Showing posts with label memorial. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 January 2023

There is time

Here's the sermon I shared during Evensong at St Catherine’s Wickford this evening:

Last year, I led a Memorial Service for a friend from St Martin-in-the-Fields who died an untimely death. For those of us who gathered for the Memorial, there was no getting away from that fact, and lockdown had also meant that for many of us our contact with our friend had been less than it might otherwise have been. Those were tough truths and caused us real sadness as we gathered to remember her and give thanks for her life.

Nevertheless, the reading from Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 3.1-11) that she had chosen for that reminded us that, although the time she had had with us was shorter than we would have liked, there had been time for her life to impact us and others, while there was also time for her to live through the whole gamut of life's experiences from great joys to great sorrows.

At her Memorial we heard of childhood friendships enduring into adulthood and later friendships built on lived experience of discrimination, leading to advocacy on behalf of others. There was time to reflect on places that, at points, provided safe space and community space to her and also places like the Wards of the Hospitals in which she stayed that were restrictive and conflicted spaces in which to be. There was time too, to also hear the voice, as through her writings, she had articulated her experiences and advocated on behalf of others whilst acknowledging the many ways in which hers was a voice insufficiently heard, sharing experiences that are insufficiently understood and appreciated. In her life there had been time for travel to places like Palestine that impacted her deeply and which gave lifelong commitments and also times in which she was confined to one place, whether on a ward or in her flat during lockdown. There had also been time for talking - conversation, prayer, presentations, advocacy - and time for silence - whether of reflection or of discrimination when her voice went unheard.

Her Memorial Service provided time in which we could say that ‘This was the woman I knew’ and time to hear others saying, ‘This was the woman I knew’. There was time to gather up the richness, the fullness, the diversity of her personality and experiences in order we all experienced a greater depth in our understanding of her, all that we appreciated about her, all that we had shared with her, could share of her with others and could learn of her from others. There was time for anger at the discrimination and lack of understanding that she and others face. There was time for inspiration from the experiences she articulated, the statements she left and the example she provided. There was time in which the extremes, the contradictions, the confusions, the paradoxes of life and experience could be held and where the limits of our own understandings could be acknowledged in a time and space where we each one valued and affirmed her for the dear, special, unique and gifted person that she was and came to know that we can now hold and appreciate in our hearts forever the time that each of us shared with her and had now shared with one another.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 tells us that there is time, even when lives are cut short, if we use the time that is available to us. All too often we do not take the time we have to be with those that are important to us. All too often we distract ourselves with unimportant tasks and fail to do the things that are truly of importance to us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 encourages us to use the time that we have. So, as we often pray during funerals, grant us, Lord, the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. Let us use that time to know others more completely, appreciate them more fully, love them more deeply, and, in that knowing, know ourselves more intimately. For to know and appreciate and love and enjoy each other in that way is heaven.

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U2 - 13 (There Is A Light).

Monday, 21 February 2022

A Memorial Service for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabusa: Prayers

Here are the prayers I prepared for today's Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

