Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: camino, Christmas, pilgrimage, spain, wine
My Christmas presents this year had a bit of a theme:
I’m very happy with this. Keeping tastes of the Camino alive until I go again. And memories of a bottle of wine arriving with each solo meal. Salud!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, howard thurman, justice, Kingdom of God
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: asylum seekers, charles causley, Christmas, dickens, flight into egypt, great expectations, holy innocents, hope, icons, poetry, refugees
On retreat recently, I was privileged to spend time praying in front of this beautiful Icon of the Flight into Egypt. We remember today the Holy Family becoming asylum seekers, refugees escaping the murderous hate of Herod.
We remember too that this is not just part of the Bible stories but a part of the stories of the world today. We look to Syria, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo to see murderous rage against innocent people as power seeks to keep power.
And innocence can be destroyed in so many ways. I was reminded of Charles Causley’s Innocent’s Song while watching the first part of the BBC’s excellent new adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations last night with the games being played with the life of the young Pip.
Who’s that standing at the door,
What are all those presents
Laying on the kitchen floor?
Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?
Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why, when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?
Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?
Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?
Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talki ng:
Herod is his name.
santiago de chile 2011
You are my treasure,
my pearl beyond price.
I forsake all my riches,
my wealth in heaven,
to come and seek you out.
- JK Rowbory
Gerrit Van Hornthorst - The Adoration of the Children
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, leaps and bounds appeal, learning disabilities, monyhull, rspca, st bede's brandwood, st gabriel's weoley castle
Two highlights of Christmas so far. On Monday at St Gabriel’s we had, for the first time, the RSPCA Carol Service in Church and then at the Animal Centre.
As well as enjoying Christmas, with some very beautiful basset hounds inspecting the Crib, we were raising awareness of the RSPCA’s Leaps and Bounds Appeal for a new Animal Centre and Hospital.
Then, this morning, I travelled up the hill from St Bede’s to Monyhull Chapel for the Christmas Service with the Learning Disabilities Chaplaincy. There have been strong links between St Bede’s and Monyhull, not least during the period after the fire when St Bede’s congregation worshipped with the folk with learning disabilities. Since I have been Vicar, Rosemary and I have loved being a small part of the Chaplaincy Team, helping out when we are needed and sharing in services like today’s. My Grandad was Head Porter in one of the old hospitals and it means a lot to me to have this link. I learn as much about the nature of God and of love and community here as I do anywhere else.
I hope to post again over Christmas, although if I get lost in busyness, may I wish you all a Blessed Festival.
You are welcome to any of our services:
St Bede’s, Brandwood (B14 6NN)
Christmas Eve Children’s Carol Service 4pm; Midnight Eucharist 11.30pm; Christmas Morning Eucharist 11am.
St Gabriel’s, Weoley Castle (B29 5LT)
Christmas Eve Children’s Carol Service 2pm; Midnight Mass 11.30pm; Mass of Christmas Morning 9.30am.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: animals, Christmas, oxen, poetry, thomas hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
- Thomas Hardy
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Advent, camino, Camino de Levante, Camino Ingles, Christ the King, Christmas, generosity, graham greene, gratitude, humility, pilgrimage
Reflecting further on the themes of gratitude and generosity that I have touched on in the last few posts, there is also something about how one is able to receive.
the first sign on the Camino Ingles, Calle de Santiago, A Coruna
It would, I guess be possible to walk a Camino with little or no interaction with people along the way and to receive very little. I’m not sure what this would feel like. I try hard not to impose or to expect things (two exceptions to this being on the Levante, on one occasion when I was lost and made a car stop for advice, and once when I had run out of water and was in danger of heat exhaustion). But I suppose I do try to interact with people I meet along the way as much as possible. My Spanish is limited (and I am determined to be reasonably fluent in a few years) but I try to speak to people, greeting them, asking them the way, if they know where a shop or bar is, talking about the Camino. And people have been unfailingly kind in return. You will find examples sprinkled through my posts on the Levante and the Ingles, although I have tried not to identify individuals along the Way.
I recently read this in Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train:
He was tied by her agreement, by her refusal to make any claim. Before so complete a humility one could be nothing else but generous.
I’m not claiming this for myself, but there is something here about a state of being that helps others to act in a generous way.
On this Feast Of Christ the King, and as we begin to look towards Christmas, there is also clearly something here about the nature of Jesus Christ and how we should respond to him and to other people.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer, RS Thomas, the echoes return slow
A Christmas meditation and poem from RS Thomas’ remarkable book ‘The Echoes Return Slow’
Town Christmases, country ones, sea Christmases are all transcended, perhaps, in nativities of the spirit. If one cannot have the lights and festivities of the town, one can celebrate the coming of three waves from afar, who fall down, offering their gifts to what they do not understand.
This is the wrong Christmas
in the right place: mistletoe
water there is no kissing
under, the soused holly
.
of the wrack, and birds coming
to the bird-table with
no red on their breast. All
night it has snowed
.
foam on the splintering
beaches, but the dawn-
wind carries it away, load
after load, and look,
.
the sand at the year’s
solstice is young flesh
in a green crib, product
of an immaculate conception.
Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it – because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it – his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.
This powerful Christmas quotation comes from Thomas Merton’s essay ‘The Time of the End is the Time of No Room’. I wonder if the birth of the Baby in Bethlehem might be a spur for us to work out how we can create room for God in this world, especially for those in whom he is most present, the least of his brothers and sisters (and to do this throughout the year and throughout our lives, not just at Christmas).
May Christ,
who by his incarnation gathered into one
things earthly and heavenly,
fill you with joy and peace.
