All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

Joyce Huff
From Gargoyle Magazine
Volume 44

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

go here to read

To make is such.  Let us make.  And set the weather fair.

From Autumn Sequel by Louis MacNeice

In the course of writing my current book (to be published next year) I bought this marvellous book of Christmas poems by U A Fanthorpe. It really is the business – each double spread is a poem she wrote and an illustration by her partner, which they originally created to send as Christmas cards. Some are religous and others not; some are comical and some more serious. It’s quite brilliant, and would make a great resource for Advent/Christmas/Epiphany services, as well as a fab Christmas present.

Luckily for us, though, Duxford doesn’t just restore historic aircraft for museum display, but gets them back into flight as well. Planes in a museum are certianly interesting in their own way, but watching the airshow yesterday, it came home to me that only ever seeing old planes in a museum is a disjointed experience if you never see them fly. If you only ever see them grounded, you lose the sense of what they are built for.

Yesterday afternoon, after a couple of hours of watching assorted war-time planes showing off their possibilities to maximum effect, we walked back through a hangar that we know quite well. The planes hanging from the ceiling suddenly took on a new aspect: now I could see them not just as pieces of engineering history, but as birds that were built to fly.

It occurred to me that a similar thing happens between theology and faith. Theology is, if you like, the "engineering" – the nuts and bolts that you have to slog over and test drive until it will get off the runway. Theology is absorbing and interesting in its own right, just as engineering is. But it isn’t an end in itself.  Like old planes, if theology ends up grounded in a museum, you can forget what it’s like to "slip the surly bonds of Earth… And dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings".* 

Just for the record, the plane that left me absolutely gobsmacked was this one:

a Bearcat, built in 1945, it goes as fast as a jet although it doesn’t have a jet engine. Once it gets up to speed it can turn its nose right up and fly straight up into the sky. A serious goosebumps experience.

*quote from John Gillespie McGee

(Mary Oliver, poet)

The tell-tale catatonic stare betrayed
an ocean swelling inside of her.

Time to rest the heart and stop the mind.
The wise and old familiar chair
stuffed with words to comfort her.

Poor dear… she’s an artist, you see,
and was never made for soldiering.
Misfit toys sometimes get annoyed
with wounds and endless wandering.

No more fighting.
No more thinking.
An end to swan’s song singing.

Just trust
and rest
your weeping head
on feathers friends are bringing.

~ Susan J. Preston

Words: Judith Bingham

Darkness… there is something about the context of darkness. Only in darkness can you see the light for what it is.

C’est toujours par la faim que commence un bon repas (Jaen Commerson)

~ Mary Oliver, ~ New and Selected Poems

I found this wonderful poem over at Susan’s place. It reminds me of Canada (the geese and the prairies) and of Wendell Berry’s poetry, and of the relief and joy of having left behind a religion that demanded constant repentance. – Visual~Voice Archives.