God of justice, we give you thanks for your prophets, prophets like Desmond Tutu, who advocate for love, justice and human rights in the struggles against apartheid, oppression and exploitation and for climate justice, peace in Palestine and Israel, equal rights for the LGBTI community, equality, fairness and justice across the world. Like the Arch, may we come to see that all humans are of infinite worth intrinsically because all are created in Your image and that systems such as apartheid are blasphemous because they treat the children of God as if they are less than Your own. Challenge us through your prophets to create societies wherein people count and where all have equal access to the good things of life, with equal opportunity to live, work and be educated. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of culture, we thank you for your poets, poets like Lindiwe Mabuza, for whom art was an essential part of the struggle and poetry a part of a whole arsenal of weaponry to be used against apartheid. We thank you for all who shape their words to get to the heart of the matter and move their hearers. We thank you for all who kneel, where road-blocks to life pile precariously, and scoop earth, raising mounds of hope, who oath with their lives to immortalise each footprint left, each grain of soil that flesh shed, each little globe of blood dropped in the struggle upon the zigzag path of revolution. We thank you for those who saw that Soweto's blood red road would not dry up until the fields of revolution were fully mellow tilled, always to bloom again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of unity, we give thanks for your reconcilers, reconcilers like Desmond Tutu, who do the demanding, sometimes agonising, sometimes traumatic work of truth-telling, testimony, confession, listening, reparation and rehabilitation. We thank you for all who helped investigate the violations that took place in South Africa between 1960 and 1994, provided support and reparation to victims and their families, and compiled a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. Remind us that while we are not responsible for what breaks us, we can be responsible for what puts us back together again and naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts. That, as the Arch reminded us, in our own ways, we are all broken and out of that brokenness, we hurt others. May forgiveness be the journey we take toward healing the broken parts and become whole once again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of relationships, we give thanks for your Ambassadors, Ambassadors like Lindiwe Mabuza, who succeed in promoting their countries and cultures winning new friends from across many fields, from business to tourism, music, literature and arts and culture. Give us the gift of bringing people together and of polishing rough diamonds until they themselves know how brightly they shine. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God of freedom, we give thanks for 27 years of freedom since South Africans voted in their first democratic elections. We give thanks for the lives and work of Desmond Tutu and Lindiwe Mabuza and the part that each played in the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks for those of all faiths and none who contributed to the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks that Trafalgar Square became a global focal point for the movement and for the part that St Martin-in-the-Fields played within that movement. We give thanks for the ongoing partnership between St Martin’s and St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. We give thanks for the work of the High Commission in the UK as it contributes to the creation of a better South Africa through its engagement with the government and people of the United Kingdom. God Bless South Africa; Guard her children; Guide her leaders And give her peace, for Jesus Christ's sake. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Merciful God, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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David Fanshawe - Dona Nobis Pacem - A Hymn for World Peace.

Sunday, 20 February 2022

A Memorial Service for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabusa

A Memorial Service for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabusa will be held at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Monday 21 February, 2.00pm. The service, which is being organised with the South African High Commission, will include tributes to the Archbishop Emeritus and the Ambassador from those who knew them, an Address from Revd Dr Sam Wells, and music from St Martin’s Voices. Those wishing to attend should RSVP to events@southafricahouse.uk, the service will also be livestreamed on stmartins.digital and the St Martin's Facebook page.

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James Whitbourn - A Prayer of Desmond Tutu.

Sunday, 6 December 2020

Artlyst: Nicola Ravenscroft - Sculpture With A Peaceful Stillness

My latest interview for Artlyst is with Nicola Ravenscroft, who has recently been commissioned to create a memorial to honour the bravery of front-line NHS and care workers in the fight against Covid and whose installation 'With the Heart of a Child' is currently displayed at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

'My installations are contemplations, silent, tender pleadings: they plead for you, for me, for us all to work together: they cry out for us to recognise the loving signature connecting us all – the Divine – in nature, in human diversity, in the universe, and in the heart of a little child.

I trust that in this beautiful and powerful realisation, we can imagine, create and achieve in ‘oneness’, that which we can’t achieve alone.'

My other Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

Articles:

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Raphael Ravenscroft - "... and a little child shall lead ..." Isaiah 11:6.

Saturday, 7 December 2019

Service and Sacrifice marked on Mt Piceli

Much gratitude to the Curry and Rowan families who went to Mt Piceli for the 20th anniversary of the 24 aid workers who died in 1999, including my brother Nick:

'High in the Mt Piceli ranges, 12 kilometres outside of Mitrovica, the air is pristine and the vistas are breathtaking, with no scrap of manmade material in sight – save for several memorials and some pieces of airplane fuselage. These serve as visceral reminders of the loss of 24 people from around the world, primarily international humanitarian and aid workers, who died there 20 years ago today in the deadliest plane crash in Kosovo’s history.

On November 9, six people journeyed from Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to commemorate the events of Friday November 12, 1999 – and mark the holes that were left in families around the world when a plane chartered by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) came down en route from Rome. The passengers and staff onboard came from 10 different countries. None survived the crash that happened when the plane struck treetops and crashed in poor visibility.

