good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of saturday the 9th of october it is the most lovely autumn morning with sunshine coming up through the trees and as the sun rises high in a clear blue sky it's giving light it's setting light to this tree above me the tree of heaven uh as the this tree is commonly called but all around me is at the glory of the autumn and the lawn beneath my feet where i'm sitting is damp with an autumn dew there's no wind this morning and so please enjoy the autumn morning with us wherever you are in the world and bring your own concerns as the sun comes up and begins to light more and more areas of the garden we've got the creatures around us and they will become helpful in our reflection in a very special way but at the same time the uh the that's the story that we're going to tell this morning from the book of exodus is about a bush seeming to turn to flame and i'm sitting on the lawn in front of the catinis bush here behind me which is generally called a smoke bush and reminiscent of that burning bush but also something really magic has occurred as has with this lawn as we've let it grow up and show us little pyramid orchids and achilles flowering through the season well this morning it is covered with mushrooms you can never get mushrooms to grow particularly you have to let them come and they've certainly come in the night so there is a feast of mushrooms around us on the lawn this morning and we're resisting fresher is resisting cutting the lawn back which will have to be cut back for the all the events for next year but this year we've enjoyed it growing in a wild way to become a great meadow and this morning it's a meadow in dampness filled with mushrooms so let's say our prayers on this day but i wanted first to pay tribute this morning to james brokenshire one of our members of parliament and an ex-northern ireland secretary and housing minister and i wanted to to reflect on the tributes paid to him he was a a politician who died of cancer aged 53 but also a father of three and his wife catherine we remember in our prayers this morning catherine is the niece of fetcher's aunt and his his uh uncle peter his late uncle peter but at the same time we remember the tributes page by the prime minister the leaders of the opposition and all sides of the house for a thoroughly good and decent politician today who gave his life to public service and has heard that that life has tragically ended too soon so god rest him and may catherine and the family be feel very supported by prayer this morning so at the same time we're remembering areas of the world that are at present uh in any kind of distress and we still see the flaming of the mountain on la palma um and i wanted also to just give a shout for the anglican communion center in rome's uh webinar which is going to happen on the 12th of october on faith and science called care for our common home and we'll put a link on on on for that so that you can join in if you would like to with that but let's begin our prayers on this particular morning as we worship in this lovely awesome sunshine oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god our light and our salvation to you be glory and praise forever you gave your christ as a light to the nations and through the anointing of the spirit you established us as a royal priesthood as you call us into your marvelous light may our lives bear witness to your truth and our lips never cease to proclaim your praise 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 as 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 on this ninth morning of the month is psalm 46. god is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble therefore we will not fear though the earth be moved and though the mountains tremble in the heart of the sea though the waters rage and swell and though the mountains quake at the towering seas there is a river whose streams make glad the city of god the holy place of the dwelling of the most high god is in the midst of her therefore shall she not be removed god shall help her at the break of day the nations are in uproar and the kingdoms are shaken but god utters his voice and the earth shall melt away the lord of hosts is with us the god of jacob is our stronghold come and behold the works of the lord what destruction he has wrought upon the earth he makes wars to cease in all the world he shatters the bow and snaps the spear and burns the chariots in the fire be still and know that i am god i will be exalted among the nations i will be exalted in the earth the lord of hosts is with us the god of jacob is our stronghold so we turn now to our reading from the book of exodus and i'm starting in uh chapter two and uh sorry chapter three at verse one now moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law jethro the priest of midian and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to horeb the mountain of god and the angel of the lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush he looked and behold the bush was burning yet it was not consumed and moses said i will turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned when the lord saw that he turned aside to see god called to moses out of the bush moses moses and moses said here i am then god said do not come near take your sandals off your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground and moses said i am the god of your father the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob and moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at god then the lord said i have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters i know their sufferings and i have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the canaanites the hittites the amorites the perizzites the hivites and the jebusites and now behold the cry of the people of israel has come to me and i have also seen the oppression with which the egyptians oppress them come i will send you to pharaoh that you may bring my people the children of israel out of egypt but moses said to god who am i that i should go to pharaoh and bring the children of israel out of egypt god said but i will be with you and this shall be the sign for you that i have sent you when you have brought the people out of egypt you shall serve god on this mountain it's a powerful story of vocation it's also a powerful story in the images