Midwinter solstice storm Pia.
wild night blends into day
awakening prayers for all in danger ….
Storms of weather, war, wounded lives.
For those waiting for a new birth
Travellers, refugees, homeless.
Lord, have mercy
Send us your Christmas angels
The bright star of hope
The Christ child
[Gill Henwood]
Poem: O Child of promise come. First published on WordPress . Attributed anon.
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The Weight of our Sins.
In the Bishop’s Palace Gardens next to Wells Cathedral, there is an amazing and disturbing statue by Josefina de Vasconcellos. It is called, The weight of our Sins. It was carved in 1999.
It centres on a Cross which eight children are holding up. They are bearing its weight and each is symbolic of a crime against children today. There is young person suffering from AIDS; a teenage boy who is a drug addict; a child blinded by a land-mine; another child represents the homeless; a baby who is victim of genocide; a girl is dying after experiencing serial sexual abuse. Poverty, deprivation and pain are also part of the message.
Josefina had a deep compassion for disadvantaged and damaged children.
She was also inspired by her belief that loving God led people to love one another and therefore help build a peaceful world. Josefina’s concern was for so many in our world who suffer because of cruelty and inhumanity. She had a particular sadness and love for the most vulnerable in our society. Unable to have children, she had a special concern for them. Though she died in 2005 the meaning of the statue couldn’t be more pertinent than today.
Children are suffering appalling life conditions and not just in placers like Gaza, the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.
The tragedy of those forced from their homeland to live as refugees seeking the basic human need of shelter, food, water and warmth is something Josefina’s statue holds before us. Without doubt, one of the children clinging to the Cross would be representative of the boat people in the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
Another would possibly represent the children living in poverty and hunger in our own country. Having been brought up in the post war deprivation era it is hard to think that for many the conditions of that time are also still with us in the 21st century. Food Banks, substandard accommodation, debt and a sense that they don’t matter, is a scandal in a time when the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ feels closer to Victorian England.
I think Josefina would have wept to see what is happening today.
Her concern for the well-being of children was expressed through her art, but together with her husband, Delmar, she took it further.
Her faith in God and her devotion to the beauty of art and music, together with Delmar’s involvement as a Lay Reader in the Church of England’s ministry, led them to put their faith into action. They adopted two boys made orphaned by the Blitz on London; they opened their home to borstal boys whom she tried to encourage to express themselves through art and nature; they bought an old trawler and, after renovation and adaptation, moored it off the Cumbrian coast to provide an holiday experience for children coping with physical disability. She also created space, complete with appropriate sculptures for people whose children were stillborn.After her death, an Arts Trust was set up in her name which included the education and care of young people.
She named her Sculpture, The Weight of our Sins. It is a charge she laid against all who harm and destroy children and childhood, but it is also a plea for a more “ethical reflection on the issues of the modern world, the meaning of childhood and what part we need to have in producing change and as a source of inspiration for word, art and music”
The message is clear in the sculpture in Wells. We cannot ignore our responsibility to change things for the world’s young ones, suffering because of what the so-called adult world is doing to them. It is human sin which is crushing the vulnerable and innocent victims because of what we are doing.
It isn’t enough to say it’s too vast a problem for us to have any effect or change.
Of course it requires international and national solutions but we can all play our part. We can pray and believe that prayer changes things, not least our own perceptions. We can help to relieve poverty. I have friends involved in running Food Banks. All of these Banks need donation of food; The lady who sells me Big Issue magazine has a baby. Just buying the magazine, perhaps even giving more, helps her.
Supporting charities such as the Big Issue Foundation, Abraham’s Children in Crisis, Embrace the Middle East and a host of others is a good place to start. Small things bring big results. As Josefina said, loving God and caring for each other , can bring peace and love.
We can, if we accept our part in all this, move from being part of the burden which weighs down children to become those who help to raise them up with the weight of our love.
God of love,
We pray for peace in our world, and an end to war.
Instead of hatred, let there be love.
Shelter your children and protect us.
Guide us and keep us from harm,
so we can build a world of love and live our lives in peace.
[This prayer was written by a group of children]
Walking in December
(Sir William Addison)
The wind is wine to those who walk
on bright December days the heath;
Above, the cold, capacious sky,
the rimy grass beneath.
With each a merry heart the guide,
The sun for compass: they who know
the wanton ways and whims of earth,
and laugh to find them so.
No English hills, in English lanes,
A man may walk with ease and find
at every turn the mode and mark
of earth’s best humankind:
May rest in quiet inns at night,
in sleep enfolding bone and brain,
and with the dawn may rise and take
the long, free roads again.
(Sir William Addison)
This poem comes from a small collection, ‘Winter Forest’ by Sir William Addison.
The poems are inspired by Sir William’s long association with Epping Forest where he was one of the four Verderers. The verderers of Epping Forest have represented the views of everyday people for over 800 years acting as a key go-between with the City of London.
Sir William was born in the Ribble Valley in Lancashire and he was educated at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School. His family had connections in the past in Grasmere and Bowness.
When he married Phoebe Dean in 1929, the couple moved south and eventually lived in Buckhurst Hill on the edge of Epping Forest, Essex.He bought a bookshop in the neighbouring town of Loughton, and began his lifelong association with Epping Forest which included a love of the history of the area. The result was a number of books on the Forest area and Essex, Suffolk and of people like Dick Turpin, highwayman of the Forest.
He worshipped at the Parish Church in Epping.
The collection of poems Winter Forest was edited by Richard Morris, Verderer of Epping Forest and published by the Corporation of London in 2002, by kind permission of legatees of Sir William’s estate, including the incumbent of St. John’s church in Epping. My personal involvement in this small way has led me to make the poems in this collection more widely known. Walking in December seems a good place to start.
I am grateful that I am able to illustrate this with a ‘December’ photograph by my friend Gill Henwood, and appropriately the scene is from Cumbria, where Sir William’s family had their roots.
[Mr G]
Mr G's Ponderings 