good morning and welcome to morning prayer here in the absolute Center of downtown Houston in Texas and we are sitting in the Thompson Cloister of the Cathedral Church of Christ here the Episcopal Church in in downtown Houston the Cathedral Church of the dasis of Texas Houston itself is the most popular city in the state of Texas and in the Southern United States and it's set on Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico it's the fourth most popular city in the whole of the United States after New York City uh and Los Angeles and Chicago and it was founded back in 1836 having originally been part of Mexico not of the United States at all and then after a a quick battle it became the independent republic of Texas and finally part of the United States itself but there is this Spirit of fierce Independence and yet this city of Houston is a really friendly City and over the decades since the oil boom made it into such an important place over those decades people who have come here and who have been willing to work for the economy of this city of Houston have been warmly welcomed there's a spirit of inclusion about this city it's not only the oil of the 20th century but also it's now become the world's largest concentration of healthc care and research institutions known as the Texas Medical Center and also famous also for its NASA Johnson Space Center and we can talk a little bit about that later on it's surrounded by a ring of the busiest High highways and its climate is one of very high humidity and great heat in the summer months but it's plentifully well endowed with museums and highly regarded for the Performing Arts so that its existence based on a boom and bust and wild speculation uh uh was really something which which grew up really fast like a mushroom the oil discovered in 1901 and then cotton and real estate making other other uh Financial gains for this city and here in the middle is the Cathedral Church of Christ it was established in 1839 when Texas was still an independent republic and it's been a place of worship consistently ever since it's the the longest uh place of worship in in this particular City and is a thriving Cathedral we've been here to uh Houston several times before but never here to the cathedral city and we are much enjoying the hospitality of Dean Nathaniel Catz who came here just eight months ago and Nut Cats is is really making an impression here and and as we've seen in in several meetings now with volunteers and people who work in the cathedral really binding the place together and it's a very happy place to be so we're going to say our morning prayers together and then from that moment we'll just think a little bit about uh certain aspects not only of what happened today in history but also about what the Feast of Pentecost and on the eve of the Feast of Pentecost at the moment used to be called witsen tide in England and still some people call it that but Pentecost is the Feast of the coming of the holy spirit that great gift given to the apostles and followers of Jesus which allowed them to be brave and free in the way in which they were speaking about the gospel itself so let's begin our prayers and um as we're traveling I tend not not to bring heavy books with me so I'm using this little book of hour by hour which gives us here it is it was given to me by friends here some long time ago and it's a lovely book to travel with because it contains what you would need for your daily offices morning prayer and evening prayer and even midday prayer and the office of night prayer of compin but we are going to use the office of morning prayer for Saturday in this book and we shall add some other things too grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ the Canticle the song of the redeemed oh ruler of the universe Lord God great Deeds are they that you have done surpassing human understanding your ways are ways of righteousness and in truth oh king of all the ages who can fail to do you homage Lord and sing the Praises of your name for you only are the Holy One All Nations will draw near and fall down before you because your just and holy Works have been revealed glory to the father and to the son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and will be forever amen 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 oh God set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen you'll have the noises of the city all around us here this is no a piece of quiet Countryside but all sorts of things are going on but all the more reason to be saying our morning prayers the psalm is Psalm 42 As the deer Longs for the water Brooks so Longs my soul for you oh God my soul is a thirst for God a thirst for the Living God When shall I come to appear before the presence of God my tears have been my food day and night while all day long they say to me where is now your God I pour out my soul when I think on these things how I went with the multitude and led them into the house of God with the voice of praise and thanksgiving among those who keep holy day why are you so full of heaviness so my soul and why are you so disquieted within me put your trust in God for I will yet give thanks to him who is the help of my countenance and my God my soul is heavy Within Me therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan and from the peak of misar among the heights of Heron one deep calls to another in the noise of your cataracts all your Rapids and floods have gone over me the Lord grants his loving kindness in the daytime in the night season