given to us and also the statement which we've heard once or twice and will continue to hear throughout the old covenant and sometimes in the books of the new covenant too god calls and often by name and the person answers here i am we've spoken about it with the vision of isaiah in the temple here i am send me but here is moses for the moment simply responding to his name and he's certainly not in the mood yet to say send me let's remember where he's gone and what he's been through and how he fled from the terror of thinking what he did in killing the egyptian guard and then letting it be known and so he fled and by the well if you remember he met the girls who bought the sheep for watering and helped them with their sheep and had then become part of the family of the priest of midian and married a wife and even had a child gershom which was a sign of his being happy in this ordinary life a completely different kind of vocation from the vocation that uh god has planned for him it's a strange thing about vocation that one can choose not to receive that call but god tends to present it again and again and again in so many ways and here is moses thinking he's gone far enough bit like jonah running away from the call of god to do something far enough away to be out of the the the the sense of of he's resisting something that he feels inside him he must do for the state of his people and for the call of god but instead he's gone to live as i say a perfectly useful ordinary life such as other people have around him in an area in midian which has nothing to do with egypt and nothing to do with the suffering of his own people and just as he said the old translation used to amuse me in the in the king james version it said when he was in the backside of the desert far away from everything is the sun just rising as it has in golden glory on that desert scene when he's there with the sheep how do we know but something causes him to see the bush that is burning and not being consumed and it connects with that latent vocation sitting within moses that he is resisting and physically trying to escape from yet somehow it's there in the consciousness of the suffering of his own people in slavery and moses hides his face and yet although he's afraid to look on god god speaks to him and says take your shoes off this is holy ground well anyone's vocation is holy ground and has to be treated by others with tenderness and care but most of all by them themselves when suddenly it awakens in them and moses is still ready to argue with god as we shall see tomorrow but for the moment let's think of that wonderful vision of the burning bush and think how that set a light within moses something which would carry on through all those books of the old covenant and into the new covenant i want to talk this morning about certain dates but um i wanted to say that on this morning 140 years ago my grandfather was born in 1881 and i loved him dearly he was my mother's father and was someone of my my sister used to say do you notice how still grandfather is when he's sitting there is a tranquility about him and yet he'd lived a great age all the way through he he died in 19 let me just think i was at constant at the time 1970 on the feast of the annunciation march the 25th but that meant he'd lived right up through 70 years of this century and before that 1881 19 years of the last century and as a young man he had gone away to the first world war and left my grandmother with two little children one of them my mother and then come back from the war he's one of the ones who returned from the the awful experiences that he'd had but i used to sit and listen to his stories of of incidents in his life all the way through and just spanning across the ages and telling me of how things were then and for him a very devout man and very much a church musician who loved to sing bass in the choir and listening later on to things like that on what he would have called the wireless was a great joy to him never had a television but um would sit and listen to things but always his face would light up with joy when we went in to see him and he cared for his wife my grandmother who for years was at home with a form of dementia and was uh was bedridden and grandfather cared for her through all of that and i give thanks for him and also the way he helped formed me and his own devotion and through all those horrors of the first world war and then the the the years of the century going to the second world war and the years of caring for grandmother so that's a personal memory but at the same time talking about someone who spans decades and is forced to change on the way through but keep tranquility and stability in their own sense of a spiritual life as well as a physical life as father and grandfather and loving husband and also a thinking life as he uh combined his thoughts with all the things he was mostly listening to on the wireless and also reading about in the scriptures and in other books which he read now sorry the same time this is a day and i'm only going to do one date today because it's a lovely one and it takes us through many things and many pictured scenes on the 9th of october in 1835 the french composer and brilliant organist and conductor camille sansong was born and he lived from 1835 right right through to 1921 when he died at the age of 86. now so many of pieces by sansa organ symphonies organ pieces pieces of chamber music songs the great opera samson and delilah and there's that very very famous uh aria which delilah sings um which is a beautiful beautiful song in english it translates softly awake my heart as the flowers awaken probably known to you very well because it's a a melody which is played very often on radio programs and uh has become very famous it's not the most famous thing that he he wrote and at the same time he was the organist of the great french church la madeleine in paris and he was organist for 20 years there and became organist in 1858 in the years of the second empire with the emperor napoleon iii there and it was the state church where the emperor would come and samsung would compose music for that but at the same time was composing orchestral and choral music and was a great teacher of others cesar frank bizet foreign massive friend to voya and later in life became an honorary member of foray's family as an older man after the tragedies of his own uh life but nevertheless his vocation to write and compose and also teach was firm and strong and we remember that he was fated here in england when he came here he even composed an oratorio called the promised land well that's a good one actually on this morning when we're reading moses story of the burning bush the promised land for the three choirs festival in 1913 but he'd been here already to be fated by the university of cambridge in 1893 when he and tchaikovsky and max brooke were all called by the professor of music there to a meeting of the university of cambridge musical society where they all performed and then received doctorates of music at the university of cambridge think of that trio of of of sanson and tchaikovsky and max brooke whose violin concertos are so well known and loved so all of that and while he was there and this is quite amusing he went he was a catholic himself of course playing in the madeleine and writing masses and music for the catholic church in france but he went to the college chapel probably kings chapel choir in cambridge and listened to the choir singing for coral even song and he wrote and i'm translating him again the demands of english religion are not excessive the services are very short and consist chiefly in listening to good music extremely well sung for the english are excellent choristers and that was his judgment of coral even song here in england in 1893 as the guest of charles videos stanford all those things but of course you know as i do that his most famous composition has become the carnival of the animals and that piece which is has 14 short movements is so well known and so well loved he wrote it first of all or sketched it for students of his to perform a musical entertainment it was a sort of joke and then at a difficult period of his life when he was recuperating in an austrian village he set it out for two pianos and a chamber orchestra but still he wouldn't allow it to be published he never allowed it to be published except the one piece the swan which he he wrote again for cello and piano but he wouldn't allow it to be published until after his death so it was published in 1922 and became instantly famous and it is really a musical joke that if we look at samsung's life uh he married at the age of 40 and before that had been wandering and traveling and had known great tragedies because in the franco-prussian war war broke out in paris he was the organist at the madeleine and the priest of the madeleine was the abe there was murdered by those in the commune and all of that caused samsung to have to take refuge at that time for his own life he came over to england and then came back and took up again with being organised at the madeline but at the same time he got married to uh the sister of one of his pupils he was 40 she was 19 and marilor had two little boys one after the other and their marriage lasted only four years because tragically they had moved and were living with with samsung's mother all the time of the marriage but they had moved to an apartment which was on a higher floor and one of the boys fell out of the window and was killed and six weeks later the other died of pneumonia and the marriage never recovered and from 1881 he'd been been married in 1877 from 1881 onwards uh he that that marriage split and he himself lived with that tragedy and there's a sense i think that marilor felt blame in herself and he couldn't quieten himself about what had happened to the two sons so that this musical joke if you like the 14 episodes uh come given to us in a way from someone who knew great personal tragedy but knew his vocation as a musician very clearly and let's look at that carnival of the animals it begins of course with an introduction and the royal march of the lion is the lion who comes first all the movements are quite short and uh we remember how the royal lion when we were standing once in the smithsonian zoo in washington uh in the united states and there was a lot of noise of animals and people around us on a lovely happy afternoon and there were birds squawking and and and monkeys chattering and so on and the the lion an enormous lion sitting on a rock in the middle of the zoo roared with a massive part everything went silent everything the royal roar of the lion and the royal march of the lion begins it but immediately after and here is uh russell uh absolutely on cue immediately after come hens and roosters and uh in the music uh he he imitates the hens and roosters clucking and making their sounds and cock-a-doodle-doo sounds as well which he's been making all morning here the next one after pulley the is the wild donkeys swift animals then tortoises and the tortoises now this is when he starts joking about his fellow composers the the tortoises mark walk very slowly to often barks can can from orpheus in the underworld but that it's very slowly played very slowly and in a deep way for tortoises to walk to it's a joke against offenbach the next one the elephant again a slow walk but this time he's joking mendelssohn's midsummer night's dream and berlioz damnation of faust he's teasing fellow composers and at the same time he goes on then to uh creatures that he may never have seen kangaroos he'd seen them in the zoo probably but has never been to australia seven is an aquarium and it's copying a chopper etude another tease of another composer then eight is characters with long ears nine beautiful the cuckoo in the depths of the woods ten is an aviary and eleven pianists i don't know how they crea how they counters as as animals but but she saw the somehow that the pianists were needed to be in a group there and uh it was a way in which the two pianos could show off and then very famous indeed fossils on the xylophone and you hear that lovely uh xylophone sound which is a teasing of his own dance macabre but at the same time there are sort of references to those composers that he was considering to be fossils already because they hadn't moved with the times 13 is the beautiful swan it's probably the most famous of all of them and played on a cello with a piano it's equally beautiful and so the swan is the most marvelous piece to listen to it's elegant and the rippling sound of the water gives a sense they always say when one does a a lovely opera or something of that sort even a piece of liturgy in the cathedral someone will say it's like a swan but