around me during this service are numbers of people doing unselfish loving things. One regularly visits prisons, another provides sandwiches for the poor, another has fought tirelessly for justice in this country. I could go on and on.

If I am deluded, as my atheist friends tell me,I decide, that deluded is what I wish to continue to be.

In praise of MOOCs

Having just finished an Online Astronomy course called Orion in the night Sky. I started another one, this time simply called Moons.  "Orion" was stimulating and exciting: Moons is  astonishing, amazing, fabulous and any other superlatives you can think of. It is, I am afraid,a little too much for me. I  really need to do it all over again.  There is just so much information to process. Astronomy is all very new to me. All I knew about Moons is what I learnt more than sixty years ago in School Geography class. I became interested in stars when I joined a U3A tour to Sutherland to see the SALT telescope. I meant to read up more about the subject, but only when I had become a bit bored after finishing a poetry course and having time to spare,did I look up other possible courses on the Internet and found these two on Futurelearn.  These courses are run by the Open University and they are excellent. The material is well presented and easy to read and as for the illustrations... I can only say WOW. They comprise wonderful pictures from NASA taken on different space probes. These are quite spectacular!

Some more poems

JUST A LITTLE TIME

When you are old, time gets out of hand.

Like water in a muddy dam, its sluice gates open

to spew out effluent cascades.  Your feeble fingers

can’t stem the flow. Brown clouds of days

rush past. You clutch at them,

but as you try to keep them back

they twist and swirl away,

turn into weeks and then to years.

Until all that is left is

a shrunken puddle

on a sandy floor.

THE SCENT OF ROSEMARY

The bitter scent of rosemary 

calls to me from the bush

that once grew by the door.

of a house full of girl-children, set

in a garden with a daisy-bordered lawn

and a cypress tree. .

Round-faced Dalena  kept floors polished

and windows clean. Old Soppy tended

flowerbeds and sold my green beans on the sly.

Now −

both in their graves, the lawn paved over

and the cypress tree chopped down.

CAROL SINGING IN AN OLD AGE COMPLEX

As the moon, one day from full, stares pale

through clumps of cirrus cloud,

we bring our candles and our hymn sheets,

and gather at the gate to start

our pilgrimage around the cottages.

A singer in a motor-wheelchair leads the way

and bringing up the rear, another singer

leans on a walker.

Our choirmaster gives the note

and off we go. We stumble into “Bethlehem.”

Our voices tremble on the damp night air

then swell. Sound spreads, doors open,

hands wave out of windows.

Soft drizzle sparkles in our hair.

We visit all the units

one by one.

Legs weary, breath a little short,

song starts to peter out, and then a woman,

surprised at hearing music by her door

comes out and looks confusedly about.

Through fog that fills her aging brain, recalls

something she first learnt at her mother’s knee and

joyfully, joins in with sweet soprano  Stille nacht,

Silent Night, Holy night

LEARNING ABOUT ORION

(After studying an online astronomy course)

In the constellation of Orion

somewhere halfway between

Red giant Betelgeuse

and White giant Rigel, lies

Orion Nebula, a fuzzy place,

where stars are born.

As Orion sweeps across the sky,

his hunting dogs beside him,

chasing the Pleiades, bow at the ready,

he carries below his belt the seeds

of suns. They swirl in multi-coloured clouds

of purple, yellow, green and blue.

In the wide disc which gathers round

a sphere that will become a new young sun,

are bits of debris, which, with dust

and ashes from celestial conflagrations

might form, after a million years

another Earth like ours

 

THE FUNERAL

I get there early to secure a seat.

The coffin is already there and the churchwarden

The coffin wears an outsized wreath

The warden, wears a white shirt and a tie

I kneel and say a prayer

A lay minister in a robe walks down the aisle

Women from the old age home take up their seats.

some people come in at the vestry door

I read the Service Order leaflet.

The lay minster blows in the mic

He shakes it to and fro and blows again.

Some people come to sit in the front pews

I read the book of Job in the Pew Bible

A child toddles up and down the aisle

The wind blows the altar candles out

The verger lights them all again.

I finish Job and start on Proverbs

The priest comes in and puts notes on the lectern

 He looks around and then walks out again.

The warden makes announcements I can’t hear

I finish Proverbs and begin The Psalms

The last of the pallbearers has arrived

They hoist the coffin skew; its wreath falls off

The verger picks it up and puts it back

The organ breaks into the March from Saul.

And now the service can begin.

WORDS FAIL ME.

Numbers were always unreliable.

ID, cell phone, credit card, the only ones

that ever stayed embedded in my brain

and as for names − many have long refused

to be attached to faces,

but now words, once dependable,

my very tools-of-trade,

are turning traitor.

It was the long ones started the rebellion,

the crossword puzzle ones – palaeontology,

Manichaeism, spectroscopy, all

went AWOL when I needed them.

Soon everyday ones joined the fun,

hiding under beds and behind cupboards,

having to be winkled out with

rakes and broom-handles.

Some, I believe, have gone for good.

They went and hid in luggage trunks

or old ice-chests and to make sure

I wouldn’t find them there,

they closed the lids down very tight.

And then they couldn’t open them and so

they suffocated –

serve them right!