good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 22nd of december as we gather to say our morning prayers feel welcome from right across the world it's a freezing cold morning this morning completely still and as you see with a clear blue pale blue marian blue sky which will help us to reflect on the vocation of the blessed virgin mary as we continue her story later on in our scripture reading from the first chapter of the gospel of sint luke this morning we were treated to the most beautiful sunrise it was the sort of sunrise you only get in wintertime on a frosty morning such as this it began very very red indeed and then began to go into a multitude of different golden colors as the sun rose in real splendor across the garden and of course it was quite late because we're at the shortest day uh yesterday the shortest day and so the the longest hours of darkness and the fewest hours of daylight and also was showing this morning at that time as i went out to matins as well the moon on the other side of the cathedral now the moon was a very different story in the middle of the night leo who had found it very very cold outside had come in and went to sleep on my bed and i was suddenly awakened by an excited leo in the middle of the night i suppose it was about half past one and realized that the bedroom was almost as clear as daylight i've never seen the moon so bright almost a full moon a night past the full moon a gibbous moon now beginning to wane but nevertheless that wasn't apparent from the high up brightness that the moon was giving right across the earth and shining through the bedroom windows and leo then needed to go out to play because the moon was calling him into the the frosty weather outside so we give thanks for all this glory of the heavens but also this morning i'm surrounded uh we were going to the orchard but when we came out we realized what we wanted to show you was that the the lawn with all its tussocks from having been allowed to grow uh wild throughout the summer it's now we're going to begin to tend it again to bring it back so that it can entertain next summer in in proper space but this morning all these tussocks are covered in frost and it is the most picturesque site in coming out it's cold but the trees all the twigs are covered in in crystals of frost and i'm surrounded by all this lovely whiteness of a winter morning with no breeze whatsoever as we say our prayers so we give thanks for all this golden glory around us the blue sky and the white lawn 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 blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your sunrise 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 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 psalm on this 22nd morning of the month is the long psalm 107. i shall read most of the psalm i'll start with the first uh three verses and then uh carry on through the first eight verses and then carry on through a bit later on from verse 23 onwards oh give thanks to the lord for he is gracious for his steadfast love endures forever let the redeemed of the lord say this those he redeemed from the hand of the enemy and gathered out of the lands from the east and from the west from the north and from the south some went astray in desert wastes and found no path to a city to dwell in hungry and thirsty their soul was fainting within them so they cried to the lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress he set their feet on the right way till they came to a city to dwell let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children for he satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with good those who go down to the sea in ships and ply their trade in great waters these have seen the works of the lord and his wonders in the deep for at his word the stormy wind arose and lifted up the waves of the sea they were carried up to the heavens and down again to the deep their soul melted away in their pedal they reeled and staggered like a drunkard and were at their wits end then they cried to the lord in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were count then were they glad because they were at rest and he brought them to the haven they desired let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children let them exalt him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the counsel of the elders the lord turns rivers into wilderness and water springs into thirsty ground a fruitful land he makes a salty waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell there he makes the wilderness a pool of water and water springs out of a thirsty land now he settles the hungry and they build a city to dwell in they sow fields and plant vineyards and bring in a fruitful harvest he blesses them so that they multiply greatly he does not let their herds of cattle decrease he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes they are diminished and brought low through stress of misfortune and sorrow but he raises the poor from their misery and multiplies their families like flocks of sheep the upright will see this and rejoice but all wickedness will shut its mouth whoever is wise will ponder these things and consider the loving kindness of the lord it's a wonderful psalm of journeying on land and sea but also the way in which fruitfulness can be coaxed and nursed out of the earth by right treatment and by the work of humankind and also by overuse of land refreshed areas suddenly become once again a salty waste and streams and lakes dry up a wonderful sound for a morning like this as we go to the first chapter of the gospel of saint luke and continue our reading from yesterday we remember yesterday the angel gabriel announced her vocation to the blessed virgin mary and today after the angel has departed from her it's clear that she wants to share the news and also being been given encouragement in this vocation in those days mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in judah and she entered the house of zechariah and greeted elizabeth and when elizabeth heard the greeting of mary the baby leapt in her womb