by

Great and Small Wonders

 
Can you discern the true seat of your soul?
Or say of what your true self is composed?
Give reason for your life? or know the way
In which the essence that is you arose?
Though close confined in flesh and bones, your eyes
Observe the turning world and endless skies.

Enclosed, your soul in seeming prison lies,
Restrained by flesh, particular, within
God’s infinite, eternal universe.
Our boundaries (self stops where else begins)

Show only what our senses will let pass.
Until you know what links your soul to sense
Make no decision as to here or hence.

A boy catches the Sun in a burning-glass. Its image dazzles his eyes blackening a paper sheet; smoke wisps curl, a tiny spot takes fire. A burning glass of photons, tiny portions of the Sun’s heat, so many they dazzle his eyes and light the paper. There are more photons in a burning-glassful of Sun than there are glassfuls of Sun’s rays shining on Earth.

At night; the boy lies in bed gazing out at the sky. Photons, filtered by the clouds, the atmosphere, his window and his eyes, focus in his eyes. He sees small wonders.

He is a marvellous harmony with the photons. Each photon is a harmonic of the whole cosmos and deep calls unto deep. The clouds break. He sees stars, planets, galaxies, the Milky Way. Photons are distorted, focussed and refocused by the gravitational pull of stars, galaxies and galactic clusters, by dark and light matter and the Cosmos itself.

Like a violin string producing harmonics and sub-harmonics, the music of the Cosmos is filled with waveforms and sub-forms. We call them fundamental particles but particles are just our name for the focal points of these very faint, weak waveforms. Although weak, the extent of each wave is as vast as the Cosmos itself. A photon is a fundamental harmonic, one of the smallest notes in the cosmic harmony. The Cosmos is a waveform with many interplaying themes. The burning-glass and the boy are unique and special themes; symphonies on the cosmic scale. It does not matter how many or complex the harmonies may be.

The boy, the burning-glass, the Sun and the farthest star, his body and brain, every cell, sinew and neuron, are part of that harmony. The workings of the mind, emotions, logic, faith, hope, love, may all be explained by analysis of the brain. Not because the brain is all there is but because it is a network of harmonies played on the greatest scale imaginable. Some say that the Cosmos can be examined solely on its own terms; others that it is a wonderful dream in the mind of God. Both may be right. Half a picture may seem complete in itself but it is still half the picture.

Lying on his bed the boy breathes deeply; fascinated by the stars. He listens to his breath. There are more atoms in a lungful of air than there are lungfuls of air in the atmosphere. Every breath since men walked on Earth disperses throughout the atmosphere. Any later breath will include some atoms from it: the dying words of Julius Caesar, the Beatitudes and Hitler’s wartime speeches; the breath of kings and commons, saints and sinners, old, young, hale and dying.

Plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. They fix nitrogen and other elements necessary to life. The same distribution goes on in soil and growing things as his breath in the atmosphere.

He takes part of every living thing and person from the beginning of life on Earth with every breath and every mouthful. He is involved in mankind from his birth and in every moment of living.

Earth is older than men. The boy lives in the presence of immense antiquity. No breath of his, of kings or commons, Moses, Abraham or Mahomet went into the Earth’s making. Men have raised up its stone at their most sacred sites, worked it, used it and admired it. But they are not part of it. It is part of them. The constituents of the boy’s body, like those of the Earth, were not formed on Earth but in stars and supernovae at remote times and distances. We are made of the ashes of dead stars.

A picture may seem complete and yet be part of a greater one. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are men so passionate about the way the world is if it means nothing? Should we listen to those who quote Macbeth: Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing? Or to a still, small voice that tells us: ‘All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made.’?

‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’

by

Christmas sets me thinking.

We are often overwhelmed by emotions surrounding events, religious and non-religious. We can be partly blinded by them; particularly by the sweet tinsel of Christmas – just how silent is a night while a baby is born in a stable cavern? How still is a small town when it is overcrowded and every room and caravanserai full for a census? What would it have been like?

New Little Town Of Bethlehem

Oh, little town of Bethlehem
so full of noise and dust,
outside the inn they’re crowding in,
is there still room for us?
For in those dark streets shining,
is everlasting Light;
the hopes and fears of all the years
are meeting there tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary
and gathered all above,
while mortals sleep, the angels keep
their watch of wondering love.
The morning stars together
proclaim the holy birth,
and praises sing to God the King
and Peace to men on earth.

