A Thought Experiment (Work in Progress April 2025): The Use of Buildings Where Communities have Worshipped in the Past

I pondered...

Could a Change of Language spark a change-of-mindset for many beautiful and long-cherished buildings whose future might, just now, seem uncertain?

So I fell to thinking: about people falling in love with places. This is seldom a rational process, for people simply’ fall for’ a place and perhaps occasionally, bizarrely, people fall in love with redundant churches! Why?

The language is dated, the very title seems to smack of decay to those who cannot feel the history of the generations that invested love, spiritual homeliness and, of the time, vast funds, to create these havens from the storms of life. They have had good carers, they have had indifferent carers and occasionally unimaginative carers - and those places have fallen into disrepair, often beyond being restored.

But many, many have thankfully survived, but a lack of imagination within an introspective Anglican Church has possessively clung to the notion they have to be called a something church: and the musty word redundant has been pressed into reluctant service. 

So, let’s stands back a tiny distance and see if we can do better with our description for these, O so often, beautiful Oases. Let us simply recall who they were built to honour. They were built to honour The Creator of The Cosmos, clothed in the human frame of Jesus Christ.

Being a generous God, The Creator saw fit to endow we mere humans with an amazing vestige of his own function borne out of Love, creativity.

Would it not be entirely fitting for these often incredible edifices, which have had love, often of generations of women, lavished on them through good tunes, bad times, times of peace, times of war to be given a changed persona. in the lingo of today, could they collectively become Creativity Hubs?

This is an age in which such an idea could’ fly’, at least partially because fundraising for imaginative projects can be more easily generated than perhaps at any time before in history. Crowd funding has reached a mature stage. So, for example, American money, wondering where to find a sound home just now, could well think that a small plot of land, with a wonderful serenity about it, and being home to the remains of an ancestor, could be a good place to be rooted into/ invested in.

Patron of the Arts has long been a noble title, for generations the province of the wealthy. But today, it could become a far more broad-based accolade. Any takers among the generation that has been made wealthy by windfall profits on even a modest home willing to make a modest stake in that beautiful little chapel that lies in a close-by woodland, attended by a faithful locals?

Maybe this is too simplistic, but surely it deserves some further consideration!

The Church Estate might well be be able to work with some major philanthropists to make a core fund available to give the notion a kickstart - by making grants available on a ‘matched’ basis to, in turn, encourage local funds generation

Dioceses could surely find ways of transferring the land and buildings into community wide trusts - couldn’t they? Might they even make modest handover grants to do essential weatherproofing? After all, they would be shedding a present liability

It would be surprising if local creatives didn’t welcome nearby spaces to make their work more widely appreciated.

Creativity-Hub Trails could be attractive ways of a wider public being invited to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of these often ancient refuges. Places where people have brought their joys, their celebrations and their sadness could be repurposed, without the overlay of the too often dead-hands of formal religion. Many places could burgeon yet another imaginative location for a coffee shop. It’s already been done in many places, so maybe this is the time for a trickle to become a tide.

Given a modest core fund to help build a community, many places might find eager gardeners and allotment enthusiasts to help such a dream to come alive with wildflowers and herbs.

Local clergy would be relieved of the guilt of having a redundant ecclesiastical asset in their often massive parochial portfolios - and just to emphasise this separation, perhaps the location, rather than a seldom remembered patron saint, could become the main feature of the name. That would, sometimes, require an act of generosity by a local ‘guardian’ parish - but isn’t generosity at the heart of the Christian Gospel?

Surely it’s worth an exploration!

Maybe we could say ‘Goodbye' to ‘redundant churches'

And welcome Creativity Hubs across our lands. It could just be a twenty first century resolution of a centuries old problem.

Trevor Thorn, Durham and The Cambridgeshire Fenlands, April 2025

Subsequently posted to Facebook on 3rd May 2025

My thought experiment on the use of former places of worship at http://crossandcosmos.blogspot.com politely refused by The Church Times - 'I’m afraid it doesn’t quite work for us’.