and elizabeth was filled with the holy spirit and she excuse me and she exclaimed with a loud cry blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb and why is this granted to me that the mother of my lord should come to me for behold when the sound of your greeting came to my ears the baby in my womb leapt for joy and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the lord and mary said my soul magnifies the lord and my spirit rejoices in god my savior for he has looked on the humblest state of his servant for behold from now on all generations will call me blessed for he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation he has shown strength with his arm he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty he has helped his servant israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers to abraham and to his offspring forever and mary remained with elizabeth about three months and then returned to her home a wonderful passage of first mary's haste usually haste in the scriptures of the new testament means good news to be shared think of the resurrection narratives think of the road to emmaus slow steps on the way to emmaus but haste back to the city of jerusalem with good news and think of peter and the beloved disciple running to the tomb after news has been given by the women coming back from the tomb all of those things haste and running means excitement and here is mary actually giving a sense of excitement of her vocation but needing support needing companionship needing someone who will understand and she goes to her much older cousin elizabeth who herself is with child and is in the sixth month now of her pregnancy it's a fair journey for mary to make and i doubt she went alone on those roads she would have taken folk with her because from her own home which we hear from luke is in nazareth in galilee to the hill country of judea is quite a step probably on foot a three-day journey or four if she was to avoid going through samaria which many jews did and to cross the jordan and then come back but we're talking about a house in the hill country and sometimes that's been identified in the town of hebron which was a priestly town and in the hill country but it's also been identified with the beautiful village in the hill country of ein karem outside of jerusalem to the what the the south west really and there was the house of zechariah and elizabeth in the hill country now remember that when mary arrives zechariah is still unable to speak from his own conversations with the angel gabriel and the vision he had in the temple which has rendered him for the moment unable to speak until the time when the child is born and he obeys the angel later on by saying or writing on the tablet his name is john we shall come to that story tomorrow but for the moment let's just think of zechariah being silent through all this and mary and elizabeth having three months together in that little community in the hill country a beautiful place to go a place of green trees and of refreshing springs as they muse together on their vocation but already elizabeth has been granted the grace to know exactly how important the vocation of her cousin her young cousin mary actually is when elizabeth heard the greeting of mary the babe leapt in her womb and elizabeth was filled with the holy spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb it continues the sentence which is so often used in our music and in our liturgies starting with the angel sentence to mary hail mary full of grace the lord is with you and now elizabeth's words blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb to which we always add the name that she must give jesus and once again we are with luke's capacity to give us words for our worship as well as the words of the old covenant in psalms and those words and concepts which the writer to the hebrews was giving us for our liturgy our eucharistic liturgy our words at the holy communion about our lord's perfect sacrifice all of those words we rejoice in using daily and no words more important than the song of mary which follows i read it in this translation this morning but if you're like me because of all the music you will know it best in the words of the book of common prayer my soul doth magnify the lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior and the lowliness of his handmaiden is underlined by mary why to me so unimportant a person and yet just as my soul is magnifying is a great word enlarging the concept through the spirit's grace of god in her life at the same time mary has been magnified herself in the importance of the good news that she is to bear in physical form in the birth of the anointed one which we shall celebrate this weekend and at the same time to have that concept of being the handmaid the servant of the lord in all her works and in all her obedience these are wonderful ways that our narrator luke is giving us to express the joy of the coming of good news to humankind when it most needs it we saw that news beginning with zechariah right in the middle of the temple and now we see it being given to elizabeth once again by the holy spirit filling her and her perception of the magnified vocation of her young cousin who herself in her song shall we call it for it's very much a song like salmadi the magnificat in her magnificat she magnifies the lord so together they have much to talk about and together they have many things to ponder but in the end mary goes back home on the journey back back to galilee back to the quietness of nazareth but she won't be allowed to stay there too long because as we know a census is in progress and in the end another journey will have to be made but this morning we rejoice in this journey to the hill country to the beautiful villages of the hill country in judea at that time and as we rejoice so we rejoice in the beauty all around us on a winter morning of white frost and blue sky and a glorious sunrise giving a sense of joy to the world on this december morning here in the northern hemisphere we've been joined on this frosty lawn on this morning by one of the