good morning and welcome to the deanery garden on this sunday the 26th of september 17th sunday after trinity as we come to say our morning prayers and be welcome wherever you are in the world it's a september morning and there's nothing better than the changing light and diversity of light in september and all our thoughts this morning in both the dates we shall think about and the prophecy we shall hear from isaiah and the reflections we shall make on those dates are about the diversity of atmosphere which very often is the light that causes or different kinds of color which people have put into music or rhythms in their words and we are sitting here in this particular place because our reflections will include a railway journey and this is path they actually also have references to three completely different uh american atmospheres which connect here back to the united kingdom as well but you're seeing also at this september time a sky which began when dawn came with the deep gold of a september sunrise and also shows you the diversity of flowers around still in the garden of different colors some like the evening primrose coming to an end and the sunflowers still looking quite bright and waiting for the sun to shine on them facing the sun and all these uh japanese anemones here all along the the past of completely different colors so let's this morning say our prayers together with a thanksgiving for the way in which the light will change because there's blue sky and intermittent clouds and a set designer would would love that that kind of atmosphere as we shall see as we go to our reflection so let's begin our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise bless the lord all you works of the lord sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord you heavens sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord you angels of the lord sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord all people on earth sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord all creatures on earth sing his praise and exalt him forever o people of god bless the lord sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord you priests of the lord sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord you servants of the lord sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord all you of upright spirit bless the lord you that are holy and humble in heart bless the father the son and the holy spirit sing his praise and exalt him 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 so god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this morning of the month is a section of psalm 119 and i'm beginning at verse 105 and reading the eighth verse section from there your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path i have sworn and will fulfill it to keep your righteous judgments i am troubled above measure give me life according to your word accept the free will offering of my mouth o lord and teach me your judgments my soul is ever in my hand yet i do not forget your law the wicked have laid a snare for me but i have not strayed from your commandments your testimonies have i claimed as my heritage forever for they are the very joy of my heart i have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes always even to the end it's a sunday morning so we have a special lesson but it connects with the last two sundays because we are in the part of isaiah written by that second writer in the tradition of isaiah but in exile in babylon and we've come now to chapter 48 of isaiah and i am reading from verse 12 listen to me o jacob and israel whom i called i am he i am the first and i am the last my hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens when i call to them they stand forth together assemble all of you and listen who among them has declared these things the lord loves him he shall perform his purpose on babylon and his arm shall be against the chaldeans i even i have spoken and called him i have brought him and he will prosper in his way draw near to me hear this from the beginning i have not spoken in secret from the time it came to be i have been there and now the lord god has sent me and his spirit thus says the lord your redeemer the holy one of israel i am the lord your god who teaches you to profit who leads you in the way where you should go oh that you had paid attention to my commandments then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea your offspring would have been like the sand and your descendants like its grains their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me go out from babylon flee from chaldea declare this with a shout of joy proclaim it send it out to the end of the earth say the lord has redeemed his servant jacob they did not thirst when he led them through the deserts he made water flow for them from the rock he split the rock and water gushed out but there is no peace says the lord for the wicked very famous strap line i think in the old translation it must have been no rest for the wicked because my mother used to say that when she was particularly busy and stressed no rest for the wicked but in fact the great passage is of the presence of the lord god and also notice how his spirit is being already given in particular ways to those whom he has anointed and on this occasion as we've seen it's an extraordinary choice for it is the emperor cyrus who has become the person whom the lord has chosen to open the gates open the doors and set his people free from exile the prophet is writing in exile with people longing to go home and the images being used of their joy in going home are natural images images of rivers flowing like a flowing of peace images of mountains that are strong images of trees earlier in the the book of isaac clapping their hands with joy as the people go out with freedom because the lord's anointed for this particular work has set them free to travel home and as they go every valley every deep place every high place become the valley filled in every valley shall be exalted raised up to make a flat road every mountain shall be made low to make a flat road for that's how the road will seem to those who have such joy as they go along that all creation and all light and every sunrise and every sunset is seeing them home to jerusalem where they will begin a new work and rebuild it's a journey and the absolute assurance just like at the end of the gospel of saint matthew when the lord says to his disciples as he's leaving them and be assured i am with you always to the end of the age to the end of time and here is the same promise from god himself given again and again in the present tense i am the lord i am with you and all creation in its signs is proclaiming this for those journeying according to the lord's will the gates are open and all the natural imagery is saying exile is ended the depths of exile by the waters of babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered zion one of the psalms but this is a song of joy this prophecy opening the gates for people to go home well that in itself is the most wonderful reflection from a book which jesus himself quoted from when he stood in the synagogue at galilee the spirit of the lord is upon me he's anointed me to let captives go free he quotes the long passage from this part of the prophecy of isaiah and we give thanks that our lord himself took up the scriptures knew them and the psalms absolutely in his heart and then knew exactly which scroll he wanted to receive to read to his own people in luke's gospel as we read that story of jesus being at home and prophesying with the prophet isaiah and then saying to the people today in your very hearing this text has come true bringing the past into the present but then god is always present tense i am the lord i am the god of abraham isaac and jacob and at the same time i am said so many times by jesus using natural images i am the vine you are the branches so much thanksgiving for the way that all created order can speak to us there are two dates that i want to remember but i said um because both those dates have an american flavor also the the american flag is behind in 1960 this isn't one of the dates actually i'm just adding this in 1960 on this date the first ever televised debate between two candidates for leadership for the head of state took part in a televised debate great risk and one was richard nixon the vice president and the other john f kennedy and they debated with each other it was the end of the eisenhower age 1960 the 60s were open opening a new beginning it was that decade which here was often called the swinging sixties and it began with that that uh that debate and of course uh kennedy that proved to be the winner in the end of that particular election but i was going to mention that on this day 26th of september in 1888 the poet t.s eliot was born in louis missouri and later on he became a naturalized british citizen but he is a shared possession on both sides of the atlantic and also a very faithful anglican episcopalian christian and so his way of worshiping in that strand of christ church throughout the world to which we belong um then and those of us in canterbury meaning there are many of you who belong to many other strands of faith and communions but but elliot chose this particular strand and was argent in using its liturgy to inspire his prayers but also collecting from many different cultures many different languages insights and prophecies almost he loved the sense of journeying journeying from ordinary situations and he described them in very basic detail sometimes into that which was infinite and causing us to dream dreams and then returning us again to home and that poetry sometimes is stark his unveiling of what he thought of the situation post the great war the wasteland is a stark poem but it's full of prophecies and echoes of prophets in the old testament but other cultures and dimensions at the same time perhaps the journey we know best and that fits quite well today because this was the date on which bishop lancelot andrews of winchester whose day we kept yesterday in our christian calendar this was the the date um that uh of connected with him and he is used one of his poems is used at the beginning as a straight quotation of a very famous t.s eliot poem about journey i mean of course the journey of the magi which we hear read so often at christmas carol services a cold coming we had of it just at the worst time of the year for a journey the ways deep the weather fowl the very dead of winter those words are from a christmas day sermon preached by lancelot andrews to the king when andrews was the bishop of winchester but elliot uses them and then takes us through that journey of the magi with lots of references all the way through to natural things and light and darkness and dawn and sunset and all those things going on and then at the end he comes to that sense which is so often in his poems of what is seemingly an end becoming a new beginning but which will tend in the end to a fulfillment the last sentence of the actual wise man who is telling that story and of course that is something that appears in his four quartets over and over again that sense of beginnings and endings and things seen the song of the thrush the blossoming of a rose or um in terms