Dorset Poems – Scrumping in a Hurricane

November 3, 2017November 3, 2017 / andreaskevington / 3 Comments

So, here is another poem from our trip to Dorset, when we stayed in this beautiful, remote National Trust cottage. Like most of the poems, the extraordinary weather plays a part. This time, the powerful winds and sudden gusts of the remains of Hurricane Ophelia brought an end to the moral dither I was in about apples.

There were many glorious and very ancient apple trees, which presumably were owned by the National Trust, being on their land. However, it was so remote down our lanes that it was hardly surprising that no-one was gathering them. I could gather them. Whether or not I had a right to, I was unsure. On the other hand, to let so much food go to waste is another kind of crime. Food use versus property rights. I knew what I thought of that particular tussle, but only acted when Ophelia swept along, and swept the fruit off the trees.

The apples really were delicious!

Scrumping in a hurricane

So, here are the old apple trees,
behind a wall of warm stone.
Their branches, their trunks,
are gnarley and twisted,
some drip grey with lichen,
all are heavy with fruit.

They belong to the old manor
where we stay,
a remnant of an ancient hamlet.
So, do they belong to us,
here as we are
for only a few days?

The smell drifts over the wall,
sweet, you can taste the juice
in your mouth.
The apples lie in red,
extravagant heaps in
the long grass.
No one comes to gather them.

And then, storm warnings shake
the branches,
and then, the skirts of the
hurricane brush the hillside,
and as the apples fall,
I go and gather them,
enough for us while we
are here,
and peel them as the
juice flows over my hands,
and cook them with the blackberries
that whip across the path

And eat. What are they?
No varieties I know,
but they are good, so good,
and good the next day
in porridge,
and good the day after
cold, and purple,
and sweet.

Dorset Poems – St Gabriel’s Chapel, 1

October 31, 2017 / andreaskevington / 2 Comments

We’ve come back from such a tranquil, peaceful break at a National Trust Holiday Cottage – this one was down a long lane which said “No Cars”, and then we turned off to an even smaller lane where the grass swished against our exhaust pipe. It felt so safe and undisturbed. I felt myself calming as we slipped further away down these winding lanes. While we were there, we did a lot of walking. Taking the car out was less attractive than just putting on boots and setting off. And while we were there, the remains of Hurricane Ophelia made her presence felt.

She did great damage in Ireland, but where we were, we felt the effects of a dramatic weather event, without the destructive force. My notebook went with me as we walked, and I tried to record something of the landscape’s response to the storm.

St Gabriel’s Chapel

Walks from the door.

Seatown beach, with Golden Cap behind. There is an excellent pub, The Anchor to refresh the weary walker! Portugese man of war jellyfish washed up on the beach.

We stayed near the ruined chapel of St Gabriel. As I sat to write, my thoughts diverged down two paths. As an experiment, I’m trying to explore both paths in poems, each path taking as it’s starting point the experience of sitting in the chapel as the wind blew. This first poem follows a more direct path, the one we took over the cliffs back to another cottage where we had stayed as a family years ago, a place full of memory. It was so good to retrace such freedom and laughter. Next door Downhouse Farm runs a garden cafe with delicious food, and we enjoyed resting and recovering there, before turning back. It was a long walk, taking in Golden Cap, the highest point on the south coast, and as we climbed and descended, the sky began to turn a strange red, as the dust that came before the storm filled the air.

St Gabriel’s Chapel, Dorset,
Storm Ophelia
1

From inside this small, stone chapel,
over broken walls
I can see the sea –
the wild white water crashing
into the cob at Lyme,
the many clouds moving fast,
as one, the sky sliding
against the earth
as leaves
scratch in corners,
tangle in hair.
Yesterday the trees held
more, far more,
when we walked seven
hard miles of cliffs
and troughs,
back to the place
we were
years ago, when
we were
all so much younger,
and we walked, and ran,
with Bessie the dog,
down, down to the sea.
We retraced those steps
more slowly, yesterday,
but look how far
we walked,
look how far
we have come.

