good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this february 11th a thursday morning but it really is the most magic morning of the year for snow has fallen in the night in a particularly beautiful way every leaf every twig every branch and every bush is covered with its own cap of snow and the whole world has become almost narnia if you want to go to c.s lewis so welcome to the deanery garden as we share this special morning with you to come out into the blue sky and the rising sun on this particular morning is something which takes your breath away with its beauty and so this morning we're going to say parts of our service in different bits of the garden so you get the full beauty of this morning and we can share it with you wherever you are feel that you are with us saying your prayers and giving thanks to god for the beauty of his world on this 11th of february bring your own intentions and your own concerns as we begin our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night this is very much a morning for the benedicti and we use that scanticle now 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 bless the lord all you his hosts bless the lord you waters above the heavens sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord's son and moon bless the lord you stars of heaven bless the lord all reign and dew sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord all winds that blow bless the lord you fire and heat bless the lord scorching wind and bitter cold sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord dews and falling snow bless the lord your nights and days bless the lord light and darkness sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the lord frost and cold bless the lord you ice and snow sing his praise and exalt him forever bless the father the son and the 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 on this eleventh morning of the month is psalm 57 it begins in one particular mood and its mood changes part of the way through and becomes a mood full of music and joy be merciful to me oh god be merciful to me for my soul takes refuge in you in the shadow of your wings will i take refuge until the storm of destruction has passed by i will call upon the most high god the god who fulfills his purpose for me he will send from heaven and save me and rebuke those that would trample upon me god will send forth his love and his faithfulness i lie in the midst of lions people whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword be exalted o god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth they have laid a net for my feet my soul is pressed down they have dug a pitch before me and will fall into it themselves my my heart is ready o god my heart is ready i will sing and give you praise awake my soul awake harp and liar that i may awaken the dawn i will give you thanks o lord among the peoples i will sing praise to you among the nations for your lovingkindness is as high as the heavens and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds be exalted oh god above the heavens and your glory over all the earth so we turn to our lesson from the gospel of saint mark taking up where we left off yesterday and this becomes a very significant incident what we are about to re to read is taking place somewhere entirely different from galilee it's as though jesus at this point and will remember his almost anger certainly irritation with all those who are picking at his teaching for reasons that he thinks so utterly unimportant compared with the message and the truth that he has to give in terms of healing and peace to his own people and we've seen also that with the disciples themselves he can't get used to their not understanding what is growing and burgeoning within him and perhaps he's having to come to terms with it himself again we shall come across that a great deal when we go into the wilderness with him next week on ash wednesday and begin lent but for the moment he decides to walk and walk and walk until he goes right out of galilee to the northwest and comes into the predominantly gentile region and the cosmopolitan cities of tyre and sidon and the phoenicians who live there the syrian phoenicians of course there are members of his own uh nation they're scattered among them but this is a very different area and mark has taken us in one way into a foreign lands and opened up the landscape and when he's there an incident happens which changes everything verse 24 of chapter 7. from there jesus arose and went away to the region of tyre and sidon and he entered a house and did not want anyone to know yet he could not be hidden but immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of jesus and came and fell down at his feet now the woman was a gentile a syrophoenician by birth and she begged jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter and jesus said to her let the children be fed first for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs but she answered him yes lord yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs and jesus said to her for this statement you may go your way the demon has left your daughter and she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone mark's short gospel is full of shall we call them hinge moments when everything changes and on that hinge a new door opens not only for us but for jesus himself mark is tracing through the human passions of jesus his irritation and anger at the hard-heartedness of his own people in rural galilee and especially those in authoritative positions who have been shall we say trying to pick holes in his teaching and not concentrating on the great message that he feels is burgeoning within him and is helping people in their thousands to find wholeness healing and peace again his desire to release the divine spirit once again to restore them to the image of their creator and all of that is weighing upon him and the fact that even the 12 can't seem to get this message and the signs that are being given are lost on them often and so he's walking walking and has walked into this foreign part and here in those few short verses a realization dawns that his ministry as the anointed