Month: June 2023

Hands shaped like a cradle

Put peace into each other’s hands. (Hands shaped like a cradle)

We sang this hymn yesterday at Church and, given the words, I am surprised how little I have sung it.
Against the background of increasing war, violence, anger and darkness in our world , it is very appropriate to use this song to open our hearts to prayer and meditation.
It offers a hope and an aspiration for a better way of living and being by reaching out in love and compassion to others. The version above is offered as a poem. It is the second version of the hymn.

It was written by Fred Kaan. He was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands in 1929 and was baptized but the family were not regular churchgoers. During the Nazi occupation, three of his grandparents died of starvation. His parents were deeply involved in the resistance movement in Holland and took in a number of refugees.
Fred became a pacifist in his teens and also began attending church.
He later moved to the United Kingdom where he joined the Congregational Church, (later to be known as the United Reform Church). He was ordained in 1955 in Barry, Glamorgan. In 1963 he was called to be the minister of the Pilgrim Church in Plymouth. It was whilst here that he began to write hymns.

In these hymns he was driven by his desire to work for peace and justice in the world.
The hymn, Put Peace into each other’s hands, (also known as Hands shaped like a Cradle) expresses this completely.
Of it, Fred said:
“This hymn was born when I watched people go forward to the altar rail to receive Communion: they shaped their hands like a cradle to receive the bread. (Bethlehem — house of bread — did not fully live up to its name until Jesus, the bread of life, was laid in the manger!)”

The Inter-faith version was a re-write asked for by the Chaplain of the recently opened Bolton Hospice, It was sung at the first anniversary of the Hospice opening. The Chaplain, Jim Hollyman soon recognized that the Hospice was caring for people who were also from the Muslim and Hindu faiths, so he asked Fred if he would write new verses which could be used on multi-faith occasions. This, Fred gladly did.
He continued to write hymns throughout his life.

He died in 2009 and some of his ashes are buried in the graveyard at St. Patrick’s Church on the shore of Ullswater, near his last home in the Lake District. He had asked that on his memorial stone, words from his hymn, Put peace into each other’s hands be engraved. The first verse marks his grave as does the two things of which he will be justly remembered:
Pastor & Hymn Writer.

Lord, we ask you please, to place yourself into our hands,
so that we may hold the hands of the fearful, the pain-filled,
the anxious, the homeless and the dying.
Help us to reach out in love and friendship to all in need
and touch all who despair, lack hope and long to know your
peace and justice in their lives.
Make us cradles to enfold everyone we meet ,
with your saving love.

[Mr G]

The Jays come to call

The Jay (a.k.a. Garrulus glandarius : chattering, noisy ; of acorns)

These photos of two baby Jays were taken in Latton Vicarage Garden by my friend, Lynn Hurry. Our intrepid photographer had to hide in the lower branches of a pear tree to get them and emerged covered in bugs, leaves, bits of wood and blossom. Sadly, there was no one on hand to take a photo of her!

A JAY WRITES A LETTER

I decorate your garden with my finery
but you do not trust me.
Some say that I am always up to no good.
A reputation for being shifty, flighty, mischievous,
precedes me;
more kindly I am a scallywag.
But do you notice how shy I am?
Perhaps you are distracted by my piercing ‘call’.
Dismissed as a chatterbox, incessant talker,
your proper name for me is ‘garrulous.’
Hardly, ‘reserved’!
Maybe those who are more suited to quietness
speak the loudest to hide our true nature.
How better to disguise myself as I search for acorns,
my Winter food.
I have a knack for foresight and planning.
I do not fear discovery from my well disguised hiding.
So be nice to me.
I bring colour and joy to your lives,
if you but look.

[Mr G]

A Tale

The crow and the pitcher

The Intelligence of the Corvidae family was observed 2,500 years ago by the famous Greek fabulist, Aesop. Here’s the tale, taken from the BBC website, about the crow and the pitcher:

One day, after a spell of hot weather which has dried up all the streams and ponds, the crow fears it will die of thirst. Coming upon a pitcher of water left in a garden, the crow tries to drink from it, but there is only a little water left in the bottom, and his beak can’t reach it. Having thought for a while, the crow hits upon the solution of dropping in pebbles until the water level rises sufficiently for him to drink.

