Author: mrgsponderings

Where prayer is valid

Little Gidding Church | photo Mr G

Today the Church of England remembers Nicholas Ferrar.
He is forever connected with Little Gidding which is near Huntingdon. It here that he founded a community to live a life of prayer. This was in 1625. Their prayer was based on the Book of Common Prayer which was that of Edward VI (1559). The Community gathered in the Church at Little Gidding to say Morning and Evening Prayer together with reciting the Psalms. They also maintained a ceaseless intercession. They set up a school for local children, cared for the local sick and helped to relieve the destitute.
Nicholas was a deacon and the community was made up of his immediate family. The community was broken up by the Puritans after Nicholas’s death who feared that it was bent on re-introducing Romish practices into England. (Despite their prayer being based on the Church of England’s Prayer Book!) The Puritans demonstrated what alas is still prevalent today—that fear often leads people to act irrationally and often cruelly.

The memory of the Ferrars lived on and this had much to do with the consecration of the Church at Little Gidding by constant and faithful prayer. It has many visitors, apart from this summer, of course.
Its fame today also has much to do with the 20th Century poet, T.S.Eliot,  who wrote about Little Gidding in a poem of that name which was published in his Four Quartets. It was of Little Gidding that Eliot wrote:

“You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity, Or carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid.”

That is certainly true of Little Gidding where the prayers of countless pilgrims have soaked into the very atmosphere of the place, and indeed formed that ‘atmosphere’. Well might we say with Jacob in Genesis 28:17, ‘How awesome is this place.; this is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.
This is a meeting place with the Holy Spirit.

For Eliot, prayer is ‘more than a form of words’ which are often inadequate. The Holy Spirit transforms our efforts, however halting, into a powerful utterance which turns buildings such as the church at Little Gidding into portals through which we seek and find a glimpse of heaven. In such places, not all by any means churches, we can sense that the divide between earth and heaven, between us and God, is tissue paper thin.These ‘thin’ places are where Heaven and earth seem to touch. The eternal breaks though. The extraordinariness of God meets with the ordinariness of our lives and reveals the glory within.
These become in some way ‘places of Resurrection’, and you may perhaps revisit some of the places which have become special meeting places with God in your own lives.
Just being able to visit them in your memories may be just as valid because Whilst it is possible, in the words of T S Eliot in Dry Salvages we can have the experience but miss the meaning, it is more likely that the sense of being in God’s presence never leaves us. We can visit the memory and call to mind what God has already shown us – his love. We re-member this as surely as we re-member Jesus in the Eucharist or in his drawing of us safely to heaven. A past experience becomes immediate again.

The search for one’s place of Resurrection is not necessarily a physical journey but it is always a spiritual one. All of us are on a pilgrimage, a journey to where we belong and that journey is towards God. In this journey, as a friend of mine once said, “we are to ask that ‘the journey be long, full of adventures, full of things to learn.’ The significance of the destination is that it gives a reason for the journey. Desire for the homeland, longing for God, quest of whatever Grail we seek” (Ronald Trounson)

One certainty is that on this journey, in those places where we meet him, God touches our hearts wth his love again and again and it is this that ultimately makes all our prayers valid.
Little Gidding and Nicholas Ferrar bear testimony to that.

Loving God, the Father of all,
whose servant Nicholas Ferrar
renounced ambition and wealth
to live in a household of faith and good work:
keep us in the right way of service to you
so that, feasting at the table in your household,
we may proclaim each day the coming of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

[GC]

Give me a candle of the Spirit

This prayer by George Appleton is inspiring a short series of Advent meditations at St. Mary-at-Latton in Harlow.

The prayers of George Appleton are probably not so well-known these days but deserve to be rediscovered.

He was Archbishop of Perth and of Jerusalem after a varied and long ministry which included Burma during the war and Rector of St. Botolph’s Aldgate. The main thrust of his ministry was Mission but he will be best remembered by many as a ‘shaper of souls’ who, through his writings and particularly, his prayers, touched peoples’ hearts of faith and enriched their spirituality, including mine.

Little birds of Clothall

I’ve just been to church in Clothall, near Baldock.

Every year, at the beginning of Advent, there is a wonderful Advent Service with music, imaginative readings, beautiful prayers and all the enthusiasm of people intent on praising God at the beginning of the very special season of Advent. A season, which oddly this year, we are more free to celebrate and enter into its meaning.

So often, Advent is dwarfed by all the hype leading up to Christmas and we miss out on so much of preparation, not so much for the feasting and revelry and frenetic shopping, but the real Preparation. Advent is a time when We are prepared for Christmas, as one of the clergy reminded us tonight.

As we continue to be affected by the Virus and the change in life lockdowns of various types bring, the Advent message and celebration has so much to say to us and to uplift our hearts, minds, souls at this time.

I say I went to Church at Clothall, but this year it was a ‘virtual’ visit by way of Zoom. But somehow, those clever Christians there made it just as extra special as it usually is. We even had a live demonstration of making an Advent Ring. A talented lady made it look so easy! (but it’s not!) Thankfully, her husband was on hand to turn off the smoke alarm when the first Candle was lit and set it off! That too, brought its own contribution to a unique service.

Above you will see a detail of some of the Clothall birds in the East Window.
They’ve been strutting their stuff since the 14th century, I think. They have danced through quite a lot then! And that includes a lot of dark days in our human journey. They’re still there, so hopefully, they can encourage us that, indeed all this shall pass and we will be enriched, renewed and, even maybe set on fire like that Advent candle, by God’s love and the demonstration of it in the birth of our Saviour.

Sing and strut with the Birds of Clothall this Advent! And, as our friends in Sweden say, Glad första Advent, kära vänner!
(Happy first day of Advent, dear friends!)

Mr. G

Another Lakeland Rainbow

My friend Gill Henwood, who wrote about Tarn Hows and created the poem has sent me another photo she took of a rainbow over the Lakeland fells.

A reminder to us in these difficult winter days when there is so much heartache and anguish around that there is always a rainbow. God is constantly walking through the darkness and showing us the promise of light and that, indeed, all this shall pass. Or as St. John of the Cross puts it so much better:

“God passes through the thicket of the world, and wherever His glance falls He turns all things to beauty.”                 

Nowhere is this more true than in the Christmas Incarnation of Jesus, the light and Saviour of the world. He is the rainbow bringing a new perspective and promise of what is to come. Jesus is God’s glance of love pushing back the darkness and pointing our hearts to a new beauty.

Thank you Gill for this reminder of God’s love and care for us.

Mr. G