Month: November 2020

Poetry No. 1: Re-discovered

Poetry No 1: Re-discovered

I am busy removing old files from my computer.  Most of them are in a folder carrying the vaguely general title of ‘Church’ with numerous subfolders such as ‘Parish Council’, ‘Liturgy’ and ‘Sermons’.  Do I really need to keep all the sermons I’ve preached since 2010?  (That was the last time my hard drive crashed and I had not backed-up such items as sermons.)  ‘Maybe… You never know, I might be asked to preach on the 27th Sunday after Pentecost and I could simply lift the sermon I preached in 2011 and use that.’  But reading through such ancient old sermons you realise that most sermons are definitely time-bound.  What was happening in 2011 is not the same as what is happening in 2020 or 2021.  I say that as a historian and it is us historians who constantly say that history repeats itself!  

I remember as a server at St Margaret’s, Fish Hoek in the early 1960, I was the only server willing to serve on the third Sunday of the month when retired Bishop Basil Peacey used to be the celebrant and preacher.  I loved serving for him at the Eucharist because he was so High Church Anglo-Catholic.  Genuflecting at what I now know through Ritual Notes1 to be the right places, saying the Last Gospel (genuflecting at the words ‘made flesh and dwelt among us’, of course!), doing the preparation from a printed card which included a confession and the saying the antiphon I will go unto the altar of God : even unto the God of my joy and gladness.  Oh, it was so exciting and colourful and rebellious among the rather staid broad-church congregation of St Margaret’s then!  I must admit that his sermons were long and hard to follow because he spoke in such the strange modulating tone of a very old man.  I wonder how old he was?  He was made a deacon in 1913 and let us say he was 25y old then that would make him born 1888.  In 1966 he would be about 78y!  During the Preparation he was so hard to follow as we servers knelt on either side of him.  Fortunately, we only had to say something after he had beaten his chest at the confession so we could catch up at that point.  One Sunday after the service, as I was clearing away the sacred vessels and setting up the tray for the next Eucharist on Tuesday morning, Bishop Peacey was disrobing and he took his sermon notes and tore them up and threw them into the wastepaper bin.  “This is where most sermons belong” he said smiling at me as he did it.

While talking about Bishop Peacey, I feel should mention two other things.  The first is personal and occurred when I was in Std 8 (now Grade 10).  I was sixteen years old.  He said to me.  ‘Young man, have you ever thought about becoming a priest?’  I was at that time into the Anglo-Catholic novels of authors such as Ernest Raymond (Tell England, My Brother’s Keeper etc.)  and Compton Mackenzie (Altar Steps) and I had thought how wonderful it could be if I could become a priest and celebrate the Communion as Bishop Peacey did, with bells and smells and all the ceremony and the choir singing the setting by John Merbecke.  I feel that I had reached heaven!  So, I answered, ‘Yes’.  ‘How is your school work,’ the Bishop asked me.  I told him my not-so-good marks.  He responded, ‘If you want to become a priest you will have to work much harder!’  I cannot say that his comment put me off and it certainly wasn’t what cause delay of any further exploration of my vocation for some twenty-four years, but that is another story.  I greatly admired Bishop Peacey and it was only later while doing Church History through university in the 1990s that I read Alan Paton’s book on Archbishop Geoffrey Clayton2 which speaks of Bishop Peacey’s strong pro-Apartheid views.  R. R. Langham-Carter, in his booklet on the history of the Parish of Christ Church, Constantia3 speaks of Bishop Peacey being rector there from 1941.  His wife was pro-German and he would not allow prayers to be said for those away serving in the Allied forces.  He also believed that the Constantia parish was a ‘Coloured’ parish and he asked the white parishioners to go elsewhere, though not all followed his request.  By the time I knew Bishop Peacey, some 25 years later, I saw none of this nor knew about it until my reading came across it, well after he had died.

I have drifted off the reason for writing this blog-essay.  So back to me clearing my computer hard drive.  As I was wiping off unwanted files and folders from my hard drive I came across a folder called ‘Poems’.  I re-read the poems I wrote in the 1990s, especially those I wrote while at the College of Transfiguration and the year immediately after it.  It is strange to re-read about how one felt twenty-five years previous.  I kept on thinking: “Did I write that! It’s too good! Wow!”  or “It’s too bad!  Let me destroy it!”  Most of these poems were captured in my Spiritual Journal and then typed out on my PC.  But why did this poetry writing stop in 1996?

I was thinking about this the other night when I woke up in the middle of the night.  I came up with a reason but I think there are a multitude of reasons and perhaps this is the simplest and least threatening to me.  My life as a Medical Laboratory Technologist had become routine.  Oh, yes, exciting things were happening – birth of Nick and Kate being the most important but then my decision to allow myself to hear what God was saying to me about my vocation to serve God as a priest and then the church’s acceptance of that call, put me into a transitional zone, a liminal space.  Into this space I started writing poems that expressed my feeling and emotions at that time, responding to things that were happening around me.  The first batch of poems disappeared in some hard-drive crash or other but once at College where my time was no longer routine like going to the laboratory to work and coming home again, but rather ordered in a very monastic-type of way, allowing me time to think and write, which I had to do as I was doing BTh(hons) at Rhodes University and had to produce an essay a week.  This liminal space within continued into my deacon year and up to my ordination as a priest.  Then my poetry writing ceased.  I think what happened is that I was now back into a regular routine of sermon-writing, visiting, chairing parish meetings etc. I was comfortable with it and so the discomfort of my liminal space disappeared.

Going through later spiritual journals I find plenty of recorded quotation that moved me, plenty of entries at the start of a retreat saying it would be great if I could be inspired to write a poem again.  But very few if any poems appear.

Now, at this time, the routine of running a parish has been removed from me and so I’m sitting down and writing again.  Not sermons, nor poetry, but essay-type scripts expressing my feelings and emotions in prose rather than poetry.  The academic writing of my Master’s thesis (completed in 1997) and the editorship of the Cape Town Family History Society’s Newsletter (since 2010) has perhaps resulted in me approaching writing in a more ‘academic’ way, ensuring that all quotes and references are duly foot-noted.  Not conducive to the writing of verse!

I said above that as I looked at some of my poems I thought, ‘This is much too good for me to have written, surely it is a quote from someone else.”  I’m not saying the poems are brilliant but maybe someone else might be moved by them so I’m going to place on this blog every so often a poem from my collection which I think you, the reader, might enjoy.  I will title these blog entries as “Poem No. xx”  and beside giving the verse I might need to set the context in which it was written and I’ll place in the blog entry too. 

Let me give you a taster. 
These lines were written during a Saturday Quiet Day, during the time we were sent away to meditate

In the College Garden on a Quiet Day
The sound drifts up from the valley below,
The rustle of trees, doors being opened and closed,
The ‘sprong’ of well-struck tennis-balls,
The laughter of sportsmen preparing for their match,
And above, through and gently over these….
The sound of a meandering flute being practised
somewhere in the stillness below.

[4 June 1994]

I remembered this poem some twenty years later when I joined a group of Cape Town Clergy to lecture at COTT for a week.

Then and Now
Twenty years ago,
on a Saturday afternoon,
the sound of a flautist practising
came drifting up towards the college.
It was a quiet day,
and I was wandering in the garden.
The sound touched my inner being,
forcing me to capture the moment in verse.

Tonight, staying in nearby staff accommodation
I hear the sound of marimbas practising.
It drifts up a block and a half
yet takes me back twenty years.

By tomorrow I’ll be home,
but those around me will still be here
in their same positions in the Chapel.
Silent in meditation.
It is just like it was twenty years ago,
all that has changed are the faces.