residents of the garden who is a constant companion here that's corny crow and his great black feathers against the frost makes quite a sight he originally was here by himself and then he found a wife and now there's quite a family of them but always uh we hear his singing he's gone up into the tree now we hear his singing which i'm sure his family find very attractive indeed but it's it's unmistakable when he's around sitting on chimneys or down on the lawn and here he is this morning well let's see uh what date we find ourselves with today and for me it's a lovely date it's uh the day in in december 1943 22nd december 1943 when the writer beatrix potter died and of course she's known best for her children's books of the uh animals that make up characters that so many have enjoyed and many films and and uh and other stories have been told about them but uh she was born in in 1866 and her lifelong vocation became the protection of the hill country back with hill country again uh in the lake district because she saw the country life of the villages there and the little farms vanishing and so she used her resources to buy those farms and to share in that life and we give thanks for that but let's uh let's begin with her beginning which was in london the daughter of a very affluent family and she and her brother were kept at home with governances and she had uh three governances but one of them annie moore she was annie carter was one who stayed friends with her for the whole of her life and the eight children of annie moore became very familiar with beatrix potter and it was for them originally that the little drawings were made in letters to them particularly the eldest son noel who was often ill and beatrix when particularly when they were away on holiday in the lake district or in scotland she would draw pictures to cheer them up and add to her letters for it was in the countryside that she and her brother also seemed to come to life and she became intensely and scientifically interested in the creatures and the plant life of the landscape in that hill country she became an expert in mycology that's the study of fungus like mushrooms growing on the roots of trees and she would paint those because the colors were so attractive but at the same time through a microscope she learned them and in a self-taught way but in a very expert way she began to write a thesis about the the fungi and she had it ready to present at q and went off to queue to give her thesis to the kew gardens authorities but sadly i'm looking for his name the director of queue i've got it william thistleton dyer uh rejected everything and said you know one young woman like that she had no business bringing such things to cue which is a serious scientific establishment and so she was rebuffed uh and later she presented this and and the the thesis she came up with was full of cogent arguments in detail but at the same time her real pleasure was with the pets that she and her brother kept uh they kept newts and frogs and mice and rabbits and apart from the chickens in the farmyard and also the cats and dogs that were around in the same way and uh the the the way in which or all this uh um came about i forgot hedgehogs as well very important because of mrs tiggy winkle later on uh she would she would draw them and when that letter went to noel one of them because she'd run out of things really to tell him she wrote a story and the story began with flopsy mopsy cottontail and peter for rabbits and it was annie moore her her former governess who said you could make a book of that it's so attractive and at the same time another friend of hers who was a vicar of the village there where they were staying and canon rawnsley he became and was another lifelong friend said he could help her and he got the book to the warn brothers who were publishers and at first there was a cool reception and then because she had published a black and white version just for her family and friends as a christmas gift but then then one of the brothers norman warren took an interest and he took rawnsley's words rosie had revised beatrix potterworth's trying to make them more fine in their cadences but in fact norman warren said no simplest is best her words are good let's stay with that and when the book was published i'm going very fast but through the story but when the book was published it was an instant success now her mother particularly not so much her father who was very very very soft with with uh beatrix but her mother particularly hated anything to do with trade it seemed to be beneath them and for her daughter to be mixing with publishers in this particular way and and and thinking that she would become someone who would sell books was just uh beneath her and at the same time when norman warren and beatrix fell very very deeply in love with one another mother would have none of it father was better and father said if you could just uh wait a while before you uh become engaged and maybe we can then see if it's a it's a real relationship and that's what happened and while they were away the whole family in the countryside beatrix was right and norman would write and then his letter stopped coming and he had died of pernicious anemia and beatrice was inconsolable she was so exceptionally sad and had no idea how to overcome this but what overcame it of course was her huge desire to paint and the little books continued she started with the taylor peter rabbit and it went on from there as the um squirrel nutkin book and then the taylor of gloucester and then a host of others you will know them all and the great thing about them was that the creatures when you look at them although they may be carrying teapots and everything else uh they actually the hedgehog and the rabbits are a fine representation absolutely in detail and in color as norman warren suggested it would work better in color and all was set for him to take that on and for norman warren to marry beatrix but it wasn't to be so she then used her resources to buy a house in the hill country left london to go to to buy that and it was there that she met the