Tag: Joyce Smith

In love is our strength

My friend Joyce has sent me this lovely picture tweet. She writes,
This sleepy wood pigeon is enjoying the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the blossom before it is blown away. With my love and prayers. God bless, Joyce

There is a call to stillness as nature and the natural world bring forth the joy of creation. The blossom heralds Spring and, though fleeting, it is a sign of hope.

We all know that there is so much darkness and despair right now. Ukraine weighs heavily on our hearts and other places are unsettled. The girls denied an education this week in Afghanistan are only part of the problem there, as children and families suffer increasingly from malnutrition.

We need to remain aware, too, that there are many in Russia who oppose the war at their peril and yet are brave enough to speak out. They too need our prayerful support.

So whilst all around us there is destruction and fragility, it is good to be reminded that the earth still blossoms with beauty and the promise of new life.

Two years ago we went into the first Lockdown against Covid. That virus in differing forms is still with us. I myself am battling it at the moment, as are about a million others in the UK alone. Maybe we didn’t really learn the lessons. Maybe we should have taken up the opportunities of a new way of living and so developed new values by which to be truly human and truly at one with each other and creation.

At the time of the first lockdown, the artist, David Hockney, painted a series of paintings. Alongside them he said, Do remember, they can’t cancel the Spring! Maybe, in the midst of all that is besetting and destroying humanity in a maelstrom of the demonic, we need to pray and work for that truth.

Spring is God’s time of renewal and re-birth. To give us that gift, however, he had to take on the demonic of evil by dying on the Cross. It was the triumph of love and light against evil and darkness and, in the words of the poet T.S.Eliot, it cost God not less than everything. For Ukraine and other places of suffering, that is a personal reality for many right now, not least their inspirational and dedicated President, Volodymyr Zelensky. It is costing the Ukrainian Nation not less than everything.

Many of us are deeply humbled by the people of Ukraine and by the multitude of people who are receiving the victims of the war by opening their countries, their hearts and their homes with a generosity, compassion and love which is rapidly enfolding those for whom life has changed so deeply.
In such hospitality the demonic is being confronted and in many ways defeated by love.
God is enthusing and empowering that love.

Our little wood pigeon surrounded by blue sky and gorgeous blossom is, in its own way, a reminder that not only has spring not been cancelled but also, neither has love. It may be very fragile but it cannot be broken.

[Mr G]

Love remains

My friend, Joyce, has sent me this photo of two companionable swans, making gentle progress in the canal waters. They are contendedly together as love flows between them. The Caption from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is well known but perhaps less pondered because of that.
Joyce says that :
In these dark times, these words of love bring light and hope.
That light and hope comes to us through God.

During Lent we Christians are invited by God to understand more deeply that the Victory of Christ on the cross is really life-changing and that this change comes about not because of something we do but of realizing that God has done, and goes on doing, something so powerful in our lives through Christ on the Cross.
He has loved us totally and completely and through that Love he has drawn us into himself so that, as Paul tells the Galatians (2:20)

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.

In order to die to self and live for, and in, Christ we are, says Jesus, to take up our Cross and follow him.
He is not asking for heroics. He is not asking us to search for some impossible burden to carry, some suffering to undergo.
He is asking us to commit ourselves to carry the sign of God’s love in our lives. It is the power of that love to transform that makes the real difference
For that to happen, the Love of Christ must rule our hearts, our lives – come what may.

Many years ago, a young Russian priest was imprisoned at the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
Years later he was released from prison. He was a broken man.
His friends asked him, “What is left of you?”
“Nothing” he replied, “nothing is left. They have burnt out everything. Only love remains.”

That priest had discovered the one thing that changes every human situation and disarms every human conflict – sacrificial love.
Only Love remains – that is what is necessary for Christ to change the world – and he does it through us. When we abide in God’s love, totally, then, as we walk around the area where we live, it will become a changed and different place. Our approach to others will be different, generous, kind and joyful.

The darkness of our present situation in the world can easily lead to despair and a sense of futility but we are called to be, increasingly, signs of God’s amazing, long suffering and transforming love. We are called, in fact, to carry that love into all the world’s dark places and into hearts that have turned away from love.
On the Cross the victory of Jesus was the triumph of love over all that is not love. It was a cosmic battle to proclaim God’s power over demonic and destructive forces which threaten to swamp the world with evil, hatred, self absorbtion and oppression.
Against this darkness and evil we are to love and go on loving for, as the great mystic, St John of the Cross, put it so powerfully:

“Where there is no love, pour love in, and you will draw love out.”