The six who journeyed to the site left personal keepsakes, including a figurine of the Irish saint Our Lady of Knock and a few splashes of Irish whiskey, at a memorial stone that was built by a voluntary brigade of international civilians and unveiled last year, with the names of all 24 who died carved in stone. The group comprised the loved ones of Canadian government official Daniel Rowan and Northern Irish NGO worker Andrea Curry, and for most it represented their first time at the crash site.'

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Julie Miller - All My Tears.

Sunday, 14 July 2019

Srebrenica Memorial Week Erev Shabbat Service

It was a privilege to mark Remembering Srebrenica Memorial Week at West London Synagogue by lighting a memorial candle at the beginning of their special Srebrenica Memorial Week Erev Shabbat Service. 'Srebrenica Mother' Fudila Effendic was guest of honour, sharing about the unspeakable loss of her husband and son and her resolve not to harbour hate or revenge.

West London Synagogue aims to keep awareness alive, despite the lessons of the Shoah, of the threat of race hate and genocide. Over the past few years, they have actively and proudly participated in Srebrenica Memorial Week, honouring the memory of the 8,372 mainly men and boys who were murdered in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, purely because they were Muslims. Unbelievably, this horror took place on European soil just 50 years after the end of World War ll and the cry of 'Never Again!'

We also saw 'tito's picnic' - an exhibition by Lejla Kevric, reflecting hope for a shared society - “This is a vision of optimism. It is an invitation to an idea. Thinking about the future. Ordinary people talking together.”

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Aida Čorbadžić and Elvir Solak.

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

Dove Cottage & St Oswald's Grasmere

Today I made the obligatory Lake District memorial visit to Dove Cottage in Grasmere and the grave of William Wordsworth at St Oswald's, although I'm really more of a Coleridge fan.

I particularly liked the inscription in the church to Wordsworth as Poet Laureate:

'To the memory of William Wordsworth, a true philosopher and poet, who, by the special gift and calling of almighty God, whether he discoursed on man or nature, failed not to lift up the heart to holy things, tired not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple; and so, in perilous times, was raised up to be a chief minister, not only of noblest poesy, but of high and sacred truth.'

I also liked the fact that Wordsworth, not really wanting to become Poet Laureate, made it a condition that he only write as Laureate when inspired to do so and, as a result, became the only Poet Laureate not to write any verse in the role of Laureate.

It was particularly sad to see the grave of Hartley Coleridge. Martyn Hallsall writes that: "The child had proved to be the father of the man, his academic brilliance overshadowed by immorality and disorganisation ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, separated from his family, lived latterly in Hampstead, thinking, writing and above all talking against a background of opium addiction; ‘an archangel, a little damaged’ as Lamb remarked. Hartley Coleridge remained to his father, Richard Holmes reminds us, ‘a reproachful ghost of his own lost youth’. He failed as a schoolmaster, abandoned journalism, and remained unmarried, living off a bequest. After many years of silence his father, the year before he died in 1834, received from Hartley a copy of his poems. It was dedicated to him, and the opening sonnet quoted half a line from ‘Frost at Midnight’."

St Oswald's church also has a fine 'Madonna and Child' by Ophelia Gordon Bell. I also saw the 'Virgin and Child' by Josefina de Vasconcellos at St Mary's Ambleside.

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William Wordsworth - To H C Six Years Old.

Friday, 24 February 2017

Chaim Stephenson: Between Myth and Reality

Wednesday 1 March –Wednesday 10 May
Chaim Stephenson
Between Myth and Reality

A sculpture exhibition in the Foyer of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Chaim Stephenson worked for over sixty years to produce a wide range of sculpture, of which this exhibition shows but a small part – pieces inspired by the stories in the Old Testament, and those that came out of his lifelong concern for people driven from their homes. Among the former, every sculpture tells a story, familiar and built into our culture and traditions. The refugee statues speak of a universal and contemporary reality that not only mattered profoundly to the artist but affects us all.

Chaim Stephenson was born in Liverpool to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. He served in the mines as a ‘Bevin boy’ before joining a group of young Jews who emigrated to Palestine. After fighting through the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 he joined a kibbutz in western Galilee where he worked as a shepherd, sculpting in his limited free time. After a year in England studying and sculpting, he went back to Israel, and married writer Lynne Reid Banks. They returned to the UK in 1971 with their three sons. He spent the rest of his life as a working artist, dying last year aged 89.

