good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 15th of november as we gather to say our morning prayers we've come to the meadow as we do on uh monday mornings and we are intending to uh talk about that as well but let's first say uh uh a word of prayer for the people of liverpool after the the um terrorist incident yesterday in the center of the city uh we were talking about other ways in which people fear violence yesterday in remembrance and we pray for them this morning let's talk about yesterday as well uh apologies that that broadcast that that film of morning prayer which we so much enjoyed making early yesterday morning before ever i went across to the civic service in the cathedral church fletcher had planned a wonderful sequence of remembrance images and uh it was a lovely thing to be making early i then left and when he sat down at the computer then he didn't know he was going to be sitting there for most of the day until the early evening because the kinds of problems it seemed to have been building up from time to time through last week became came to a head and the the computer refused to upload that and put it online and so on and he worked at all kinds of solutions until in the evening nathan our head of comms came in and took the whole thing onto his computer and managed eventually to put morning prayer online so apologies for that and you can look back at it and i hope it's still a beautiful meditation and reflection for remembrance sunday but at the same time today uh our it department are going to be investigating uh tesha's computer and he is going on another computer to send what we're doing this morning to hannah so old times again and hannah is going to upload it this morning so we hope to have success there and also hope to have a restored computer working properly for the rest of the week now enough of that let's uh think of our prayers this morning but we're here with the chickens and with the um uh two pigs clemmy and winnie i'm going to put some more food around and that means that our prayers then won't be quite so disturbed as we go on and that we are for all of them there we go i was going to say there we go girls but right in the middle here is uh bruce short for brewster the rooster another rooster not russell crowe but uh this proud little bruce who has a a kind of counter tenor crow and it's quite a rich crow you may hear him from time to time and he's here proudly with the hens this morning so let us begin our prayers on this monday morning meadow monday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds 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 and 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 this morning is psalm 77 for the 15th morning of the month i cry aloud to god i cry aloud to god and he will hear me in the day of my trouble i have sought the lord my night by night my hand is stretched out and does not tire my soul refuses comfort i think upon god and i groan i ponder and my spirit faints you will not let my eyelids close i am so troubled that i cannot speak i consider the days of old i remember the years long past i commune with my heart in the night my spirit searches for understanding will the lord cast us off forever will he no more show us his favor has his loving mercy clean gone forever has his promise come to an end forevermore has god forgotten to be gracious has he shut up his compassion in displeasure and i said my grief is this that the right hand of the most high has lost its strength i will remember the works of the lord and call to mind your wonders of old time i will meditate on all your works and ponder your mighty deeds your way o god is holy who is so great a god is our god you are the god who worked wonders and declared your power among the peoples with a mighty arm you redeemed your people the children of jacob and joseph the waters saw you o god the waters saw you and were afraid the depths also were troubled the clouds poured out water the skies thundered your arrows flashed on every side the voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind your lightnings lit up the ground the earth trembled and shook your way was in the sea and your paths in the great waters but your footsteps were not known you led your people like sheep by the hand of moses and aaron it's an historic meditation going back to those days in the wilderness the waters saw you and were afraid the reference to the passing of the waters of the red sea and also thinking of the leadership of moses and aaron leading the people like sheep and helped moses by the advice of the shepherd priest his father-in-law jethro who not only comes to give good advice but comes also to worship god himself moses god he says who is above all gods and he offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving there those kind of references are plentiful but it causes us always to doubt when things go wrong and here's the psalmist doing just that he can't sleep you will not let my eyelids close and he or she in their meditations uh like us think quite often this in the middle of the night that troubled thoughts come to us and what does the writer of the song do thinks back to mercies given not only mercies to the community but mercies in life and does what we're asked to do at the beginning of all prayer to give thanks above all else as we do this morning by morning to give thanks for the gift of this new day whatever it may bring and to trust in the power of god to be there with us as it was as the psalmist of old time well let's then read our lesson from exodus of old time which jesus himself would have known as he would have known that psalm very well indeed and we're reading from exodus chapter 19 taking up from the moment that jestro has departed to his own country and going on from there verses one to nine of exodus 19 this morning on the third new moon after the people of israel had gone out of the land of egypt on that day they came into the wilderness of sinai they set out from refudim and came into the wilderness of sinai and they encamped there in the wilderness there israel encamped before the mountain while moses went up to god the lord called to him out of the mountain saying thus you shall say to the house of jacob and tell the people of israel you yourselves have seen what i did to the egyptians and how i bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation these are the words that you shall speak to the people of israel so moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the lord had commanded him and all the people answered together and said all that the lord has spoken we will do and moses reported the words of the people to the lord and the lord said to moses behold i am coming to you in a thick cloud that the people may hear when i speak with you and may also believe you forever it's an important moment and that important moment will begin to develop from mount sinai into a different aspect of community life but for the moment they have arrived at the mountain of god sinai scholars seem to be divided in their opinion that sinai and later horeb which is a name used by different writers are the same mountain there seems to be a consensus that those are different names for the same mountain it's not something that needs trouble us but when we read horeb you can think again because it's also spoken of as the mountain of god and later in the old testament in other writings the writings of the prophets the two names seem to be interchangeable but sinai it is known to us mount sinai as the place where the people camp after the battle of refuge where aaron and her have had to hold moses hands high we'll come back to her later on when we come to an aspect of what the people did in the wilderness her was largely thought to be the husband of moses sister milliam that's the old tradition and aaron of course knows his brother this is a a kind of family affair though her is from the tribe of judah and moses and aaron are from the tribe of levi and as we think of those and it's now moses who will go up onto the mountain and the mountain will be shrouded with mists or smoke and the people see this as a holy occasion and the place from thereafter will be a holy place one thinks of the very early christian monastery there's some catherines that on the slopes of mount sinai but that's far far into the future from what we're looking at now with moses going up high to receive the words of the creator and the ordering of life but first of all he has to make sure that the people are ready to accept this ordering of their life he's spoken about the laws of god before he did that when he was talking to jethro and the people would come to him and he would sit and settle the cases and the disputes and in that she's settling it in according to the ways of god but now we're going to have a much more definite statement of what those ways for the people are to be and that's still for us in the days ahead meanwhile moses has gone to the lord on the mountain just as jesus goes up to the mountain and spends all night in prayer before he chooses the twelve moses comes down and says to the people this is the lord's covenant with you it's the beginning of the covenant the covenant is that if you obey my words then you will be a holy people a nation of priests and my treasured possession that's not literal it's a a metaphor for the priesthood was of the house of levi one of the twelve tribes but what this is meaning rather as saint paul and other epistle writers calls us a holy people those of us who have embraced the good news and a nation of of priests before god because the priest is there to offer the divine message in our terms in word and sacrament in words and is also the christian sacraments of bread and wine and the water of baptism and so on but also the in a much more general sense that the sacraments that jesus gives us of considering the works of the creator in order to know what the ordering and will of the creator is these things become plentifully established not only in our lord's teaching but also every time we read the psalmist and the images that were in jesus's minds in the years of his human life were those images given to him by the lessons and pictures of the old covenant so this morning let's let's look at the usual way of of saying what happened on november the 15th in years gone by that might help us and give us a kind of imagination firstly i wanted to say that for the past two weeks we've been valuing the gifts of the creator by following the themes of the conference now ended the cop 26 on climate change and we should give thanks for the limited progress that has been made there but the greatest progress is the growing consciousness among the old and the young of what dangers this planet is facing if the behavior of humankind does not change and one's notice a a sea change in the realization of that and the preciousness of everything that our home on this planet as a human race offers us and the way in which we are to be stewards of that planet so two things to give thanks for the step-by-step realization and the step-by-step decisions made for action which must now step by step be carried out internationally nationally and locally and individually all those steps like a staircase but joining together into a ladder of success in helping the life of this planet be free from this particular and awful danger which besets us all i'm going to deal with the dates we have first of all two people and then an event the first of these people who died on november the 15th 1630 having been born in 1571 is the astronomer johannes kepler and johannes kepler who lived out his life in the conference fines of what was then called the holy roman empire living in different free cities and it ah sometime a mathematician and an astronomer for the uh emperor himself but we think of him especially in all the research he did and the conclusions he came to in matters massive matters shall we say stella and uh reaching out well beyond this planet for although he was interested in astronomy and mathematics and music in the intervals between notes and the way in which harmonies fitted together he was also interested in natural philosophy and the harmony of all creation but at the same time he was the one who steadily looked into the heavens he was a man of great christian faith steadily looked into the heavens and began to discern the way in which the planets moved [Music] hello you're interested in more in my boots than your food at the moment so i'm going to have to just push you away a little bit as you're chewing your breakfast um and uh he's a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution but we think of him with regard to kepler's laws of planetary motion and they are lovely laws showing the elliptical way in which planets go around the sun and he was a great one for making drawings of those circles and ellipses and the way in which those shapes formed and yet he was making a revolutionary scientific discovery in huge stellar universal but well beyond this planet going out beyond the stratosphere and out into the night sky in a real way and coming up with the laws of planetary motion so we think of someone first who by the grace of god was able to observe and interpret the gifts of the creator amongst the stars and the moon see how this morning in the book of exodus it was the third new moon it's how the whole thing is dated they're so important on a morning like this it's cloudy we can see nothing we see not even the sun but we know the sun is there because the light being given but on clear nights kepler was always busy with his telescope and at the same time serving the needs of his people in the service of the holy roman emperor well that's someone who thought and imagined really big and helped us and now it has turned to someone who focused on tiny things and the beauty of things on this planet which were spectacularly beautiful but you had to do what beverly nichols one of our uh your spectacularly beautiful um uh you have to do what one of our favorite garden writers uh beverly nichols says you have to shrink yourself in order to go into that world and the psalmist does that too he does that with the insects of the field as well as the mountainscapes and at that time um we're thinking of the way the psalmist uses images huge images of moon and stars and tiny images of the insects of the field but i'm thinking now of georgia o'keeffe who was born on the 15th of november 1887 and died in 1986. that's a very long life but at the same time georgia o'keeffe has become an icon and a beacon for uh women throughout the world in what she did and the the way in which she focused her attention and her attention was focused in two ways she was helped hugely by her husband alfred stieglitz and they were married between 1924 and 1947 but at the same time she was looking and painting at flowers and the beautiful flowers and the way in which she was able to capture them by her art are spectacular jimson weed particularly which to me looks like white convolvulus and yet she portrays that magnificently be no pictures this morning but you can you can see those pictures and at the same time um black iris and oriental poppies beautiful things which are tiny and yet by enlarging them in perfect art she shows us all kinds of things for our imagination and our thanksgivings at the same time she although she didn't come from there was taken by landscapes in new mexico stop chewing please i'm going to have no classic left in the end um and uh so from 1949 to 1986 she moved to new mexico and painted not only flowers but beautiful scenes of the mountains and landscapes and the colors of the sky there that would be called if you like middle ranking in terms of not the tiny flowers but also the way in which she herself um is i think i'm going to be eaten in a moment the way in which she uh herself is seeing the world not like kepler looking up at massive things and interpreting the stars and the moon and the sky but looking down and shrinking herself to small things but then looking around and loving the landscapes and the culture of new mexico she died in santa fe in 1986 so two completely different ways of valuing the gifts of the creator helping us to value them as well the stars the moon the sun that the psalmist is always talking about and then the lilies of the field which our lord himself speaks about and mountainscapes and mountainscapes allowing people to rise high like moses and jesus and contemplate and have the the way in which the creator speaks to them shrouded in the mists which shroud mountains and yet coming down to give those words to the people moses coming down to choose the twelve to give the sermon on the mount uh teaching of that kind so the way things mix through as with psalm 77 that all those troubles of the night then in the morning all kinds of clarity begin to appear and the gifts of god that we give thanks for we even give thanks for the way in which we we wrestled in our hearts and minds with the things of this world and the things of god in the night hours and lastly an event on this day in november uh uh the uh actually on november the 15th uh 1818 the congress of extra chappell a town now called uh quite often archen uh ended it was the second congress in the way in which europe after the battle of waterloo and the restoration of peace decided to work together a conference rather like the one we've just seen as the conference or the g20 conference the way in which those of influence can come together and say conflict harms and humankind is not going to grow from it and they just had years and years of conflict through the napoleonic wars and the french revolutionary wars before them the congress of vienna saw the end of that fighting the congress of xl chappelle came together to consolidate that and the four powerful nations of europe that's the russian empire the austrian empire the kingdom of prussia and the united kingdom came together together with france now once again under the bourbon monarchy of king louis the 18th at that time and their representatives or in the case of emperor alexander of russia and emperor francis of austria and king frederick william iii of prussia the monarchs themselves came together but they also brought their diplomats as did england send diplomats because king george of course was too sick by then to be anywhere and the prince regent wasn't really trusted to make the right kind of decisions in a diplomatic conference and so the duke of wellington and the foreign secretary vicar castle ray went instead and also from france the dukes original representing louis the 18th came as the the nation that had been defeated and reparations had been placed on them and restrictions and an occupying army at the congress of vienna and now three years later they've come together count nestle road for the tsar and prince hardenberg for frederick william the third and they meet in a very social way during october and november of 1818 other congresses would follow right up to about 1830 or so but this one was generous in its proceedings and wise for they wanted france to re-establish itself they had no interest in destroying france and so the decision was made with the dukla isla negotiating for king louis the 18s that the occupying armies of the four great powers would be withdrawn three years after they'd been placed there in 1815 and also that reparations will be declared satisfied and france was not then loaded with enormous debt and it was a much more imaginative kind of settlement than the peace process at versailles immediately after the great war when such crippling reparations were given to germany that was storing up problems for the future and it then all cascaded again into war in 1939 this actually began to to prepare a century of relative peacefulness between the great powers and we give thanks for the way in which nations came together in what they called the concert of europe at that time and looked at each other's interests and also enfolded france who was the defeated party back into the fold so we thank god for that kind of working together at a national level on behalf of humankind we remember also as we go back to our lesson that when god was calling his holy nation they were given the vocation of giving the good news to the nations of the whole world and that becomes a huge vision of the prophet isaiah which we like to read but also the vision of our lord himself i when i be lifted up will draw all peoples to myself so let's say our prayers on this particular morning and give thanks give thanks for the um decisions and the progress made at cop 26 and give firm intention as we said yesterday as we remember things that carries with it an intention of action we're praying today in the diocese of uh sorry in the anglican communion for the diocese of honduras in the episcopal church and we are also praying for in our own diocese we've gone back to parishes now we're praying for the parish of saint mary folkeston with sin ian swiss and savior and for john walker in his ministry there and the schools there folks in st mary's church of england primary academy and in swiss church of england primary school the same time we pray for archbishop justin and for rose bishop of dover and also for emma bishop at lambeth bring your own prayers and intentions as we say our prayers this morning here's the collect which is one we've not used before heavenly father whose blessed son was revealed to destroy the works of the devil and to make the children of god make us the children of god and heirs of eternal life grant that we having this hope may purify ourselves even as he is pure that when he shall appear in power and great glory we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom where he is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen same image of our silence now as we say our prayers together and preface that with the our father in whatever language we like to use 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 are men kemi kemi she's going for going for the camera moment of silent reflection so uh the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and that his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be among you among those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen trouble with the pigs is they always think you're playing whatever you're doing you're playing don't you both of you you're doing great work here we'll have a meadow once again to plant with nice seeds well done i better leave you and put something less tasty on because otherwise they're going to eat me again hey [Music] all right [Music] don't do that don't do that right i better go in enjoy your day