In waters and the blood of birth
the wondrous gift is given!
and God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of His heaven.
In tears of pain and tears of joy
and cries of birth is given,
the gift of God to humankind,
the promise of his heaven.

No ear may hear his coming,
through all this wide world’s din,
but where meek souls receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in.
Oh, holy child of Bethlehem
come live in us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell.
Oh, come to us, and live with us
our Lord Emmanuel!

by

How we Love Children

How we Love Children

How we love children…
continue to love naughty children…
… love them more… weep over alienation from them…
… scold, but still love…
remember, with sadness not blame, tantrums and bad behaviour…
… forget much or most, or remember with amusement,
for childish disobedience is part of growing.
We devote ourselves to them… weep with them…
… teach them to pick themselves up…
… stand back when they are making their own way…
… give them space to grow…
… admire their attempts even when they fail…
… see their hurt when they let you down…
… give them credit, love them even more,
when they try to be good but fail…
… and know this is just their childhood.
All their adult life will grow from this.

If love seems to fail… parent turning from child…
child from parent… the failure is in both.
Parents are also children, babes in eternity,
we have our failings and our fallings too,
and a good Parent who loves us
even more than we love our own children,
who weeps over us, with us,
gives everything, even life itself,
for us.

When we move on from this life we will not be turned away because of our childhood failings, because a good parent does not cease to be a parent when we grow up. However we tried and failed, the great Parent of us all will never fail.

All shall be well, and all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well.
–                      Dame Julian of Norwich.

(Language changes, meanings change. When Dame Julian wrote these words ‘all manner of thing’ meant every possible thing. Now it has been weakened, ‘all manner of things’ is used to mean ‘lots of things’. Dame Julian’s meaning was total)

by

We love because He loved us first.

On Friday, November 13th, the BBC charity Children in Need held its culminating programme. Throughout the evening, donations of loving, caring people of all faiths and none came to a still-growing, thirty-seven million pounds. Together with Comic Relief ordinary people have raised over a hundred and fifteen million pounds, not counting many other well known and not so well known charities.

The programme had been on the air for a couple of hours when an Islamist militant group began bombing and shooting people of all faiths or none in Paris to the cry in Arabic, ‘God is great!’ a call sanctified and holy throughout the world in many languages, many faiths. As I write there are a hundred and twenty-nine dead, with  three hundred and fifty wounded, sixty still critical. Some will ask where the greatness of God is in this.

God is great. His compassion and mercy, His love, extend to all. We, His children, forget this in our squabbles and every form of greed. Although we are God’s children, in worldly terms we are adults and can give way to adult worldly desires and hates. We fight with ‘adult’ weapons.

Our Father sees his children warring with one another, yet loves us still – enough to die for us in an eternal act that pervades all time. We cannot see the future but He, the Eternal, is the future, today, yesterday, tomorrow.

‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ for people of all faiths and none.

by

The World God Loved

A murmuration of starlings swirl against the setting sun,
a parliament of rooks vote for home or beyond:
the farther field or the evening rest.
The quiet low of cattle,
the lamb’s call, its mother’s reply,
the stilling of the wind,
the pause of lift and sway in the alder boughs,
and the stream’s flow heard clearer
against the hush of the world.

‘My peace I give you,
not as the world gives,
not as the world gives.’

Then what is this ease of sunset into twilight?

‘Hope:
hope for the night,
hope for tomorrow,
hope for my peace.’

What is this calm that stills my soul?

‘Part,
just part of me.’

‘As the flock moves against the set of sun,
As the rooks call for evening rest,
their shape is seen,
their decision made.
The cattle move to home,
the lamb to its dam.
For this I formed the world,
the universe,
you.

‘They know me, the birds and the beasts;
that gather in shifting shapes,
they know me, that go down to the sea,
that face the uncertain waves,
the herds, the flocks, the flowing deeps.
The world they know is me.

‘In the beginning,
in the empty dark,
I brooded like a mother hen
over shifting, uncertain waves,
breathing on them,
choosing the good,
the perfect conditions.

