Tag: Piers Northam

Dance for Joy

Isis dancing with Old Father Thames. Leaded glass sculpture by Kay Gibbons.
This panel has been produced in a ‘kintsugi’ fashion, after the Japanese art of bonding broken ceramics with gold.
Beauty in fracture.. Broken beauty...

A Poem for Trinity Sunday, selected by Piers Northam. Written by the Persian poet , Hafiz. (1325-1390) and gently amended by Piers to refer to the Three persons of the Trinity.
The invitation to ‘dance’ is based on an early Church theology of ‘perichoresis’ – rotation or circular movement (hence dance) within the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (The Holy Trinity of God). The early Greek Theologians of the Church, led by St. Gregory Nazianzus – one of the Cappadocian Fathers- helped Christians to discover the relationship of pure love between the Father, the Son(Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. This Love energizes all that God has created as it pours itself in the sheer joy of life. It becomes a dance which carries us into the fullness of the joy of God and therefore leads us to see that love and joy at the heart of our own life. So we are invited to the dance of life in which we are encompassed with the swirling love of God.

Created for Joy – Hafiz

I sometimes forget
that I was created for joy.

My mind is too busy,
my heart too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been called to dance
the sacred dance of life.

I was created to smile,
to love,
to be lifted up
and to lift others up.

O Sacred Three
disentangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul
that we might dance
– and that our dancing
might be contagious.

Breath. (Ruach)

photo: Sharon Tate Soberon

This poem was inspired by Peyton Salmon, who when she was just 4 years old, answered a question in Family Church about Pentecost in a profound way. (Piers Northam.)

‘How do we know God?’ She asks.
‘We feel it inside us.’ says the child.
‘And what does it feel like?’
‘It feels like breath…’

It feels like breath:
the engendering, enlivening breath,
the rushing wind,
the gift of life…

This child,
just four years old,
speaks an ancient truth –
a truth not learnt
but lived.

She knows the One
who knit her together
in her mother’s womb:
recognises in a way
that can’t be taught.

Knows herself beloved.

                                                      

Piers Northam