Is this the sun, condensed into a flower? Distant energy facilitates fine subdivision, mitochondrial machination building petal, sepal, branch and bower.
Sound struggles, beats on baffles beneath the strings. Sweet escape eludes then exudes mellifluously.
Pine needles, waft, scent air evoking place and season, sharp to unshod foot yet gentle olfaction, calms… relaxation.
Sensate to a feather brushing my cheek, soft, sensuous, soothing, like these sibilant characters typed on a page.
Childhood memories evoked as yeast, after millennia waiting, interacts in the present tense. Air carries intense anticipation of taste across the park, use my loaf, collect my daily bread.
AnDrew Pratt 8/2/2021
Blogs
Beyond where light can image (The God of cosmic question) – in the ‘light’ of the first image from the James Webb telescope
Beyond where light can image,
can infra-red probe truth:
dark matter that might harbour
what set creation loose,
where human senses lead us,
through all they analyse,
from arrogance to wonder,
to spiritual surprise?
But senses have their limits:
unanswered yet there lies
the single, deepest question
our intellect supplies.
Yet faith can proffer insight:
the Christ of time and space
speaks of a God incarnate
born in a squalid place.
Alive within our compass,
upon this ravaged earth,
the God of cosmic question
surprised us once in birth!
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) (amended 2019 & 2022 by author)
Originally The God of cosmic question
© 1991, alt 2022 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Great Budworth Churchyard 8/7/2022
Great Budworth Churchyard 8/7/2022 Andrew Pratt
Great God we need your present grace – a hymn at the time of the resignation of Boris Johnson
Great God we need your present grace,
for honesty’s been shaken.
We need integrity and truth,
enliven and awaken
a seam of trust, a sense of faith,
while life is so uncertain,
the future hidden from our sight,
opaque behind a curtain.
God give a calm and steady hand,
unshackled by ambition,
to challenge hatred and distrust,
yet not employ derision.
Give us the time to act and learn,
to unify this nation,
a place where all might live as one
in spite of rank or station.
Is it too much for us to build
in gracious love and living,
a place to care, not built on greed,
but generous in giving,
where children grow in peace with hope,
as sister and as brother,
that, hand in hand, within this world
we’ll live with one another.
Metre: 8787D iambic
Tune: CONSTANCE (Sullivan)
Andrew Pratt 7/7/2022 – Responding to the resignation of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party
Words © 2022 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider
and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
The Good Samaritan …and then some…a hymn
The parable of the Good Samaritan points us to an unexpected neighbour (Luke 10:25-37). Elsewhere Jesus explains that whenever we greet the least of our neigbours we welcome him. And what if instead of seeing the Samaritan as the model of Jesus we turn the parable around…that it is Jesus in the person of the one left injured? It is not just angels that we entertain unawares…
1 Anonymous you come among the nations,
outside the door of synagogue or church,
and what you say will shake the world’s foundations,
will make the sinner sing, the righteous lurch.
2 You come with grace, not seeking any favours,
except a cup of water for your thirst,
and those dismissing you with other ravers
will find that they are last and others first.
3 The ones who offer you a share of shelter,
or visit you when you are locked inside,
who pause a moment on life’s helter-skelter,
will be rewarded for their lack of pride.
4 The ones who care, not simply for your beauty,
who hold you in the sickness of your age,
who walk with you beyond the call of duty
are ones who share the true Messiah’s stage.
5 ‘You clothed me in my nakedness and squalor’,
said Christ to those who fully understood
that love cannot equate with pound or dollar,
is found in acts of simply doing good.
Andrew Pratt, Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 11 10 11 10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
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