Beech Tree, Lake District, photographed by Gill Henwood
My friend Gill has sent me this wonderfully autumnal photo and poem.
Beech in Autumn
Fallen beech leaves, copper shining with rain, carpeting the grey slate with burnished glow of the changing season
As the tree sheds her leaves after another year, her bare skeleton speaks of hope and renewal: that one day, after the cold frosts, bitter winds and ice, warmth and buds of growth will come again, anew, afresh.
She is over a century old. She bears witness this Samhain, All Hallows, All Saints, Remembering.
This wonderful photo of a sunrise was sent to me this week by my friend, Gill Anderson.
With so much of our news shrouded in darkness, horror and misery, there is something very joyful in this photo. It exhilarates and somehow, it reassures. Despite all the uncertainty we can take some comfort that the morning sun has, in the words of the writer of the biblical book, Ecclesiastes, ‘hurried to the place where it rises. (Eccles 1:5).
Its rays reflecting on the stillness of the waves, penetrate the darkness. The sky is full of promise, hope and expectation. Pondering over the view, I have a sense that God is reminding us that in the words of the Prologue in the Gospel account of St. John (1:14), all Life is both a gift and intention of God – without him, nothing came into being, and what has come into being is life. This is a life which fills all people, though as we are seeing, that is not immediately obvious in so many different parts of our world. But St John insists it is so. Real life has come into being in Jesus, God’s divine Son, who is pure Light. For us, wandering around in darkness, St John tells us, The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. As I looked at the light coming over the land in the photo, I just thought, we really do have to hold on to that. Many of the media photos and news events show us graphically, places and people overwhelmed with the darkness of destruction – naming Gaza and Ukraine as just two places among so many. It’s so easy to become depressed and despairing when just a few men (it’s always men!) act against so many billions of people. Why are we letting this happen?
However, there is a way forward and hope tells me that despite all the suffering and pain, death and the spiritual destruction of innocent children, there will be justice and there will at some point be peace. There will be love again. This is my hope and the subject of so many of my prayers.
I must now reveal something very important about this photo. My friend Gill Anderson took it, as I say, from her bedroom window. She was looking at the water which is actually, the Sea of Galilee. She , her husband and fellow travellers were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It became somewhat thwarted but they still managed to see some of the important sites held dear by Christians. She saw the Sea of Galilee but was unable to sit in a boat upon it which was a plan. Instead she was soon to travel to Jordan and relative safety and then home. She did not then fully know that, not that many miles away, a very different dawn was enfolding. Hamas had worked its evil and the Israeli Defence Force had retaliated. We are still in the midst of that deep darkness which engulfs the Holy Land and also Gaza.
But there, at Lake Galilee, there was a sense of history too, and of association with what we Christians see as the heart of our Salvation. For Galilee played a huge and significant part in both Old Testament and New Testament times. It was by its shores that Jesus chose his first disciples, four fisherman who fished in the waters there. By its shores, Jesus healed many people. He fed 5,000 on the foothills near the water. There, also, he cooked breakfast for his disciples after the Resurrection. He was intimate with its moods especially when he stilled a storm which threatened his followers, whilst he, at home with every element, had a little sleep. Most of all, he often prayed there.
Galilee was the backdrop for so much that became our Christian understanding of Salvation, eternal love and new life. Might it become therefore a place where, drawing inspiration from this sunrise, we dare to place our hopes, our desires, our prayers, into a new dawn which will rise in the hearts of all those engaged in war, violence, deceit and meting out suffering on others. I believe we must pray for a better way of life for all as we work together to bring a new light, symbolized by this photo, to a broken and desperate world. The Light of Love. In the words of the Prophet Isaiah, speaking not that far from Galilee: The book of the Prophet Isaiah Chapter 9: verse 1 & 2.
But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined
An extract from Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Address when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984
“Unless we work assiduously so that all of God’s children, our brothers and sisters, members of our one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of movement, of work, the freedom to be fully human, with a humanity measured by nothing less than the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself, then we are on the road inexorably to self-destruction, we are not far from global suicide; and yet it could be so different.
When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to become truly free, to become human. We can be human only in fellowship, in community, in koinonia, in peace.
Let us work to be peacemakers, those given a wonderful share in Our Lord’s ministry of reconciliation. If we want peace, so we have been told, let us work for justice. Let us beat our swords into ploughshares.
God calls us to be fellow workers with Him, so that we can extend His Kingdom of Shalom, of justice, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of sharing, of laughter, joy and reconciliation, so that the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen.”
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu
Mr G's Ponderings 