one the christ the messiah if it is to be anything according to the father's will is not just for his own people it is to fulfill the prophecy which we hear simeon saying in the gospel of saint luke and which we use evening by evening in nunc dimitis he is to be a light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of his people israel his own people he is fulfilling their message to create light for all those who walk in darkness the world over it becomes a global mission of messiahship and it all happens in this house where he hadn't wanted anyone to recognize him and a woman a foreigner a syrophoenician woman kneels at his feet and begs compassion on his daughter and this feast of our lady of lords when the little girl saw a vision of the blessed mother of jesus we remember jesus's own words to his mother at the wedding at cana of galilee when she in compassion asks him to do something and he says woman that the hour's not yet come and she it is by her question and her certainty that his compassion will win through opens that up and says to the servants on that day do whatever he tells you or today it's another woman and she addresses them with the same word to to mary and to the woman woman it's not right for me to take what is the bread of the children his own people and and throw it and he uses the word dogs it's his and she looks up at him and says yes but even the dogs have the right to eat the crumbs that fall from the table and that sentence prompts the breaking open of jesus's ministry to the whole world for saying that says jesus and she goes home and finds her little girl there without everything that had troubled her being there at all she'd been restored to her mother in the image that her creator intended it's the most beautiful lesson and on this morning when the world has been transformed by a purity which only heaven could give and everything is in a new dress of pure whiteness we give thanks for that as we continue our reflection in this new landscape a new landscape for jesus certainly a new landscape for the twelve but that will continue as we go step by step through the verses of st mark's gospel on this date february 11th in 1915 patrick lee for more was born he was a boy here at kings and later in life became a soldier a writer in some sense a philosopher someone who imagined all kinds of things and wrote about them a travel writer of all kinds but i was given when i was suffering with flu back in i think probably something like 1985 or six um a gift at christmas by two friends john and prue ginger and it's called a time of gifts it had just been published by patrick lee for more and it told about a particular journey it also told about his time here at kings and how it ended in the sixth form rather abruptly and he talks about how this happened and said that intramural romances spring up and prosper in places of learning but some exotic psychological fluke directed my glance beyond the walls of the precincts and once more out of bounds as i say often was it was a time when one falls in love hard and often and my aesthetic notions entirely formed by andrew lange's colored fairy books had settled years before on the long-necked wide-eyed pre-raphaelite girls in henry ford's illustrations interchangeably kings daughters ice maidens goose girls and water spirits and my latest wanderings had led me at the end of a green and sweet smelling cave set dimly with flowers and multicolored fruit and vegetation in short a green grace's shop that is which she tended for her father to the vision of just such a being the effect was instantaneous she was 24 a ravishing and sonic begetting beauty and i can see her now and still hear that melting and deep kent accent this sudden incongruous worship may have been a bore but she was too good-natured to show it and perhaps she was puzzled by the verse which came showering in i knew that such an association in the town however innocent broke a number of taboos too deep rooted and well understood to need any explicit veto nevertheless i headed for the shop beyond the cattle market the moment i could escape but the black clothes we wore those stiff wing collars and the wide and speckled straw boaters with their blue and white silk ribbons were as conspicuous as broad arrows my footsteps were discreetly dogged my devices known and after a week i was caught red-handed holding nelly's hand that is to say which is about as far as this suit ever pressed we were sitting in the back of the shop on an upturned apple basket and my school days were over he found himself expelled but that began another journey and this book which i read in wonder in the winter of 1986 uh is a story of just such a journey it's full of crisp snow in its first pages but he determines to set off in december 1933 on a boat leaving tower bridge for the hook of holland and in that winter weather on an empty boat the captain says to him we don't get many people in december he lands in holland where the landscape looks just like this full of snow and begins his walk it's a time of rediscovery for him it's a time in europe when there wasn't uh a similarity between every capital city with the same kind of hotels the same kind of shops everything was distinct everything of its own culture and his ability to write is phenomenal he sketches the landscape and sketches the way in which his own vocation to write and to explore humanity and the landscape he knows burgeoned in those years three whole years he spent having gone in december 1933 and landed back in january 1937 and at that time he felt himself utterly transformed i don't want to say too much about the book a time of gifts the very word gift is one we use about the new day every morning but also as we explore the journey of our christ our messiah the humanity of jesus expressing the divine gift of heaven in our human life and in the wonders of creation then the purity which all this this morning expresses becomes apparent day by day and the landscape is transformed a time of gifts indeed and painful gifts patrick lee for more's journey is not an easy one often but he finds much hospitality and much wonder in the different cultures as he begins his journey this was to have been the first part of a trilogy the second part did get published and the third part from his notebooks had to be put together after his death he came here to open one of the houses uh earlier on um over on the other side central gustin's he came and opened newgrange for us when we moved grange house where he had been over to the other side to make it a more modern house to live in and i remember good conversations with him at that time and give thanks for his coming back to the school that had expelled him for holding hands with nelly on an apple barrel all those years before other events of significance have happened on this february the 11th in years gone by and we ought to remember some of them in 1990 nelson mandela was released from prison after 27 years in prison and he came out with a spirit still of faithful reconciliation in his heart and mind and that was the gift he wanted to bring not only to his own nation but as a message to the world so we give thanks for that sense of release the release of captives was one of the things which jesus proclaimed when he read from the scroll of the prophet isaiah in his own synagogue at nazareth and then also we remember in 1940 john buckin who had become lord tweesmore the governor general of canada at that time died quite suddenly and people mourned him but of course we know him much much better as the writer of um exciting novels at the time perhaps the most famous is the 39 steps and uh richard honey the hero of that of course is the hero of several books but it wasn't just sort of action men in that way because he wrote books about the retired uh um businessman dixon mcconnel the scotsman and all that went on for him and the beginning of hunting tower his novel is very much again rather like patrick for more leave for more but patrick lee from always at the beginning of his life dixon mccann is at retirement and sets out on a journey which surprises all his friends and uh he goes to have adventures with all sorts of people well this sense of journeying in a winter landscape but most importantly a landscape which the journey transforms or heaven transforms it for you as you walk along then perhaps we have to mention that in 1840 donizetti's opera la fille regimon was first performed in paris it is for me for both of us one of the most joyful operas we've ever seen we've seen it several times with lovely juan diego flores the wonderful peruvian tenor uh singing and that song where the high notes repeat and repeat and repeat again when the first time he sang it at la scala their rule which was 74 year long rule no encores ever the the house erupted at the end and would not let the opera go on until it had been encouraged and i felt like that and i knew we both did the first time we heard him sing it and that was the wonderful covent garden uh production with not only for diego flores but also natalie de say full of enormous humor and beautiful music and it it lifts the soul when when you hear it being sung we put a link on to that today because uh covent garden live streams so many things at the moment but here's the link of that particular song with the the high notes in it giving thanks for the music which remember our song came back to at the end after the the the mood at the beginning was one of really wondering what was going to happen next and then suddenly everything breaks into music well this certainly breaks into music so all those things and then lastly on this day in 1938 the bbc television in its infancy at that time but broadcast the very first science fiction play that it had ever done and it was a scene from carol capex play r u r and in that play he which had been performed many times in theater he coined the word robot as being something that could take all the hard grind out of human life and do all the donkey work for human beings but the robots had no soul and that was the difference between them and humanity and both by this were done a disservice because as we saw yesterday the the working physically is necessary to every human being as well as thought and and the exercise of the spirit that's the rule of the benedict and the robots themselves at the end of the play which got audiences um clapping and clapping discovered in capex play a soul and one robot um fell in love with the other robot and the two the male and female robot go off together into the sunset and the audience breaks into enormous rounds of applause the discovery of a cell well that's just a bit of science fiction there but in terms of what we need to express our humanity and realize the soul of creation and the divine image within us then it's very much something we need to hold on to when so many things are now done um electronically and and ai is something coming into our landscape so all of those things we remember and so many of them we give thanks for we give thanks even when they are a warning to us so here uh and the guinea fowl are making their song known their own music um here as the robins hop about and there's plenty of food for them on the feeder and good water which is released from ice then there are feeders in the orchard as well as we now come to say our prayers so let's say our prayers in this landscape transform by the purity of the snow and today that we are praying in the anglican communion for the diocese of ancholy in the church of the province of uganda and all the people there and in our own diocese as we pray for archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambus we're praying for the elderly throughout the diocese and those who look after them both at home and in care homes on this day bring your own intentions and concerns and prayers as we say our prayers together almighty god you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children through jesus christ your son our lord who with you in the holy spirit reigns supreme over all things now and forever amen so we say each in our own language the prayer 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 are men moment of silence now as we say our own prayers the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and this 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 amen