Pity really! Naively I thought it might be germane to quite a lot of CT readers - but then again, I hear that CT often focus on internecine battles in the CofE these days. So why should a bit of speculative futurising about formerly much-loved buildings, interest a readership that is tearing itself apart at the seams and perplexing any non-church person who would still like to believe the CofE might be about love and inclusivity.

Reply - Sad to me (of course), though I wonder if it could be anything to do with a bias towards being preoccupied by factionism? Well, it’s a thought!

A NATIVITY TREE - THE TREE TELLS THE STORY

Throughout last year, I was encouraging churches to decorate their Christmas Trees in such a way that they became part of the Christmas story thus changing them from a prettified pagan emblem at the front (usually) of the church into a symbol of the angel host that hovered over Bethlehem and invited the edge-of-society Shepherds to be the first people to witness the coming of the Saviour of the World, the Messiah.

However, as the year has passed and our companion site (a more secularly based site than this), has developed the ideas of CLIMERICKS and CLIMCUBES, these two potent symbols of Climate change, Climate Justice and servanthood in their own right, offer an opportunity to turn a Christmas Tree into an even more graphic symbol than that of the Angel Tree. In this, they also need the help of some of those lovely Palestine Olive wood tree hangings. I hope you are beginning to get the picture.

That picture is, overall, almost breathtaking in its simplicity and explicit messages. Just look!

FROM THE TOP - down to just above eye level are your LOCAL ANGEL THRONG. As there is now plenty of time to prepare, why not ask local craftspeople to make angels for the tree in their own medium. You will then have a beautifully diverse fellowship of angels AND an opportunity to invite the crafters in for their own pre Christmas celebration and dedication of their work hanging in the church, which at its best is the beating heart of any community.

FROM EYE LEVEL to about 1metre off the ground - CLIMERICKS speaking of Climate Justice and Stewardship. So about OUR responsibility and opportunities to bring about the failing of the COGS industries.

BOTTOM QUARTER OF TREE - Palestine Olive wood tree hangings recalling the very land where Christ was born

AROUND THE TREE - CLIMCUBES to be given away at an Epiphany service - symbolic of our sending Your message of love and truth into our communities.

So the pretty but irrelevant Christmas Tree becomes a NATIVITY TREE -a  multi-faceted symbol of HOPE and OUTREACH: a glorious transformation.

Please pass this idea on far and wide if you think it has merit

When The Last Sparrow Falls,

Photo credit Pixabay

 

When the last sparrow falls,

there’ll be weeping in heaven,

such as that which was heard

when a spear pierced the side;

and The Hope of The World

from the depths of human anguish

to his greatly beloved Father cried (x2)

 

When the last sparrow falls,

will the world even notice,

with its focus on wealth

at expense of the earth.

Or will the sudden dearth

of the sparrow’s cheery chirping

wake our souls to its worth (x2)

 

The genesis of this poem, which I intend should become a song, dates back to 2018 when I was privileged to have a term at St John’s College, as Visiting Scholar to help me shape my emerging ideas about songs of faith and science.

Several times, I was drawn to the theme of climate change, but Celia Deane-Drummond of the Theology Faculty felt there was at least as much need for songs and hymns about species loss. This has remained a background thought since then

In the recent past, I have been working to bring more bird life into our garden and a newly installed bird-feeder outside our quiet room started to bring sparrows to it at about the time I spend there each morning.

I had also been thinking in terms of songs of lament, and had ‘discovered’ O’Carolan’s music: the tune ‘The Clergy’s Lament’ felt to have a particular resonance, as I repeatedly reflect on the burden an over-beauracratised Anglican church lays on its local ministers, distracting them from their main task of mission!

All these ideas finally came together on Palm Sunday (2025) but have had to wait the few days of Holy Week and Easter and a short break away (partly to re-visit Durham!) to find their way on to the blog.

 

If any of you are in the Cambridge area on the weekend of 17th May, you would be very welcome at the Children’s Science, Faith and Climate Change afternoon at Fen Ditton Church from 1.30pm until 4.30pm. There will be two distinct elements of the afternoon. The main attraction will be the Faraday Institute’s Education team who will be mounting seven or eight displays in the church. They are a very experienced team at presenting the ways in which science and faith, together, can help to illuminate the Glory of God throughout the universe.

