good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral as we come on this tuesday the 3rd of august to say our morning prayers we've come here into the orchard so be welcome wherever you are throughout the world and water forms a great part of our thinking today as we continue our reading of the first book of the scriptures the book of genesis which should have been the first book of the scriptures that our lord himself knew yesterday you remember we read the first part of chapter one we shall continue with that this morning when we come to our reading and then you will see how much apart the water plays in everything that happens in that great chapter of the book of genesis so bring your own prayers and all your intentions and concerns as we continue to pray for people in danger through fire or flood throughout the world in danger from pandemic and pray also for those whom some of whom we know who are both encouraging and helping to heal and keep people safe and rescue people very often at a cost to their own safety let's begin our prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouths shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you 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 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 son on this third morning of the month is psalm 16 preserve me o god for in you have i taken refuge i have said to the lord you are my lord all my good depends on you all my delight is upon the godly that are in the land upon those who are noble in heart though the idols are legion that many run after their drink offerings are blood i will not offer neither make mention of their names upon my lips the lord himself is my portion and my cup in your hands alone is my fortune my share has fallen in a fair land indeed i have a goodly heritage i will bless the lord who has given me counsel and in the night watches he instructs my heart i have set the lord always before me he is at my right hand i shall not fall wherefore my heart is glad and my spirit rejoices my flesh also shall rest secure for you will not abandon my soul to death nor suffer your faithful one to see the pit you will show me the path of life in your presence is the fullness of joy and at your right hand our pleasures for evermore i've said that we shall be going during the month of august on an exploration of aspects of the old testament as we would call it the sacred scriptures which jesus himself would have known and so much he seems to know by heart and quotes from constantly that let's remember that the psalms which although they're a kind of hymn book for the temple worship the psalms are also part of those scriptures and the teaching given in them and the prophecies given in them are part of the way forward but this psalm 16 gives us wonderful teaching and perhaps most of all something about our own humanity in chapter eight the way in which our reality is given aspects of body and mind and spirit and there's that threefold aspect of our humanity in verse eight wherefore my heart is glad my spirit rejoices my flesh also shall rest secure the heart there is given the aspect of deep thinking and realization and the spirit a dimension which is really unplumbable if we're taking a watery image and flesh of course the physicality of our own being in what is a very very physical world also so let's go on for we believe as verse 10 of the psalm says you will show us the path of life in your presence is the fullness of joy and in your right hand our pleasures forevermore speaking of the gifts of god as we say this new day the gift of this new day let's go then to the book of genesis and i'm taking up from where we left off yesterday at verse 20. and god said let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky so god created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves of every kind with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind and god saw that it was good god blessed them saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth and there was evening and there was morning the fifth day and god said let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind cattle and creeping crawling things and wild animals of the earth of every kind and it was so god made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps and crawls upon the ground of every kind and god saw that it was good then god said let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps or crawls upon the earth so god created humankind in his image in the image of god he created them male and female he created them god blessed them and god said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth god said see i have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps or crawls on the earth everything that has the breath of life i have given every green plant for food and it was so god saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitudes and on the seventh day god finished the work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done so god blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it god rested from all the work that he had done in creation and there that story written by uh generally thought to be a scholarly priestly hand and set together in the way we read it ends began with those words in the beginning god created and then tells the story of what is created and what were given in that beautiful and we said yesterday is it a poem is it a story is it history is it theology is it truth is it legend is it myth is it philosophy i could go on lists and lists and the true answer is there are aspects of every kind of creative writing and imaginative writing in this but the great truth is there in the first phrase in the beginning god created hence we call god our creator and christ also taught us jesus in his humanity to talk to call him father in an intimate way it's a startling concept and that concept which is very much the concept of jesus abba father creator calls us so to realize our likeness and the fact that we're made in the image of our creator to be creative and it's why we find such intense pleasure in creativity of unique kinds with our unique gifts of body mind and spirit but what is given to us in this really wonderful chapter which stands alone the fourth evangelist uses the same beginning in the beginning was the word here in the beginning god created but the chapter gives us a kind of rhythm a litany of worship and there are phrases which reappear and they're beautiful phrases and the best of the phrases which keeps coming god saw all that he had made and it was good and at the end even more than that it was very good there is pleasure in the work of creativity for the creator and pleasure in us who made in his image find ourselves able in so many different ways to create with the faculties of our human life not limited by physical faculties not limited by mental faculties not limited by spiritual faculties but all three bound together and learning and taking insight not just from one another by but by new realizations day by day in our thinking and i say day by day but the psalmist says that even in the night suddenly we have imaginings and realizations which stretch beyond our being which when we're asked to describe them defy description and saying once again this is all those things when we try to write them down or even tell them because like a photograph which never quite gives us or even nearly gives us wonderful moments when we were part body mind and spirit part of a scene sometimes with others sometimes by ourselves looking at landscapes pondering the sun and the moon and the stars and all these things well that takes me on to the other aspect of this because of course what is set in place is not just light and darkness but the rhythm of time and the rhythm of seasons and the rhythm of days and the rhythm of nights and an awful lot of that is intuitive we see this morning how animals and fish and birds and living creatures are formed and as we saw yesterday with the the vegetation and plants and also the lights of heaven but i said we'd be dealing with water and water we are dealing with because in this aspect of the writing and remember this is very very ancient history and even what has been gathered together although this is a a a more modern in terms of time aspect of the book of genesis this chapter seems to pull things together but was still well back somewhere between the 6th and 10th century bc and remember those dates go backwards in in that aspect of our creation but what we're getting is the fact that the water was a threat to life and god creates a dome [Music] so that humanity and all life like the birds and the animals and even the dry land plants the trees and the fruitfulness are protected by the hand of god from the waters enclosing it again it's an image it's a picture but it's a picture of our own fragility within creation and are looking to the creator as a source of life and breath and light and darkness this is where that the sense of so what is truth and we know that physical facts can help our bodies and physical facts and data can help our minds but they're not enough for the imaginative spirit and not enough in the end to satisfy the mind and to give joy and the creative pleasure to the body all these things are there in that chapter and the rhythm of the days and the nights are set and also the rhythm of the seven days and the necessity for rest and reflection and the necessity for thankfulness for the fact that god not only sees everything that he has made and it is very good but he also blesses it and he gives in this account should we call it stewardship to humankind to look after the earth because humankind has a special role in all of this in this chapter and you and i are part of that stewardship of this amazing planet of course we now know physical facts of far far far greater depths than the priestly writer collecting together this and forming this amazing litany but at the same time i doubt we know in spiritual terms as much as this creative hand is giving us all in one go from a time so far back and really just collected from observing all that is around as the writing is done humanity's place as the steward and the protector that say that too of all of this surrounded by the fragility of the fact that the waters could always return and cover the earth what imagination but let's then see how humanity is seen in this chapter you have to think of it quite differently from chapter two we'll go on to that tomorrow that's a very very different handwriting and a very very different story humanity is created here last of all god's living gifts but at the same time created as humankind and just as god says let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and fish and birds and at the same time he creates human kind in his image and likeness and says to them also be fruitful multiply and take your place in the planet the whole of humankind as it then was but many many more in the writers imagination than chapter 2 who just gives us one single human being and then the one to keep that single human being company that's chapter two we'll come to that this is chapter one a very different account and chapter two makes it a different beginning but on this occasion we have humankind given its role in the created order and that role because humankind is made in the likeness and image of the creator that role is to be creative body mind and spirit with the gifts that god has given us not just the gifts of creation but the gifts of time and space and the gifts to puzzle things out and explore but never come to the end of that exploration i've just chosen really one date today and i think it will help us and it will help us perhaps to do our work a little as well because i'm seeing august almost as a holiday month and fletcher said yesterday remember remember uh i mean a holiday from our thinking of the the gospels and the new testament and things in but it's a month when so many people are taking an aspect of holiday here in this culture and i'm thinking that in that month just as lent was seen as a season then in this month we can once again be creative with the thoughts that were given and the aspects of what we're seeing in the stories of the book of genesis if you want again take something write it down because coming back to it later is always a good thing or draw it or paint it or just put a word down and think uh and maybe that mental thought written by a physical hand will engender a spiritual realization we then return to our ignatian spirituality of sinking ourselves and our own being into what we're doing and let me just explain who it is i'm thinking of today i'm thinking of baroness phyllis james and you will know her better as p d james the writer of detective fiction now phyllis james was a very loyal anglican member of the church of england and also a patron of the prayer book society she very much valued the book of common prayer in all its aspects and wanted it to be preserved very much alive and as a great foundation stone of the worship of the church of england and i met her on the liturgical commission of the general synod on which i served for about five years and and she was the member representing the prayer book society and all of us enjoyed her company hugely but it's not as that aspect of life although the rhythm of the prayer book clearly and the the beautiful language of the king james version of the bible were at the the heart of her devotion but it's the aspect of the fact that in the middle of an intensely busy life she began to write and be creative and it was a a difficult life at first she was trained in hospital administration and from 1949 to 1968 she served the national health service at a very serious and practical level on a hospital board in london and at the same time she had been married early in the second world war to someone her husband was called connor and he became a hospital sorry an army doctor and went away to war and when he come came back he had intense mental difficulties and problems this is what the war had done to him and he had to be as they said in those days institutionalized but very often he would sign himself out and phyllis james would come home and she tells this story and find that connor was back again and her life was thrown into disarray by all the the distress that he had and the distress she felt for him and so the rhythm of her her working life and in the national health service and the rhythm of uh her writing as it became was a salvation to her and of course the rhythm of her worship and the words that she treasured so much but at the same time she was a huge admirer of jane austen jane austen was her favorite writer but she began herself to write detective fiction and if you read pd james's novels then she has one favorite detective adam dalglish and she took the name dalglish from a mistress who had taught her at school whom she admired miss dalglish and that sorry mrs douglas i must say that because this is important mrs dalglish because later on and of course in those days you you didn't know uh people's christians names certainly not teachers and and it was it was just not done but later on she was amazed to find the coincidence that in fact mrs douglish's husband was called adam darglish and that pleased her but adam dalglish was really her hero and if you've read her detective books the first one cover her face in 1962 when detective chief detective inspector um adam darglish was born so to speak and given a character by p d james then you will know all about him not only that he was a detective of the first rank and order but at the same time that he was a poet and had poetry published and the two dimensions are part of her imaginative creativity there are 14 novels with inspector douglish in them and the way in which she writes is just so wonderful it marks her out as someone who is a student of shakespeare and of the book of common prayer and the king james version but also jane austen in beautiful english and also she was a tremendous companion to have i remember with pleasure many conversations with her but her novels were generally set in communities she was used to communities and when her husband sadly died uh he she then realized that she was free to to leave her job in the national health service and take one which would engage her talents in a different way and so she entered at a high level the home office and worked through the home office and hence her knowledge of how the police system worked and all the facts she gives us but very often she sets her novels in a publishing house or a barrister's chambers or a theological college or an island or a private clinic where there's a community and the puzzle is set for you and her to work out puzzling through and enjoyably published um puzzling through but i was in washington once and staying and on my bedside table was a book time to be in earnest and it was a hardback book published in 1999 and i picked it up and began to read it in bed and i found that it was a book almost like an autobiography of phyllis james and what she had done she'd shaped it rather like our priestly writer with genesis 1 she'd shaped it in the form of a diary of a year but also she wrote paragraphs in her in limited style paragraphs which when she was saying she's on a train at a particular time she looks out and something reminds her of an aspect of her earlier life and so her earlier life is not played out chronologically but the way in which we use our memories by being prompted and you suddenly find yourself back with mrs douglish teaching her or the desperate times when she was trying so hard to look after connor and understand all the mental distress or at times in her home office life or at times when she's writing and that's what gave me the thought that we can do this and uh fletcher the thought that it's best for all of us to when we have those thoughts note them down just as she did in a notebook and then gave us a whole year of wonderful autobiography that book as i say is time to be in earnest and it's published uh we published in 1999 i i value it not only because it helped me understand her better but also because it helped me understand how an autobiography can be quite different and relying on aspects of memory and imagination to do it at the same time i give thanks for the fact and this i don't think flesher will agree with that in the very last book that she wrote she took her jane austen characters mr darcy and jane and lizzy and made them into a detective novel set a few years after he's shaking his head a few years after uh darcy and lizzie have got married and they are living at pemberley and the novel there the detective novel is called death comes to pemberley it was made into a a three-part bbc series with matthew reese playing darcy but the book itself i think must have given huge pleasure to phyllis james when she wrote it because it was involving so many different gifts of her creativity so let's give thanks for the unknown writer who has put together that wonderful first chapter of the book genesis and explored our place as humanity amongst the life and breadth of the created order called to be called to be creators ourselves and we give thanks for the flowing waters from which in that account all life begins to generate and how important not only the sun which we had yesterday but the refreshing water is to everything growing and living around us see how our own birds the minute they're let out come to the water for morning refreshment and the one who enjoys it most of all is just making her way across now but being distracted on the way by little nibbles to eat and i mean ducky of course who is a creature of the waters so let's say our prayers on this day and give thanks for creativity and the ability to imagine body mind and spirit as our humanity has stewardship of this planet for good or also for evil today we are thinking on this third of august of the diocese of doko in the church of nigeria the anglican communion in the lukoja province and once again in this diocese we are having a listening and discerning on the way day and we're praying for the mission of the director of mission and ministry there in our diocesan office we pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and we come to say our prayers please bring your own thoughts and intentions imagining to imaginings and gifts of body mind and spirit but think of others who need our prayers and encouragement on this day here's the prayer for today almighty god who sent your holy spirit to be the life and light of your church open our hearts to the riches of your grace that we may bring forth the fruit of the spirit in love and joy and peace through jesus christ our lord are men so together in whichever language you would like we 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 of silence now for your own prayers on this day ah [Music] oh [Music] ah ah oh 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 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 [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] you