we know that beneath the feet are paddling and working as they go along but the swan is a piece of intense no you're not a swan ducky sorry but you're very beautiful as well it's a piece of intense tranquility and we give thanks for that and no better instrument than the cello to play it on i never achieved when i was a cellist the the beauty of the sound that we hear on so many of the recordings of the swan but we give thanks for that and then uh lastly the finale and the finale is the most exciting piece of all but it brings reminiscences of everyone back in in again comes the reminiscence of the lions tune in again come the reminiscence of the and the hens and in again come the reminiscences of the donkey and it ends with a sort of he-haw from the donkey uh repeated several times now this is an exciting piece but i saw it and and heard it in a way that was really really exciting quite recently and within the pandemic before we could have many people at a wedding and one of our choristers was married in the crypt of the cathedral i may have mentioned it at the time and the the person who was playing the organ was uh another of our choristers was playing actually on a grand piano we were in the crypts uh and the the great grand piano was there not too many people there but people coming from norwich cathedral and from ex-choristers to sing and the bride wanted to come up the short isle in the eastern crypt to the finale from the carnival to the animals and so george insco who was playing on the piano performed the finale in a virtuoso way and i've never seen a more cheerful group of wedding guests even though they were there were few of them and uh we weren't allowed too many in those uh those days of pandemic in the shutdown but as all that was going on uh the bride came smiling up the aisle and it was a wonderful wedding set off by the finale of the carnival to the animals is the only time in my life taking it when he has happened but it it created the most joyful aspect in and the crypt isn't below ground as you know um it's it's actually holding up the the eastern end of the cathedral so the sunshine on that afternoon could pour into the crypt and everyone became joyful because of the music of samsung so we give thanks for the way in which samsung in his music was teasing other composers and having the sense of creating music which later on would be a joke that he left almost as a gift but he he died in the year before 1921 having toured the world and having lived through the great war he'd given a final recital in in 1913 but then when the war broke out she wanted to support the people of france and to raise money for them and consciousness of what they were suffering and so he gave many other performances and traveled around the world in order to help the cause of his own people in paris particularly at that time with the war going on not far away just a few miles away and then after the war he returned to going always to north africa in wintertime to look after his health and it was there that he died but his body was brought back to the madeleine where he had played on the organs so many times and in the madeline everyone gathered and the musical people of the world and the people of france gave thanks for this wonderful composer who had spanned as i felt with grandfather spanned so many decades and it had to made so many changes in his life as this went through and seen so many different aspects and fled from paris as everything was burning around him at the time of the commune and the hotel de ville was burning and and and the the the the louvre is burned and all of that and yet he came back and took up his life again and was able to lead up leave us that lovely musical joke there is one sad cameo attached to his funeral and that is that his widow married law in deepest black was hidden away in a seat in the corner at the funeral of the husband that she hadn't seen since 1881 and this was 1921. so we give thanks for the music of samsung and the way in which people know their vocation and can't escape from it without giving something up within themselves but also maybe i should say that those who are the husbands or wives or companions of those with a strong vocation often have to suffer the effects of that vocation at the same time and find themselves um either supporting or being being hurt as marilol was on the way through so we think think of both sides of that because moses is is uh living a life with his wife and his son gershom and that the call has come for him so he's got all sorts of choices to make let's say our prayers on this particular day and we are thinking today of the and praying for the diocese of george in the anglican church of southern africa and with our own diocese i'm keeping uh praying with thanksgiving for the harvests and we shall do that also tomorrow with the diocese but we we pray for archbishop justin and pray for rose bishop of dover and also emma uh the bishop at lambus in her new role there so let's say the colict for today for the last time is a saturday morning so we shan't use this again bring your own prayers as we say this prayer almighty and everlasting god increase in us your gift of faith that forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before we may run the way of your commandments and win the crown of everlasting joy through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language let's say the prayer our savior taught us 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 now of quiet as you say your own prayers on this lovely autumn morning in england [Music] so oh so ah [Music] [Music] the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in 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 are men i've been wondering what kind of music sansone would have given darcy there are no turkeys in the carnival of the animals but we've rejoiced in his music for every other kind of creature [Music] below let us put a a link to a children's prom which the bbc have done narrated by michael morpurgo whose animal stories and and novels for children are immensely popular and in that is the music of the carnival for the animals and so you may like to click on that and you'll hear also michael reading some of his animal poems we also send our love from here to michael and claire on this morning michael was at school here and is someone who revisits often [Music] so you