The moral is: little by little does the trick

All photos by The Revd Lynn Hurrry

Mid Summer

*Climbing Rose Felicity & Perpetua. Photographed by Alan Roden*

The photo was sent to me by my friend Alan Roden.
It is of a special rose named after the early Christian martyrs, Felicity and Perpetua who were put to death for their faith in
Jesus Christ, on March 7^th, 203AD

The Félicité-Perpétue, was developed in 1827 by Antoine A. Jacques was head gardener to the Duc d’Orleans, the future Louis-Philippe I, in Château de Neuilly. It is a sempervirens (everblooming) hybrid with a delicate primrose fragrance. It’s reported that Jacques named it after Saints Felicity and Perpetua, , when there was an unexpected birth of twins in his own family; and the newborns were given the saints’ names.
It was introduced into Britain in 1928 and, in 1993, it was given the RHS Award of Garden Merit.

Alan told me that Three years ago I bought this climbing rose named after the two Saints and being inquisitive as always, researched them and was greatly moved. Alan told me,
“The rose now produces masses of flowers over an arch I made and transforms our garden for an all too brief time.”
It is often known as The Martyr’s Rose.

It is also a sign of Summer and it is blooming now to celebrate Midsummer Day.
Another friend, Vincent , has sent me this short but profound observation.

Photo: Alan Roden Text from Vincent Emms. Prayer from Gill Henwood.

Red Kites

The human reputation about care and preservation of Nature and God’s Creation is not always a good one. On the whole humans are more prone to exploitation, persecution, destruction than we are on preservation and protection.
A reading of the poem of Creation, which begins the book of Genesis in the Bible, could convince us that human beings have a superior place in the pecking order of Creation. Indeed the writer of the poem observes that according to God’s word we are to subdue the world and have dominion over every living thing. This has led to a view that we have power over Creation which is exercised through control and domination. A development of this is that everything exists for the sake and use of the human race. This has led to a wanton destruction of the natural world—animals, birds, creatures of the sea and also of the natural resources which we have exploited for our own ends. Too often we have lost sight of something else expressed in the Genesis Creation poem, that everything in precious in the sight of God, the Creator. He clothes the lilies of the field and he watches over the birds of the air. Alongside the idea of ‘dominion’ is the principle of stewardship. We are custodians of the earth and of the world of nature and we are to be stewards. Stewards have to give account of their stewardship—and to God. So it is good to highlight something good that we have done in this respect.

I was reading recently about the successful project to save the Red Kite bird of prey which was facing extinction.
I first met these birds a few years ago when I was walking along the Ridgeway on the Buckingham/Oxfordshire border. My attention was attracted by large swooping birds which danced and wheeled on the horizon and then through the valley below before soaring up into the sky way above my head.
These birds were common in Shakespeare’s time. He mentions them in some of his plays.
In later times, they had a particular function when they were common in towns and cities where they scavenged for scraps. It was a crime to kill one as they were so useful for rubbish management. Then things changed for them.
Persecuted and made almost extinct, these amazing birds with their 185cm wingspan and striking eyes were in great danger.
Successful reintroduction projects have now helped the species to recover. They can be seen in a number of places. The best areas to find them in the UK are central Wales, central England – especially the Chilterns, central Scotland – at Argaty and along the Galloway Kite Trail.
They are a protected species under Schedule 1 of The Wildlife and Countryside Act.

RED KITES (Poem) GC 19.6.2023

We soar and swirl on the uplift of the wind
swooping gracefully,
wheeling majestically.
Free to be.

It was not ever thus.
Humans hated us, hunted, poisoned,
drove us away on orgy of persecution.
Lordship over the earth, over the world of nature,
is seemingly always stronger than stewardship.

Yet kind hearts,
Determined souls,
visionary aspirations,
saved us.

A new choreography for our dance of life
was composed,
nurturing, protecting the few of us left
but we did not trust them.

Yet over time, hesitantly,
responding to infinite patience and soft actions,
we became tender again to each other.
We bore young who knew no fear
nor the hate of others.
Springing into life they took flight,
joyfully circling and chasing and with speed.
Quite a performance!

We dance again.
We are high as Kites!

[Mr G. 19th June 2023]