good morning and welcome on this october the 8th thursday morning october the 8th as we come together in the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral to say our morning prayers and reflect together on the scriptures bring your own thoughts and intentions of prayer from wherever you are in the world please feel welcome it's a very windy morning and we've come near to the fishpond amongst the trees this morning and that will be very apt when we come to the reflection itself as you'll see but let's think just for a moment of this date in years gone by briefly in terms of human tragedy and human endeavor people remembered for events in their own lives two of the things i shall mention in the reflection and i'll keep them up my sleeve but for the moment let's remember some tragic events in 1915 in the great war the battle of blues ended with 430 thousands killed if you add germans french british soldiers poisoned gas had been used and not an inch of ground had been gained by either side for all that slaughter and then we have also the fact that in 1871 the great fire of chicago broke out in which 300 were killed and so many more destroying that great city an event in the city in peacetime an event in wartime of tragedy but at the same time we remember other things on this day creative things we remember that in 1965 london's post office tower was opened the tallest building in the country at that time and that was an attempt to improve communications across the world and to be more at one in in our humanity the 19 year 1929 saw the birth of betty boothroyd who is remembered as the first woman speaker of the house of commons and a great character a wonderfully respected person in 1967 clement atlee died he was the prime minister here after the war having been part of the wartime government as well and he was the prime minister during the the time when the national health service was was founded and and uh was given the the support that government needed to give it and began its life which now we simply take for granted and pray so hard for and all its workers at this time of pandemic terms of creativity um louis vuierne the french organist and composer was born we still use his music a great deal one of his masses is one of the favorite pieces for a sunday morning in canterbury cathedral but his organ works also very much used john lennon in 1971 released his his iconic and very popular song imagine and in 1927 dotting about mary webb died she was an author best known for her novel precious bane it always reminds me rather of a thomas hardy novel set in shropshire and the the title taken from milton's paradise lost speaks of the dangers and temptations of money and what that does in terms of human relationships but at the same time it's a story of someone overcoming a physical blemish and finding that that too which could have been a bane was in fact a salvation so let's begin our prayers and we'll come back to the other two dates in the reflection the 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 sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the words made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips 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 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 song on this morning of the month the eighth morning is psalm 39 it's a very reflective sound i said i will keep watch over my ways say that i offend not with my tongue i will guard my mouth with a muzzle while the wicked are in my sight so i held my tongue and said nothing i kept silent but to no avail my distress increased my heart grew hot within me while i mused the fire was kindled and i spoke out with my tongue lord let me know my end and the number of my days that i may know how short my time is you have made my days but a hand spread my lifetime is as nothing in your sight truly even those who stand upright are but a breath we walk about like a shadow and in vain we are in turmoil we heap up riches and cannot tell who will gather them and now what is my hope truly my hope is even in you deliver me from all my transgressions and do not make me the taunt of the fool i fell silent and did not open my mouth for surely it was your doing take away your plague from me i am consumed by the blows of your hand with rebukes for sin you punish us like a moth you consume our beauty truly everyone is but a breath hear my prayer o lord and give ear to my cry hold not your peace at my tears for i am but a stranger with you away fairer as all my forebears were turn your gaze from me that i may be glad again before i go my way and am no more let's turn then to the acts of the apostles and we're at chapter 24 and remember that paul is now being delivered to the roman governor of the province of judea who is it caesarea the capital of that province and after five days the high priest ananias came down with some elders and a spokesman one to tell us they laid before the governor their case against paul and when he had been summoned to talis began to accuse paul saying since through you we enjoy much peace and since by your foresight your excellency reforms are being made for this nation in every way and everywhere we accept this with all gratitude but to detain you no further i beg you in your kindness to hear us briefly for we have found this man a plague one who stirs up riots among all the jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the nazarenes he even tried to profane the temple but we seized him by examining him yourself you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him the jews also joined in the charge affirming that all these things were so and when felix the governor had nodded to him to speak paul replied knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation i cheerfully make my defense you can verify that it is not more than 12 days since i went up to worship in jerusalem and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd either in the temple or the synagogues or in the city neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me but this i confess to you that according to the way which they call a sect i worship the god of our fathers believing everything laid down by the law and written in the prophets having a hope in god which these men themselves accept that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust so i always take pains to have