his song is with me a prayer to the god of my life I will say to the god of my strengths why have you forgotten me and why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me while my bones are being broken my enemies mock me to my face all day long they mock me and say to me where now is your god why are you so full of heaviness oh my soul and why are you so disquieted within me put your trust in God for I will yet give thanks to him who is the help of your countenance and your God we're going to read as part of our Pentecost readings a lesson which tells the story of the day of Pentecost in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles Luke's second volume telling the beginnings of the history of the story of Christ's Church it's chapter 2 and verse one and you will perhaps have remembered from a morning prayer we did a day two ago that after the Ascension the apostles returned to Jerusalem and devoted themselves to prayer with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and the brothers of Jesus but we then come to the day 40 days after Easter day when we arrive at the day of Pentecost and this is the beginning of chapter 2 of The Acts of the Apostles which Will Go On Through To Peter's sermon on Pentecost day when the day of Pentecost arrived they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from Heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews devout men from every nation under heaven and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language and they were amazed and astonished saying are not all these who are speaking galileans and how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language parans and mes and elamites and residents of Mesopotamia Judea and capid doia pontis and Asia friia and pamilia Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to sirene and visitors from Rome both Jews and prelit cretans and Arabians we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty work of God and all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another what does this mean but others mocking said these men are filled with new wine but Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and addressed them men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem let this be known to you and give ear to my words for these people are not drunk as you suppose say it is only the third hour of the day but this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel in the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on All Flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and Vapor of smoke the sun shall be turned to Darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved men of Israel hear these words Jesus of Nazareth a man attested to you by God with Mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and forn knowledge of God you crucified and killed by the hands of Lawless men God raised him up loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it it's the beginning of the story of Pentecost that story goes on to greater things during the day of Pentecost when many are added to the faith and are baptized into the faith and as those people come forward so the life of the church begins and as that happens we see the beginning of a great river flowing through at the moment we are thinking of the way in which things can suddenly change and these men and women are suddenly given a courage that they lacked because of the the the way in which they had suffered during the crucifixion of Jesus in thinking that all things were lost but now suddenly Things become different with the giving of the holy spirit with the rushing wind and tongues of fire suppose we might say and some of you would have seen on Fletcher's blog that the night before last we were certainly very conscious in Houston of a rushing Mighty Wind for an immediate and really unexpected tornado tore Into the Heart of the City and did enormous amounts of damage we ourselves had to uh come down all the flights of stairs not being able to use the elevator in the hotel opposite because the electricity would go at any moment in a wind of that sort and we had been War warned by a young man from Iowa who told us how to expect the tornado as it came he said at first the flags that you're seeing and we were sitting on the top floor at that moment looking out of the window the flags that you're seeing will be drawn and sucked in to the tornado but then there will come a moment just before the tornado hits when all of the wind will cease and the flags will drop and as the young man said that to Fletch the flags dropped and the manager of the hotel came in and said you must must now go downstairs so we began to go down and the sky grew very black at first and then began to turn a shade of green and all this the young man had told us about and the wind roared around us and the rain began to be torrential get and enormous amounts of damage was done to the glass windows of the tall buildings and to the trees and there still even now sweeping up from that it was a very dangerous place to be and someone very near us a mother of five little children lost her life in trying to move the car and the tree fell on that but I think more than seven people lost their lives and enormous amounts of damage was done yesterday we went through the city looking at the Tre trees which had fallen on houses and on cars and this isn't a regular occurrence it was a surprise even to the people people of Houston but it continued that sequence that Garden members of the congregation will know very