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.

IONA: We’re there!

This is a bit out of sequence because there are two ‘travelogue’ poems in course, which narrate the story of our journeys, first from home to Glasgow, then from Glasgow to Iona. I’ll post these some time in the next few days. But here, courtesy of National Trust for Scotland are some glimpses of what draws us here as well as the fellowship of the Iona Community and a profoundly compelling sense of peace and pilgrimage.

To view these images, you may well have to click on them, then zoom in around 6 times to make them comfortable to view. I’m sorry my expertise is not up to my enthusiasm!

Just a flavour!

Tomorrow we’re off to Iona - again!

This time it’s to take part in a retreat run by Kenneth Steven, the well known Scottish poet, who, over a few years has become a friend.

To celebrate, I will try and re-post over the next few days my poems written during and after previous Iona trips - and incorporate some of my art from earlier days too.

Tomorrow’s first leg is to simply walk to Waterbeach Station, 400 metres away to start the Waterbeach-Ely-Peterborough-Edinburgh-Glasgow train journey. We will be using the Network Rail assisted passage system in the hope of minimising hassle at the transfer points.

So I start with

Embracing Silence

I am about to escape into silence,

to be released briefly from

this clamorous world

that seeks to suffocate

the bliss of the absence of noise.

Will you, my God,

meet me in the stillness?

Will you be there, waiting,

simply to allow me to be,

alongside you?

Will You use the mantle of silence

to draw me,

to open me

to past, present and future

in the way you alone are able?

Help me yield my whole being.

That, in the deep vault of stillness,

You can gather it to yourself

and weave it seamlessly

into the warp and weft of eternity

in whichever way you desire.

Whilst contemplating a time of silence, you might like to pursue the idea further in the poem Deep Silence 

AS I Look Up at The Cosmos and Pray

This is the NASA image of the day for 27th February of star clusters M35 and M36. It is images like this which have been an inspiration in the writing of ‘As I Look Up at The Cosmos and Pray.

The song is to the delightful tune of ‘As I Went Down to the River to Pray’ which I listen to regularly as part of my morning quiet time: a tune I have come to love and which I wanted to vest with a fresh and contemporary set of words. They emerged as a children’s song which was an unexpected delight.

The song expresses, for me, the important understanding that God made, not only earth sky and sea, but the whole Universe -and all its resplendent glories. So let’s sing this with joy and maybe a fresh insight into the amazing greatness of our God.

As I Look Up at the Cosmos and Pray, (Sorry! Score in course of adjustment - for ‘Above’ in heading and first line, read ‘and pray)  

 

Score: Musescore adapted for new words.

As I look up at the cosmos and pray,

marvelling about the wondrous way

in which the Lord created this,

quite daz-dazzling array

 

Oh Children! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

Oh Children! let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

 

Oh Sisters! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

Oh Sisters! Let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

 

Oh Brothers! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

Oh Brothers! Let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

 

Oh Mothers! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

Oh Mothers! Let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

 

Oh Fathers! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

Oh Fathers! Let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

 

All people! Let’s look up,

let’s look up, up-up above.

All people! Let’s look up,

up at the cosmos and pray.

TT February 2025

.

There is a splendid instrumental version of the tune by Kaleb Brasse  at on You Tube here which can be used to sing along with

 

  

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 

Ely Cathedral, 'Clothed in Glory' Exhibition of work by The Sisters of The Church and a poem ‘Just Saying'

Last Friday, Pam, my ordained wife and I visited Ely Cathedral with two intentions: one to support the doughty pilgrims walking the COAT OF HOPES around the United Kingdom as they passed through Ely on their way to Lakenheath and onward to Norwich Cathedral. The full story of the COAT can be found at coat of hopes and I will post more on this remarkable initiative tomorrow.

The second intent was to visit the ‘Clothed in Glory’ exhibition currently on display in the Lady Chapel at Ely. The embroideries of The Sisters of The Church (an Anglican Order) is exquisite: love and dedication radiate from every beautiful garment on show. Do visit if you can: it is in the Cathedral until 16th March.

