Dear One and All,
Every so often I like to pick up a poetry book. You may see me with a copy of John Donne’s poetry or Wilfred Owen or I might start having a read of a Shakespeare play. I try to convince myself I am going to learn the text and spout Shakespeare or some such at appropriate moments, like a modern day Rumpole of the Bailey. And yet, poetry has the capacity to make one stop and think, it’s not simply a device or done for show.
A line from W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘When you are old’ resonated with me ; ‘But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you’. The poem seems to be laced with regret as time ravages the body and life moves inexorably toward a final conclusion. ‘The pilgrim soul’ that’s you and I, moving through the ups and downs of this life. Life can be grand, it can also be terribly hard. Life can be full of riches and joy, but it can also be a sheer grind bringing a soul to despair. Yeats reminds us ‘one man loved’ the likes of you and me because of the nature of humankind to be ensouled. As we are ensouled so we are loved by the divine, for the soul is the inspiration, the gift, the treasure of God’s eternity; loved by Christ, the God-man who knows us through and through.
Charles Wesley’s ‘Jesu lover of my soul’(Singing the Faith 355) again reflects divine truth through poetic lyrics; ‘other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee’. We are wrecked without God and still Christ ‘raises the fallen’ and even though we may be ‘all unrighteousness.’ Christ has sufficient grace for all as ‘thou are full of grace and truth’. This is heady stuff, the elixir of faith and the balm which soothes us when the mists swirl and life is full of doubt and uncertainty. ‘Plenteous grace’ Wesley tells us, is to be found in Christ and it is in Christ that we are as to freely share.
This harvest time as we celebrate the gifts of the seasons, the land, the fruits of creation, this ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’, let us recall the plentiful gifts that God has bestowed on us. Likewise, let us recall to our minds, the plight of those who suffer and find scarce hope in life or living. Whatever our condition ‘one man
loved the pilgrim soul’ and in that love we take the next step forward as it is the harvest of our age and the fruit of our faith.
Every blessing,
Simon.