God of the visible and the invisible

Here are intercessions that I wrote for today's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

God of the visible and the invisible, God of the incarnate Christ and the ascended Christ, God of the Son who lived and died in 1st century Palestine and God of the Spirit that blows where it chooses in every time and culture, we come before you today acknowledging all your different guises and ways of being. We cannot fully understand you, we cannot constrain you, and yet we can know you, love you, and know your love and life in us. In awe and wonder at your diversity and variety, we ask that we might encounter you in as many ways as we can bear and, especially, within the challenges and changes brought by Covid-19. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of presence and absence, we ask that in this time of physical distancing we may learn from the insights of those that have sought isolation in order to pray allowing our cells to teach us everything, as the city truly becomes our monastery. We ask, too, that, although physically separate, we will not neglect to meet together but encourage one another, and all the more as we face together the challenges of this day and time. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of affirmation and negation, we ask that, in this time of loss, we will discover what is truly central to our lives and loves, praying for all who have lost loved ones that the memories of all that was shared will come to outweigh the sudden bleakness of loss. In our loss of liberty and movement, may we see afresh and affirm all that we had overlooked and ignored in the haste and hurry of our previous lives; the beauty of birdsong, the clearness of air and sky, the peace and rest encountered in the still and the slow. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of touch and distance, we pray that we may understand our social distancing as an act of love to protect others from danger and maintain this discipline until no longer necessary. We pray for those whose touching of others is essential for the saving of life – all medics, paramedics, care workers and all in other emergency services – praying that they might be given the PPE and testing needed for their own protection. We pray, too, for those who are the recipients of their care praying for many that care will enable recovery. We pray, too, that our physical distancing at this time may become a spur to acts of greater love, support and service towards others, in ways that, while virtual, are nevertheless full of care, concern and meaning. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of sight and insight, we pray for those we only see virtually giving thanks for the technology that enables us to see others without their being physically present and for those that invented, maintain and develop that technology. We give thanks too for all who have preceded us in using this technology well – often those who have been on the edge of society and church – praying that we will learn from their experiences and value all they have to share. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

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The Innocence Mission - St Francis And The Future.

Tadeusz Dabrowski: the caring non-presence of God

Black Square by Tadeusz Dabrowski is reviewed in the current edition of the Times Literary Supplement.
Adam Zagajewski has written that 'Tadeusz Dąbrowski is writing his self-portrait of the artist as a young man. Love, faith and doubt fill its pages.'

Dabrowski has published five volumes of poetry in his native Poland, which have won him numerous awards. His work has appeared in translation in thirteen European languages. English translations of his poems by Antonia Lloyd-Jones have been published in several leading literary journals, including Agni, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. Black Square is his first collection to be published in English.
In his introduction Tomasz Różycki writes: 'It is hard to define Dąbrowski’s poetry with utter certainty, to say whether its subject has or has not reconciled himself with God—whose authority is never put in question—or what his moral choices are. This is a poetry that complicates matters, that refuses to provide answers, that constructs small treatises in completely unpredictable places—an existence en brut, always becoming, always variable and resistant to definition. This is a poetry that smelts its inheritance into something new, modern, and original, something dynamic, paradoxical, constantly in motion, a poetry that is engaged with today’s world in so many of its manifestations, leaping from theme to theme—art, travel, sex, love (presented in all its succulence, no doubt, and with complete candor, as if this most fragile of human affairs was the only constant in life), computers, camera lenses, Europe, America, quotations from philosophers, and rock lyrics—in its ambitious gambit to comprehend a world that remains elusive and undescribed.'

The TLS review notes that some 'of his most compelling poems are meditations on the absence of God or what he prefers to call "His / caring non-presence."'

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Henryk Górecki - Songs Are Sung.