Thank you to Peter Skevington for the photographs.

Poem – Cormorant

October 6, 2017October 6, 2017 / andreaskevington / 4 Comments

Photo by Graham Owen

The River Deben

I used to walk by our river most days, with a notebook. I don’t know why I fell out of the habit, as it was a good one, but this week, I knew I needed to begin again.
So I walked along the lane, along the quiet creek, towards the bench where I used to sit and write, when, just behind me, my attention was caught by an ungainly black shape moving fast.
Startled, I felt the emotions I had been seeking to keep under the surface.
The experience reminded me of the last line of Seamus Heaney’s wonderful Postscript

“And catch the heart off guard and blow it open ”

Like the white swans in their wild landscape in Heaney’s sonnet, this dark bird on my river was some kind of liberation, revelation.

So I sat down on the bench where I used to sit, and wrote this:

Cormorant

Why is it, this bright morning,
that the sudden sight
of the cormorant
coming to land on the water
takes me unawares,
startles me open?
The tattered black wings,
stretching back,
the rangy sticks of feet,
the head, sharp as a
stabbing sword.

It lands in a single
fluid act, graceful upon
the slippery shining water,
but for a moment
only,
and then the bird
pierces the brightness
with that fine head
and dives
down into
its darkness.

Spiders

September 21, 2017 / andreaskevington / 2 Comments

September – such a rich month. You can feel the year turning. I love the golden light, and the fruit and berries everywhere. I love the mornings when spider webs are strung with dew, and there is a nip in the air, waking you up.

Spiders – where are they, the rest of the year?
They seem to be everywhere now, including in the house. I keep reminding myself of the sterling work they are doing eating the flies, which were bothering me last month….

This is a small poem about the ways of spiders, and the power of waiting. At this time of year, so much slow ripening is coming to fruition. I find I have forgotten I watched the bees on the raspberries and the apple trees, wondering what the harvest would be. I have moved on, thinking of something else.

I forget that much I have wondered about, worried about, prayed about, has turned out all right, after all – not everything, but enough. I am learning the patience of spiders.

Spiders – September

Now is the time of spiders –
their silver webs spun between
leaves, and twigs, and blades of grass.
Each one has its weaver,
resting its legs
on fine threads,
its many eyes watching.

For now, warm fat insects
drift dreamily on
the September breeze.

The hedges hang
with berries, I cannot
pick the plums fast enough,
first apples bend branches,
and beans lengthen on their vines.

I am learning the patience
of spiders.
It comes. What you need
comes to you. Gently,
when you have almost
forgotten that you ever asked,
or wanted, or longed for it –
here, and here, and here..

I have this on my computer desktop. It helps me remember the power of patience endurance, of not giving up.

Writing for Christmas in August – See, Amid the Winter’s Snow……

August 9, 2017 / andreaskevington / Leave a comment

Walter Launt Palmer

One of the strange and rather wonderful things about writing for a devotional publication like Quiet Spaces is that you sometimes find yourself doing things at times that feel out of step with the world outside your window. So, now, in August, I am thinking of the cold and dark of midwinter. Today, it is very rainy indeed here in Suffolk, and not at all summery, which nearly fits…

I decided to base my meditations on the simple and profound carol, “See, Amid the Winter’s Snow”, by Edward Caswall. I am finding it a very moving process, and am looking forward to whatever will emerge from it.
If you feel like some unseasonal listening, you could try the following, which are currently playing on repeat in my house.

How to read a Poem

July 18, 2017July 19, 2017 / andreaskevington / 3 Comments

Earlier this week, a friend asked me how to read a poem. It was a question I have been asked before, and so I felt I should know how to give a better answer than I did. Of course, it may depend on the poem, and the mind and the training of the mind of the reader. A good response to the question will take these things into account.

The exchange stayed with me, so I took some of the phrases of my answer, and wrote them in my notebook sitting on the garden bench later in the day. I found they formed a a small poem themselves, inviting other words to join them – it’s what they seemed to want to do.

I begin with the mind – at school, so many of us ended up approaching poetry as if it were a form of cryptography, as if the pesky poet had deliberately concealed a meaning and we had to puzzle it out. Poetry rarely holds that kind of meaning. In this, it is similar to story, as I was thinking in my previous post about parables. The mind is a great resource in reading, and writing, and good academic rigour can seriously deepen our joy in a poem, but, for the nervous reader, it is not a good place to start.

Try starting like this, and see if that helps.

If you like to listen, you can listen here.

How to read a poem

Let your mind rest.
Do not pursue it anxiously,
grasping for meaning.

There is no riddle here
that must be solved
or else doom will fall.
No puzzle to puzzle
for a prize.

Let the sounds of the words
soak you,
water you.
Let the colours of the words
fill your eyes.
Receive it all, then,
with a yes,
hold the words
cool and dripping
in your cupped mind.

Come back,
come back again, for
something that snagged
your dreams
like the dark brambles
over an autumn path.

Come back.
In time, the words may
open to you.
You may taste
their sweet sharpness.
They may grow in you,
nourishing you again
and again.

Sunday Retold – The Sower and the Seed 16th July 2017

July 12, 2017July 21, 2023 / andreaskevington / 2 Comments

Part of the Sunday Retold series, based on the readings some churches follow, with passages from my books The Bible Story Retold and Prayers and Verses.

This week it’s

Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23, the Parable of the Sower

Please feel free to use any of my material that helps you, saying where it is from.

The Sower Vincent van Gogh

“Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables,

I will utter things hidden since the

creation of the world.”

Matthew 13:34-35″

I love this small commentary from Matthew’s gospel – it opens up for us all kinds of insight into Jesus’ storytelling. Things hidden since the creation of the world are spoken out – spoken out in stories. How extraordinary is that!

Matthew’s reference takes us right back to the beginning – perhaps we can wonder what these things hidden from the beginning are. Perhaps Jesus is unlocking meaning, and truth, showing us a natural world which is also a mirror in which we see our own experience, and a window into the mind of God. These parables, parables of the kingdom, reveal things about the nature of God, of the kingdom Jesus tells us is near, very near, and even within us. Things which have been hidden, up till the moment the stories begin.

Story works, as we know, very differently on the mind and heart from rational argument. We remember stories, they stay with us, working deep in our imaginations. Many of us remember this one – the parable of the sower. It draws from lived experience – or it did, before so many of us ended up so far away from the rhythms of planting, and growing, and eating. You could even say that the story itself is, in some ways, alive.

Stories reveal their meaning slowly, over time. The words of God can grow, unfolding within our own hearts, like the secret growth of the seeds. Not fast food for the soul, but a banquet – it takes time.

But, why didn’t he just say what he meant? we can ask. Not every meaning can be spoken out like that, for a start. There are different kinds of meaning. Perhaps Jesus didn’t want people simply to agree with his point of view, or perhaps he knew they weren’t ready to hear…. not all at once. Perhaps he wanted to hold out a possibility even to those whose hearts had been calloused by the hardness of life – the possibility they could be transformed by a new way of seeing the world. Metanoia, the Greek word usually translated repent, means to change your thinking – change your mind in a deeper sense than we usually mean it – change the whole orientation of how you see and understand things. Even if they could not hear the meaning when they heard the story, the story would stay with them, ready to reveal meaning when the time was right.

As we read it, it can help to set to one side what we think we know of what it means – to allow our rational thinking mind to be stilled, for a while, and to respond with the heart, with the imagination.

Stories can help us make sense of our lives, they open us up to a deeper kind of reality and truth. When we are ready. It takes time. Don’t rush to an explanation.

Once, when Jesus was surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, he told them this story.

“One dry, bright day, when the wind was still, a farmer went out to sow seed. He took handfuls of grain from the flat basket he carried and, with a flick of the wrist, scattered seed, hopeful for its growth. But some of the seed fell on the path, where the passing of many feet trampled it, and the birds swooped down and ate it. Some fell on dry rock. After the soft rains, it swelled and sprouted. But then it withered, for its roots could find no water. Some landed among the thorns, which grew so fast that they soon smothered the tender new shoots. But some landed on good soil, where it grew up, and ripened. When the time was right, the farmer came back and harvested a crop from it, a hundred times more than was sown.”