‘Now!
Waves of light,
waves of every kind,
multiplying, separating,
expanding, condensing,
mass, gravity, liquids, solids.
Clusters, galaxies,
stars, planets, moons,
the Earth,

Tides and seasons of Sun and Moon,
driving evolution;
bacteria, cells, vegetal life,
animal life, birds, mammals,

Man, you, in my image,
mothering,
fathering,
loving.

‘Oh! How I loved you;

love you still!’

by

So Loved

And God So Loved the World

I AM
the Other of you,
Your Father.

I made the first waking breath,
the infinite-finite moment,
the first pulse of love,
the flickering of desire;

Other than here and now,
Other than where and when,
the first breath, in the first waves
of growing light at dawn.

Other,
fission,
and the world was born:
waters and waves of light,

Other,
you, another,
others.
Loving eyes,
light, sound, colour, cries;
the infinite-finite moment.
Loving eyes, searching:
eyes lost in love.

Oh, how I loved you,
love you.

…

And God called the light day,
and the darkness he called night,
and the heavens and the earth
are darkness and light,
here and there,
day and night,
and it was good;
and God so loved the world.

For God so loved the world
that he gave,
he came,
he shared,
and died,
as his own son.

that whoever should believe in him,

who came, shared and died;
sent from whatever dimensions into these three,
into its tiny inner darkness,
no bigger than this universe,
this hazelnut universe,
this mere infinity of three dimensions,
than which there is so much more;

should have eternal life.

For the turning of the wheels of space and time
are no more than the smooth rolling shell of the hazel.

…

And can he love his lost ones,
lost within the hazel shell?
And if it roll so tinily in his hand,
did he yet enter it?
And are we held in time?
And was he here,
in the bright day
in the kernel’s heart?

‘Love those who hate, bless those who curse, do good to those who spite.’

We must love the lost
who cannot escape,
the captives in that outer darkness
no bigger than a hazel shell:
those who did not believe,
cannot believe,
will not believe
in Him.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
fallen away in the darkness.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
fallen away from the one true Person.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
you we brand as demons, lost and unloving,
and grant you his peace

…

by

An apology

I have had a complete crash in Office 365, including Outlook and have, temporarily I hope, lost the notifications of those who have put ‘Likes’ on this blog. If you are wondering why I have been so rude as to not reply or thank you I promise to be in touch as soon as things are restored. I can still post as normal and my next will be on 1st November.

by

All the Time in the World

Linespace

Concerning time we tend to ask,
(though feeling slightly foolish)
‘If time began with the Big Bang,
what happened before then?’
before when there was no before,
when there was not a when,

a question in a circle,
a circle in a round
when never was was never found
nor ever was again.
…

We are growing old together,
we two, the world and I.
and we often talk together
as I lie in the heather
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

‘If time began with the Big Bang,
there must be something other.’

We both were born so very young,
we two, the world and I,
when time was nothing to be found,
except we heard a bugle sound
to live or die.

In these purple heather flowers
the minutes turn to hours
and the passing of the clouds
is passing time.
…

Concerning space we tend to ask
(though feeling slightly foolish)
‘If space began with the Big Bang,
with what beyond did it compare?
beyond where there is no beyond,
where there is not a where?

a question in a circle,
a circle in a round
where nothing there is ever found
nor ever will be there.
…

We are growing old together,
we two, the world and I.
and we often talk together
as I lie in the heather
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

‘If space began with the Big Bang,
there must be something other.’

We both were born so very small,
we two, the world and I,
when there was nothing else at all,
except we heard a bugle call
to live or die.

In these purple heather flowers
the sky and space are ours
and the passing of the clouds
is far away.
…

Spacetime began with the Big Bang,
with no before or any where.
There must be something other.
Other than the world and I,
Other than the clouds and sky,
Other than the words we choose,
Other than the facts we use,
Other in the most extreme,
Other than all other.

Could that Other that is other
than this universe be nothing?
No time? No space? No thing?
A song we cannot sing?

We cannot think of nothing,
but we think of nothing less,
a void, an emptiness.
An emptiness in what?
So we look for something else,
for something Other.

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I.
and we talk again together
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.