Meanwhile, outside in the churchyard, there will be around 10 or 12 sideshows, all with an Environmental/ Climate justice theme: all the fun of fair-type sideshows, given a twist to remind the children and us just how critical this theme is for the upcoming generations - and those of us who can no longer qualify for those cohorts.

There will be a second-hand bookstall with Science, Faith and Climate Change themes. If you no longer qualify as a child, you may still find something of interest among the books.

So do come along and if you rereading this in, lets say, Singapore (from where there have been a lot of page views recently) and know any of your compatriots who have moved into the East of Cambridge, do please let them know they will be very welcome. Fen Ditton is a bus ride (No 3) and a short walk from the centre of Cambridge.

A Day of Terror for Jesus’ Followers

As every year comes round, I spend this odd ‘between day’ wondering what it might feel like to feel all your hopes dashed, as evil seemingly had triumphed over good. Some years ago, I turned these thoughts into a poem.

 

Unreported moments from First Century Jerusalem:
Bleak Sabbath

Empty as an inverted pitcher,
every hope, every bright hour,
every wonderment at a miracle
quashed by three vicious nails and an alien spear
thrust deep into the side of my most precious love.

Friends? I know not where they are. 
Hiding like me?
Full of fear?
Fled from the city
for the safety of home
and work they understand?

Oh where, oh where might they be?
I weep as I have never wept before – for the death of him
who filled us with hope and joy;
at the remembrance of horror
I thought I would never have to bear;
at the thought of his once beautiful body 
lifeless in a stone-cold tomb.
And with gut-wrenching anxiety
for my own pitiable life.
There is nothing to live for,
I am utterly undone.
Let the mountains fall on me.
I feel I cannot bear another day.
Yet I will cry out to the Father
to whom he taught us to pray ...

Listen to the poem read by the author

This audio file is stored in a Dropbox account and if you follow the link, you may be invited to sign in or create an account in Dropbox. If that happens, it should be possible to use the exit button (top right) and be let in to listen to the reading without signing in.

This is part of a Lent and Easter collection which includes a Palm Sunday re-imagination, and other ‘unreported moments from fist century Judea. These can be accessed HERE

Two Poems for this Most Holy of Days

 

Unreported moments from First Century Jerusalem: 
Detailed for Friday’s Crucifixions

See; a Centurion, a man under orders:

consider his duties, what they might have been.

To drive the prisoners to their vile execution,

whip up anger against them, until it’s obscene.

Prevent any rescue, or forfeit your own life;

rubbish all hints of the prisoners’ good,

defile them, destroy any dignity left them;

stir up the crowd, make them lust after blood.

Ensure crucifixions, without mercy and deadly;

let your men revel in the shedding of blood:

make sure that death is the end of the scumbags:

then -

traumatically realise - 

one was – ‘Son of God’.

The Cross of The Creator

Is this the ultimate paradox?

The Co-Creator of the Cosmos,

The Lord of Eternity,

The High King of Heaven,

is bloodied, humiliated, defiled;

then heaved and nailed

onto crossed beams of wood,

whose grain had woven itself

in patterns He had imagined

down the aeons of evolution

of this, His precious planet.

Looking for a truly All-age activity for Easter Day?

One of the items in this short E-Book for Holy Week, through to Easter Day is a very simple activity to engage every person celebrating the great day, together. I have long felt that the sharing of a common herb on Easter Day has a beautiful symbolism of the herbs and spices Mary took with her to the tomb.

There is also a Holy Saturday meditation titled ‘Bleak Sabbath’ which tries to envisage the feelings of one of Jesus’ followers that terrifying day after Good Friday.

Below, I reproduce again my post when this little booklet was first published, as new readers, and it seems there are quite a few of you, will not be aware of this story

This is the  Ebook ‘cover’ of my Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Day published by Wild Goose Publishing, the publishing arm of The Iona Community. It consists of A meditation and a reflection for Good Friday, a lament for Holy Saturday, and a simple all-age activity for Easter Sunday. 6 pages and still costs only £2-20.