a clear conscience towards both god and man now after several years i came to bring arms to my nation and to present offerings while i was doing this they found me purified in the temple without any crowd or tumult some jews from asia and they ought to be here before you and to make the accusation should they have anything against me or else let these men themselves say what wrongdoing they found when i stood before the council other than this one thing that i cried out while standing among them it is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that i am on trial before you this day but felix having a rather accurate knowledge of the way put them off saying when lysius the tribune comes down i will decide your case and then he gave orders to the centurion that he should be kept in custody but have some liberty and that none of paul's friends should be prevented from attending to his needs well we're now in the midst of roman court procedure and paul is standing before felix the governor who is as they all say very well informed about the jewish nation and also their faith as we'll see tomorrow when he introduces to us his jewish wife drusilla but for the moment they have come down and it looks as though it's a party of the pharisees from the sanhedrin that have come with the high priest from the way paul speaks they won't all have come it's a 70 mile journey all the way from jerusalem to caesarea the capital of the province but here they are and they brought a lawyer with them a rather glib spoken lawyer called tatalus who spends most of his speech flattering felix with uh she was a compliments and flattery which there's nothing like that nothing like the truth of felix's real nature or his record as the governor of judea at that time which was a brutal violent one but more of that tomorrow for the moment we listened to to tulsi's glib statements glozing over uh what really was a lynch mob and and saying we've we've taken this man because of course he's a threat to roman law he's stirring up incitement right across the empire with the jews and is a follower of this sect of nazarenes and then we hear paul's speech and paul is perfectly well informed as a roman citizen he knows roman law and he knows that the real accusers are not there the real accusers who could bear witness to whatever the accusation was were the jews from asia and they're not there the high priest and those who've come with him had never witnessed anything it was the tribune who had come down to take paul from the lynch mob and so felix is realizing that there's really not much of a case here but on the other hand he is the governor of judea and here is the high priest standing in front of him so he makes a compromise plays for time and says i'll wait for the tribune lysius whom we've already met to come down and then we'll see what is to happen sends them away and one imagines they go back to jerusalem but meanwhile felix allows paul though a prisoner much freedom and total access to paul's friends and those who can look after his daily needs now we may might not think that paul has friends around but of course he does because this is caesarea where philip the deacon lives where he's recently been entertained so there are there are many followers of the way christians as they're now called in this capital city of of uh caesarea of the roman province of judea so paul's needs will be well met given that particular freedom that's the context of the story and we enter really into paul's mind quite a lot at this point we hear him tell his story in different ways over and over again we've already said that the best way of communicating the good news is by telling the story but paul is also i think examining himself because he is still juggling between his faithfulness to the law and the prophets and all that he was taught at the feet of gamaliel and also the compulsion of this new vocation and the intention that he knows in his vocation to be in rome and how that will happen so in these last chapters of acts of the apostles and in as in so much of his writing of the epistles we enter into his mind interesting thing that i was talking about the dates that we were thinking about earlier one of those dates is that in 1892 sergey rachmaninoff first performed his prelude in c-sharp minor it brought him instant fame and at first that was wonderful but he had to hear it over and over and over again and play it over and over and over again wherever he wherever he went and in the end after a failure in his next compositions he had a very very serious depression now i'm saying all this because recently we went to see the most wonderful you call it a play with music i would think there's much much music in it at the southwark playhouse and it was a play written by the very talented playwright and musician dave malloy it was all about the hypnotherapy which was used on rachmaninoff during those years of intense depression and the playhouse those of you who might know it is quite small so you were sitting at the donmar theater almost on the stage with rachmaninoff there was a really brilliant pianist playing the piano the music and everything else that was on and characters appearing and the psychoanalyst that was involved in the hypnotherapy was a a major character but you never never knew throughout the whole performance whether things were really happening or whether you were in rachmaninoff's mind and you yourself were engaged in all the sometimes illusions sometimes truths and sometimes very deep uncomfortable truths of his hypnotherapy as his music was played and sung very often by characters on the stage it was a a really really intense experience it was called preludes and you could probably look it up on on your google or however you examine these things preludes by dave malloy and i i could long to see it again [Applause] a short run but it gave one an intense experience of what it what it meant to have created this piece that the whole world was raving about and he began to find it haunting him and could write nothing more well enough of that because this is also a day a very cheerful event and i've brought my own copy out here this is my copy of the wind in the willows and it says at the beginning of this lovely book originally published october the 8th 1908 well many people have illustrated the wind in the willows but my copy here is one of the 1931 copies with the illustrations by e h shepherd who is also really well known for winnie the pooh they are the only illustrations i can think of with windy the willows i love the rackham illustrations but really toad and mole and rat and badger are in my mind the characters that e.h shepherd drew and here they all are but what i see in this book which i almost know by heart and so many of you will is an opening out of a meditation on creation and on the way in which people although they're made into animals here relate to one another and also dream dreams and venture forth and get things wrong and grow impatient with one another and have characters in them who are um almost reminding us of folk that we know and just to read the chapter headings the riverbank the open road the wild wood mr badger dulce daum mr toad the piper at the gates of dawn toad's adventures wayfarers all the further adventures of toad like summer tempest came his tears the return of ulysses gives you that flavor of adventure but also beautiful meditations of what it feels like to be reminded of home or to feel in danger in the wild wood in the depths of winter without companionship and the sense of safety when a door opens to you but also a sense of wonder in chapters like the piper at the gates of dawn and one remembers too the moles wonder when he breaks out of his home in the ground and finds himself in the sunshine but also finds himself on the side of something he's never seen before a river i love this description of the river 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 a 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 swirl chatter and bubble the mole was bewitched entranced fascinated by the side of the river he trotted as one trots when very small by the side of an adult who holds one spellbound by exciting stories and when tired at last he sat on the bank while the river still chatted 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 oh my goodness when one thinks of the way in which the river of life has been portrayed and the water of life going along and the little drawings of mole getting first into the boat and the dragonflies surrounding him there and here they all are with the willows by the stream there are no willows in this part of our garden there's a good one in the front garden but i was trying to find you the duck song on the river here it is all along the backwater through the rush is tall duck sorry dabbling up tails all ducks tails drake's tails yellow feet quiver yellow bills all out of sight busy in the river slushy green undergrowth where the roach swim here we keep our ladder cool and full and dim everyone for what he likes we like to be heads down tails up dabbling free high in the blue above swift's whirl and call we are down a dabbling up tails all well the swifts are mentioned there but remember our son called us wayfarers i am but a wayfarer as all my forebears were and there is a chapter called wayfarers all and this perhaps is the most awesome thing one can do on this windy morning as the leaves fall around me it's the rat suddenly seeing in the willows which fringed the bank a swallow sitting presently it was joined by another then by a third and the swallows fidgeting restlessly on their bow talk together earnestly and low what already said the rat strolling up to them what's the hurry i call it simply ridiculous oh we're not off yet if that's what you mean replied the first swallow we're only making plans and arranging things talking it over you know what route we're taking this year and where we'll stop and so on that's half the fun fun said the rat now that's just what i don't understand if you've got to leave this pleasant place and your friends who will miss you and your snug homes that you've just settled into why when the hour strikes i've no doubt you'll go bravely and face all the trouble and discomfort and change and newness and make believe that you're not very unhappy but you want to talk about it or even think about it till you really need to no you don't understand naturally said the second swallow first we feel it stirring within us a sweet unrest then back come the recollections one by one like homing pigeons they flutter through our dreams at night they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day we hunger to inquire of each other to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us couldn't you just stop for this year suggested the water rat we'll all do our best to make you feel at home but the swallows feel compelled to go wayfarers all and the sound i am just away fairer as all my forebears were the journey compels us onward whether it's paul's journey or rachmaninoff's journey in the mind in the heart actually on the seat and with the physical activity the journey calls us on each one especially with our own vocation so as we give thanks for the creativity of that book the wind in the willows we say our prayers today we are praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of popondota in papua new guinea and linsley i hove the bishop there and the diocese coimbatore in south india and timothy ravinder and the people of that diocese here in our diocese of canterbury as we pray for justin our archbishop and for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth we pray for the fannet deanery today it's clergy and people and we remember in uh that deanery that it covers the areas of broad stairs margate and ramsgate and pray also for the sea marsh group that's minster birchington saint nicholas at wade moncton chislet minis bay ecole and west gate on sea we remember that that is the area where augustine first landed and brought the mission to the english of the good news having had quite a journey himself let's bring our own intentions to our prayers as we say the prayer for this week almighty god you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you pour out your love upon us in our hearts today and draw us to yourself and so bring us at last to your heavenly city where we shall see your face through jesus christ our lord amen it's a wayfaring collect leading us on our own way as we say together the prayer our savior taught us 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 thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen moment of silence on this windy morning the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men you