[Applause] good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of tuesday the 28th of september the eve of michaelmas day but we've come to the herb garden for a very special reason which we will develop in our reflection later but we i'm surrounded by herbs which have healing properties and the way in which herbs have been used and flowers and ordinary things in people's gardens have been used in medicines and the treatment of all kinds of ailments throughout the ages will become part of our thinking so we are thinking also together and be welcome from wherever you are in the world together of those who are helping to give people health and recovery and also treating them in serious conditions today as we say our prayers on a lovely september morning but i think there's rain in the air no wind today but a pale sunshine coming through a thin veil of cloud onto the herb garden let's begin our prayers on this day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise send your holy spirit upon us and clothe us with power from on high blessed are you creator god to you be praise and glory forever as your spirit moved over the face of the waters bringing light and life to your creation pour out your spirit on us today that we may walk as children of light that by your grace and by your grace reveal your presence in our lives blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm this morning we finished the uh 11 pilgrim psalms the short ones yesterday and today we begin our morning sound with psalm 103 lord remember for david all the hardships he endured how he swore an oath to the lord and vowed a vow to the mighty one of jacob i will not come within the shelter of my house nor climb up into my bed i will not allow my eyes to sleep nor let my eyelids slumber until i find a place for the lord a dwelling for the mighty one of jacob now we heard of the ark in ephrathah and found it in the fields of jar let us enter his dwelling place and fall low before his footstool arise o lord into your resting place you and the ark of your strengths let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy for your servant david's sake turn not away the face of your anointed the lord has sworn an oath to david a promise from which he will not shrink of the fruit of your body shall i set up on your throne if your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that i shall teach them their children also shall sit upon your throne forevermore for the lord has chosen zion for himself he has desired her for his habitation this shall be my resting place forever here will i dwell for i have longed for her i will abundantly bless her provision her poor will i satisfy with bread i will close her priests with salvation and her faithful ones shall rejoice and sing there will i make a horn to spring up for david i will keep a lantern burning for my anointed that's for his enemies i will close them with shame but on him shall his crown be bright a psalm of the royal line of david descended through from jacob as we've been seening seeing in our old testament lessons in the book of genesis though that vision of peace which the even the name jerusalem speaks of is an eternal vision and i've just left matins in the cathedral to come here for our morning prayer in the garden and it matters in the cathedral the old testament lesson was read from the first chapter of the book of maccabees which is much later than any of this in the old testament and in that the descendant of alexander the great or successor of alexander the great antiochus epiphanes is laying jerusalem to waste burning it long before the roman desolate desecration of jerusalem but that city has known such turmoil through so oh pray for the peace of jerusalem is an earthly prayer but also the vision that we saw here of david and zion is an eternal one and a sign of the kingdom of heaven and the community beyond so let's then turn to the book of genesis and go back to um the chapter we were reading yesterday where joseph has settled his family in goshen and having settled the family in goshen he is now coming back to his duties for the pharaoh and do you want to come up tiger do you want to come up you can't get up come on there we are baby go back to where i was sorry the time table's a bit high for him so you can see it this morning so joseph goes back to his duties for pharaoh which are duties very special juices in the land to contain the famine and make for the people and those who come for food rationed resources during this desperate crisis not only for egypt but for the lands around i'm starting at verse 13 of chapter 47 in the book of genesis now there was no food in all the land for the famine was very severe so that the land of egypt and the land of canaan languished by reason of the famine and joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of egypt and in the land of canaan in exchange for the grain that they bought and joseph brought the money into pharaoh's house and when the money was all spent in the land of egypt and in the land of canaan all the egyptians came to joseph and said give us food why should we die before your eyes for our money is gone and joseph said give your livestock and i will give you food in exchange for your livestock if your money is gone so they brought their livestock to joseph and joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses the flocks the herds and the donkeys he supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year and when that year was ended they came to him the following year and said to him we will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent the herds of livestock are my lords there is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land why should we die before your eyes both we and our land by us and our land for food and we with our land will be servants to pharaoh and give us seed that we may live and not die and that the land may not be desolate so joseph bought all the land of egypt for pharaoh for all the egyptians sold their fields because the famine was severe on them the land became pharaohs as for the people he made servants of them from one end of egypt to the other only the land of the priests he did not buy for the priests had a