good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this monday the 27th of september there comes a time at this time of year when the season tells you that it's changing and this morning in temperature in wind and in rain we've had some heavy rain already this morning and still it's spotting down on this meadow garden it's saying that the season is changing in the sky at night the gibbous waning harvest moon is moving the change onwards and and the day we've we've got a completely different kind of atmosphere today we've come into the meadow garden here to show you what is happening here it's very different from last week until now of course the niger has been queen of this garden for the last few weeks and before that the sunflowers and before that a sequence of little flowers springtime saw the plants growing summertime saw them unfolding their flowers and now it's a time for beginning to take stock of what we will need next year and also throughout the winter so some of this will be sifted through and certainly there's far too much niger and the balance has to be restored and we should be looking at plants like thistles and nettles but the sunflowers of course are still being used by even green finches coming to feed on them this morning and all of that means that if we take this down to a sort of level and sift through what we need then we've left enough cover for little creatures to still find shelter as the winter comes on and and that we shall be very careful of as we go through but meanwhile the wind which is a cleansing thing and that will begin slowly to take the leaves away and bring us into the the bareness of the winter season but today believe me there is a sign of change we have in our our minds that round about october the 14th we we we get us in luke's summer that may still happen but those lovely balmy september days which we've been enjoying in the sunshine with beautiful sunrises and sunsets i think are certainly not going to be happening in the next two weeks so we've come into the the garden here and are sheltering a little ourselves from the rain as it falls but it may come and go this morning so i'll use the umbrella when it's falling at the same time i'm sitting here next to the chicken run and we put the covers up for the moment so that the chickens can say hello to you when you begin to see them and they'll be here next to me but after that we'll make sure the covers come down because they feathered creatures don't like their feathers getting wet in this way and the wind isn't very kind to them and certainly we won't see any cats in the garden today because the wind gets in their whiskers and the last thing they want is that kind of disorientation and so they will be well out of the way and warm in the house so today we've come out and be been brave and we're going to say our prayers here in the meadow garden a very different meadow garden from the last month or two when we've seen it so full of flowering so we remember in our prayers today particularly germany as the election comes to an end and political parties begin to make uh signs of what looks as though it must be a coalition so that their new government and their new chancellor can be put in place let's begin our prayers then on this monday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise make 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 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 and 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 our psalm on this 27th morning of the month is uh uh shall we say that the psalms begin a sequence of short pilgrim psalms beginning at psalm 120 they are quite short so i'm going to read two 120 and 121 and then from then on and into the evening service as well the pilgrim psalms run they're very beautiful psalms but we've got 120 121 this morning when i was in trouble i called to the lord i called to the lord and he answered me deliver me o lord from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue what shall be given to you what more shall be done to you deceitful tongue the sharp arrows of a warrior tempered in burning coals woe is me that i must lodge in meshech and dwell among the tents of kidar my soul has dwelt too long with enemies of peace i am for making peace but when i speak of it they make ready for war in psalm 121 i lift up my eyes to the hills from where is my help to come my help comes from the lord the maker of heaven and earth he will not suffer your foot to stumble he who watches over you will not sleep behold he who keeps watch over israel shall neither slumber nor sleep the lord himself watches over you the lord is your shade at your right hand so that the sun shall not strike you by day neither the moon by night the lord shall keep you from all evil it is he who shall keep your soul the lord shall keep watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth forevermore two psalms as all these pilgrim psalms right up to the last of the pilgrim psalms 131 which we shall sing with the five psalms for tonight um all of them full of wonderful images imagery which feeds back from verse to verse and at the same time they are natural images of the moon and the sun and shelter and at the same time also they are pilgrim images of joy at going towards the holy place the city of zion which also is the image of the true community of the kingdom of heaven and all of those things we embrace as we read those psalms but i shall come back to psalm 120 in our reflection for a very particular purpose and especially that first verse when i was troubled i called to the lord i called to the lord and he answered me but for the moment let's go to our reading and our reading of course takes us back to the book of genesis on a monday morning we left off on saturday and we remember that joseph has now greeted his brothers as they have come to the land of goshen in egypt and we're continuing with that story today i'm reading chapter 47 and verses 1 to 12. so joseph went in and told pharaoh my father and my brothers with their flocks and herds and all that they possess have come from the land of canaan they are now in the land of goshen and then from among his brothers he took five men and presented them to pharaoh pharaoh said to his brothers what is your occupation and the brothers said to pharaoh your servants are shepherds as our fathers were they said to pharaoh we have come to sojourn in the land for there is no pasture for your servants flocks for the famine is severe in the land of canaan and now please let your servants dwell in the land of goshen then pharaoh said to joseph your father and your brothers have come to you the land of egypt is before you settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land let them settle in the land of goshen and if you know any able men among them put them in charge of my livestock then joseph brought in jacob his father and stood jacob before pharaoh and jacob blessed pharaoh and pharaoh said to jacob how many are the days of the years of your life and jacob said to pharaoh the days of the years of my sourning are 130 years few and evil have been the days of the years of my life and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning and jacob blessed pharaoh and went out from the presence of pharaoh then joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of egypt in the best of the land in the land of ramesses as pharaoh had commanded and joseph provided his father his brothers and all his father's household with food according to the number of their dependents suddenly a gap in the cloud i think i can put the umbrella down for a bit to see you better it's an amazingly touching passage for joseph is presenting we don't know which five of his brothers but five of his brothers before pharaoh we must feel for them imagining them as shepherds from canaan a very very different lifestyle and land to egypt which is a very sophisticated culture with a very advanced kind of civilization already at that time and here is the supreme ruler of all egypt in all his splendor and surrounded by his court and joseph has taken from the land of goshen where he's settled his father and brothers and all that they've brought with them he's taken five brothers and also as it turns out jacob his father to stand before pharaoh it's probably quite nerve-wracking for joseph himself as well and he must be feeling intense sympathy for his brothers but he wants to present them to pharaoh and pharaoh greets them with enormous shall we say courtesy and ask some questions about themselves and i'm sure they nervously answer your servants are shepherds and pharaoh gives kindly answers how like the story we've been telling each sunday about cyrus the emperor of of of the the lands of babylon and persia who was anointed according to the prophet isaiah to allow the people to go home but here is the pharaoh being used in a particular way as an agent of god's purpose and meeting jacob and the brothers but for the moment the five brothers i'm being too optimistic here i'll i'll put the umbrella up again or i shall get just about everything soaking wet um and so the brothers are are given the the the best of lands they say why they've come the famine which was of the prophecy of joseph's dreams the famine is severe everywhere and they have no resources to feed their flocks leave alone food for themselves and the pharaoh because of the wisdom of joseph has and pharaoh gives them leave to be there in the land and says have able men also look after my livestock but then this really to me is the most touching moment of all joseph brings in jacob israel as he is now known by his new name israel to meet egypt if you like for pharaoh is the royal symbol of all egypt and its civilization at the time and here is jacob israel being presented the epistle to the hebrews when it's talking about abraham meeting melchizedek and melchizedek blessing abraham the writer to the epistles of the hebrews says it is without doubt true that the greater blesses the lesser well on this occasion pharaoh allows himself to be blessed by jacob i think partly out of his valuing joseph but partly also out of his respect for jacob's years that runs deep in so many cultures that there is intense respect for those who have lived to a great age and all that they have experienced i found that in so many cultures which i've had the privilege to share in the intense respect in that way and i remember also having guests in my own house when my father was still very much alive but in old age and was slower and i remember a a lovely priest from tanzania patrick monchiko who went on to be bishop of masasi as in a young man staying with us for christmas in the dinner at hereford and father was there as well and my sister and my sister and and i would would be come on father we've got to hurry for this and because we've got things that and there's a lovely tanzanian word in swahili m which means respected older one it's a term of intense respect and patrick who was young and was respectful to me as his host and respectful to pauline but there was there was a piece of of watchful advice that he felt as a young man he he was bound to give from his own culture and taking my father's arm he said to me wait for the mse wait for the speed of your father which was quite a lesson to both of us and also a lesson to our own culture here is jacob being brought in by joseph and the pharaoh allows himself to be blessed by jacob and later when patrick uh grew older and was a bishop and we were talking about my father and i said well he's he's becoming slightly muddled now father what by then was 91 or so and uh patrick said don't ever forget robert that all that he was he still is and that too was a wonderful lesson from a completely different culture and here i think is a respect for jacob's years of fairies says how many are your years and jacob says that his years are of a great age and then the blessing takes place and jacob then goes and leaves um pharaoh and there's no doubt courtesy in the saying goodbye and goes back to the land of goshen which pharaoh has given for the well-being of jacob and his sons and households and all his flocks so for the moment they have resources there we'll go on with that tomorrow but one or two wonderful lessons i think from that as israel meets the symbol of egypt on that day well now let's think a little bit about dates that have happened today because some of them are significant in a way that's intensely important and one of them is the 1066 date now 1066 is writ large in the history of these islands as the date on which william the conqueror came and the norman leader then came across and became king of england and william the conqueror as he's known set off from normandy on this date september the 27th 1066 a turning point in the history of these islands and certainly also of this city of canterbury for william himself when he came in 1066 found a fully developed city here but at the same time he wanted to order his kingdom the city had suffered quite recently from incursions and invasions by the danes one of its archbishops alphage had been murdered by the danes the cathedral had been burned to the ground on several occasions and at the same time william wanted to establish with norman architecture but solidly in stone a cathedral church worthy to be the mother church of this land and at the same time william wanted a degree of order everywhere he set about writing a register sending his clarks out to write a register of everything there the doomsday book began to to shape a register of of england and at the same time william gathered together there's senior bishops and abbots and priors of the land to set out the order he wanted from his church and we still have that document set out there it's called the winchester accord but we have that document with williams mark on it and the mark of his queen who could actually have written her name but in deference to her husband who didn't know how to read and write but knew exactly what he wanted in terms of order her mark is there but lan frank the archbishop wrote his name and then the lists of abbots and bishops are there and in setting the order um william said someone must be the chief person of the church and he settled that on the archbishop of canterbury and the archbishop of york at the bottom of the the uh the list there of people writes the word concedo meaning i consent to this above that word concedo all the others in the list wrote their consent subscriptsy we've signed this and this is established the primacy of canterbury had always been there since augustine coming but now royal command wanting order in williams norman kingdom now was establishing exactly that and everywhere else in the kingdom politically began to feel a new order so that here's a turning point from the moment williams set off and then won the battle of hastings this became um an ordered nation it was a perfectly civilized nation before but william gave it a new protection and a new order so we remember that and it's why everyone knows that the date 1066 which is a date which we we all tend to know for the history of these islands um this is also a date and this is a very different kind of date but it did change life this is the date in 1908 when henry ford launched and produced the first mass-produced car the model t ford and between 1908 and 1927 henry ford built 15 million of them and that of course you you don't need to imagine very far to see how that changed things before that things like road atlases were fairly irrelevant to most of the population they had no means of traveling around and those of the great and good were um carried around in carriages and even if they had really splendid motor cars generally it was a chauffeur that drove them but mostly it had been horseback or on foot or carts lumbering along and all of that suddenly began to change as the age of motoring arrived it took off slowly maybe but on this day that production of the model t ford changed the the life of people and suddenly made certainly made the kingdom smaller here but began to make other nations smaller as people could travel to see each other and then of course as the centuries opened up the the the the sense of being able to travel easily uh became a natural thing and then last year when we were locked down we we were completely disoriented by the fact that we couldn't any longer travel around in that way things beginning to open up again now but in human history there it's been a relatively short time since people were able to travel in that way even on trains mid 19th century something like that and and so um this date when people then had the capacity to get in their own vehicle and travel about was a significant one and so we remember not only then 1066 but 1908 september the 27th when that age was given the go-ahead by mass-produced cars from henry ford and at the moment in this land where there's a a a shortage of people to take petrol to the the petrol stations which i think will be a temporary shortage because there's no shortage of fuel um that people are finding it very difficult suddenly to be thrown back onto their own devices and but i'm sure that will that will be put right very soon um now i wanted to mention too that on this date we keep in our calendar the name of sin vincent de paul who founded a community to help the poor he was a french catholic parish priest and eventually after and some years in slavery himself and coming back to his training and then going into the priesthood he decided that his order will be helping those in small communities and the welfare of the poor in small communities so we give thanks for the order of sin vincent de paul the congregation of the mission and giving us a a sign of people who need help especially in small communities and small towns and then the name engelbert humperdinck and don't think of the modern singer think of the composer who was born in 1854 and died on this date in 1921 he's a composer pretty well known for one work and that is the delightful and very skillful opera hansel and gretel based on german folk songs it grew up out of a series of songs that he wrote for children that he knew and then suddenly he orchestrated it and his musicianship was really fine it was much influenced by people like reinberger and wagner but when hansel and gretel his his children's opera which many of you would have seen and many of you will know the tunes from and certainly the overture is played constantly in classical programs um when that was first produced uh richard strauss conducted the first performance it was an instant instant success and who can wonder it's of course performed in opera houses and i've seen it with so many different versions that it's hard to to think how many times you've seen it but it never seems to tire and the lovely prayer of hansel and gretel before they go to sleep lost in the forest and the sense of blessing all around them that lovely prayer is something in musical terms which then expands out to the sense of heaven guarding them there in their danger so we give thanks to for that one work that engelbert humpaging the composer composed in 1893 and we remember that particular thing that sometimes people are known for one thing and if you mention their name people say oh yes that's and with him yes that's hansel and gretel the old folk tale given charming and skillful operatic music now i said we'd go back to psalm 120 and it comes to us in two particular ways i mentioned yesterday um our friend david and kate newsham david art director of music and their daughters megan and libby who live here in the precincts have a cat called oscar who's a ginger cat and some of written in wanting to see a picture of oscar well thanks to david mckay we can show you a picture of oscar and i wanted to think not only of oscar who's a rather shy and homeless loving and very cuddly ginger cat uh we've never had a ginger cat here but oscar is a great friend to us all and so too was his sister tilly who became very much a cathedral cat but i wanted to think of another ginger cathedral cat whom the choristers used to call laptop now this laptop the ginger cat was the cat of one of the house mistresses here and girl's house in jervis house linda horn had laptop the ginger cat as her ginger and white laptop was laptop suddenly decided he wanted an outdoor life and so he came across and then he made his home next door here with the choristers and they called him laptop because he used to sit on their laps as they watched television but when the house was being renovated for several years and choristers moved up to saint edmonds school for a while before they came back laptop found that he loved the society of the cathedral and he became a catalyst for people just stroking him and then complete strangers coming to visit here getting to know one another he was a character of the cathedral who caused people to be friendly with one another justice oscar's sister tilly took that role on and used to live in the constables office and uh then um be looked after still of course by david and kate but generally was outside and i remember tilly wandering the cathedral nave and even sitting on my lap in concerts it seemed the most natural thing in the world in a full cathedral for chile or the school worshiping tilly just to walk about sadly tilly has died uh and now um oscar as we said is is ill but let me come back to laptop because laptop would always come into the cathedral through the doors which um beckett's knights came through to be there at morning prayer and sit on a chair by the radiator and one morning the coldest morning of the winter we'd forgotten to open the door to let laptop in and it was the 27th morning of a winter month and when we began the psalm at matins uh when i was in trouble i cried to the lord suddenly there was a yowl from laptop outside and i stopped the sun went out opened the door laptop came in and climbed onto the chair by the radiator we closed the door and the sun began again it's always been known to us since then 120 years laptop psalm when i was in trouble i cried to the lord and he heard me and uh so but then when laptop died my goodness the cathedral staff when they came together for the the funeral in the water tower garden and the the the articles that were sent in from across the world because he had a little obituary in the church times and in one of the the national newspapers the daily telegraph for one of those and we had messages from communities even of nuns who said yes our cat does this also wanders around and causes people to connect with one another so we remember uh laptop and we remember tilly uh and also um our cat lily is um and certainly wasn't until the the uh time of of the lockdown here on this side of the cathedral she would go out to meet people in the green court and in the garden and no school event was ever the same without her present she would rush out to have a photograph taken at school photographs and once when archbishop rowan williams was addressing the whole of the school in the the memorial uh court down there lily went right into the middle of it all and sat washing and all the pupils knew it was lily because quite often in an open window she would go into their lessons they have this capacity of causing people in some way to come together and to smile well we've shown you um some pictures of of oscar a ginger cat and it was mentioned that when we dedicated the poem yesterday to of of skimmer shanks um he wasn't a ginger cat so i took up the elliott book again and found a poem about a ginger cat and this is a poem about a ginger cat he's certainly nothing like oscar because this this guy lives outside and his own person um but at the same time perhaps he's a little bit like laptop but i think his crooked dealings are nothing like laptop here we are it's mccavity the mystery cat very much t.s eliot's ginger cat mccavitt is a mystery cat he's called the hidden poor for he's the master criminal who can defy the law he's the bafflement of scotland yard the flying squad's despair for when they reach the scene of crime the cavity is not there the cavity the cavity there's no one like macavity he's broken every human law he breaks the law of gravity his powers of levitation would make a fake ear stare and when you reach the scene of crime the cavity is not there you may seek him in the basement you may look up in the air but i tell you once and once again the cavity is not there the is a ginger cat he's very tall and thin you would know him if you saw him for his eyes are sunken in his brow is deeply lined with thought his head is highly domed his coat is dusty from neglect his whiskers are uncombed he sways his head from side to side with movements like a snake and when you think he's half asleep he's always wide awake the cavity the cavity there's no one like macavity for he is a fiend in feline shape a monster of depravity you may meet him in a by street you may see him in the square but when a crime's discovered then the cavity is not there he's outwardly respectable they say he cheats at cards and his footprints are not found in any file of scotland yards and when the lard is looted or the dual case is rifled or when the milk is missing or another peak's been stifled or the greenhouse glass is broken and the trellis past repair i there's the wonder of the thing the cavity is not there and when the foreign office finds that treaties gone astray or the admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way there may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair but is useless to investigate the cavity is not there and when the loss has been disclosed the secret service say it must have been the cavity but he's a mile away you'll be sure to find him resting or a licking of his thumbs or engaged in doing complicated long division sums the cavity the cavity there's no one like mccavity there never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity he always has an alibi and one or two to spare and whatever time the deed took place macavity wasn't there and they say that all the cats whose wicked deeds are widely known i might mention mungo jerry i might mention griddlebone are nothing more than agents for the cat who all the time just controls their operations the napoleon of crime well certainly when anything naughty has happened then none of our cats show themselves they're experts at hiding so we give thanks this morning for all the gifts of god's creation on this wet morning at a change of season a very sudden change of season we're praying this morning in our prayers for the anglican communion for the diocese of southwest florida and we're praying also in our own diocese for all emergency chaplains to the areas which suddenly need a chaplain and they've first they've gone out on a first call of emergency and you can think of all those people from coast guards and police and ambulance drivers and one fire services everything and there is a series of chaplains who help in that way so we pray for their work on this particular morning as the season changes pray for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and also for tim bishop at lambeth and pray on this day the collect for the 17th sunday after trinity 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 so we say together in whatever language you would like to say the prayer our savior 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 moment now for your own prayers and concerns on this windy morning oh 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 so we've braved the rain and uh thanks for being with us braving the rain as the season changes here in england this morning but wherever you are in the world enjoy your day as best you can and encourage one another always you