The story of this download was published on this blog In March 2017, when I wrote:

'This is a thrilling day for me! Whilst, like many ‘armchair poets’,  I have had the occasional poem appear in collections edited by others or in local newspapers, today has seen the publication of a small personal collection as a download from Wild Goose Publishing, the publications arm of The Iona Community.

I am sure every author finds publication of their own work an exciting experience, but this is especially so as it is a new link in the long thread of our experience with that very special island, Iona, which has been part of our story over the last twenty-five years or so. It all started when I took a retreat at All Hallows, Ditchingham in a year that we had booked a holiday on Mull. I mentioned this to the Mother Superior, who made it her practice to meet all retreatants, and she suggested we went to Iona where her community were going to be ‘baby-sitting’ a small ecumenical retreat house on the island, whilst a new warden was found by the American organisation that ran Duncraig. Pam still tells the story of my sudden stopping to ‘chat up’(!) a nun in the garden of Duncraig which led to us being shown over the accommodation. This was the start of a time when we took groups of friends to the island on several occasions: they were always precious events and we found that rounding off each day at the Iona Community’s Abbey services added immeasurably to their specialness.

It was on the island that Pam felt affirmed in her call into ministry and I found much delight in building up a small suite of Iona poems from visit to visit (see end).

Sadly, Duncraig is no longer a retreat house. A fund-raising campaign I helped with to try and save it foundered when a major prospective donor, whose gift would have enabled the house to continue its ministry, lost money in the banking collapse. As it happens, the money from the subsequent sale of Duncraig went into Bishops House where we are planning to lead a group visit in September - an unexpected thread of continuity.

We have had many more personal Iona experiences, including a retreat led by Kenneth Steven, the well known Scottish poet and then last year joining Author’s Week at the Abbey run by the community which led to the publication of this download. Hence my delight on this special occasion. It feels poignant too, in that we very nearly didn’t get to the Author’s week as a hideous cough, the first evidence of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, made travelling to the island feel an almost impossible challenge. But we got there and then later travelled on by bus to Inverness to spend time with one of the friends who earlier travelled with us to Iona. And today, now sandwiched between chemotherapy and radiotherapy, is part of the outcome of that trip, for which I am immensely grateful.

If you would like to see details of the download - and even, perhaps, purchase it (for only £2-20 +VAT), you can find it HERE. I personally would much appreciate your interest and you will also be supporting The Iona Community’s magnificent work which you can find summarised HERE. They, too, will be delighted to receive your support through a purchase. For some people, the download may be of particular interest as it has a description of a very simply organised Easter Day children’s/ congregational activity which involves the giving of Rosemary to the congregation as a representation of the spices the women carried to Jesus’tomb.(Hence the title of the download)

My Iona collection of poems can be found by clicking HERE’

All this remains relevant we have since 2017 visited the Island another six or seven times and continue to be thrilled every time we do by its spiritual ethos and by the presence of The Iona Community who feel to us more aware of the major concerns of the World than any church we experience on the mainland. The Island has, for us become our veritable spiritual ‘home’ and we thank God for it daily.

We do that by joining the Iona Community You Tube,  Morning Worship. It changes every day of Monday through Saturday and keeps us singing along with the powerful and ever-surprising songs and hymns of John Bell and the late Graham Maule. Why not check it out?

The Myth of Galileo

Pixabay free image of ‘Outer Space’;

an image to which Galileo’s findings contributed

in the medieval days of exploration of the Universe.

Our recent visit to IONA saw an interesting completion of a project that has been shaping itself in my mind for some time. I felt I wanted to write a song about Galileo whose insights and relationship with the church of the time are widely misunderstood. The song turned out to have dimensions I hadn’t expected and the scientific concepts needed to be checked by ‘real’ scientists who could ensure I was reflecting the best views of the moment, particularly in the area of quantum physics.

