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Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
Carol Ann Duffy
(From Mean Time)
This is both prayerful and liturgical. It’s hanging on to something familiar and snatching the wisp of blessing as it passes – a prayer that utters itself. The roll of the Shipping Forecast sounds prayerful – and like the best liturgy summons those things we need to keep remembering. It honours ‘Those that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters’ (Psalm 107).
Like liturgy it works best when heard and spoken (on Radio 4 at 12.01, 17.54 and at 00.48 or 5.36). The late night and early morning readings are the kinds of times you’re awake too long worrying or awake too early fretting. The kinds of times when it might feel like the ends of the earth.
And oddly enough, Duffy’s last word of prayer, Finisterre – finis terrae -literally the end of the earth – is where we end up in prayer. At the end of our known world.
The full liturgy of the daily Shipping Forecast is at the Met Office. The map doesn’t show Finisterre, which was once between Biscay and Sole. It was replaced in 2002 by Fitzroy.
We like howies. You don’t just buy clothes, but a set of values too.
The Spring catalogue comes in the post at the same time as Lent. One of the thoughtpieces nestling between the organic denim and the Merino wool t-shirts has a bit of the alt key about it.
We are creatures of habit.
Of routine.
We are all in our own groove.
So try new. Try different. Try crazy.
Try unexpected.
Like punk? Try opera.
Wear black? Try white.
Love bubbles? Try still.
Speak Spanish? Learn Chinese.
Love to ride? Try running.
Always grumpy? Try happy.
Like science fiction? Try romance.
Never cook? Bake some bread.
Forever cynical? Try love. Try trust. Try hope.
Take a different route to work.
Say yes when you mean no.
Wear your watch on the other hand.
Leave the comfort zone.
Lent has come to signify some kind of self-improvement programme, a time to develop new habits and abstain a while from something that has taken up too much room for itself in our lives. It can also be atime of hungering after God, a pause to get some re-tuning, re-aligning, re-booting of the soul done, to know the God who creates, sustains and inspires. To realise again dependence and trust on a Father.
‘You are a feather on the breath of God’ (Hildegaard of Bingen)
I’m supposed to be helping several groups think about strategic plans to safeguard their future. There comes a point where you just have to get on with it, and I find myself saying ‘You can’t do everything, but you can do something’ or some such organisational life coaching slogan. And then I found that some expert reckons that around 90% of plans are never implemented, so what’s the point of a plan? Except that thinking that something is doable is important for building confidence for battling with the dragons and finding your way in the dark.
Then I came across this which made me feel that the plan wasn’t the important thing, it was the thought that there was a plan.
“The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit out onto the icy wasteland. It began to snow immediately,snowed for two days and the unit did not return. The lieutenant suffered: he had dispatched
his own people to death. But the third day the unit came back. Where had they been? How had they made their way? Yes, they said, we considered ourselves lost and waited for the end. And then one of us found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down.
We pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm and then with the map we discovered our bearings.
And here we are.
The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map and had a good look at it. It was not a map of the Alps but of the Pyrenees.”
(A story from Miroslav Holub)