fixed allowance from pharaoh and lived on the allowance that pharaoh gave them therefore they did not sell the land then joseph said to the people behold i have this day bought you and your land for pharaoh now here is seed for you and you shall sow the land and at the harvests you shall give one-fifth to pharaoh and four-fifths shall be your own as seed for your fields and as food for yourselves and your household and as food for your little ones and the people said you have saved our lives may it please my lord we will be servants to pharaoh so joseph made it a statute concerning the land of egypt and it stands to this day that pharaoh should have one fifth the land of the priests though did not become pharaohs it's an interesting reflective story as it's told and it's still as if with a kind of hindsight by the one who is telling that and writing it down for us in the book of genesis that what it shows is an early form of rationing and helping the land to recover from five years of terrible famine where not a stalk of wheat would grow and where everything became dead in terms of the land around and the livestock would also have become dead but for the careful rationing and the provisions that joseph puts in place it's if you like a political solution for the welfare of the people which the wisdom of joseph not for his own benefit though he was feeding his family at the same time and the extended family in the land of goshen and because of the prophecies of the dreams and the pharaoh's dreams and joseph's interpretation but also the wisdom of joseph as a statesman and counselor for pharaoh extraordinary situation we're hearing about then we see that kind of of settlement which became a settlement for egypt but later on if we look at other lands that kind of settlement if you like an early form of taxation um for protection uh and for the way in which the land is ordered and to to say it's so to in egypt to this day when the writer is writing well we're talking about when that particular writer was writing and yet is interesting to us how that is all set out for us in the book of genesis we have to remind ourselves that there have been 14 years seven years of plenty seven years of famine and the last five years of those famine joseph's own family have been there in goshen and in those 14 years but for joseph's wisdom and the interpretation of the dreams then egypt when the famine started would have had no resources whatsoever they would have been like every other nation and the people would have died from lack of food their crops had already died and that their animals would not be fed and pharaoh probably would have been a a much much weaker ruler attacked by nations from outside and egypt's economy would have collapsed completely so what we're seeing is something that is setting out how egypt became able under the pharaoh was became one of the most powerful rulers at that time um under the pharaoh to resource the people that an interesting story as we tell it of political wisdom on joseph's part but coming from his interpretation of the dreams well we shall go on with that story on saturday morning because tomorrow is michaelmas day uh but i wanted to say today and and we're looking at the way in which egypt the the the the land of the priests was kept separately in that way because there were communities of priests and in medieval england then the communities of of priests here parish priests there were of course but the the large monasteries all over england at that time and all over europe at that time benedictine monasteries for the most part were peopled with monks who had duties outside as well for benedictine abby's actually went out into the the areas of of and and um although there was a stability of coming home there was the welfare of the people around both in healing and also all kinds of other welfare the monasteries also communities of of nuns in their convents and and people like the abbess of shaftsbury an an enormously powerful landowner but at the same time those benedictine abbeys across england became part of the landscape they disappeared at the reformation and of course the the remains of them are seen across england at places like glastonbury and at tin turn but some didn't disappear they became parish churches and others cathedral monasteries were retained as cathedrals but the monastic flavour and the benedictine flavor of respecting a community in body mind and spirit a community given to hospitality at any time but with a stability all on its own and creative things going on in it was retained in various places in these uh cathedrals and and abbey churches and i've always been very um proud in a way as an english parish priest and also still as the dean of canterbury to wear a black classic a working overall which descended from the black benedictine habit the working overall of those who were serving both god and their community the inner community and the outer community around them that kind of vocation a pastoral vacation in body mind and spirit is something that someone helped me with early on i want to go on to that now it's been my privilege on two specific occasions to have charge of a place that had been a benedictine abbey i'm talking about sherban abbey and canterbury cathedral and at that time um in sherburne i learned something about the benedictine life from someone who i least expected to learn it from and that was from a detective novelist and you can now be begin to guess where i'm going i've been a curator in shrewsbury it was an abbey church in shrewsbury but i was in the city church of of uh of the town church of saint chad's in the middle of the the the town uh and at this time these books weren't written but when i was in my parish in wiltshire one of the parishioners called pat oliver at the time he and his wife mary were living there gave me a book it was a hardback book which had just been published it was called a morbid taste for bones and at that time and you've done this with books i had a pile of books to read the life was very busy the parish was very busy and the book was put on a shelf and it took me until i got to sherman and had my own benedictine abbey to read that book and realize that in the life of brother