well that we seem to have experienced from the planet both in blizzard and snowstorms and hurricanes and then in earthquake when we were in greinwich and then finally in the eclipse of the Sun and now this tornado which really tore through the city much of the city was without electricity and yesterday traffic lights weren't working in particular places people are helping one another and there is a great spirit of unity within the city at this time of of real crisis but let's go back to that story in Jerusalem because that will be the story which really overarches the worship of Tomorrow our hymns will make reference to that and the various eucharists which we will be part of during the day in this lovely Cathedral Church will all bear witness to that event the Cathedral Church being an ancient one has beautiful glass and the glass tells the story of the gospels as you stand inside there in a in a wonderfully explicit way but then there is this Closter which is right on the road so at times of day like this it becomes very noisy but at the same time uh in in the early very early morning you get that sense of tranquility and coolness under the trees just here and we give thanks for this place of prayer this oldest place of prayer and worship within the city of Houston you hear the noise of people still sweeping up the broken glass and the branches of trees outside but things are beginning to recover though out beyond the city it's said that because pylons have been demolished completely um the it said that the the uh Power will only be restored after some long time so let's just pause for a moment and find another place where we might go and read different Reflections about all these things we're talking about and think of the the dates that happened on this day which made May the 18th this year the eve of Pentecost but Pentecost like Easter changes its date each year made this date a significant one so let's reather in another place and enjoy a different scene [Music] you watching this very sweet for he here so this is the other side of Texas the noise of the city and now the total Countryside and Silence of the anahuak nature resery conservancy Park which is along Galveston Bay here and is a a a refuge for all kinds of wildlife a multitude of birds of different sorts and also uh visitors like American alligators we saw one on the way here on the road it was a a fairly young one Fletcher was tempted to pick it up and take it home for Chris and Martin to have in their Pond but I think the young alligator would soon have grown into something rather bigger and more dangerous there are bobcats here there are all sorts of different creatures and you'll hear noises mostly of of frogs uh and other insects and at at the same time beautiful dragonflies of different colors and enormous size and total silence apart from that no sound of traffic anymore so we've come into the silence to think about some of the things this day the 18th of May means if we look at dates first the 18th of May was significant because uh John Paul thei II Pope John Paul II who had such an influential Ministry of Pope for so many years was born on this day in 1920 the first non-italian pope and then Gustaf Mara the composer died on this day the 18th of May an Austrian Jewish composer and his Symphonies are uh really full of the songs and and and tunes that he himself must have known from his own culture Margo fontine the great ballerina was was born on this day in 1919 she was well known at Cent Garden but had should we call it two incarnations one as a prima ballerina in younger years and then suddenly the partnership with Rudolph nor who had come from Russia and uh sought Asylum and the two of them are now uh very much thought of together as they danced and finally on on the uh other side of things Hal's Comet appeared on this day in the year 1910 now that was a year when England was in a a fairly difficult position with all kinds of things going on and the first world war wasn't too far away the Prime Minister were told I remember reading this in a book called The Strange death of liberal England the Prime Minister who had a a fairly big majority then was a liberal prime minister called Mr asth and was on holiday in the Mediterranean and in the evening he went out on the ship uh on the to to to look over the the rail and saw Hal's Comet blazing in the sky and the comet was always said to be a sign of either really bad Tidings for some or Good Tidings for others when it appeared in 1066 William of Normandy saw it as a good omen for him I don't think as with knew quite what it meant but within a few years he was in the middle of the cataclysmic Great War and in the middle of that uh that war a coalition government was formed and the liberal party which had had such a big majority never really recovered from all of that so all those things signs in the heavens and sounds on Earth here in this total silence which the planet can give us from place to place this is the weekend when we consider the Holy Spirit sometimes the holy spirit is seen in terms of fire and tongues of flame and the vestments in in church worn are red in in honor of those Flames which which lit each Apostle's head in the upper room but at the same time there's a long tradition of thinking of water running as a great River and getting bigger and bigger rather like the the the the lovely um smeta uh scene with which he he Paints in songs of his his homeland of the river of theava getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it joins the sea well I've