congrats to Carol Ann Duffy!

So proud to have a new Poet Laureate – and yes, it is, after all quite a new thing (in this day and age even…) to have a woman in the role.

all the best to her!

Below is a great poem of Carol Ann Duffy’s which articulates amazingly what it’s like in that difficult bit of life when we’re away from the one we love…

Words, Wide Night by Carol Ann Duffy

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

smell the roses…

Generally, in every day life, I’m pretty darned good at ‘smelling the roses’ – I notice little beauties of life and even literally stop to smell the roses when I’m walking through a neighbourhood and plants overhang the pavement/walkway.

What i’m being reminded of just recently is that I need to do that in my whole life too.

I have things i want to happen in my life – and i get impatient. I try not to ‘go on’ to God, but I kind of end up being just a tad repetitive in my requests (sorry God!).

What’s so easy to miss though, is the love and blessedness in my life now.

To be looking forward impatiently to a future i dream of, and miss the fact that my life right now (though not untouched by pains) is actually blessed beyond my imaginings. In fact, I’m ridiculously over-blessed.

For my future hopes, I have felt God tell me so many times, ‘It’s all in hand’, yet I find it so hard to ‘leave it there’ and get on with today.

 

                                          

I want to be better at ‘smelling the roses’ in my friendships, enjoy and savour every moment of joy that comes my way, to abandon myself to God in the ‘now’, to learn the lessons God is teaching me directly and through my amazing, beautiful friendships right now.

I mustn’t waste the lessons of now, or miss the fun of now, by only waiting impatiently for hoped-for future joys.

 

Grey waters

Someone wonderful recently introduced me to R.S. Thomas… here’s one of his poems that I already love! (thanks SL!)

Sea-Watching

 

Grey waters, vast 

                        as an area of prayer

that one enters. Daily

                      over a period of years

I have let my eye rest on them.

Was I waiting for something?

                                          Nothing

but that continuous waving

                             that is without meaning

occurred.

              Ah, but a rare bird is

rare. It is when one is not looking

at times one is not there

                                  that it comes.

You must wear your eyes out

as others their knees.

               I became the hermit

of the rocks, habited with the wind

and the mist. There were days,

so beautiful the emptiness

it might have filled,

                          its absence

was as its presence; not to be told

any more, so single my mind

after its long fast,

                          my watching from praying.

– R.S. Thomas

in Laboratories of the Spirit, 1975 

new life in old twigs

i literally jumped for joy when i saw that the tree outside my window was starting to leaf and showing tiny signs of blossom!

i love this time of the year when things are ‘coming alive’ or ‘waking’ again. it’s wonderful… and nature’s parable re-enacted: that the cold barren days, the waiting in darkness, the dry brittle twigs weren’t really signs of all-is-lost, but of things waiting for their time (their ‘kairos’).

this is the kind of thing i meant before (over easter) when i wrote about death and resurrection – the experiences in the ‘here and now’ which feel like endings and loss, the cold/lonely/barren times that feel like wasted time, that are sometimes actually just the gateway to something new. not always what we expected, or what we think we’d want, but somehow blessings of new life.  

hold on for the light…

                                                              

“yes, I can see a light that is coming, for the heart that holds on,  

and there will be an end to these troubles, but until that day comes,

still i will praise you, still i will praise you…”

                                                            (Matt and Beth Redman)