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Dear Friends,

I was struggling to think of something to write today - my mind clouded by all the different things going on: praying for certain people, planning mutual aid fundraising, wondering how to do Holy Week from lockdown. Then in the midst of mass this morning the words of Jesus struck me - "Before Abraham ever was, I am". We know from the prologue to the Gospel of John that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." We know that Jesus existed, as God, at creation, and we know that the existence of God, summed up by the name God gives Moses at the burning bush, "I am" - Yahweh - is one of living in the eternal present. And that eternal present is as present in the past - "Before Abraham ever was, I am" - as in the present and in the future. As the letter to the Hebrews puts it "
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

Thinking of all this, my mind returned to the opening words of TS Eliot's wonderful poem, Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets:


Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

The poem recounts, with Eliot's typical abstraction, a visit to the mysterious Cotswold manor house of the same name with Emily Hale, who may have been his lover. It was known as Burnt Norton because part of the house burnt down, just after it had been built. In the garden of the manor house, in the rose garden, Eliot has a mystical moment when time stands still, and a dry pool seems to fill with water in the autumn sun:

Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

Eliot spends the rest of the poem trying to process, and trying to return to the beauty of this moment. He eventually finds an answer in prayer, when he goes to the small church of Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire:

 

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city--
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

The call of being a Christian is to make time to connect into the eternal present of God, to turn aside from our fixation with a past that cannot be changed, to turn aside from our cares and worries about the future, "For who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life", and to seek God wherever we are, however we are feeling, in this moment of time, which is the only time and place we can find God, here and now. 

At a time like this, when our lives are full of the stress of daily living an anxiety about the future - wondering how and when all of this will end - this can be a hard thing to do, to step into the present. Sometimes I'm, even slightly scared of finding out how I really feel, apart from the many distractions with which we fill our days. And yet, at other times, when the sun glints on the forget-me-nots in the vicarage garden, when I feel the peace of the woods when I'm walking Pippin, when I turn aside to look at the sun setting over the brow of Queen's wood to the west, I know that God and God's love is here among us, even at this time. I'll leave you with a poem by RS Thomas, which makes the same point in a simpler way:

 

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

With love and prayers,

Fr Ben

 

 
Services at Holy Innocents
 
Join us online for our Palm Sunday Service from the vicarage at 10.00am on Sunday.

Every week day there will be a mass at 9.30am,
with these exceptions

Maundy Thursday: Mass of the Lord's Supper, 8.00pm 
Good Friday: Liturgy of the Day, 12.00pm 
Holy Saturday: Morning Prayer with silence, 9.30am
                         Easter Vigil, 8.00pm 

Easter Sunday: Mass, 10.00am 

All our services will be streamed here

We will also embed the Sunday Services on our website

 
HI Kids online
 
Clem will be posting a short video for kids on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, after the main service. Each video will include story telling and a craft activity to do at home with your kids. They will be streamed here
 
Compline
 
Clem will be live streaming a short service of compline each day at 9pm. Everybody is welcome to join her - a lovely way to end the day.  Click on the link above to join in.
 
Catch up and Pray
 
On Sunday at 5, I will be hosting our first zoom meeting, a chance to catch up with other members of the congregation and pray together. Zoom is an excellent tool for a big group to be able to see and speak to one another. This week I've already conducted a governors meeting, an interview, a supervision, a spiritual direction session and a clergy chapter all from my own living room!  Clinking this link you can reach the zoom meeting (you'll need to download the app if you don't already have it, you'll need either a laptop or a smart phone). Looking forward to meeting some of you there on Sunday for a catch up. Let me know if you need any help setting it up. 
The Angelus Prayer
I can no longer toll out the church bells, but I still invite you to join me at 12 with the Angelus prayer, which I will pray every day from home
 

The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary: 
And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of
our death. Amen.
 

Behold the handmaid of the Lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

Hail Mary...
 

And the Word was made Flesh: And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary...


Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. 

Let us pray:

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord.

Amen. 

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