Quite extraordinarily, I have been brought into contact with three notable scientists of faith, all of whom are astrophysicists. They are Prof. David Wilkinson, former Principal of St John’s College, Durham (who generously invited me to be a visiting scholar at St John’s in 2018), The Revd Dr Rodney Holder (who is Trustee of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, among many other responsibilities in the Faith and Science Arena) and Bro Guy Consolmagno, Director of The Vatican Observatory, who I encountered on a retreat he ran at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire.

All pointed out a potential misunderstanding of the very issue I was trying to address, at the opening of the song and it was Bro Guy, who suggested a way round it, thereby leading to the splendid title of this song.

My thanks are due to all three of these ‘advisors’: here’s the song 

The Myth of  Galileo

Tune: Ellacombe/The Day of Resurrection 

 

The Myth of Galileo, should please, no longer stand

He knew that faith and sciences can all walk hand in hand,            

to show the glory God has sown throughout the universe.

So let’s give thanks and praises to show the Maker’s worth.

 

There’s glory in the stars of night, there’s wonder in the sun;

there’s beauty everywhere you look, Yes! great things he has done!

And neuroscience now reveals how connectomes combine,

to organise God’s gift to us, the brain and human mind.

 

In every creature of the earth there lie great mysteries,

which are revealed in greater depth by deft biology.

And botanists who seek for truth will maybe understand,

that as they probe each complex cell, they glimpse the Maker’s hand.

 

The ups and downs and charm of quarks can test the human mind:

as particles collide at speed, to seek what lies behind

the quantum concepts that defy perceived reality.

So maybe physics illustrates God’s cosmic mystery

 

So let’s give thanks that sciences of many disciplines,

show us the wonders and the grace, revealed from deep within

ourselves, and Gods great universe, the cosmos all around. Sing praise, sing joy, sing thankfully ‘We stand on holy ground!’  

 

The song is part of a collection entitled ‘Creation: 16 Songs of Faith and Science’ which is currently under consideration by a publisher. Many of the songs are to be found elsewhere on this blog.

IONA: in retrospect

My watercolour of several years ago

I had hoped to post a few times whilst we were on Iona, but the dynamics of the excellent writing course run by Kenneth Steven, the internationally known and highly commended Scottish poet, and enjoying the island's beauty meant the blog took a bit of a back seat. So in a belated attempt to recover something of the experience of being on one of the most precious places in our life story, Im posting this 2 weeks late!

The preciousness is due to the island itself but also because of the presence of The Iona Community, a dispersed Christian community with a passion for justice and peace themes. Among the themes is a passionate concern for inclusivity which brings us to the poem and my companion watercolour of the Nunnery on the island. Both prompt the question of why the Abbey, a conspicuously less well built building compared to the Nunnery (in Rosemary Power’s understanding) has been rebuilt, whist the women’ house has been allowed to fall into decay. The poem considers this:

Passing through a doorway here

Is to pass from light to light,

grass to grass or stone to stone:

steps rise in the walls

to non existent landings

or dormitories

of no more substance

than the sublime, island air:

Windows look either out or in,

it makes no difference now

in this once loved home

of holy women.

Yet a mere few hundred steps

along the rise,

the same emptiness

has been restored,

re-vitalised

and made to ring again

with Alleluias, Hosannas

or "Joy and Peace to you"

according to the seasons;

just as the former place

once rang with women’s, love-laced

praise and  thanksgiving.

Why so different?

Why does one reverberate

and the other lie entombed

in a pleasant garden,

but otherwise

just a block of ancient walls?

Why this gross inequality

‘twixt sanctuaries?

Could it be, the influence of men

suppressed the significance 

of  these stones

laid to house women of the Lord?

Could it possibly be

It seemed more proper to men

To restore a house of men?

"Why, Why?"

The stones might justifiably cry.

"Why, Why?

is our heritage the less?"

"Why, Why"

the porches might, for equity, cry,

"Was there something wanting in our holiness?"

Or was it simply

that men rebuilt with little thought

the auld domain of men:

Maybe they felt

their headship, Biblically taught,

entitled Abbey above Nunnery

to rise again.

"Why, Why?"

The angels might for justice cry

"Why, Why?"

Cry faithful women from amidst

the press of heaven's saints.

"Why,Why?"

