good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this friday morning the 29th of october it's a wet morning here and so we'll find some shelter in a moment but we expected that as we said yesterday when we were amongst the golden leaves in the sunshine rain was on the way and earlier when the sun came up it was a very very red sky behind the clouds so here's the rain falling and we're going to say our prayers in a moment but let's just focus our mind on decisions of world leaders at the moment the g20 meeting in rome and others already gathering in glasgow in scotland here in the united kingdom for the meeting which begins on sunday we think it's the largest collection of world leaders ever to gather in the united kingdom and thousands will also come to to be there both to be present at that occasion officially and unofficially in so many different ways so the focus of attention on sunday will shift to glasgow and already his holiness the pope has issued prayers for wise decisions from the world leaders and we think of them all in these decisions they have to make this encouragement constantly coming from the queen and she herself will begin the conference with a video message to all of them so let's keep them all in our prayers for the sake of our planet and it's life this gift which god has given us oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as once you ransomed your people from egypt and led them to freedom in the promised land so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your risen son may we the first fruits of your new creation rejoice in this new day you have made and praise you for your mighty acts 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 and 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 29th morning of the month is psalm 139 o lord you have searched me out and known me you know my sitting down and my rising up you discern my thoughts from afar you mark out my journeys and my resting place and are acquainted with all my ways for there is not a word on my tongue but you o lord know it all together you encompass me behind and before and lay your hand upon me such knowledge is too wonderful for me so high that i cannot attain it where can i go then from your spirit or where can i flee from your presence if i climb up to heaven you are there if i go down into hell you are there also if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there your hand shall lead me your right hand held me fast if i say peridventure the darkness will cover me and the light around me turn to night even darkness is no darkness with you the night is as clear as the day darkness and light to you are both alike for you yourself created my inmost parts you knit me together in my mother's womb i thank you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made marvellous are your works my soul knows well my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my form as yet unfinished already in your book were all my members written as day by day they were fashioned when as yet there was none of them how deep are your counsels to me oh god how great is the sum of them if i count them they are more in number than the sand and at the end i am still in your presence we'll go now and find some dry shelter but i think we'll find that shelter by going through into the secret garden through the wall here through the hedge under the fig tree and open the door into this garden and that becomes a strong image for our reflection later on so we found shelter now i'm sitting in the doorway of the gardner shed with all the lovely smells of the potting compost the gardeners use and the pots on their shelves and all the tools behind me here and over me are growing lovely red roses still blooming a trial doll orange which has a lovely scented fragrance if you pick it and there's some some weeks yet for that rose still to be growing but the rain is still falling now you saw me come through the arch into this garden those of you who are interested in the sort of architecture of this place that arch is a 12th century arch of an old barn which used to come off at right angles from the house itself and now it's part of the garden wall which the door opens into this more secluded part as i call it a secret garden for the reflection we'll have in a moment but let's first continue our reading from the book of exodus which we left off the day before yesterday to celebrate the feast of sin simon instant jude yesterday so i am beginning this morning at verse 29 of chapter 12 of the book of exodus at midnight the lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of egypt from the firstborn of pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon and all the firstborn of the livestock and pharaoh rose up in the night he and all his servants and all the egyptians and there was a great cry in egypt for there was not a house where someone was not dead then he summoned moses and aaron by night and said up go out from among my people both you and the people of israel and go serve the lord as you have said take your flocks and your herds as you have said and be gone and bless me also the egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste for they said we shall all be dead so the people took their dough before it was leavened their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders the people of israel had also done as moses told them for they had asked the egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing and the lord had given the people favor in the sight of the egyptians so that they let them have what they asked thus they plundered the egyptians and the people of israel journeyed from ramesses to success about 600 000 men on foot besides women and children a mixed multitude also went up with them and very much livestock those flocks and herds and they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that had been brought out of egypt for it was not leavened because they were thrust out of egypt and could not wait nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves the time that the people of israel lived in egypt was 430 years and at the end of 430 years on that very day all the hosts of the lord went out from the land of egypt it was a night of watching by the lord to bring them out of the land of egypt so this same night is a night of watching kept to the lord by all the people of israel throughout their generations we have no idea what kind of plague this is but we do know that death visits the houses and the palaces of the egyptians and that death takes the children the firstborn when a plague strikes it's often something that takes everyone by surprise but one thinks of those red crosses on the doors of london in 1665 with lord have mercy on us on and not many houses escape to visitation from the play the pandemic and here's a dreadful pandemic striking egypt and continuously the egyptians blame the hebrews and it is the opportunity for the hebrews to take their leave now when we read that story uh the day before yesterday in preparation we said that over hundreds of years a priestly liturgical hand had made it sound a little bit like presenter's instructions in a cathedral you will do this you will do that you will do this on the seventh day and and so on this chapter is nothing like that at all this is a chapter of blind panic of the egyptians and the hebrews themselves for they know they have to go now when opportunity comes then action has to be taken at once wait for the lord yes but when the lord's moment comes then to use the latin tag carpe diem seize the day or on this occasion seize the night for they must go and the unleavened bread suddenly becomes absolutely clear for they have no time to wait for the the leaven and the leveling of the they bake it without leaven and it will then travel with them but they're traveling in haste and they're eating up what they have and who knows whether as we were saying yesterday this had been already the feast of the first fruits of the flocks and those lambs which they wouldn't have had time to prepare if one was going on the liturgical exercise but we're not we're actually dealing with the historical seed of all this when god's opportunity and the people's opportunity came to leave after as the writer says 430 years this is a time when whatever they can grab has to be grabbed and placed on whatever beasts of burden and wheeled carts and can be carried on foot can be carried and it reminds me somewhat of of any black and white films of people fleeing european cities when armies are approaching let's say at the beginning of the second world war terrible scenes of people attempting to flee before sometimes enemy fighter planes coming down and gunning them down on the road but what they have on those carts and we can carry all that up into the kind of panic that comes over a civilized city we've seen that in kabul recently of people fleeing great lines of transport and now cars stationary cars mostly because the traffic jams become intense but what the people have on those wagons in the black and white films and in those cars and on the trucks in modern films is really almost happenstance some of the things are useful some of the things are precious because of what they mean other things have just been taken for necessity and off the people go they're taking what they can there are even numbers given of what is movement this is a mighty host moving with animals too and they're sitting off without any real chance of preparation for the lord's moment can come at any time liturgy is ordered and prepared and what we read in exodus about the instructions as to how this act of salvation is to be memorialized in the worship and the storytelling of the people among whom our lord grew up and of which he was one and kept the feasts and festivals even to the time when he was lifted up and beyond that those who were his followers continued to keep those festivals the day of pentecost the wheat harvest when uh the holy spirit came to the assembled group of of apostles after the resurrection but for the moment we are thinking of that historical time which is now beyond us to have described in very great detail what we keep getting our notes about how to keep that feast how to keep that memorial in thanksgiving afterwards this shall be a memorial of thanksgiving for all your generations for the lord passed over and the people are set free the the gates open and they're able to go where they're going for the moment what route they're taking is hidden from them they now have to trust moses and aaron massive responsibility on those two and we shall see the journey unfolding but it will be interspersed and threaded with advice given by hands that wrote into it later helping folk to understand but also telling the story that has been handed on handed on and the people are told to tell that story to one another at the passover meal year by year by year and it's how a a culture and how a face it gives uh it's it's it's its future by telling the story as i'm telling the story now and we tell the story day by day by the reading of the scriptures in the cathedral and by our own reading of the scriptures at home but also we intersperse that and stop where i found myself quite often if i'm reading the scriptures alone we stop by the fact that we have uh [Music] we stop by the fact that we we have a a sense of that reminds me in my own life of this time because that's what the scriptures are meant to do it's what the psalms do the verses of the psalm nothing better than psalm 139 you've searched me out and known me you know me inside out that psalm is saying and it it causes us to remember remember but at the same time when we tell stories they're from our own experience as well as the fact that we have had those stories handed on and in the middle of them is that that seed of the historical event which is then sending itself forward and the glorious event of the good news being given by the anointed one of the new covenant of jesus himself from that same tradition of keeping the passover and becoming the lamb of god sacrificed for the sins of the of the world behold the lamb of god says john the baptist and here is the the passover being told at that point well at the same time um we think of the the way in which the hebrews are are feeling being launched out into somewhere very strange so let's remember some dates now and on this day the 29th of october in 1924 the story writer and dramatist uh francis hodgson burnett died and she herself had been born in the united kingdom in manchester but then had gone to the united states but from time to time returned to live in england but eventually died on this day in new york i'm not wanting to go through all of her her life but i just want to mention one aspect of it because her most famous book is the secret garden and it's it's a story really of all kinds of healing going on through the result of something happen happening in a secret garden which the little orphan mary lennox who's been sent to live with her rather morose uncle archibald craven in a huge country house missile suite mana with a full staff and all that sort of livery and and and the orders of the household staff in a great manner house like that in those days but she wrote it when she was living here in kent she lived at great maison hall at rolvendon now rolvinden is a village in kent a very beautiful village and it's in a very beautiful area of kent and great mayhem hall was a a country house which had seen damage and later would be rebuilt by um or at least the middle part of it were rebuilt by sir edwin lutyens and gertrude jicor would have a hand in the gardens but when um francis hodgson burnett had it she was she was living there between 1898 and 1907 and wrote her book the secret garden there and you may remember how uh a robin plays a huge part in that if one thinks of rollvinden and just sort of with a leg back into what we were thinking on before the way that not many societies have escaped having to flee from danger or from plague and rovenden's geography at the moment was decided by plague happening in i think the 17th century when part of the village had to be burned because of plague and the village relocated to get out of the plague direction so they they had a sort of elementary lock down there and now it's in two parts and the streets the lane and the street and the the ancient parish church there as well all of that in that beautiful area of kent but she wrote it after a physical fact caused her to go into a a walled garden that she didn't know about in her own country house sarah she'd come back to to live there she'd had unhappy times we don't need to go into all the the relationship problems that she had or or her reception by the village and all of those things but she was feeling distressed herself and as she walked in the garden a robin and we know that robin very well here uh became friendly with her because they take to you and they they get to know you and it it kept going to an ivy bush and behind the ivy bush she found a door rather like the one i came in through just now and when she went in there overgrown was a garden a walled garden and there she decided to plant roses and she would go and sit there had a table set up by the staff and would go always in her just as high used to put his best coach on to to right um so if he was writing a mass for the glory of god he put his best coat on and she would put on a white dress and a white hat and go and sit in the garden and write and this image this cameo of a secret garden which has a key to it into which one goes it can be an internal garden or a special place or a sense of things happening in a particular way but it was the robin that caused her to have the inspiration for the book and you'll remember how a collection of characters come together there's the sickly mary lennox an orphan who has come to live in a place that she doesn't know she's been sent halfway across the world and arrives at winter time at missile weight manner because uh she um francis hodgson burnett transfers the garden to yorkshire on the moors there in yorkshire and mary lennox arrives and is greeted by the butler at the door i think mr pitcher his name is and and a man servant who and and she's got mrs medlock the housekeeper who's rather a severe lady and she sits down and mrs medlock uh introduces her and they say what a what a ugly little specimen uh she's sitting there all in her black morning that they had to wear in those days hating being there and her face is showing all that hatred and this is the story really of the opening up of mary like a flower but with the encouragement of martha that the maid who tells stories of her own village and her mother and her brother dicken she goes out into the garden and you'll remember how she sees a little bird with a red breast who hops around and every day he's near her and she says to the gardener ben weatherstar very old man whom everyone seems in some way to respect but she doesn't know why she says what's this bird and he says why that's a robbing red breast didn't you know that they're the friendliest birds in creation if they take to you watch him pecking around and so robin becomes her friend and in the end of course you'll remember it's robin who finds the key and robin who shows her the door as though there's a sort of knowledge there in the garden and in the robin to help mary find healing and she goes into that garden as a special place and at the same time martha the housemaid's brother dicken who has a great way with animals and wanders the moors and has a fresh air quality about him helps her to understand how things which look shriveled and dead can grow again and he brings animals to see her but you remember also that the heir to archibald craven colin is sick in the house and because he reminds uh his father of the way in which his wife died in the secret garden which has been locked up ever since by falling from a swing there colin is said to be a sickly in village in bed and mary discovers him by hearing his cries in the night we could go on with this you've got all sorts of characters like the doctor who is if uh colin dies as an invalid and doesn't inherit is the inheritor of of the the whole mistletoe manor estate and is therefore not too anxious about colin's recovery but it's mary and dicken with the help in the end of old ben weatherstaff and all the way through the robin who caused springtime to come for colin and springtime to come for mary and the garden to flower and grow and roses to bloom and for it to become the happy place that connin's mother had known before her death and in the end everyone is touched by this healing including the rather miserable uncle mr craven who when he comes back and finds them there in the garden and his son who before had been said to be an invalid and mary has discovered with dicken that in fact it it just needed a sense of exercise and fresh air and new growth and colin outgrows his illness whatever that was and he's standing on his two feet to meet his father and you can feel that there is a future for all of them but it's a a lovely thing to think that that shriveled little orphan mary who was so unhappy with the help of the country folk and the old gardener who was well past his time of retirement but was kept on because mr craven's wife had loved him and he was the only one who was allowed to garden in her secret garden then in that story you have a story of opening out and wholeness and healing and it's a lovely one it's a resurrection story actually as the sun's beginning to come out this morning now on the flowers here as i sit in this particular secret garden seizing the moment seizing the time but waiting for the lord all these lessons come in and as i've said there aren't many societies which haven't in their time been injected with a complete flow of people coming to seek hospitality and shelter sometimes they come unexpectedly sometimes they come violently but oftentimes they come in individuals and we remember little amal coming last week in the form of the giant figure walking so gently into the cathedral but especially let's let the robin remind us of that as well that there are secret places in our own lives i always think of the uh the composer uh parry who wrote jerusalem there and did those street in ancient times walk upon england mountains green and the great i was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the lord he would send for a flower from his gloucestershire garden to be sent on the train when he was in london simply to wear in his buttonhole and like a fragrant thought from the morning prayers he is he puts you in his buttonhole to remind himself of that secret garden that was in reality his own garden but within him a time to dip back into inner refreshment at that time to remind oneself of life and growth when things seemed dead and and shriveled that this garden will burst into life again well now the other person i wanted to remember this morning the 29th of october 1992 a tragedy happened at covent garden in the middle of the ballet myerling backstage the uh the director of uh covent garden and chief uh choreographer shall we say of covent gardens sir kenneth macmillan died and at the end of the performance of his own ballet maya ling which was being danced at the time the um someone came onto the stage to to give the news of that and ask the audience to buy their heads for a minute silence and to walk home and leave the theater in silence it must have been a very moving occasion but it's a day when we give thanks for the creativity of sir kenneth macmillan because so many of the wonderful ballets that certainly i have enjoyed at the royal valley and have seen also on screens um where his his vision the way that will be set out he himself came from a background where he had no resources and quite an unhappy childhood but he was taken up by people who could help him open up like mary lennox and then he began to lump to dance and was taken under the wing of dame nineteen devalued but he suffered terribly from stage fright and in the end it overcame him so he became instead a choreographer from being a dancer much lauded on the stage he couldn't overcome what was inside so he became a choreographer and gave that gift then to other people and i um myself his favorite favorite ballet for me is manol the story of manuel lescoe where you've got the the characters again a bit like the the secret garden but it's a story of strange faithfulness which ends with uh the hero and heroin dying in the the swamps of uh louisiana not a happy ending but beautiful massenet music all the way through and you've gone from great drawing rooms and places in in paris and you've gone right across because uh manol herself has been sent on a prisoner ship to the states and degra follows her out of love and that the sense is that this this in macmillan um that this love is enough to create that creativity at the end i've seen it danced so many times and i saw anthony anthony dowell danced in the beginning with antoinette sibley and david wall as as the the gruesome uh let's go the brother of manol and all those things but in the same way romeo and juliet is one of his and again you've got people who are struggling with things which they can do absolutely nothing about and in the end both die as a tragedy of the people around but hopefully in romeo and juliet a healing takes place because of their death between the capulets and the montagues who are sworn enemies but uh the the music of prokofiev and that those those wonderful dances which one has and at the same time the the loveliness of of the the little oboe melodies which speak of juliet's happiness with romeo but uh the certainly um fletcher is signaling because uh that's one of his his favorite dances those great thumping chords of the the capulets ball when prokofiev gives us that kind of music but i wanted to give thanks really for the lovely creativity of sir kenneth macmillan and that he opens up secret gardens galore for us uh and some will enjoy that others will not you'll find completely different aspects of life from which to pick your flowers but waiting for the lord means necessarily seizing the moment when it comes and those i suppose are the lessons for today that we would pluck and put in our our buttonhole like the hubert parry taking that away to refresh us during the day so we're praying this morning continuing to pray for uh the area deanery of elam the elam valley now interestingly enough the elam valley has a long legend attached to it of saint augustine when he was here going out because the the villagers of the villages of elam uh were turning away from the faith because they're born which was the water course which which was meant to flow and flow and it tends to flow about every seven years i think uh and uh it had dried up and that that that sense of it ever coming again had been lost to them and augustine came out to refresh them but at the same time his coming caused the born to flow again and it tends to flow every seven years but that legend of how the refreshing waters of the born is linked with augustine and also the the villagers turning to a sense of new faith in that is is attached to the elam valley it's a nice story to hold on to as it's told through the the generations and so this morning we're we're praying for the elim elam valley group of churches and these are beautiful villages akris denton elam liminge paddlesworth wooten and stanford all of them lovely villages in the countryside of kent and as we pray for them we pray for jane weeks in her ministry there and the assistant curates deb skoble and stephen dougall and at the same time the lives of the primary school church of england primary schools at elam and selsted and liminge this morning praying for the diocese of guuzou in the church of nigeria the kaduna province and on this day when the calendar commemorates the martyred first bishop of eastern equatorial africa which is the church in uganda really now james huntington we pray for the church in uganda today so let us say the prayer for this day and bring your own prayers as we say this with your own concerns across the world but we certainly today as the rain is spotting and it's clearly coming again quite heavily because there's lots of rain forecast but nothing like the rains that have been absolutely devastating both the west coast and are set to devastate the east coast of the united states but also the northern part of england and around the beautiful lake district so that the poor people of cockermouse and hayek and farther up are actually the whole of of cumbria and and uh and the the and scotland itself uh are suffering from enormous floods and perhaps also this is a a sign for all those gathering on sunday to discuss climate change to note that that there are record floods across the world and you may know more than i do in your own areas let's say this prayer then together blessed lord who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning grant that we may in such wise hear them read mark learn and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of your holy word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life that you have given us in your son our savior jesus christ amen moment of silence now as we say our own prayers but first let's say the our father together in our 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 men [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [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 and upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen well we're your guests today aren't we this is tigers part of the garden so you plan to be dry here and a bit warm i don't think you'll be going far today i don't think any of us will be going far today more secret garden you're beginning to melt oh there we are perhaps you are going far this is very much tiger's shed so i hope that all of you may be able to open up some part of the secret garden within yourselves today to refresh your day and give you a sense of the life which our lord offers so deborah i'd love to hear you know knowing kenneth and what i presumed is such a strong character he was whether he had any doubts when it was first performed i think he always had doubts i think he was terrified going up to the first night of anything and manon came after a very tough time with the critics he'd just taken over in 1970 as artistic director and the first ballet he did was anastasia and they threw the book at him and he had a bit of a breakdown so the next one which was manuel he was very determined to play it a little bit more carefully barrow was still stuck in a sort of classicism that wasn't prepared to move forward so every time he did a ballet when he wanted to use real people in real situations he was very nervous i think what hit me big time when you look at that cast that he worked with is how brilliant he was at typecasting people into roles yes did they really believe that he got it right for them because he had a great track record of great casting and finding people like he found you when you were hardly out of nappies thank you i mean you were 19 or something yeah that's right when he did pagodas for you i think people genuinely trusted what he was he was going to do and they would have you know they've gone to the end of the earth for him that was what was so wonderful you i i do remember not ever wanting to let him down actually these padders in manon are probably the most difficult in in some of his ballets he's ever done yes at the time he was obsessed with ice skating ah so all those swirling puppies i mean that image is perfect because we literally had to glide along the floor in every slide and every lift take off out of a lift in as you were traveling yeah and it was so hard for the guy because nothing ever was square nothing ever was straight he wanted every angle every lean every change direction which must be counter to all the training really the thing is that if you're telling a story about great love which then becomes introduced and broken down by circumstance you have to say to the audience these people have fallen passionately for each other so all restrictions are off an upright pata with everything perfectly in place and and and vertical is not going to give the audience that impression that they've risked everything which he does for love when did you first do manong i can't remember when i was first you to do it actually kenneth took me out yes well because yes you don't have tickets no no no i know but people just get upset if he took people up but his his argument always was i don't want this to be wrong for them he was the only one that actually told me why yeah because i'd just done winter dreams with iraq so then we stepped into man on thinking that the partnership would be perfect in those roles and of course the ballet hadn't remained on us so there we were fighting with our bodies and man on is one of those roles that the main couple have to be like this they like their bodies have to entwine and feel as natural as possible together yes it's true so i was very lucky to have chemist at the beginning of my career i know but he was too because to come you know to come upon and to be able to use the talent that trusts and is open to anything doesn't come with a whole lot of preconceived ideas what he wanted to do was get stuff done well i mean it was his lifeblood you know it was i knew that but i want to go and tell all the dancers now go and think you're an ice skater you'd love to give them that image because i think it would just click they go exactly