got two images of that what a river can mean one of them happily is taken at in a lighter mode from the beginning of Wind in the Willows where the mole has broken out of the darkness of his spring cleaning below and suddenly finds himself in the sunshine rolling in the the warm grass and enjoying himself and this is a little bit of the first chapter of Wind in the Willows and it it Tunes in with another poem on here we are it all seemed too good to be true hither and thither Through The Meadows the mole rambled busily along the HED RS along the copses finding everywhere Birds building flowers budding leaves thrusting everything happy and Progressive and occupied he thought his happiness was complete when as he meandered aimlessly along suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river never in his life had he seen a river before this Sleek sinuous full-bodied animal chasing and chuckling gripping things with the gurgle and leaving them with a laugh to fling itself on Fresh Playmates That Shook themselves free and were caught and held again all was a shake and a shiver glints and gleams and sparkles rustle and SWR chatter and bubble the mole was Bewitched entranced fascinated when tired at last he sat by the bank while the river still chattered onto him a babbling procession of the best stories in the world Sent From The Heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea Kenneth Graham writing at his best after the mole has broken him out of his dark little hole where he'd been spring cleaning and then came onto the grass and the warm grass and began to enjoy the daylight and certainly to be absolutely fascinated by the river and that sign of life burgeoning in the river as it flows and grows bigger and bigger with all the greenness and on on the each Bank as as it flows I think that's the reason that Christina Rosetti the poetes decided when she was writing a poem for each holy day of the year when she came to the Monday in Pentecost or witson TI is it was then called she used the image of a river for the life of the spirit and the way in which it not only fed but caused Faith to grow and this is how it runs we know not a voice of that River if vocal or silent it be where forever and ever and ever it flows to the Sea more deep than the Seas is that more full than their manifold Tides where forever and ever and ever it flows and abides pure gold is the bed of that River the gold of that land is the best where forever and ever and ever it flows on at rest oh goodly the banks of that River oh goodly the fruits that they bear where forever and ever and ever it flows and is fair for low on each Bank of that River the tree of lifegiving Grows Where forever and ever and ever the pure river flows it's a magnificent image of the way in which the spirit infuses is all things from the moment in chapter one of the Book of Genesis the Holy Spirit Broods on the waters and God says let there be light and there was light to the moment when in the upper room that little group of disciples and the women with them and the mother of Jesus and the brothers of Jesus suddenly received the Holy Spirit in tongues of flame and at that moment they knew that they were strong to speak and began to proclaim the good news the Evangel the good news of the Gospel so we give thanks for that image as given to us by Kenneth Graham and by Christina Rosetti but it's an image which really has no end for the river flows on and on and on and is a symbol of the spirituality capable uh that the of of which the human race is is capable in the same way it's capable of creative things in body and mind here is the image of the spirit the river that flows on and on and on so we're going to go back now to our um place at the beginning and the noise of the city will re here but for the moment we've enjoyed our time here in the countryside outside the great City of Houston so we've returned to this place just to say our final prayers so that the day can proceed and in our prayers we think of those really troubled areas of the world we think of places that are damaged and hurt by natural climate disasters as with the the tornado here in the city of Houston itself but also we think of places of war and of real uh distress where people are leaving their countries in order to find safety in other places in the world and at the same time we pray for all those who need our prayers and Those whom in our own lives and in our families across the world are suffering in any way and we remember those who have recently departed this life so let's join our prayers together first of all with the collect the special prayer for Pentecost and then afterwards we will say the Our Father together here is the Pentecost collect almighty God who on the day of Pentecost opened the way of eternal life to every race and Nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit shed a this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel that it may reach to the ends of the Earth through Jesus Christ Our Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit ever one God World Without End Amen so together we pray the prayer that our Lord 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 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 among you and remain with you and those with whom you love wherever they may be now and always amen so we've said our prayers in the heart and busyness of this pulsing City of Houston in Texas and we've said our prayers also and made reflection in quiet spaces which can always be found if you look for them for