[2014.  Grahamstown]

  1. E. C. R. Lamburn. Ritual Notes (London: W Knott & Son Limited, 1964 [↩]
  2. Alan Paton, Apartheid and the Archbishop: the life and times of Geoffrey Clayton.  (Cape Town: David Philip, 1983) [↩]
  3. R. R. Langham Carter, Among the vineyards: the story of Christ Church, Constantia (Constantia: Christ Church Parish, no date) [↩]

Sermon for All Saints Day

St Francis of Assisi, Simon’s Town.
Sunday 1 November 2020

A pdf version for downloading and printing available here

When I was in my 20s, I was in the choir at St Margaret’s, Fish Hoek and one evensong Fr Tim Peacock preached.  He told us that if we wanted to explore Scripture we would have to ask ourselves four questions all starting with a WH.  WHO wrote the passage, WHY did they write it, WHAT did it mean to the first readers of the passage and finally, WHAT does it mean for us today?  I remembered this as I was thinking about this sermon because these four WH type of questions need to be asked as we look at SAINTS and in particular ALL SAINTS.  The order of the WH questions change but otherwise they are a good springboard for us this morning.  WHAT is a saint? WHO are saints?  WHY do we need saints? and WHAT do saints mean to me today?


Let’s begin by asking WHAT IS A SAINT?  I think in every All Saints sermon I’ve ever preached I’ve asked this question.  I think mainly because we so often have strange ideas about saints.  We say “Be a saint and carry this parcel for me” or at funerals “the deceased was an absolute saint as he cared for his wife who had dementia.”  We seem to imply that saints have to suffer to earn their title. 


In John Henry Newman’s poem, Dream of Gerontius which was set as an oratorio by Edward Elgar, has the Soul of Gerontius ascending to heaven and as he passes, the Demons call out him.  It is interesting that Elgar had the men of the choir singing the Demons part!  They call out “What’s a saint?  One whose breath doth the air taint”.  Now, that is something all of us know about, wearing our face-masks!  The demons carry on and say that saints are “Low-born clods of brute earth, they aspire to become gods.”  But think about it…isn’t that what all of us are striving to do, to become more like Jesus, who is God?   In our Gospel reading Jesus gives us the beatitudes.  Eleven verses of encouragement as we strive to become saints.  Mahatma Gandhi said of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount of which the beatitudes begin it, that it fills him “with bliss even today. Its sweet verses have even today the power to quench my agony of soul.”  Does it quench your Soul?  Or do you dismiss it, saying, “Not this passage again!”  


Wikipedia says A saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God.  So even Wikipedia agrees with those demons!  But it also says that the definition of a saint will vary depending on the Christian denomination you belong to.  All of the faithful departed in Heaven are considered to be saints, that is why we are having this Festival today, but some are considered worthy of greater honour or emulation.  Certainly, for Paul anyone who belongs to the Christian faith, living or departed, can be called a Saint.  He writes to the Roman Church: To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.


But what about us Anglicans, what does a saint mean to us?   For us the title of Saint refers to a person who has been elevated by popular opinion as a pious and holy person, a person worthy of imitating.


But then WHO IS A SAINT?  The saints are models of holiness to be imitated, and a ‘cloud of witnesses’ that strengthen and encourage us during our spiritual journey.  As Hebrews 12:1 says Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” If you look at our Church Calendar you will find a lot of Saints who didn’t suffer in anyway, who didn’t go the extra mile to help others, who weren’t martyred.  In fact, died in their beds.  Many wrote poems or experienced oneness with God in their lives.  They will be part of what Bp William Walsham How calls in my favourite hymn, For all the Saints:  O Blest communion, fellowship divine or as Bp. Christopher Wordsworth describes them: Patriarch and holy prophet, who prepared the way of Christ, king, apostle, saint, confessor, martyr and evangelist, saintly maiden, godly matron, widows who have watched in prayer, joined in holy concert, singing to the Lord of all, are there. 


Are you there?  You who are the Saints of Simon’s Town beloved by God?  Boet Domisse wrote that little book entitled The Six Saints of Simon’s Town.  Agreed, he was referring to the six saints that the local churches are dedicated to, but I believe there is no reason why there should not be hundreds of saints of Simon’s Town.


But WHY COMMEMORATE SAINTS at all?  So many of them, we discover, were perhaps not as holy or pious as we originally thought.  Another All Saints hymn by James Montgomery says They were mortals too like us, O, when we like them must die, may our souls translated thus triumph, reign, and shine on high.”  During Lockdown I have watched streamed services from Portsmouth Cathedral.  I choose that Cathedral because my family originally came from there in the 19th Century, my son lives in the Portsmouth Diocese and the Dean, the Very Rev. Anthony Cane was educated at Bishops and UCT before returning to the UK, so I feel a strong connection.  In a sermon last month the Dean spoke about walking home from the Cathedral to the Deanery following two visitors to Portsmouth and as they entered the Grand Parade where there was a statue to Lord Horatio Nelson – appropriate for any town with a Royal Navy connection, he heard the one say to the other, “Oh! so it’s not Nelson Mandela then!”  The Dean went on to show how Lord Nelson in spite of being a hero and hero-worshipped by the English, was no saint, and I’m sure there are many things in Nelson Mandela’s life that are not really saintly.   The Dean indicated that he often, when going to meetings in Church House near the Houses of Parliament in London, had to cross Parliament Square.  “There,” he said, “is a statue to Nelson Mandela, and Churchill and Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett, the suffragette and Jan Christian Smuts.”  None of these would fit into that hymn which asks, “Who are these like stars appearing… these are they who have contended for their saviour’s honour long…” but there are their statues and we commemorate them just as we do for All Saints today.


So, WHAT DO SAINTS MEAN TO US TODAY?  Certainly, they are examples to follow, to imitate and because of their very humanity, we might find it less of a burden to follow their way of living.  Three years ago, Fr Richard asked me to help out by becoming your Priest-in-charge for six months.  I immediately said yes which I think surprised him a bit because he told me to go home and speak it over with Karen.  I said, “No, I want to be able to help in this parish.”  Though I must admit I didn’t think it would be for three whole years!  But I have really enjoyed being you Priest-in-Charge.  I am sure many of you could see my faults and my failings.  My failure to be as pastorally-caring as Fr Rodney obviously is, my sermons being too academic and long, my over indulgence with traditional hymns and choir music.  “I am no saint,” as the old saying goes and one starts to expect a “but…”  There is no but from me!  


There is a delightful book I owned, but with downsizing it has disappeared from my bookshelf so I can’t remember the title or the author.  It tells of a man called George who felt that his life was empty and worthless and he needed to do something to make it all worthwhile.  He decided that he would like to go a quest.  His wife thought he had lost his mind but one day while he was preparing to go on his quest, a dragon suddenly appeared and asked in a very bored voice what he was doing. “Going on a quest”, said George. “To do what?” asked the dragon, “I don’t know,” said George, “perhaps to find Truth or the Holy Grail.”  The Dragon then asked him, “What’s your name?”  “George” said George.  “What! Plain George? Not St George?” “I’m not holy enough to be saint!” said George. “No, not Saint George but S-E-N-T, Sent George because you have been sent on a quest.”  That was just the opening part of the first chapter of the book, but I think the message for us is clear.  Yes, we are all SAINTS because we are SENT, sent by God to make a difference in people’s lives.  I was sent to be your priest-in-charge for three years.  You are sent to do what God is calling you to do.


Around St Francis Day I found a quote from Francis, as his life was drawing to an end, just as my ministry among you has now drawn to an end.  St Francis said: “I have done what is mine to do.  May Christ teach you what is yours.”  That is quite a challenge to you all.  What is your task to do?  I found that quote on twitter from a priest who is a tertiary of the Franciscan Order.  He added to some words of his own to his tweet and I want to address them to you, as I end my sermon today.  “May you know the freedom of what it means to be you, and know that God rejoices in you as you are. You are beautiful!”  Amen.


Oh yes, you all know me and my famous saying “Google is your friend!”.  I googled and found that the book is called St George and the Dragon and the quest for the Holy Grail by Edward Hays.