solicitor younger than she a solicitor william helis who helped her not only by that cottage but by other farms around as her her income increased with the books and she 23 of those books which are still absolutely in print of course and we know them very well but at the same time it wasn't her real vocation her vocation was the protection of all that beautiful hill country and at the same time her detailed scientific thinking and she became a sheep farmer with herdwick sheep and also a cattle farmer with galloway cattle and we had those in our psalms this morning not galloway cattle but the the flocks of sheep and the herds of cattle in psalm 107. now all of all of those things meant that people were quite cross with her because very often william helis would make sure he knew about something that was coming up for sale long before others did and so she bought swathes of countryside there and at the same time her friend cannon rawnsley had become the first member the founding member of the national trust which beatrice instantly joined up to because it was a society which was going to protect areas of natural beauty and great houses later on as well and so all these things fed into her desire for conservation of that rural way of life not just the farms but the crafts associated with them and wherever she could help with the resources of people who were finding that way of living far too expensive and resources draining away where she could help people to stay in the countryside rather than moving into the big cities and where she could also protect little farms and continue with that then all of that became her lifelong work there are so many lovely things that she wrote not just to her children's books but reminiscences of of of her desire to do all of that and and so many letters but one of her quotes and we could quote many not just from the books but but from from her letters uh one of her quotes that i i like a lot and it goes back to norman warren saying no beatrice's words are better they're simpler she was talking about how she wrote and she wrote my usual way of writing is to scribble and cut out and write it again and again the shorter and plainer the better and read the bible unrevised version if i feel my style wants chastening so her measure her plumb line and gauge was the words of i imagine she's meaning the king james version of the bible to just steady the way she wrote and as she says chasten it make it plain and make it simple and so many of her thoughts quarry deep but sound so simple when she says some now there are many things that i could uh talk about but uh at the the the end you you know so much of that story and we give thanks not only for the little books which are still so very popular and now being made into films and all sorts of things and our little niece arabella absolutely adores peter rabbit the series on on television that she watches but apart from that we remember her strong vocation despite sadness not only norman warren died suddenly from the pernicious anemia but her beloved brother died in young middle age uh in his own garden from a stroke and it seemed that that she was destined to feel the the the sorrow and passing from those who had helped her on the way so we remember her with gladness and her creative activity and the fact that she wasn't to be put off by the hostility of landowners wanting to buy the very farm she was going for she became a strong businesswoman as well as an artist and a scientist and eventually those cc's did get to queue in the the linear society and there was a measure of of regret that they had treated her so in the past so let's then say our prayers this morning and see uh we are praying in our own communion for the diocese of ele aluji in the church of nigeria the ondo province in our own diocese we pray for archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover and uh bishop emma at lambuth but at the same time we are asked by the diocese to prepare for to pray for all parishes preparing for christmas at this time of restrictions and the way in which we have to go forward carefully so let's bring our own intentions and prayers as we say the special prayer for this week of advent which dwells on the vocation of the blessed virgin mary god our redeemer who prepared the blessed virgin mary to be the mother of your son grant that as she looked for his coming as our savior so we may be ready to greet him when he comes again as our judge who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever are men and the advent connect itself almighty god give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light now in the time of this mortal life in which your son jesus christ came to us in great humility that on the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead we may rise to the life immortal through him who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so we say each in our own language 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 are men some moments of silence now for your own prayers and concerns [Music] [Music] bye [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] r [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] he has [Music] is [Music] uh [Music] please [Music] is [Music] [Music] christ the son of righteousness shine upon you scatter the darkness from before your path and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men i should have said when we ended our reflection on beatrix potter that uh the young solicitor who helped her purchase the farms and protect the hill country which was her great vocation to do became her husband in 1913 and they had 30 years of very happy married life and so there is a a lovely ending to all of this but at the same time all that is set out in a film that we enjoy very much it's one of our favorite films in 2006 it was made and simply called miss potter and renee zellweger plays miss beatrice potter and ewan mcgregor plays norman warren and it's probably on at some stage over christmas but if you can get hold of it and you haven't seen it it's very well worth watching and a very enjoyable film you