Tag: doubt

Peace – a hymn reflecting on Jesus’ words to his disciples

Peace…

Easter seems long past, but at a time when our minds are still being drawn to Ukraine, and politics at home feel uncertain, my thoughts have drifted back. When Jesus come to his disciples after his crucifixion he came, not with condemnation, but with peace. Perhaps we still need that assurance of peace in our own, our present time. But  step back for a moment to that upper room…

He speaks of peace while all inside 
disciples' minds are churned about; 
their memories haunt their waking time, 
while day and night are fused by doubt.
He speaks of peace while all the world 
will clamour at our open door, 
while shards of music sing and break 
with light in discord on the floor.
	
Into this chaos spirit spills,
a calming notion, 'God is good', 
and real as life, the Christ was there,
the Christ they'd hammered to the wood.
This God it is who offers peace 
to bound disciples held by fear, 
who breaks impossibilities, 
who makes the clouded way seem clear.

Into this calm we'll step and stay, 
in love's assurance find God's peace 
with those whose feet had turned to clay, 
we'll find that fear will stop, will cease.
And in this moment, in this time 
within a world so torn by death, 
again we'll try to live out peace, 
with every lasting, living breath.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2012 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@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
8 8 8 8 D
Tune: YE BANKS AND BRAES

Poets struggle, sculptors risk…

One gospel (Mark) doesn’t mention the birth of Jesus. The other three relate it in different ways. This has led me to reflect on the way in which different arts attempt to give expression to the nature of God. 

Poets struggle with the language, 
words both mystic and absurd 
fail to frame the incarnation, 
giving flesh to living Word.

Art constrained by expectation 
will not let the colours go, 
only spreading, mixing media 
emulate the Spirit’s flow.

Sculptors sometimes risk the fracture, 
letting stone dictate the form, 
giving rise to new creation 
chance God shattering our norm.

Even music caged in bar lines 
lacks the freedom to expand,
till in jazz, through improvising, 
rhythms stretch to new demands.

Nothing ever fixed or final, 
way beyond the human mind:
mystery and imagination…
all that we will ever find…
© Andrew Pratt Written 17/12/2022

             Incarnation – Watercolour © Andrew E. Pratt

Doubt

To me doubt is the term often used to marginalise people who have the integrity to admit that it is impossible to know evrything about anything let alone ‘the other’ that some call God. Some such folk self-identify as agnostic, which does not mean atheist but perhaps the opposite.

Hymns as an evolving genre

There are times in all our lives when we question what is happening and when our faith is challenged and shaken. What happens when we reach the point where it feels as though our faith makes no sense.  For many in contemporary society this seems to be the case. Perhaps circumstance leads them to this point. For others there is the sheer illogicality of believing in something intangible, metaphysical. What then? We cannot force belief on someone, it simply doesn’t work. Fred Pratt Green frames the theme like this:

When our confidence is shaken 
in beliefs we thought secure;
when the spirit in its sickness 
seeks but cannot find a cure: 
God is active in the tensions 
of a faith not yet mature. 
Fred Pratt Green Copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd

In this circumstance faith is incomplete. We do not have the full picture. Arguably, where God is concerned we never can have the full picture, in which case we need to be open to the fact that faith, in Sydney Carter’s words is framed by a creed which is never fixed or final.  I raise a question in the following text:

How can we live at one with God, 
inspired by Christ the living Word, 
infused with all the Spirit's power 
when life is twisted and absurd?

[…] to grasp by faith, to act in love, 
while nothing fixed or final stands.

Put another way:

When life juggles with our learning,
with the things we thought secure, 
then it seems the artist’s palette
spins and faith becomes obscure.

In the wash of different colours, 
as we seek for shape and form, 
others paint their faith by numbers 
forcing God to fit some norm.

But when life has torn the canvas, 
when the numbers twist and slip; 
then we need to find an image 
that will help our hope to grip:

holding us, when we're past holding,
grounding when we're insecure,
till we find a faith, not drifting,
still dynamic, free, yet sure. 

All the above Andrew Pratt unless otherwise stated, verses copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd.