Spirituality

Our Father – and Mother … and Mothers’ Day

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Our Father

Our Father, Mother of all life living in timeless beauty
                                        your name is sacred, 
always to be praised and adored.

You created our world and continue to transform
        the wonder of your creation.

We thank you each day for having given us your son.

Forgive our wrong behaviour
                          as we forgive the wrongs of others.

You know us intimately, guide our lives,
            and protect us from harm.

For you are complete good, pure love, and perfect
                                 all honour, power, and glory are yours
now and forever.

                                                                     
    						Richard Scutter

Rowan Williams in a series of presentations on the nature of Christianity at Canterbury Cathedral stated the view of God … in human terms … that Mother was much more akin to the nature of God rather than Father. Refer- the book Tokens of Trust which detail his presentations.

I must say in line with Rowan Williams family is most important … whatever your comparison … whether Spirit, Wind, Love, …

So looking at Mother in that regard on Mothers’ Day in Australia some equivalent words that mirror the well-known prayer in the Anglican liturgy.

Rowan Williams Wikipedia

This is a Photograph of Me – Margaret Atwood

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This is a Photograph of Me

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

Margaret Atwood (1939 –

From AI – Margaret Atwood’s “This Is a Photograph of Me” is a haunting, deceptively simple poem that uses the metaphor of a blurry, old photo to explore themes of death, memory, and the marginalization of women. The speaker describes a landscape, only revealing in a chilling, parenthetical stanza that she has drowned and is submerged in the lake, appearing almost invisible to the viewer. 
… And is marginalization an issue?

A poem in two distinct parts … on the life of a person defined in words …

Plenty below the surface to consider, these are my words to invoke thinking   –

 
… the importance of nature to self
… on becoming water and light
… on being absorbed/lost in nature
… on being unrecognised as a woman
… on being a forgotten entity
… on history distorting, not knowing people
… on being identified with place
… on the emphasis of the importance of home
… on being there but unseen
… on wanting recognition
… on having a spiritual existence
… on connection

Do you ever see another person no matter how hard you look … and what does a person leave behind … what does the viewer conjure in the mind.

Endimyion – opening lines – analysis

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Endimyion – opening lines

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways. 

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Endimyion a very long poem of four books … rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter.

The opening lines suggest beauty is a distraction from the woes of the world. Finding beauty in nature. But not easy to do perhaps in the business of all that is happening around us. The lines also suggest a wish that the beauty of the natural world is given to us after death unfettered from all those worldly woes.

Beauty as distraction, … or perhaps better to be seen as a resistance?

Beauty in Endymion can feel like a distraction from suffering, especially given Keats’s own life: illness, financial precarity, political unrest, and looming death. Yet for Keats, beauty is rarely mere escapism. Rather, it functions as a counterforce to pain. For beauty does not erase “the inhuman dearth / Of noble natures” or “the gloomy days” — those woes are explicitly acknowledged. Beauty exists alongside suffering, not in ignorance of it. In that sense, beauty becomes an act of resistance: something that binds us to the earth even when the world is harsh.

So instead of distraction, we might think of beauty as temporary shelter — a pause that allows endurance.

On finding beauty …

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth…

Wreathing suggests effort, repetition, even ritual. Beauty must be made present, not passively received. It requires attention, imagination, and perhaps a willingness to step briefly outside worldly urgency.

And if beauty were only a longing for elsewhere, it might increase restlessness. But if beauty is seen as a comfort, it becomes grounding like the flowery band binding us to the earth by the use of the wreath analogy. Keeping us earth orientated rather than pulling us away from our situation.

Beauty does not save the world,
but it saves our willingness to remain in it.

Hoping beauty is evident in your life in some way when seen as a living aid exemplified in a flower.

Now looking at beauty after death and the philosophy of John Keats … the spiritual side to this poem …

An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

An endless fountain of immortal drink … suggests the creator of the world is continuing in love.

This isn’t a single gift given long ago, nor a distant act of creation now complete. A fountain pours continuously. If there is a creator implied here, it’s not a withdrawn clock-maker God, but one still actively giving — still leaning toward the world.

It is loving rather than judgmental. What flows from heaven is not law, command, or punishment, but drink — sustenance, pleasure, life. It’s intimate and generous. You don’t earn a drink; you receive it because you are thirsty.

Keats keeps the theology deliberately indirect. He doesn’t name God. He avoids doctrine. Instead, he gives us an image that feels halfway between Christian grace, classical nectar, and pure poetic imagination. That ambiguity allows the line to carry love without dogma — creation as an ongoing act of care rather than a finished decree. A spiritual force still in use in shaping our troubled world.

There is a longing beneath that for a place where beauty would no longer need defending, gathering, wreathing. Whether that place is art, memory, myth, or some imagined place beyond death, Keats leaves this unresolved.

It is up to us to consider the nature of heaven and any afterlife.

Edgar Allan Poe – Female connectivity

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Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809, the same year as Tennyson.  He was a poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as one of the central figures of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States and of early American literature. And he was the first American to rely entirely on his literary writing to make a living.

“Annabel Lee” was Edgar Allan Poe’s last poem and unpublished at the time of his death. He regarded it as his most significant poem and made pains to ensure that it would be published. It is thought that it is in connection with his first childhood love a cousin, Virginnia Eliza Clemn who he married when he was 26 and she 13. The marriage lasted eleven years ending when Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847.

Here is the poem …

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; —
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
 
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —
With a love that the wingéd seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
 
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.
 
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
 
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: —
 
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: —
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea —
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

The angels in heaven were jealous of her, so she was quite an earth angel – metaphorically speaking.

The locked forever connection with beloved “Annabel Lee” suggests a spiritual afterlife association. So many people express deeper connectivity with a beloved partner after he or she dies. In regard to poetry Thomas Hardy comes to mind.

Edgar Allan Poe on Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

Church Going – Philip Larkin – Analysis

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Church Going

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

I have broken this poem into seven parts for discussion, I am not sure whether Philip Larkin intended to have such a breakdown.

Part 1 …
First I will say this is something I did as a teenager. I cycled around the local rural area and if I came to a church and there was nothing happening I ventured in to have a look around. Musty is so apt as a choice in words. And brewed God over many centuries. And the silence is indeed unignorable. It is always a still space for solitude. One thing I appreciated was that many of the churches had unlocked doors to allow a wandering cyclist to enter. The doors are usually very heavy with beautiful wood so it was always a time to admire the architecture and the craftsmanship. Cycle helmets were not in use in those days, so the removal of cycle clips was equivalent to hat removal – in a sort of relevance.

Part 2 …
Philip Larkin was rather game to step into the lectern and read a few verses. Lucky that no one was around at the time to witness his short sermon! He thinks he has wasted his time with this church so a meaningful donation is out of the question. An Irish Sixpence is a good luck token.

Part 3 …
Why does he continually go into churches? What is he searching for?  And then he thinks to the future when many of these buildings might fall into ruin and become derelict. The weather and sheep might dictate rent free. More likely to be sold off though.

Part 4 …
The Church building because of its sacred nature might encourage those to seek miracles based on superstition. Dubious people suggest a shift from the original spiritual significance. And to use the church more mundane purposes – to pick simples, herbs. The practical uses for a former religious space, symbolizing the only use and the declining relevance of the church and its traditions in a secular world. 


Part 5 …
Who will be the last to use the Church for what it was built for. A shape les recognizable, representing the decline of congregation. But is this representative of the decline in spiritual awareness independent of Christianity? The last line – will He be my representative.

Part 6 …
True, churches are often only used for key social events – marriage, and death in the main seemingly needing some kind of Church sanction. Often attendees never come to other services. In that sense only a shell. But surviving over so many years while new housing estates are spilt upon the land with little architectural merit. Churches increase in land value as well as holding testimony to the Christian message. Approproate interpretation of that message is another matter. It is hard to value in anyway the worth in keeping such buildings on our landscape.


Part 7 …
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet … always a place to seek understanding of life … purpose … the spirit within in that implores us for an understanding of our existence … and what a peaceful still place to grow wise in … unfortunately so many are dead around the Church … the living dead who don’t understand.

There is a wonderful You Tube video of a conversation between Philip Larkin and John Betjeman in which he describes his Hull (UK) life, and in this 1964 video he reads his Church Going poem.

Here is the link – https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/a-youtube-education … you will have to scroll down to reach the video,

Philip Larkin on Wikipedia

The spiritual Struggle of Tennyson

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Life is a journey. Life is a spiritual journey. Life is eternal.

Tennyson’s exposure to scientific thought, philosophy, and personal tragedies (especially the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam) caused him to question and wrestle with the Christian doctrine of his day.

Tennyson’s most famous long poem, In Memoriam A.H.H., is a profound meditation on grief, love, and the struggle between faith and doubt. He tries to come to terms with the apparent cruelty of nature and the loss of his friend with a hope in divine purpose and immortality.

He never outright rejected Christianity, but his belief was not simplistic or uncritical. He was spiritually searching, determining for himself his own acceptance of faith and the understanding to the purpose of life.

These lines from In Memoriam reflect his spiritual struggle:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Indicating the importance of working our own understanding of life, without blighly following the religious dictates of others.

And Canto 54 is rich with spiritual questioning. There is a cautious hope in divine purpose. Here are the lines:

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
         Will be the final end of ill,
         To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
         That not one life shall be destroy'd,
         Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
         That not a moth with vain desire
         Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
         I can but trust that good shall fall
         At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
         An infant crying in the night:
         An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

Tennyson hopes that suffering and evil (“ill”) will somehow serve a higher good. He believes — or wants to believe — that life is purposeful, not random (“nothing walks with aimless feet”). He confesses human ignorance — “we know not anything” — yet he still clings to trust in a benevolent divine order.

Toward the end of his life Tennyson identified more openly with a broader Christian theism. On his deathbed, he recited passages from the Bible, indicating a retained comfort in Anglican rites and language. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, with full Anglican rites.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
Alfred Lord Tennyson on Wikipedia

Landscape lines – Algernon Charles Swinbourne

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I have been looking at some of the landscape poetry of Algernon Charles Swinbourne (1837 – 1909). He was an outstanding English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. A complete rebel in Victorian England a fervent antitheist and pagan. A person who opposes any form of religion and someone who believes in the natural order of life.

The opening lines of Evening on the Broads

OVER two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,
     Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile
      Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless
      Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep.
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless
      Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep —
Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow
      Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star.
As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow
      Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar,
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom
      Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers.
World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,
      Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.
Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles
      Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay —
Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles,
      Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day:
Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten
      Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave:
Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,
      Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave.
Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision
      Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest.
But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division,
      Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest.
Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season cnkindled
      Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them fade:
Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled,
      Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made.
New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,
      Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,
In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless
      Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart.
Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden
      Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway —
Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden
      Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay.
Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming
      Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,
Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming
       Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin.
Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover,
      Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud:
Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover
      Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud.
Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward
      Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star

The Broads are a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.

 The pinnace is a light boat, propelled by oars or sails.

It is a long poem that goes into great lengths to personify the Broads at the sunset hour. He associates the dark night-dying day alluding the loss of light to dying. He gives his own personal insights on death. He likens the taking of light to that of a bird unfledged that covers her brood from afar. The taking away of the world as approachng darkness dissembles. This implies a certain care implicit in nature.

World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,
      Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.

Alluding to a transience in death akin to the transience from daylight to night.

semblance of death out of the heavens descends on the deathless waters. Out of the womb of the tomb born of the seed of the grave.

The night is new made and opens the secret of love as in the lines.

New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,
      Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,

The spirits of people live on in his lines, together with the love of the day.

Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,

I find these lines quite spiritual with an appreciation of inherent love that exists in nature along with recognition of the death-birth-cycle of ceaseless life. In the last four lines of the poem, he does actually mention God.

and the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: 
                                    and the darkness is breathless
With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep:
But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless,
              Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the deep.

On a personal note, I have always found the atheist view as a hollow empty pessimistic stance. To my mind belief in a benevolent God supportive of all people gives hope for the future and purpose to life.

Bobowler – Liz Berry – Comments

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Bobowler
Darkling herald, 
see her flower-face on a waning moon 
and spake her name aloud 
to conjure the voice 
of one you loved and let slip 
through the wing gauze of jeth. 

In the owl-light,
when loneliness shines
through your bones like a bare bulb, 
she'll come for you, 
little psyche bringing missives 
from the murmuring dark.  

She comes to all the night birds:
cuckoos, thieves, the old uns 
and the babies in their dimlit wums, 
the boy riding his bike 
up Beacon Hill, heart thundering 
like a strange summer storm. 

And the messages she carries 
in her slow soft flight? 
Too tender to speak of, too heartsore, 
but this: I am waiting. 
The love that lit the darkness between us 
has not been lost. 
Liz Berry (1980 –
from her book 'The Republic of Motherhood'.

Liz Berry is a Black Country poet in that she lives and writes poetry in connection with that area known as the Black Country in England an area in the midlands near Birmingham and her book entitled the same includes the use of the local dialect and it won the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection in 2014.

She very kindly sent a reading of the above poem for our U3A Poetry Appreciation Group in Canberra last week. It was wonderful to hear her, and I was totally mesmerized by the touch of humour that pervaded her presentation along with the pronunciation of the local vernacular.

Bobowler = a large moth in the local language
Jeth = deth
Cuckoos = lovers
dimlit wums = homes

Here are my comments …

S1 – quite a pretty moth and shaped in conjunction with the moon appropriately associated with the night as it seeks light … darkling is a not a common usage word and what came to mind was darkling in connection with Thomas Hardy and The Darkling Thrush … but the moth is a herald to the memory of someone loved who let slip through the wing gauze of death … wing in relation to the moth and the flight from life … but the voice of the departed can be conjured into life … indicating a touch of magic in the recreation in her mind … something very special in the relationship.

S2 – Interesting that owl is integrated in the Bobowler title. I do like the way this second stanza expresses how loneliness and loss is subjugated through bones like a bare bulb and bringing missives; messages out of the murmuring night. Missives is an interesting word having a contractual flavour. The subtle shadow communication of the person loved is likened to the flutter of a moth against the light of the bulb. The analogy with the seeking of light.

S3 – A wider generic communication perhaps … she comes to all … of those much loved that have departed … bringing messages … whether to lovers, the aged, babies in their homes (dimlit wums) … or something very specific as a boy struggling on a bike up Beacon Hill … the departed are continually fluttering into our lives to live again so to speak … linked in the mind

S4 – The messages are back to the personal … tender and likened to the slow soft flight of the moth. Love is rekindled and never lost. The love that lit the darkness between us may imply more than just the separation by death.

An example of how something simple in nature like a moth flitting against a light bulb can be used for poetic expression. And how seeking light can be transferred into seeking connection with the dead. And the use of the old dialect may help the recall.

Liz Berry on Wikipedia