cadfail i was being given not only detective stories in the simplest way but also the life of a benedictine monk and the atmosphere of benedictine spirituality across those i think 20 novels which the novelist wrote in a way which entered deep inside me and gave me a love for the benedictine mode of living and spirituality which is lived outside in particular ways with the rhythm of life in prayer and is still lived in benedictine communities which are still monasteries or convents but here at canterbury those threads are at the basis of our life i want to come to the the at the author of these books who by the time i knew her was an old lady her real name was edith parchita and she was born on this day in 1913 and in the uh second world war she became a wren as they were called serving in a branch of the royal navy and one of her friends in the wren's was one of my parishioners in sherman her name was leslie davis and she wrote each week i think to pargi as she called her and they've corresponded backwards and forwards so that finally when i went to hereford as the dean and and the the environs of shrewsbury were in the diocese of hereford not it touched shrewsbury but the whole of south shropshire was was very much diocese of hereford i i met um ellis peters and that was a lovely thing to to do she had started her novels about brother canfer after a life of writing lots and lots and lots of books but then at the age of 64 she wrote a morbid taste for bones it could have been perhaps just a novel all by itself in fact it started a series which made her famous and there are of course television um programs which have been filmed of brother cadfail i've not watched those much because i'd already read all the books and had my own images but what i did do was listen to the radio programs which were made with the narrator sir michael horden with his beautiful narration and also uh hugh maddock playing brother canfield in his welsh way called canfield was a welshman and i want to give you something of the flavor of that first book by just reading a paragraph or two and then coming back to it here i'm going to start a morbid taste for bones as i did and then read one book after another and then we used to wait until another one would come out because she was still writing at that time here we are the first chapter of the morbid taste for bones just a paragraph or two on a fine bright morning in early may when the whole sensational affair of the guitherin relics may properly be considered to have begun brother cadfail had been up long before prime pricking out cabbage seedlings before the day was add and his thoughts were all on birth growth and fertility not at all on graves and reliquaries and violent deaths whether of saints sinners or ordinary decent fallible men like himself nothing troubled his peace but the necessity to take himself indoors for mass and the succeeding half hour of chapter which was always liable to stray over by an extra 10 minutes he grudged the time from his more congenial labors out here among the vegetables but there was no evading his duty he had after all chosen this cloistered life with his eyes open he could not complain even of those parts of it he found unattractive when the whole suited him very well and gave him the kind of satisfaction he felt now as he straightened his back and looked about him he doubted if there was a finer benedictine garden in the whole kingdom or one better supplied with herbs both good for spicing meats and also invaluable as medicine the main orchards and lands of the shrewsbury abbey of saint peter and st paul lay on the northern side of the road outside the monastic enclave but here in the enclosed garden within the walls close to the abbot's fishponds and the brook that worked the abbey mill brother cadfail ruled unchallenged the herbarium in particular was his kingdom for he had built it up gradually through 15 years of labor and added to it many exotic plants of his own careful raising collected in a roving youth that had taken him as far afield as venice and cyprus and the holy land for brother cadfail had come late to the monastic life like a battered ship settling it last for a quiet harbour he was well aware that in the first years of his vows the novices and lay servants had been went to point him out to one another with ord whisperings five minutes more and he must go and wash his hands and repair to the church for mass he used the respite to walk the lengths of his pale flowered fragrant inner kingdom where brother john and brother colin banas two youngsters barely a year ton should were busy weeding and edge trimming glossy and dim oiled in fairy the leaves tended every possible variation on green the flowers were mostly shy small almost furtive in soft side long colors lilacs and shadowy blues and diminutive yellows for they were the unimportant and unwanted part but for ensuring seed to follow rue sage rosemary gilvers gromwell ginger mint thyme columbine herb of grace savory mustard every manner of herb grew here fennel tansy basil and dill parsley charville marjoram he had taught the uses even of the unfamiliar to all his assistants and made plain their dangers too for the benefit of herbs is in their right proportion and over dosage can be worse than the disease small of habit modest of tint close growing and shy his herbs called attention to themselves only by their disseminated sweetness as the sun rose on them but behind their shrinking ranks rose others taller and more glamorous banks of peonies grown for their spiced seeds lofty pale leaf budding poppies as yet barely showing the white or purple black petals through their close armor they stood as tall as a short man and their home was the eastern part of the middle sea and from that far place cadfail had brought their ancestors in seed long ago and raised and cross spread them in his own garden before ever he brought the perfected progeny here with him to make medicines against pain the chief enemy of humankind pain and the absence of sleep which is the most beneficent remedy for pain well ellis peters had worked uh in earlier years before she joined the wren's before the first the second world war broke out in a chemist shop and she speaks of how in