Tag: Mr G

Play the Piano for me.


I call this ‘Broken Music’. It is by the Afghan street artist Shamsiah Hassani.
She did much to inspire women in Kabul to be empowered and confident in a male dominated society.
After the Taliban took over, she moved away from Afghanistan and her work now has a global perspective. One of her recent paintings, Damn the War, was addressed to the people of the Ukraine.
I have chosen this one to illustrate a poem I wrote on International Piano Day.

A poem on International Piano day  

Play the piano for me.
I wish to hear music.
Play notes to calm my fears,
Soothing my soul from anxiety.

I live in a world ripped apart by sounds
gurgling up from the bowels of hell.
Bombs, missiles, bullets,
Angry tanks, guttural sounds of soldiers.
Many are far from home, tired too, hungry.
bewildered.
Sucked in by masters whose only language is hatred.
Their words a cacophony of crashing disharmony
mixed with disillusionment.
Such cankered and disfigured hearts,
no longer at one with the music that created them.

Buildings shake and discard the rubble of their former life.
Incessant noise, unceasing ruin.
No symphony.
No sympathy.

Wars begin in hearts crumpled by demonic blackness.
Is this hell?
Despair. The concerto of annihilation.

But, if you play music to us,
We may find a way out of all this.
Your sound of note caressing note,
sprinkles  kindness over us ,  and love;
showing us where we need to be.

As the piano music  lifts my heart,
I hear it’s tune –
There is more than hell on earth.
There is earth raised up to heaven.

Mr G. 29.3.2022

Please look at the work of Shasiah Hassani either on Instagram or by Googling her name.
There are a number of interesting and informative articles about her,

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 20th 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]

Love comes Himself

LOVE DOES NOT SEND
ANOTHER….

A Star

Announces the Light
which has come into the world;
The Light of Truth.
The Light of Love,
which coming into our world
of darkness cannot be extinguished.
It is a Candle flickering in the wind of the night,
and the darkness cannot destroy it.
Its constant flame is our guide.
It is the Light which attracts
all people of Truth,
all people of Love

In humility
we bow low to the Light,
full of wonder;
and marvel at the power of so simple a thing
which overpowers and transforms everything.
and the light, entering our hearts, shines in us,
and the dark world is subdued.

Rejoice, Love has come into the world
for Love does not send another,

      …..HE COMES HIMSELF.

[Mr G December 1973 revised 2005]

Photo: Outdoor Crib at Bethlem Chapel, Prague
Photo taken by Gill Henwood

They came to you in hope

And the Lord said to us:
‘Come and I will separate you and judge you
for how much or how little you have loved’.

I put before you the suffering ones, the desperate ones.
the hungry; the thirsty; the homeless ones.
Some cast from their homes when despots, shadows of men,
ruthless power-seekers moved against their own people:
those they had pledged to care for.
Instead they sucked the life from their souls,
souls that belong to me.

You left them ruined, afraid, unwanted, empty –
but you could not take away their dignity.
You tried to rob them of the one gift that I gave them
which you cannot touch:
their humanity –  
made in my image.
An image that dazzles ever brighter,
the more you try to stamp it out.

Despairing bodies shuffle, clutching rags and children
and anxiously walk the Indo-European Way
– that trek which your ancestors made long ago.

They come to you in hope.
They come as refugees and seekers of shelter.
You utter your political platitudes.
You blame it on the traffickers.
But you fail to look in a mirror.

For these people are your test.
How much do you love?
How much do you care?
Do you see them for the glorious humanity they are?

They come to you simply, humbly, hopefully;
Looking for baptism into a new life through your love.

And you, what do you do?
You allow them to drown in the deep, chill waters of death.
Where others have failed,
you succeed in taking their lives after all.

You must leave me now.
There is little room for you in God’s heart.

[Mr G]