Our informal guide to the exhibits was Sister Marguerite and we had a thoroughly enjoyable 40 minutes looking at the exhibits and chatting with Sister.

One of the more striking exhibits is a black fabric effigy of the head of a beautifully shaped young woman’s head wearing a Mitre! I am delighted to say that exhibit was the genesis of the poem below titled ‘Just Saying!’ It touches on a justice issue that needs to be regularly aired - and especially at this time of confusion and anxiety in the Anglican Church.

Just Saying!

I am in the wide -open space

Of Ely’s Lady Chapel,

surrounded by the

exquisite embroidery 

of The Sisters of The Church

 

I am drawn to gaze 

into a glass case

displaying

an elegantly feminine effigy:

black, and wearing a mitre.

 

Is this a prophetic insight

for a struggling, wounded church?

 

An Archbishop,

female and beautifully black?

The antithesis of 

a misogynistic, male, managerial mode,

that clings onto temporal power

in sanctified palaces,

whilst its diaspora spiral into despair.

 

An Archbishop who has known

the torments of poverty: 

who is an icon for the victims of

the extremes of exclusion .

 

A woman, derided for her gender and race,

who knows and unreservedly loves Jesus. 

 

TT 23.02.25

I was pleased to be able to take further photos of the exquisite work on display, and was especially impressed by the apparent beading on the coat of the angel shown. It is all embroidered although appearing as if pearls had been sewn on. Amazing! (although the blog site will not accept my photos at present: I will try again in the next few days)

 

 

Sunday Evening and I Sit Cracking Walnuts

Pixabay free image

There is real blessing in  those moments which prompt a memory that has lain buried for years in our amazing brains - and then emerges in an otherwise quite pedestrian moment. It feels to me something to be very thankful for.  So, from a few moments just two days ago comes: (and the picture captures the moment wonderfully - although our nutcrackers are not so highly decorated!)

Sunday Evening and I Sit Cracking Walnuts

Sunday evening

and I sit cracking walnuts

fresh from a market stall. for the two of us,

It’s a sharp but gentle jab that does it best.

And as the half kernels emerge,

I discover something in common 

with a late father,

who delighted

in the same child-like way,

At any intact nut-segment

Wrested from its shell,

well before they could be purchased,

as a pre-packaged, 

supermarket commodity.

He Was Holding Me: Dedicated to the women who are in despair in Gaza

 

Image from BBC News

He Was Holding Me

(How can any of us even begin to imagine the agony?)

 

This grew in my mind, in the night, after seeing the despair of a woman returning to the rubble that had been her home in Gaza City.

 

He was holding me.

He was holding me.

And the bullet came from nowhere.

And his beautiful, beautiful body

convulsed and collapsed around me.

He was holding me.

He was holding me.

He was holding me.

by Trevor Thorn and, I believe, inspired by The Holy Spirit.

CHANGING THIS YEAR’S CHRISTMAS TREE (2025) INTO A NATIVITY TREE

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

21st January 2025

TODAY IT IS DIFFICULT TO WRITE WITH HOPE

21^st January 2025

 

A hazy winter sun,

lies directly to our south.

We are blessed to find

a vacant riverside bench,

where we are able to rest awhile.

 

We witness a chilly garden tidying

and are enfolded

by a gorgeously lazy

wood-smoke aroma.

 

Three thousand miles away,

mad things are being enacted,

that will sound the death knell

of our planet.

 

Yet here,

for a precious fleeting moment,

by the ancient-flowing Cam, 

all is wonderfully well with the world.

PALESTINE: THE LAND WHERE JESUS WALKED AND SOME POSTAL HISTORY

 

. 

This is a Palestine stamp of 1927 depicting The Dome of The Rock. Other stamps in the 1927 set pictured Rachel’s Tomb, The Tower of David, a Mosque in Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. The Wikipedia citation quotes from Donald M Reid’s 1984 Article (in The Journal of Contemporary History) ’The symbolism of Postage Stamps; A Source for The Historian’, ‘The British Mandate scenes carefully balanced sites of significance to Muslims, Jews and Christians’. 

This begs an obvious question, If this was our Government’s stance in 1927, how have we come to the appalling pass that our most prominent politicians are backing the genocidal aims of just one of these three faith-groups. Is it not an unutterable disgrace? And especially as we back that faux-Zionist terrorist group with a constant flow of arms.

So let’s look at this through a different lens; the lens of simple verse.

THIS PALESTINE STAMP OF THE PAST,

SHOWS CLEAR HOW THE DIE WAS THEN CAST;

THE COUNTRY, BACK THEN

HOMED THREE FAITHS, AND I KEN,

LET THEM FLOURISH...... SO NOW, BE AGHAST!

A CLIMERICK FROM OUR COMPANION SITE ‘ECO-VERSES’ ON How to help the earth as you seek refunds for those unwanted returns

So we are in the season between the Holy Innocents and Epiphany which might contemporarily be referred to as the Season of Returns (Liturgical colour - unappetising grey - see picture). If that picture appals you, then here’s an idea to make a move that will help the slightly-longer-term integrity of the planet. We so often feel impotent. Claim a little bit of responsibility back from the abyss - and be assured that we at C& C and Eco-verses will applaud you.

 

If you’re now returning some clothes,

A I can quickly disclose,

if the path of return,

 will be just slash and burn

or perhaps NOT increase the earth's woes.

So we find ourselves in the ‘Season of the Returns’, when disliked, wrong sized, plainly unlike the description, clothes get walked to the Post Office or mailing boxes to land back on the vendor’s doorstep. This is a 'planet aware’ moment. 

Do you have any idea what the policy of that seller is to the possible van-loads of returns that arrive unbidden throughout this Season of the Returns.

Do YOU care? I hope you do, because you can do an Earth- friendly/ unfriendly check before you send a garment back.

One way (as suggested on 16th December on this site, would be to ask the sellers for a copy of their ESG (Environmental, Sustainability and Governance) report and see a) if it exists at all and if it does ask for a copy from their Customer Relations Department. Make your action dependent on what the report says. So, if that should reveal (Unlikely) that they simply trash all returns - and some undoubtedly do, there really isn’t an Eco-wise reason to send the garment back. Take the refund, take the garment to the nearest thrift or charity shop and bask in the knowledge that you have saved that garment poisoning the earth with many thousands of others.

However, all that takes effort. Though by taking that course, you will bring pressure on some of the more unscrupulous traders and earth needs to know some of you will (Bravo! Bravo)

So, yesterday, I tried a much simpler route. I am signed up to an AI suite and asked it ‘What will #GooseandGander do with a garment I return? It’s an ideal target for aa AI request, very specifically targeted, so the Algorithms will get straight to the heart of the query. It might take you quite a long time hunting round the G&G website, for example.

The answer came back in less than 5 seconds.

If you return a garment to Goose & Gander, they will typically inspect it to ensure it meets their return policy criteria (e.g., unworn, unwashed, and in its original condition). After that, they might:

1. Restock It: If the item is in excellent condition, they could add it back to their inventory for resale.

2. Sell as Seconds: If the item has minor flaws, they might sell it at a discount as a “seconds” item.

3. Recycle or Donate: For items that can’t be resold, they might recycle the materials or donate the garment to charity.

Policies can vary, so it’s best to confirm with Goose & Gander directly if you’re curious about their specific process.

Now, I realise the answer said ’they will typically...’ and not simply ’they will’. I’ll be following up and asking other retailers questions with the help of AI.

And at the end of it all, I feel as if I have struck a tiny, but significant seam of customer awareness.

Do think about it. I will be back with another thought- provoking idea in a few days.

IN THE MEANTIME, MANY HAPPY RETURNS.