The Living South Africa Memorial by Chaim Stephenson is on permanent display in church and St Martin’s is pleased to display a full exhibition of the work of this remarkable artist.

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Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill.

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Bless the creators, O God of creation

Yesterday I was privileged to be able to lead a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Giles Waterfield at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Giles Waterfield was: an ever energetic and inspiring character with a towering knowledge that seemed to surpass any disciplinary bounds; a beloved teacher, who took a very personal interest in his students and their lives; a real pioneer in his museum studies; a kind, caring and hilarious friend; a great man of culture bridging the worlds of art history and architectural history; a talented writer and exhibition curator; a person of wit, charm, warmth and kindness.

St Martin's was filled to overflowing with Giles' family, friends, colleagues and students. As one tweet put it, it seemed as though 'every art historian alive was at St-Martin-in-the-fields to pay homage to the extraordinary, inspiring, kind Giles Waterfield.'

As well as a celebration of Giles' exceptional life, the service was, through the prayers, also a celebration of creativity and the contribution of artists more generally. The majority of the prayers used in the service were adapted from the following collection - http://artspastor.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/prayers-of-artists-prayers-for-artists.html. They included:

Almighty God, you love everything you have made, so we thank you because you made us in your own image and gave us gifts in mind, body and spirit. We thank you now for Giles and what he meant to each of us. As we honour his memory in this service, make us more aware that you are the one from whom comes every perfect gift, including the gift of creativity. As we honour his memory, his creativity and his support of the creativity of others, we remember and give thanks for those who pour their souls into music loud and soft, those who put pigment to surface, carve wood and stone and marble, who work base metals into beauty, those building upwards from the earth toward heaven, those who put thought to paper by computer and by pen; the poets who delve, the playwrights who analyze and proclaim, the dreamers-up of narrative, all those who work with the light and shadows of film, actors moved by Spirit and dancers moving through space. Lord, remember your artists. Have mercy upon them and remember with compassion all those that reflect the good, the ill, the strengths and the weaknesses of the human spirit. Amen.

Teach us, Lord, to use wisely the time which You have given us and to work well without wasting a second. Teach us to profit from our past mistakes without falling into a gnawing doubt. Teach us to anticipate our projects without worry and to imagine the work without despair if it should turn out differently. Teach us to unite haste and slowness, serenity and ardour, zeal and peace. Help us at the beginning of the work when we are weakest. Help us in the middle of the work when our attention must be sustained. In all the work of our hands, bestow Your Grace so that it can speak to others and our mistakes can speak to us alone. Keep us in the hope of perfection, without which we would lose heart, yet keep us from achieving perfection, for surely we would be lost in arrogance. Let me never forget that all knowledge is in vain unless there is work. And all work is empty unless there is love. And all love is hollow unless it binds us both to others and to You. Amen.

Bless the creators, O God of creation, who by their gifts make the world a more joyful and beautiful realm. Through their labours they teach us to see more clearly the truth around us. In their inspiration they call forth wonder and awe in our own living. In their hope and vision they remind us that life is holy. Bless all who create in your image, O God of creation. Pour your Spirit upon them that their hearts may sing and their works be fulfilling. Amen.

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Gabriel Faure - In Paradisum.

Sunday, 20 December 2015

St Stephen Walbrook, Catharine Macaulay and Thomas Wilson

The Telegraph has an interesting article by Christopher Howse about a controversial commission from the history of St Stephen Walbrook. On this occasion the piece is not about the Henry Moore altar but a statue of historian Catharine Macaulay which was installed at the church by its Rector, Thomas Wilson, in 1778. The statue was installed in the sanctuary but proving controversial was soon removed, eventually finding a home in Warrington Library.

Thomas Wilson "was a pioneering advocate for the propriety of decoration in Anglican churches. He edited and contributed to William Hole’s important Ornaments of Churches Considered (1761), a book which helped mark a new interest in introducing visual art among Anglicans." A memorial to Wilson and his wife Mary is to be found in the church.

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J.S. Bach - Jesu, meine Freude.