After the crowds had gone, and Jesus was left with the disciples, they asked him “What does that story mean?” And Jesus answered:

“The seed is the word – God’s word. The seed that fell on the path is like the seed that falls in some hearts – it’s snatched away by the devil before it takes root, before those people begin to believe. The seed that falls on the rocks is seed that falls where there is little depth – at first, God’s words bring joy to those people, but there are no roots, and when trouble comes their faith withers away. The thorny places are like hearts choked up with worry, with riches and pleasures. There’s no space for God’s word to grow. But some seed does fall on good soil – the word takes root in hearts that are ready, and they hold on to it. In time, the word gives a rich crop in people’s lives, and they are fruitful.”

From The Bible Retold

So, I don’t want to say too much – just these few things.
I love the way the sower is generous – it is the nature of the sower to scatter the seed. Seed is light, it lands lightly on the earth. It speaks to me of an abundant, overflowing God, who gives, but does not impose the gift.

Secondly, I wonder about the soil. We tend to respond to this parable individually – thinking about the state of our own hearts. And Jesus’ interpretation points us that way. Maybe, in our communities, we can also ask what things make this soil in this place good, or poor? Are there rocks we can remove, is there compost we can dig in, are there thistles we can pick before they set seed? What stands in the way of people being able to receive – for new life to thrive with them? Is there anything we can do about it?
And, of course, we can ask the same questions of ourselves, and our lives.
We can engage in soul gardening.

Then, I have been wondering about what this word might be.

What are the seeds that Jesus is speaking of?

What did Jesus mean when he talked of the word, and of Good News?

As we read the gospels, these are good questions to hold in our minds.

Often, Jesus spoke of the good news of the kingdom of God, which is much closer than we think. If I wonder what it is like, as well as looking at the parables, I often think – it is like the presence of Jesus – what he said, and did, how he lived, what he showed.

Transforming.

Isaiah 55:10-13English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁰“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
¹²“For you shall go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall break forth into singing,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
¹³Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the Lord,
    an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

This is one of the other readings given, to be read alongside the Parable of the Sower. It is worth spending some time reading it slowly, meditating on it.

Speaking of meditating, you might like to look at the second of the Van Gogh pictures.

Notice the figure is in darkness. Who has been a sower into your life? Who has brought love and hope, new growth, life itself? Can you thank them, or give thanks for them?
Are there ways you can sow good things into the lives of others – with a light generosity?
Notice the way the sun hangs over the sower’s head – does it remind you of anything? make you think anything?
How do you respond to the use of colour in the picture?
Can the light of love and goodness warm what you do today?
How do light and dark interact in the growing of a seed?

Can you nurture new life in yourself and others today?
Can you connect with living growing things?

The Sower – Vincent Van Gogh

Help me to be patient as I wait for your kingdom
and your righteousness:
as patient as a farmer who trusts that the rains
will come in their season,
and that the land will produce its harvest.
Keep my hopes high.
Help me to pray to you and to praise you.

The Lord is good to me,
And so I thank the Lord
For giving me the things I need,
The sun, the rain, the appleseed.
The Lord is good to me.
Attributed to John Chapman, planter of orchards 1774-1845

We can do no great things,
Only small things with great love.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta 1910-1997

from Prayers and Verses

May the God of growth and new beginnings bless you and all you love today.

Poem – Treasure, Hidden. Of perseverance and hope.

June 12, 2017 / andreaskevington / Leave a comment

Photo from Squirrels and snowdrops

Treasure, Buried

Each morning I find
small divots in the lawn,
dug neatly, completely.

Sometimes, the squirrel
comes while I am there –
both of us, quiet –
and with an arched back
and a bright eye
she digs.

Does she ever find her
hazelnut?
I don’t know.
I haven’t seen.