The Wild Goose might well sigh,

"No gender hierarchy

is any part of our perspective

of holiness!"

There are several other poems about Iona on this blog which you will find in the A to Z Index in the right hand column OR you may care to go on to this poem; IONA: A Special Place in the Cosmos

A Thought Experiment

Could a Change of Language Spark a change of Mindset?

So I fell to thinking: about people falling in love with places. This is seldom a rational process, for people simply’ fall for’ a place and perhaps truly bizarrely, people fall in love with redundant churches! Why?

The language is dated, the very title seems to smack of decay to those who cannot feel the history of the generations that invested love, spiritual homeliness and, of the time, vast funds, to create these havens from the storms of life. They have had good carers, they have had indifferent carers and occasionally unimaginative carers - and those places have fallen into disrepair, often beyond being restored.

But many, many have thankfully survived, but a lack of imagination within an introspective Anglican Church has possessively clung to the notion they have to be called a something church: and the musty word redundant has been pressed into reluctant service. 

So, let’s stands back a tiny distance and see if we can do better with our description for these, O so often, beautiful Oases. Let us simply recall who they were built to honour. They were built to honour The Creator of The Cosmos, clothed in the human frame of Jesus Christ.

Being a generous God, The Creator saw fit to endure we mere humans with an amazing vestige of his own function borne out of Love, creativity.

Would it not be entirely fitting for these often incredible edifices, which have had love, often of generations of women, lavished on them through good tunes, bad times, times of peace, times of war to be given a changed persona- in the . lingo of today, could they collectively become Creativity Hubs?

This is an age in which such an idea could’ fly’, at least partially because fundraising for imaginative projects can be more easily generated than perhaps at any time before. Crowd funding has reached a mature stage, so, for example, American money, wondering where to find a sound home just now, could well think that a small plot of land, with a wonderful serenity y about it, and being home to the remains of an ancestor, would be a good place to be rooted into.

Patron of the Arts has long been a noble title, for generations the province of the wealthy, . could becomes far more broad-based accolade. Any takers among the generation that has been made wealthy by windfall profits on even a modest home willing to make a modest stake in that beautiful little chapel that lies in a close, attended by a’ faithful locals?

Maybe this is too simplistic, but surely it deserves some further nurturing!

The Church Estate could almost certainly makea cite fund available to give the notion a kickstart.

Dioceses could surely find ways of transferring the land and buildings into community wide trusts-couldn’t they?

It would be surprising if local creatives didn’t welcome nearby spaces to make their work more widely appreciated.

Creativity Hub Trails could be attractive ways of a wider public being invited to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of these often ancient refuges. Places where people have brought their joys, their celebrations and their sadness could be repurposed, without the overlay of the too often dead-hands of formal religion. Many places could burgeon yet another imaginative location for a coffee shop. It’s already been done in many places, so maybe this is the time for a trickle to become a tide.

Given a core fund to help build a community, many places might find eager gardeners and allotment enthusiasts to help such a dream to live. Local clergy could be relieved of the guilt of having a redundant ecclesiastical asset in their often massive parochial portfolios.

Surely it’s worth an exploration!

Goodbye to ‘redundant ‘churches

Welcome Creativity hubs across our lands. It could just be a twenty first century resolution of a centuries old problem.

Sent from my iPad

Netanyahu’s The Villain Today

This is a Pixabay free image

 headed ‘Child:Destruction'

I don’t usually take to politics on this blog, but the vileness of the Israeli genocidal assaults on Palestinians have so reached the utter depths of depravity, I feel I should not keep silent.

My anger is wrapped into limerick form which I have been using extensively on my Eco-verses companion blog under the title of ‘Climericks’: those are limericks about Climate Justice.

I am using a second term for limericks like this one, which is ‘Slimericks’: these are about the slime that seems to wrap itself into every political system, be it totalitarian, autocratic, oligarchical or even, so called, democratic.

This Slimerick goes like this -

Hamas blamers are vilely passé,

Netanyahu’s the villain today;

his genocide aims 

are hideous stains

On humanity: NOW make HIM pay.

Rosemary For Remembrance, MY E-Book for Good Friday, Holy Saturday and an Easter Day All-Age ‘giveaway’!

 

This is the  Ebook ‘cover’ of my Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Daypublished by Wild Goose Publishing, the publishing arm of The Iona Community. It consists of A meditation and a reflection for Good Friday, a lament for Holy Saturday, and a simple all-age activity for Easter Sunday. 6 pages and still costs only £2-20.

The story of this download was published on this blog In March 2017, when I wrote:

'This is a thrilling day for me! Whilst, like many ‘armchair poets’,  I have had the occasional poem appear in collections edited by others or in local newspapers, today has seen the publication of a small personal collection as a download from Wild Goose Publishing, the publications arm of The Iona Community.

I am sure every author finds publication of their own work an exciting experience, but this is especially so as it is a new link in the long thread of our experience with that very special island, Iona, which has been part of our story over the last twenty-five years or so. It all started when I took a retreat at All Hallows, Ditchingham in a year that we had booked a holiday on Mull. I mentioned this to the Mother Superior, who made it her practice to meet all retreatants, and she suggested we went to Iona where her community were going to be ‘baby-sitting’ a small ecumenical retreat house on the island, whilst a new warden was found by the American organisation that ran Duncraig. Pam still tells the story of my sudden stopping to ‘chat up’(!) a nun in the garden of Duncraig which led to us being shown over the accommodation. This was the start of a time when we took groups of friends to the island on several occasions: they were always precious events and we found that rounding off each day at the Iona Community’s Abbey services added immeasurably to their specialness.

It was on the island that Pam felt affirmed in her call into ministry and I found much delight in building up a small suite of Iona poems from visit to visit (see end).

Sadly, Duncraig is no longer a retreat house. A fund-raising campaign I helped with to try and save it foundered when a major prospective donor, whose gift would have enabled the house to continue its ministry, lost money in the banking collapse. As it happens, the money from the subsequent sale of Duncraig went into Bishops House where we are planning to lead a group visit in September - an unexpected thread of continuity.

We have had many more personal Iona experiences, including a retreat led by Kenneth Steven, the well known Scottish poet and then last year joining Author’s Week at the Abbey run by the community which led to the publication of this download. Hence my delight on this special occasion. It feels poignant too, in that we very nearly didn’t get to the Author’s week as a hideous cough, the first evidence of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, made travelling to the island feel an almost impossible challenge. But we got there and then later travelled on by bus to Inverness to spend time with one of the friends who earlier travelled with us to Iona. And today, now sandwiched between chemotherapy and radiotherapy, is part of the outcome of that trip, for which I am immensely grateful.

If you would like to see details of the download - and even, perhaps, purchase it (for only £2-20 +VAT), you can find it HERE. I personally would much appreciate your interest and you will also be supporting The Iona Community’s magnificent work which you can find summarised HERE. They, too, will be delighted to receive your support through a purchase. For some people, the download may be of particular interest as it has a description of a very simply organised Easter Day children’s/ congregational activity which involves the giving of Rosemary to the congregation as a representation of the spices the women carried to Jesus’tomb.(Hence the title of the download)

My Iona collection of poems can be found by clicking HERE’

All this remains relevant we have since 2017 visited the Island another six or seven times and continue to be thrilled every time we do by its spiritual ethos and by the presence of The Iona Community who feel to us more aware of the major concerns of the World than any church we experience on the mainland. The Island has, for us become our veritable spiritual ‘home’ and we thank God for it daily.

We do that by joining the Iona Community You Tube,  Morning Worship. It changes every day of Monday through Saturday and keeps us singing along with the powerful and ever-surprising songs and hymns of John Bell and the late Graham Maule. Why not check it out?

 Throughout last year, I was encouraging churches to decorate their Christmas Trees in such a way that they became part of the Christmas story thus changing them from a prettified pagan emblem at the front (usually) of the church into a symbol of the angel host that hovered over Bethlehem and invited the edge-of-society Shepherds to be the first people to witness the coming of the Saviour of the World, the Messiah.

However, as the year has passed and our companion site (a more secularly based site than this), has developed the ideas of CLIMERICKS and CLIMCUBES, these two potent symbols of Climate change, Climate Justice and servanthood in their own right, offer an opportunity to turn a Christmas Tree into an even more graphic symbol than that of the Angel Tree. In this, they also need the help of some of those lovely Palestine Olive wood tree hangings. I hope you are beginning to get the picture.

That picture is, overall, almost breathtaking in its simplicity and explicit messages. Just look!

FROM THE TOP - down to just above eye level are your LOCAL ANGEL THRONG. As there is now plenty of time to prepare, why not ask local craftspeople to make angels for the tree in their own medium. You will then have a beautifully diverse fellowship of angels AND an opportunity to invite the crafters in for their own pre Christmas celebration and dedication of their work hanging in the church, which at its best is the beating heart of any community.

FROM EYE LEVEL to about 1metre off the ground - CLIMERICKS speaking of Climate Justice and Stewardship. So about OUR responsibility and opportunities to bring about the failing of the COGS industries.

BOTTOM QUARTER OF TREE - Palestine Olive wood tree hangings recalling the very land where Christ was born

AROUND THE TREE - CLIMCUBES to be given away at an Epiphany service - symbolic of our sending Your message of love and truth into our communities.

So the pretty but irrelevant Christmas Tree becomes a NATIVITY TREE -a  multi-faceted symbol of HOPE and OUTREACH: a glorious transformation.

Please pass this idea on far and wide if you think it has merit

Geodes: A Poetic Exploration on Iona.

 

We have just returned from Iona, resplendent with spring flowers, having been on an excellent writing retreat led by our Scottish poet friend, Ken Steven. During the week I was delighted to have the postcard of geodes, shown here, still left on the table by the time I came to make my selection from a collection of images that Ken had gathered to inspire us to write. Someone had picked up the card ahead of me, then discarded it. I suspect there is a story there! But it gave me an opportunity to draw on it for a reflection on the exquisite beauty found in some inconspicuous looking stones - and a little of their history. I enjoyed every moment of the writing , and hope that you, precious reader, can too.

 

What primeval forces laid these layers down,

then curled them, 

and fashioned the stratified stone

into shapes,

made beautiful to behold,

by the human eye?

 

Through them, the brain can reason,

then build speculation on knowledge,

to begin to fathom the mysteries

of aeon’s of pre-history.
 
All this is wrapped
in plainstone:
so I, full of ignorance,
need an interpreter,
a palaeontologist
to steer me through the labyrinth 

of the varied calcifications.

More informed,

I still gaze in wonder

at this newly polished gem, 

and ask myself,

‘Did God have a hand

in this imperfect perfection?’

 

And I know, that I believe, he did.

 

TT © March 2025

 

 

 

FOR ST. JOSEPH’S DAY: This Manger’s Well Made

This Manger’s Well Made (Stable Talk)

 

‘This manger’s well made’,

said Joseph to Mary,

‘Its joints are a joy

 to a carpenter’s eye’.

‘I hope that our son 

will be skilled with timber, 

so neighbours we serve

will be e’er satisfied.

 

‘Oh Joseph love,

 you are so wise and good.

yet our son will, perhaps,

work with far more than wood.’

 

‘That crook there is shaped 

with skill and perception;

‘tis made for a shepherd

who’ll both dare and save’.

‘I’ll show our son how 

sheep are protected,

so shepherds will ask him,

to shape them good staves.

 

Oh Joseph love etc

 

‘This yoke is a work

of marvellous honing.

It never will chafe:

the ox scarce need a goad.

Our son must learn ways

of both beast and ploughman, 

then contour his yokes

to ease burdensome loads’.

 

Oh Joseph love etc.

 

‘I‘ll teach him the strengths,

Of timber, dear Mary,

show him all the things

he must and must not do’.

‘Like ne’er make a cross

for fierce Roman soldiers,

Nor sell them our wood 

To hang slave, thief or Jew.’

 

‘Oh Joseph love,

 you are so wise and good.

Yes, our son when time comes

Will be smitten by wood.