Thursday, 25 June 2015

Praying for those with lived experience of dementia

Last Friday I took the funeral of Jean Bateman, a long-time member of St John's Seven Kings and Ward Sister at Chadwell Heath Hospital, while yesterday I led the Memorial Service for Dame Mary Glen Haig at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

One key connection, besides a shared involvement in healthcare, between the two services was the onset of dementia in the latter years of both whose lives we celebrated. In the prayers which drew the various threads of Dame Mary's Memorial Service together I prayed for those who experience dementia and those who are alongside providing care. This prayer was particularly appreciated by those who attended the service from Vale House, where Dame Mary lived for the final two years of her life.

Their sense that prayer for those with dementia and those who are carers was unusual is an indication of the need for the Dementia Friends awareness campaign, which is also being taken into churches. St Martin's has already held one moving and informative evening on the theme of lived experience of dementia, and is planning more such evenings.

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Edward Elgar - Nimrod.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

St John the Baptist Hoxton

Completed in 1826, St John the Baptist Hoxton is a Georgian church in the Classical style and is the only one built to the design of Francis Edwards, Sir John Soane's foremost pupil. The building is a large example of a Commissioners' church, retaining its floor plan intact as well as its galleries and its décor is notable, particularly for its spectacular painted ceiling. It was executed by the prominent architect Joseph Arthur Reeve in the early 20th century.

The urban landscape has been a source of fascination, inspiration and a recurring theme throughout the work of Caroline Nina Phillips. She contemplates what can be seen and the possibilities of what remains unseen. Phillips has loaned the church two of her paintings which have been installed on the east wall of the church. ‘Liminality’ evokes a light drawing us through the darkness of an urban landscape - making us think perhaps of the kingdom of God and the dawning brightness of Christ dispelling all darkness. ‘Occupy’, depicts St Paul’s Cathedral, but you can also make out the murky dome tents of the Occupy protest of 2011 - reminding us of the poor, the marginalised, and that Christ also ‘became flesh and pitched his tent among us’.

After two years studying with men from the Dorset limestone quarries, Mike Chapman opened his own studio in the summer of 1996 and in 2004 held his first solo exhibition at St Martins-in-the-Fields. His work is now in the collections of a number of institutions throughout the UK and in private collections both here and in America. His memorial at St John's Hoxton, located in the Garden of Remembrance, is a hand drawn monolith, carved in an enormous Welsh slate, weighing over a tonne. It marks the site where ashes are placed in the churchyard.

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Mumford and Sons - The Wolf.

Friday, 31 October 2014

East London Three Faiths Forum trip to the Holy Land (8)

Our final day began in the ancient port of Jaffa where we took in the view of Tel Aviv, saw art galleries, lighthouse, harbour and the house of Simon the Tanner (where I read to the group from Acts 9. 36 - 42).

From Jaffa we travelled to Abu Ghosh to see the second largest Mosque in Israel which was recently completed with funding from Chechnya. We also enjoyed a delicious Middle Eastern lunch at a restaurant in the village.

The afternoon was spent firstly at the Synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Center, where we saw stained glass windows by Marc Chagall depicting the twelve tribes of Israel, and then at Yad Vashem, the deeply moving national Holocaust memorial. In the time we had available I saw the collection of Holocaust art, some displays in the Holocaust History Museum, and the Children's Memorial.

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Henyrk Górecki - Symphony No. 3.

Friday, 22 November 2013

C. S. Lewis: Reconciling reason and imagination

For the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis, Westminster Abbey Institute is hosting a series of events marking his career as one of the 20th century's most notable Christian writers and thinkers. As well as celebrating Lewis's remarkable achievements as a writer of fiction, apologetics and scholarship, the series looks at the question of how, in the 21st century, his example may be emulated and his legacy continued.

Yesterday, Alister McGrath and Malcolm Guite delivered lectures examining Lewis's philosophical and fictional approaches to communicating the Christian faith.

McGrath explored the way in which Lewis integrated reason and imagination into his apologetic enabling his writings to connect with both modern and postmodern audiences:

"For Lewis, truth is about seeing things rightly, grasping their deep interconnection. Truth is something that we see, rather than something we express primarily in logical or conceptual terms.

