An Uncomfortable Blessing

Many of our churches are using this season of Lent to look at how we might examine our treatment of the environment, see where we have gone wrong and make honest efforts to redeem our relationship with God's creation. This quite harsh prayer might help:

May the Spirit bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships, so that we will find life deep within our hearts.

May the Spirit bless us with anger at injustice and oppression, the exploitation of people and earth so that we will work for justice, equity and peace.

May the Spirit bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer, so that we will reach out our hands to comfort them.

May the Spirit bless us with the foolishness to think that we can make a difference in the world, so that we will do the things that others say cannot be done.

Amen.

Monday, 22nd February

At last, a lovely sunny day, especially welcome after the rain of the weekend. Our thoughts were certainly with those affected by floods on Saturday, worryingly reminiscent of this time just last year, when so much damage was done.

Today, though, sunshine and primroses, and I found this wonderful anonymous poem in The Four Graces, a lovely book celebrating churches in Radnor:

Isn't it strange that princes and kings,

and clowns that caper in sawdust rings,

and ordinary folk like you and me

are builders for eternity?

And each is given a bag of tools;

an hour glass and a book of rules,

and each must build e'er his hour is flown

a stumbling block or a stepping stone.

Back again

After a long break forced upon us by technical problems, good to be back again. There can be no guarantee that posts will be daily, but we will do our best.

This week has seen the anniversary of the death, in the year 869, of St Cyril.

Cyril had been known until the very end of his life as Constantine, and, together with his brother Methodius, had been responsible for taking the Christian faith to the Slavic world, particularly the areas we now know as Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Born into a Christian family in Thessalonika, the two brothers were held responsible for devising the Glagolitic alphabet, which developed into the Cyrillic alphabet used now across large parts of the Eastern world. Thus they were able to translate scriptures so that people in the Slavic kingdoms could understand them. The brothers are highly venerated as saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church.