[Mr G]

Cartoon by Charlie Mackesy who speaks profoundly through humour

Thank you Joyce for your inspirational photo & text

There is another world

My friend, Joyce Smith, has sent me another of her Photo Tweets. The baby swans (cygnets) are beginning their life on earth so hopefully and with determination! Thank You, Joyce.

New Birth, new growth, new light are all signs that our natural world in the Northern Hemisphere just now is turning towards Spring.

Even the storms of the past ten days haven’t deterred the journey of Nature and that will be true of human conflict in the war Russia is waging at present, aided by Putin’s Puppet in Belarus.
Charlie Mackesy in his beautiful book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, says that the best thing about storms are that they end. As we are now living through the storm caused by Putin it’s something to cling on to. This storm will pass! says Mackesy.

Maybe those words wouldn’t bring any comfort in the Ukraine right now nor for some time to come but history teaches us that despots and tyrants are, in cosmic terms, short-lived. The 20^th century had a number of them – Hitler, Musolini, Stalin, Franco, Mao, Pol-Pot for example. They created havoc and chaos for a while and destroyed peoples’ lives as they demand obedience to their warped and demonic ideas.
We remember them now for the evil they did and the destruction they left behind. This is the work of the devil and it prospers because we have lost any real sense of the demonic. I think it was possibly C S Lewis who maintained that the greatest victory the devil has is when we don’t believe he exists.
Mostly he is a mischief maker because, in truth, he is already defeated. Christianity maintains that defeat was by Jesus Christ who, sacrificially, poured out love as God’s way of defeating darkness, and sinfulness and unlove.
Even so, there are times when the devil can turn the minds of the weak and tortured. Analysts with far more skill than I have, are already delving into the character of Putin and some fascinating things are beginning to emerge.

He is supposedly a practicing Orthodox Christian. I wonder what his priest will be saying to him on Sunday? I think we can guess it won’t be controversial.

The ‘Storm’ will pass but not just yet so the Jewish Proverb has something important to tell us. We are encouraged to turn to God. As in the story of the Prodigal Son, we will then find God running to us.

The Novelist Patrick White in his novel, Solid Mandela quoted some words possibly by the French poet, Paul Éluard : There is another world, but it is in this one.

We find God in unexpected places and especially when we are surrounded by danger, filled with despair and almost paralysed by anxiety.
We do not know how the raging war against Ukraine will turn out and the aftermath is full of unhappy consequences and foreboding.
But in the midst of that desperate world, the other world continues to show signs of hope and of God.
As the lovely Jewish Proverb tells us; We should walk towards it – maybe only one step but enough to know that it illuminates our world with God’s and He rushes towards us to enfold us with His love.

So Joyce’s photo of the little cygnets is itself a message to us to try to trust in and cherish the tender signs of love which come to us from the heart of God’s world and from His Nature. A world of which we are always a part.

[Mr G]

Delightful Collared Doves

Collared doves can be seen just about anywhere, but often around towns and villages. They’re common visitors to gardens. But collared doves only came to the UK in the 1950s, after a rapid spread across Europe from the Middle East [RSPB]

The Eurasian Collared Dove first bred in England in the 1950’s, in Norfolk.
Because their young like to wander, they could soon be found in more widespread places. It is said that they can travel over 600km from where they were born.

One lovely fact about them is that they are monogamous. Barring accident they keep their partner for life. They also share in bringing up their young equally so they are an example of real partnership.

The Dove, of course, has a deep spiritual meaning and in Christianity is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity.
In the Old Testament, it was the Dove sent out across the waters by Noah which returned with the Olive Branch as a sign of God’s forgiveness and love.
We use the phrase ‘holding out an olive branch’ whenever we seek reconciliation between people and nations who are at loggerheads with each other.
As a result the Dove has come to be known for its gentleness but it has a reputation for being tough and often seen in places of danger and where human striving is failing. The Dove is a much loved symbol of Peace.

It is also a symbol of love, which makes the quotation, chosen by Joyce, from Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) very apt.
For me, it is the partnership of collared doves which speak particularly of relationship and commitment and sharing together which are symbols of love.
Rowan Williams speaks of ‘truth making love possible and Love making truth bearable. Rowan always puts things beautifully but also in a way that makes us ponder the depth of meaning. So to help me work out what he is saying, I turn to the image of the little Collared Doves. They are true to each other and they are together in a relationship which feels like love to me. That is what sustains them and should sustain us.
In a world of shifting relationships between people but also nations and within nations, where truth and love seem to be trivialized and discarded, the collared doves may well remind us of the vitality of truth and love, of comittment and the joy of friendship which makes our lives so rich. We have to work at it!

Where chaos longs to reign,
Descend, O Holy Dove,
and free us all to work again
the miracles of love. Amen

[Mr.G]