I do know I find
a seedling growing
unexpectedly somewhere,
sometimes,
and wonder –
was it her?

I push the divots
back into the lawn.
Each day there are more,
and more.

We value persistence,
the squirrel and I,
we value hope.

Poem – Morning Yoga Practice June 2017

June 7, 2017 / andreaskevington / 2 Comments

There has been much grief in the UK this week, met with an outpouring of love, and courage, and kindness. These sudden losses shock us, remind us of our fragility, and the fragility of those we love. The moments of national grief catch up our own more private losses, bring to mind what has gone before, and can take us deeper into questions – and the capacity to endure the space between the question and anything like an answer.

After reading Malcolm Guite’s reflections on being so close to the terrible events at London Bridge on Saturday night, I too have had these words of Shakespeare on my mind.

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days?

Asking questions seems a good response to the depths,

I am returning to my practice of writing freely, recording what draws my attention. This morning it was this.

Morning yoga practice June 2017

I bend on the grass,
look up at the bending gladioli
dancing cerise with their
graceful arches

as June’s north wind
rocks the branches,
as the air fills with
white petals –
blossom, roses –
that fall.

Why is it all so fragile,
this beauty?
why does it all slip
through my fingers?
I stretch, stretch out my
heart, and my love,
sending it both near,
both near and far away.

Restore them dear Lord,
Make them whole,
may they see
this life this beauty,
as the petals fall about me
in a cold blaze,
life and beauty ripped away,
yet carried on this June wind,
yet landing softly on this
green earth.

Sunday Retold – The Woman at the Well

March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 / andreaskevington / 2 Comments

Part of the Sunday Retold series, based on the readings some churches follow week by week.:

This week we’re looking at

John 4:1-42

Please feel free to use any of my material if it helps you, saying where it is from.

This is a powerful and extraordinary story early on in John’s Gospel, one of the important conversations he has with just one person that are recorded for us. It is a story I have turned over in my mind for a few years, and at present it forms the basis for a chapter I am writing in my next book on the I AM sayings – not one of the classic seven I know, but I have been exploring a little beyond those, and find this story too interesting and too significant to overlook. What follows are some of my reflections as I prepare this chapter, a very early share before I have gone through my editing process. I hope you find it helpful. I hope it gives you living water.

Mural by Emmanuel Nsama

At a time when our politics is increasingly divided and divisive, where people divide each other into categories, and make some lesser than others, this is a particularly relevant conversation.

John the Evangelist is preparing us for this story very carefully, for it is profoundly counter-cultural. Jesus stops to rest near the plot of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph. Jacob’s other name was Israel – one who wrestles with God. We are going back to Israel’s common spring, common source, at Jacob’s well. We are being reminded of a time long ago, before the time when and the Jews and Samaritans became peoples who saw themselves as separate. It is a place that holds meaning and memory for Jews and Samaritans – of their common father, and their common salvation story. John is placing us on common ground……

I think it is no coincidence that John begins this story by setting it against an atmosphere of potential conflict – between cousins, between related nations. We see Jesus acting out his mission to be a peacemaker, a reconciler. “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” Eph 2:14. Jesus himself is common ground, and his presence changes things. If we look carefully at how we are prepared for this encounter, we can see that we are being led away from conflict, towards reconciliation, to inclusion, and to hope…….

And so, as Jesus waits for the disciples to find food, as he waits by the well in the heat of the day, a woman approaches. We can only imagine what it must have been like for her, in a culture where a woman could be divorced “for any and every reason”. We often think of her as one utterly disgraced in her community, having to visit the well at such a time. That may well be so. It is a highly plausible explanation. Her multiple husbands are hardly a marital model, but, we must remember that at this time divorces were easy for a man to come by, and early death not uncommon. However her situation came about, she had most certainly known her share of tragedy and disappointment. She may have known deep shame and disgrace. If we are thinking in terms of barriers and divides, she has many to cross.