those days the herbs were still mightily important in making the tinctures which predated the antibiotics and the kind of medicines we have now and yet at the base of so many of those medicines still lie the herbs i wanted to talk about the way in which the books themselves as they unfold and all of them have magnificent titles for once they started running there was such a demand for them that year after year edith parchetta under the name of ellis peters would write another they were set in 1137 said there was an historic story of shrewsbury and this land going on as well the next year in 1979 she wrote the first in 1977 1979 one corpse too many set in 1138 monks hood that's a radio program that i was talking about 1138. in 1981 she wrote in peter's fair set in 1139 20 novels and a set of short stories taking you through only to 11 45 about a period of english history in the reign of king stephen and civil war which is fairly well unknown but in her novels it's all there and the stability is given by the monastery but can fail because of his earlier life his humanity and his benedictine rhythm and stability is able to be intuitive about the lives of so many saints and sinners come across his path in one story after another and because he's the herbalist it is sent out to help people with pain or sent out in in monks hood to join the monastic shepherds at christmas time far away from the monastery and the characters that appear you get to know in that community it gave me a completely different insight for chasebury and i longed for the next novel to come out simply because of the atmosphere given of the way in which the rhythm of life and the creative gifts and the different ways in which can fail exercises body mind and spirit his own experiences his mind in working out both detective type of solutions but also dealing with people's pain in physical pain mental pain and things buried very deep within them emotionally he is the master of pastoral care and at the same time the person who teaches balance and forgiveness and even in the end forgiveness to himself i'm going to come back to him on saturday morning for a very different reason but today let's concentrate on the herbs which actually he is talking about because in the herb garden so many of these are still being used at the basis of the the medicines that we use uh in the front garden the great willow tree willow of course is the the source of aspirin uh and fox gloves long past flowering now the source of a heart medicine digitalis and autumn crocuses the uh the the source of of something that from time uh back in roman times have helped out but we do a quick tour of our herb wheel in front of the yew tree here very poisonous indeed but being investigated at the moment has a help in in types of treatment of cancer and the artemisia which is not here anymore it's past it's it's flourished period but we've done that before another treatment that is being used in the treatment of cancer a herb that's being used in the treatment of cancer if we go on round we've got jerusalem artichokes here beautiful in cooking but also used for a cure for diabetes or at least a a palliative for diabetes and then on we go round we've got clematis here flowering on the the trellis in it with its yellow flowers which is used in treatments for joint pain and on the flowering gladiolus behind me is uh in old times uh just a treatment for the common cold brother catfill would would have been used using that for that um on we go round to salvia which i've just left actually this big bunch here the very name salvia means a a healing herb and salvia is good for inflammation and for ulcers in the treatment of that herb robert here an antiseptic and fennel here growing up high in digestive complaints we then come to the magnificent evening primrose which is just about good for absolutely everything joint pain asthma eczema and treatments for hepatitis b all of those things that that come from this this simple herb coming to the end of its flowering season and on round two sage massive sagebush here used again in cooking but in digestive treatments on to the sunflowers on this side and the sunflowers are diuretics and also their leaves are taken to make potuses for swellings and and sores and we have then on still round to the mint of the garden now there are multitude of kinds of of mints and the the various mints the peppermint the sweet lints are spearmints all of those tend to be chest and throat infection they're used in the the the kanthal um books in those stories when he's treating that there is also as we go on past the mint i'm losing my place here flocks and the the flocks themselves have finished their flowering period uh and uh phlox are used in stomach and intestinal treatments so many more things in the garden and we could go on and i shall come back as i say to brother cantrell in a completely different way when we come to our book of genesis on on saturday morning but for the moment we give thanks for the way in which ellis peters in her novels not only investigates healing but also investigates the way in which can't fail gets to know people and is is kept stable by his benedictine life and the way in which he lives out the rhythms of that there's great humor in the books as well so let's say our prayers and we on this particular morning are praying for the diocese of fond du lac in the united states and in this diocese for the area deanery of ashford and the area dinner chris denier tuta and jeremy worthen in their ministry of the parishes around ashford so let's join together bring your own concerns and situations to our prayer the collect for the 17th sunday after trinity almighty god you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself and so bring us at last to your heavenly city where we shall see you face to face through jesus christ our lord men so we say together the prayer our lord taught us to say here in the herb garden and wherever you are in the world in your own language our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen moment of silence now for your own prayers so [Music] the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds and the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen you