“Lord God, We ask you to open our eyes to recognize you, learning from the mystery of your closeness to all creation, that the world is infinitely more than a problem to solve. It is a mystery to be contemplated with gratitude and hope. Help us to discover your presence in all creation, so that in fully recognizing it, we may feel and know ourselves to be responsible for this common home where you invite us to care for, respect, and protect life in all its forms and possibilities. Praise be to you, Lord! amen” [Pope Leo XIV]
A prayer for our earthby Pope Francis
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one. O God of the poor, help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes. Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction. Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth. Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light. We thank you for being with us each day. Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.
The photograph with text, above, was one of a regular series of photographs and thoughts which Joyce Smith sent to me most weeks. The photographs were her own and she also made the choice of text. I published many of them either on this Blog or in postings to a group of friends. I looked forward to receiving each week’s offering which began at the time of Covid and the hardship it brought to our lives. The ‘tweets’ continued until her death, two years ago at the end of May. Her life was one of dedication both to God and to people. Her ministry was widespread and for many, she was both an inspiration and, when in need of care and friendship, she was a comfort. I know many of her friends still miss her, as do I.
Each of us needs a place of ‘sanctuary’, a when things get hard and often, that ‘sanctuary’ comes from others whose hearts God has touched with love and compassion. People who can be channels of God’s grace to others. Our bolt-hole. For me, Joyce was such a person. We worked together in ministry but most of all we shared friendship. She was a very wise person and, of course, I miss her. She knew how to care and hold and make a space for us to rest in.
At this time of her second anniversary of her entry into heaven, at the end of May, I looked through her photographs, mostly of birds and nature and, quite often puffins! A lot of her time off was spent in Northumberland where, around the Farne Island she found joy among the puffins.
As, I looked at her tweets I thought of the timeless quality of them, so from time to time, they will reappear on this blog.
Osip Mandelstam, a Russian poet who could not be silent.
Osip Mandelstam was one of the most important and inspiring Russian poets in the 20th century. He was born in Poland but moved to St Petersburg where he was educated. He was introduced to me in one of Bishop Richard Holloway’s books. He was writing about how ideas for sermons develop and he likened the process to the way Osip approached his poetry. According to Nadezhda Mandelstam, Osip’s wife, in her memoirs Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned, Mandelstam he began his poetry process by listening to the ether and the words came to him. He acted as a midwife bringing those words to birth. Quite often, he didn’t write them down. He recited the poems to his wife who acted ‘like a Dictaphone.’ This Process , minus the dictaphone, is not dissimilar to that of writing a sermon, hence the illustration by Richard Holloway.
As well as learning that insight, I brushed against the poetry itself and the revelation of his life. It has been written of him that he had a prophetic understanding of the suffering of the twentieth century ‘which he transformed into luminous poetry. The same commentator said of him that he was, ‘childish and wise, joyous and angry, complex and simple. He was outspoken and brave which bordered on foolishness. He was unhappy about the way Russian Society was developing under Stalin and he felt a prophetic need to use his poetry to warn people of how dangerous it all was. Needless to say, he became a person of interest to the authorities and he suffered persecution at a time when the dictator, Stalin, was growing in power. In view of this, it was probably unwise to write a poem, a lampoon about the dictator. In May 1934 he wrote, of Stalin,
Our lives no longer feel ground under them. At ten paces you can’t hear our words. But whenever there’s a snatch of talk it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer, the ten thick worms his fingers, his words like measures of weight, the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip, the glitter of his boot-rims.
Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses he toys with the tributes of half-men. One whistles, another meows, a third snivels. He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes, One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye. He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries. He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
It was, of course, the most dangerous thing he wrote. When he chanced to meet his fellow poet, Boris Pasternak, he recited the poem to him. Pasternak was filled with dread and fear. Stalinism had eyes and ears everywhere. It was even suggested that the very pavements had ears! Russia was fast becoming a heinous dictatorship. Pasternack immediately told Mandelstam, “I heard nothing, Strange and terrible things are happening right now, You said nothing!”
Though the poem remained unpublished, the authorities, proving Pasternack right, got wind of it. Stalin began to play with Mandelstam as a cat plays with a mouse. He was arrested, interrogated, tortured and labelled a subversive to the State. He was imprisoned in Moscow and then exiled to the provincial city of Voronezh. Here and previously in Moscow, he was at his most creative. The Voronezh and Moscow notebooks, published still today are the outpourings of the poetic genius of a man who perhaps sensed he had little time but with much to say.
Eventually Stalin’s insecurity got the better of him. Like so many dictators, he fed only on hatred, fear, lust and an inner weakness which needed power to sustain it. It is hard to get into the inner being of such a person. Perhaps poets manage it because so many who challenge society do so through the medium of poetry (alongside art and music). A generalization, I know! At the age of 48, in a transit camp in the east, he died of a ‘heart attack’, His body was dumped in an open grave, identified only by a tag marked on his big toe with his prison number. Stalin could rest, at last. easy in his bed! Or could he?Nadezhda took up her pen. Osip would be remembered. His words would be read, quoted, pondered over. His creativity would be celebrated. His desire for justice, light and peace would be struggled for. Stalin? Only the suffering he inflicted is remembered. Who he was as a human being was never fully known whilst he was alive and certainly is not of interest now.
This week, along with many, I am thinking of another Russian. He was 47 when he died. There are similarities in his story and that of Osip Mandelstam. Not least that what he stood for lives on through his wife, Yulia. Osip Mandelstam / Alexei Navalny cannot be silent and nor must we.
One day people will forget Putin. Dictators fade away but those who stand up against them for goodness, kindness, generosity and love. They will always matter. So Mandelstam wrote:
Having deprived me of seas, of running and flying away, and allowed me only to walk upon the violent earth, what have you achieved? A splendid result: you could not stop my lips from moving.
[Osip Mandelstam. May 1935]
Maya Angelou said that birds sing because they have a song. Mandelstam & Navalny have much still to sing to us.
The photo of the Robin is from the collection left to us by my friend Joyce Smith. A remembrance that she was one of those who never failed to sing of God’s love.
Mr G's Ponderings 