of visiting someone and seeing ash on the old man's sleeve from the gardener with the bonfire just just burning the old shards and and and roots of the year that's gone and a new journey beginning but i suppose the the things that we think of most of all in that are the quotes from little giddy uh that i just just mentioned two sentences of them what we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning the end is where we start from and again with the drawing of this love and the voice of this calling we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time wonderful elliott sentences and that sentence in one of the the last of the four quartets little gift gidding reminds us that those four quartets which i would see as the summer the absolute crystallization of elliot's poetry and thought took a long long time in the forming in all the years of the second world war and his thoughts about that and his experiences in the places that he talks about in those four quartets one of them over on the east coast of new england and three of them here in england itself so that we give thanks for the way in which he takes time and shows us that an end of a journey is always the opportunity for a complete new beginning we'll come back to elliot i wanted to say though that my sister's favorite elliott poem was the love song of j alfred prufrock and uh her favorite couplet in the room the women come and go talking of michelangelo she would say that from time to time and often um if i say i must go now uh if i was visiting her in the nursing home she would recite the first line let us go then you and i so the journey that i was about to take was one she would follow me in in spirit and then tomorrow we would reflect once again on all of that elliot has that capacity to cause you to dream dreams and sing prophecies from bits and pieces of your life and so so many ordinary situations which we'll come back to elliot in a minute i think you can probably guess why but meanwhile i'm going to go to another birthday 1898 this time 10 years after elliot 26th of september george gershwin the composer was born now gershwin had a real gift for once again taking rhythms of other cultures and making them into music of light and shade and different colors and at the same time using words to help us with all of that his rhapsody in blue took people by surprise and at the same time when they were conducted in classical concerts those of high-mindedness complained and said is this right for a classical concert and gershwin responded i wasn't actually trying to vie with wagner or beethoven i was giving in good music an interval of music that people would simply enjoy and be transported to other atmospheres and other places rhapsody in blue is used as a dance sequence in the musical broadway musical london musical an american in paris gershwin never wrote that as a musical he wrote many of the songs in it and his overture an american in paris which was very popular indeed and as another of those it was played by orchestral conductors in classical concerts and people would sort of raise their eyebrows but then find themselves enjoying the atmosphere well in the middle of an american in paris which is a musical that we absolutely love and uh i've not seen the broadway one pleasure seen that i've seen uh with him the the london one in 2017 and at that point um fletcher said i think this production is actually even better than the broadway one and that production is full of wonderful geshwin excitement the the the song i'll build a stairway to paradise with a new step every day is one of the great scenes of musical life but also the ballet and the color that christopher wilden has brought into all of that and he talks about the way that light and shade and color plays such a a part in the atmosphere of that musical as it does in life as a whole and we're finding that in a september atmosphere this morning but of course all of that is something that we enjoy and give thanks for but there is one musical that uh um gershwin did compose as a musical and that's porgy and bess where he took music from a totally different culture and made sure that those performing it were of that culture but his song summertime and the living is easy fish are jumping and the cotton is high takes you straight into that atmosphere and you relax into the heat of summer that point just as in the the same way the moment and this is done in a marvelous way in the musical i've got rhythm starts and in that um and they're there in the city of paris and wielden in choreographing this says the city of paris is actually a character in this musical but you remember that he's sitting at the piano and playing that song too slowly and up comes the other and says no no it goes i got rhythm i got music i got who when i saw him anything more and then the thing goes along in a in in in the right rhythm and rhythm itself makes you tap your feet and with that it's it's it's a a terrific way of getting people involved and you're on a journey and at that time we would give thanks just as the stairway to paradise takes you on a journey so great thanks for those two creative people t.s eliot and george gashwin but i can't leave elliot this morning without going to his very humorous and quite unlike the rest of his poem old possums book of practical cats we've read some of those poems before and i'm certainly not going to read the naming of cats we've done that but i wanted to read something this morning of elliot of a completely different kind remember how the w.h ordon night male uh has the rhythms of the train as as he he uh reads night mail in in in that way but i'm doing a different railway journey we put the path here like a railway journey and this is a railway journey on a night mail from london up through into scotland to gallergate station in edinburgh i'm sorry in glasgow um and it's gimbal shanks the railway cat so excuse me this bit of fun but it's red for tiger and i think fletcher and i also want to pay tribute to another wonderful feline friend of ours who belongs to david and kate newsham and to megan and libby and david are our director of music and the cat is called oscar and he's a beautiful ginger cat so and he's not very well at the moment so we pay tribute to him this morning this so is kimball shanks the railway cat one of the characters in elliot's poems there's a whisper down the line at 11 39 when the night male's ready to depart saying skimble where is skimball has he gone to hunt the thimble we must find him or the train can't start all the guards and all the porters and the station masters daughters they are searching high and low saying skimble where is skimball for unless he's very nimble then the nightmail just can't go at 11 42 then the signals nearly due and the passengers are frantic to a man then skimble will appear and he'll saunter to the rear he's been busy in the luggage van he gives one flash of his glass green eyes and the signal goes all clear and we're off at last for the northern part of the northern hemisphere you may say that by and large it is skimble who's in charge of the sleeping car express from the driver and the guards to the bag men playing cards he will supervise them all more or less down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces of the travelers in the first and in the third he establishes control by a regular patrol and he'd know at once if anything occurred he will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking and it's certain that he doesn't approve of hilarity and riot so the folk are very quiet when skimble is about and on the move you can play no pranks with skimble shanks he's a cat that cannot be ignored so nothing goes wrong on the northern mail when skimbleshanks is abort board oh it's very pleasant when you have found your little den with your name written up on the door and the birth is very neat with a newly folded sheet and there's not a speck of dust on the floor there is every sort of light you can make it dark or bright there's a button that you can turn to make a breeze there's a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in and a crank to shut the window if you sneeze then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly do you like your morning tea weak or strong but skimbles just behind him and was ready to remind him for skimble won't let anything go wrong and when you creep into your cosy birth and pull up the counter pain you are bound to admit that it's very nice to know that you won't be bothered by mice you can leave all that to the railway cat the cat of the railway train in the middle of the night he is always fresh and bright every now and then he has a cup of tea with perhaps a drop of scotch while he's keeping on the watch only stopping here and there to catch a flea you were fast asleep at crew and so you never knew that he was walking up and down the station you were sleeping all the while he was busy at carlisle where he greets the station master with elation but you saw him at dumfries where he summons the police if there's anything they ought to know about when you get to gallergate there you do not have to wait for skimbleshanks will help you to get out he gives you a wave of his long brown tail which says i'll see you again you will meet without fail on the midnight mail the cat of the railway train so we give thanks for eliot's immense capacity to give fun but also to take us to eternity and also to give us rhythm as gershwin did in light and shade with their creative work thanks be to god for both of them on this particular day so we say our prayers on this morning and we are praying this morning in the anglican communion for the episcopal church of the united states of america and we pray for the primate our friend michael curry and ask god's blessing on his work but on the work of the whole church there in the united states and we also pray this morning for all the readers of our diocese and uh the the readers are having a service here this evening with bishop rose and so we give thanks for the duty of readers ministry at this time so as we say our prayers we pray also for our sister cathedral washington national cathedral uh and its position within the episcopal church and pray for randy horroccy the dean and his family um and all the chapter of the cathedral and the congregation there this morning it's the 17th sunday after trinity pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth almighty god you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself and so bring us at last to your heavenly city where we shall see you face to face through jesus christ our lord amen moment now of silences we first say are the prayer our savior taught us and then say our own prayers 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen so [Music] 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 upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men well tiger i'm sure you'd made a very good railway cat like skimble shanks and comfort the passengers but i'm not sure that the milk jug on their morning tea tray when the guard brought it in with skimble would have been quite as safe with you of course leave you now and go and do services and you can have a nice time in the garden [Music] um [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you