The basic idea is found in Dante's Paradiso (XXIII, 55-6), where the great Florentine poet and theologian expresses the idea that Christianity provides a vision of things - something wonderful that can be seen, yet proves resistant to verbal expression:

From that moment onwards my power of sight exceeded
That of speech, which fails at such a vision.

Hints of such an approach are also found in the writings of G.K. Chesterton, whom Lewis admired considerably. For Chesterton, a good theory allows us to see things properly: "We put on the theory, like a magic hat, and history becomes translucent like a house of glass." Thus, for Chesterton, a good theory is to be judged by the amount of illumination it offers, and its capacity to accommodate what we see in the world around us and experience within us: "With this idea once inside our heads, a million things become transparent as if a lamp were lit behind them." In the same way, Chesterton argued, Christianity validates itself by its ability to make sense of our observations of the world: "The phenomenon does not prove religion, but religion explains the phenomenon."

For Lewis, the Christian faith offers us a means of seeing things properly - as they really are, despite their outward appearances. Christianity provides an intellectually capacious and imaginatively satisfying way of seeing things, and grasping their interconnectedness, even if we find it difficult to express this in words. Lewis's affirmation of the reasonableness of the Christian faith rests on his own quite distinct way of seeing the rationality of the created order, and its ultimate grounding in God. Using a powerful visual image, Lewis invites us to see God as both the ground of the rationality of the world, and the one who enables us to grasp that rationality: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." Lewis invites us to see Christianity as offering us a standpoint from which we may survey things, and grasp their intrinsic coherence. We see how things connect together."

Guite read Lewis' poem entitled 'Reason' by Walter Hooper which pre-conversion pleads for the reconciliation of reason and imagination that was achieved for him when he understood the incarnation to be true myth:

Set on the soul's acropolis the reason stands
A virgin, arm'd, commercing with celestial light,
And he who sins against her has defiled his own
Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white;
So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining,
Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:
Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep
Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.
Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains
Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.
Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,
Who make in me a concord of the depth and height?
Who make imagination's dim exploring touch
Ever report the same as intellectual sight?
Then could I truly say, and not deceive,
Then wholly say, that I BELIEVE.

Guite related the prescience of this poem to Coleridge's image in the Biographia Literaria of the chrysalis of the horned fly leaving room in its involucrum for antenna yet to come:

"They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the potential works in them, even as the actual works on them!"

Lewis' imagination creates similar intuitions as conversion and incarnation are explored in and through other worlds, visiting which enable us to see our own with fresh vision as Guite unpacks for us in his own sonnet for C. S. Lewis:

From ‘beer and Beowulf’ to the seven heavens,
Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere,
You are our portal to those hidden havens
Whence we return to bless our being here.
Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door
Which opens on to all we might have lost,
Ward of a word-hoard in the deep hearts core,
Telling the tale of Love from first to last.
Generous, capacious, open, free,
Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds
Through which to travel, whence we learn to see
Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds
Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing,
Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King

Today, a memorial to Lewis will be unveiled in Poets' Corner during a service of thanksgiving for his life and work. The preacher will be Rowan Williams and the Abbey choir will sing a newly commissioned anthem, a setting of Lewis’s poem “Love’s As Warm As Tears”.

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Mina Cho - As the Ruin Falls Mvt 1: Always End Where I Begin.

Thursday, 7 June 2012

Parisienne scenes

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The Style Council - Paris Match.

Friday, 19 November 2010

War Memorial dedication

These photos are from the dedication of the new War Memorial at Hainault which I led on Sunday 31st October as Chaplain to the Ilford Branch of the Royal British Legion. The dedication that I used for this ceremony was as follows:

"This memorial is dedicated to those men and women who have died on active service. It is dedicated to those they left behind, the innocent casualties of war; family and friends, those who endured the heartbreak of their loved ones in harm’s way, and those who have served in a civilian capacity. It is dedicated to those who survived the anguish of war; the thousands of men and women who served and came home. It is also dedicated to the serving men and women of all nations who protect us from harm and guarantee our right to liberty, justice and freedom for all.

In the faith of Christ, for the benefit of this community, and in memory of those we remember here, I dedicate this memorial to the glory of God, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

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Henryk Górecki - Quasi una Fantasia, String Quartet No.2.