And yet she, like everyone else, gets thirsty, and needs water to drink, and water to wash with. She is as human as everyone else. So often, we do not see people like this. So often, we make quick judgements, build fences, wonder about people’s worthiness, and in our own pride and insecurity, seek to feel superior, safe, chosen, righteous in some way. Not so Jesus.

His question bursts through all our categories and barriers in its gentleness, its humanity. It is a question that changes everything for this woman, and for her community.
“Will you give me a drink?”

It is not just that he recognises her thirst, but that he humbly admits his own. He speaks, not to rebuke a sinful woman, not to point out what she needs to do to straighten out her life, but to make himself vulnerable before her, and to call out her goodness. For this is what the question does. It recognises her goodness. It recognises and awakens this truth about her – that she is made in the image of God, she is a God-bearer in the world. That image can be buried beneath layers of hiding, of shame, buried under words of condemnation that have been spoken over a person, it can be twisted by hatred and fear and darkness, but it is always there, and Jesus sees it.
If we have come across the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 this question opens up others – the thirsty person before us, asking us for water, for help, is Jesus. How do we respond? Do we give?

She does not know who is speaking to her. Of course not! Neither does she know the gift of God. But Jesus is revealing both of these things to her. Jesus is the greatest gift. And he has living water. We are diving deeper now. We know that in John, there is often an association between water and Spirit. Jesus’ previous encounter with Nicodemus (Ch 3) touches on that…. and it is such a beautiful counterpoint to this one. Here we have a woman, an outcast, a Samaritan, in the heat of noon – there we had a man, a Pharisee, member of the ruling council, at night.
This water that Jesus gives, it can become a spring in us, as indeed the Spirit in us is a spring, bubbling and welling up to life.

From The Bible Retold

LIVING WATER

It was hot when the woman went to get water from the well, near her home town of Sychar in Samaria. As she drew near, she saw a Jewish man sitting there, in the shade. She hesitated a moment, nervous of this stranger. For the Jews and Samaritans had been enemies for centuries, since the time of the exile. “But,” she thought, “I must have water,” and she carried on walking to the well.

The man was Jesus. He had left Jerusalem and was making his way back to Galilee. His disciples were buying food, leaving him to rest from the burning sun. He looked up at the woman.
“Will you give me a drink?” he asked, with a thirsty smile. Jews and Samaritans never ate or drank together: it was against all the laws and customs.
“You, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan for a drink?” She was so startled she nearly dropped her water jug.
“If you knew who I was, you’d ask me, and I would give you real, life-giving water!”
“How can you get water? You have nothing to hold it in!”
“If you drink from the well, you’ll be thirsty again. If you drink the water I offer, it will become like a clear spring within you, bubbling over with eternal life!”
“Sir, I would like that water!” she replied. But Jesus questioned her about how she lived, and amazed her by revealing her secrets: things she had kept hidden, for shame. Could this man be a prophet?
She ran back to town, telling everyone. They invited Jesus and the disciples to stay, and he taught them for two days.

The people of the town said to the woman, “Now, we don’t just believe in Jesus because of what you said. We’ve heard the truth for ourselves!”

“The well is deep” What does that mean for you?

Meditation suggestion:

Pour out a large jug of water, and set it before you, together with a glass or glasses.
Consider the water, and ask yourself what you thirst for right now? Try to allow honest answers to rise in your mind, and note them. Are there places in your life that feel dry and unproductive? What would bring them life?

Take a look at the photographs drawn from different cultures. How do you respond to them?
You might like to place a picture reminding of of this story above a place where you wash, or your kitchen tap.

Detail of stained glass at Gloucester Cathedral, above the place in the cloisters where the monks washed.

This is what God says

“I myself will look for my people and take care of them in the same way as shepherds take care of their sheep.

“I will bring them back from all the places where they were scattered on that dark, disastrous day.

“I will lead them to the mountains and the streams of their own land, so they may make their home amid the green pastures.

I shall be their God, their Good Shepherd; they will be my people, my flock.”

From Ezekiel 34

From Prayers and Verses

May your week be bubbling up with life-giving water

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