In the heather banks of spacetime,
in the flower bells of space,
tiny quanta flicker and tiny quanta chase,
ghosts of Might and Might Not,
ethereal as lace.
…

We two, the world and I, are lost in idle chatter.
Matter in our cosmos has mirrored anti-matter.
Is the Other anti-universe?
The Other in the Looking Glass,
converse of our own converse?
Has it mind? And does it matter?

Matter and anti-matter
annihilate each other,
What would become of spacetime?
No more us and no more Other?
No-thing, no where, no when,
questions in a circle, circles in a round,
where never was was never found,
nor ever was again.

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I,
and we talk again together
and ponder altogether
just what it is to die.

We cannot think of nothing,
but we think of nothing less,
we look in an abyss, into an emptiness.
Asking emptiness in what?
always wanting something else,
something Other.
…

We two, the world and I,
have much to take and give.
We two were born a single kind
The world is home for humankind.
It is our home, we are its mind
we much search and we must find
just what it is to live.

We’re conscious here, why not the Other?
Years of searching, years of dreams,
for others here found nothing more.
Are we rarer than it seems?
Are we alone?

Mitochondrial DNA
has one root through all the Earth.
Cells of mosses and of trees,
spiders, antelopes and fleas,
the lion and the lamb, all these,
the fossil and the newborn babe
are each other’s families.

Only once was life’s seed sown,
in this dear Earth we call our own.
Once in this land and all its seas,
once in four-plus billion years,
with so slim chance are we alone?
…

We two, the world and I,
have much to give and take.
we lie and talk together
and still we wonder whether
If conscious mind is scarce to find,
what chance is there in Other?
Does it know? Is it awake?

Here the chance of consciousness
is cut by the click and chime,
of fourteen billion years or less,
but Other has all time.

Infinite is far without end.
Eternal, an ageless when.
If far is as far as the dice are cast,
and an age is as long as spacetime lasts,
and when all time and space is past,
the Other is beyond then.

More than ‘eternal’ and ‘infinite’,
Unbound by time and space
pervading here and now,
in every time and place,
distance, seconds, years, alike,
our world is a treasured seed
Other has all the room in the world,
Other has all the time it needs
to nurture and to weed.
…

We lie here in the heather,
we two, the world and I.
and we talk again together
and think of wind and weather
and what it is to die.
And the sheep go grazing yonder,
while the world and I still ponder
how the bush that flamed with wonder
could speak in tones of thunder,

‘I AM what I AM.’

by

Where Have all the Little Green Men Gone?

When I was a boy it seemed certain that somewhere ‘out there’ were other worlds like Earth – strange and wonderful plants, birds and animals and civilisations, good and bad like our own. People wrote stories, mathematicians calculated the chances. The universe was vast and becoming vaster. At home our old encyclopaedia knew nothing of other galaxies beyond our own Milky Way, yet ‘out there’ is now known to be filled with others. Science fiction writers had to invent hyperspace travel and warp speed, stargates and wormholes in space to cover the limitations of distance and speed of light.

And yet…

Even as the twenty-first century approached, when Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke had grown into Captain Kirk, Luke Skywalker and E.T. there were hairline cracks. I remember an article listing the factors which led to the development of life here, concluding that there would probably be at least a hundred thousand intelligent civilisations like our own. I noticed that among the factors the writer had not included was the influence of the Moon. We are almost a twin planet with a satellite so large it produces powerful tides that have driven adaptation and evolution in the tidal zone so critical as life moved from sea to land.

I wondered how many planets in the life zone of other stars had a similar large companion; one in fifty or less did not seem unreasonable, That would reduce the number of other civilisations to two thousand. Three more such missed factors would mean we were probably alone. A bleak prospect.

Since then work by scientists such as Nick Lane, evolutionary biochemist of University College London, on the origins of nucleated, cellular life which found that the common basic structure of mitochondrial DNA points to a single, one-off event in the origin of all cellular life: plants, insects, us, everything in the four and a half billion years this planet has existed (Google Nick Lane ‘The Vital Question’). Derek Bickerton, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Hawaii has found strong evidence of a similar one-off development in language and spare brain capacity. In ‘More than Nature Needs’ he investigates why, in the billions of years since complex creatures evolved on Earth, we are the only species that can study the universe in which we have evolved.

It is noticeable that more recent science fiction, such as Gravity and The Martian, is of human endeavour fighting the perils ‘out there’.
Are we alone? If so is that a bleak prospect?