Climbing Snowdon

All night wind and rain
score the mountain slopes

Climbing Snowdon by Kris Thirty6Red

Quotation & Comment A Streetcar Named Desire

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields."

Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

These words are uttered by Blanche DuBois when she first arrives at her sister Stella’s apartment called Elysian Fields in New Orleans.

It tells us she is on a journey. ‘They’ refers to the attendants at the station who give her directions.

Symbolically ‘They’ indicates Blanche is vulnerable and powerless. All the men in Blanche’s life - family and lovers - have always had power and followed their sexual desires. She too has lived like this and it has brought her to rejection and exile which is a form of death.

Here at Elysian Fields Blanche hopes to start again.

beneath the oaks
we walk a bed of dead leaves
crushed fired glass

Photo autumn leaves on grass by pkirrage

Quotation & Comment

I'm starting a new project shortly.

The idea is to take a quotation from a work of literature which may include the Bible. It will probably be from a text I'm studying with my students or a text I've taught in the past. I might take quotations from the Conjured Sunlight blog. It will be a line or a phrase, perhaps even a word.

Then I'll comment on the quotation.

And I hope people that visit the blog will add a comment too. Either a response to the quotation or on my comment. Everyone is free to comment.

Anyway lets see how it rolls out.

Join in

David

dawn, looking west
trees in shadow
beyond a tower block rising gold

the river
smudged by mist and drizzle
dissolves into twilight

wet leaves, limp, black
glistening
a broken mirror

beneath the trees
a corrugated mat
of rusted leaves

Photo Autumn Forest Ground by elventear

Misty Morning

mist rising
along the water line
the river’s breath

Photo Misty Morning by RWM

Canada geese

Canada geese
the summer folded away
in their wings

Photo Canada Geese by Henry McLin

the dead slowly gather
in wind swept corners
and gutters

At Antwerp Station The Sound of Music

Here is a beautiful video Katy found on the web while she was researching a sermon. It is a gift.

David


How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria - Audition Task

Julio Diaz's Story

Katy came across this story while she was researching for a sermon. It seems to have caused quite a bit of discussion on the web.

Any way here is Julio Diaz telling his story.

David

Julio Diaz's story

Orion Rising

quietly
in the growing darkness
Orion rising

carried on the wind
dead leaves
in her greying hair

under the hazel
cobnuts are raining now

I'm putting
on the shoes I took off
in July

between grey depths
of sea and sky
a white sail rides the wind

all night
under a thin skin of canvas
the tail of a hurricane

Stormy Weather

a rough sea
breaks on the beach,
a thousand
knots unravelling
in my weary head

Photo Stormy Weather by Peter Adermark

Red Deer Summer Grasses

Red deer hidden
in the brown crust
of dry grasses


Patrolling Red Stag by bbodien

5 am

across the deer park
patches of mist -
the ghosts of dawn

THE BACK ROOM

The back room is always a mess. We do not visit it and are hardly aware of its existence. But it is there, each day more and more things are thrown in. It is a very crowded and cluttered room. We stumble through it blindly in our sleep, searching, full of yearning, reaching out. It is a room full of fear and desire.

By day we barely know that it even exists. But it does. We carry it around with us where ever we go. It secretly and invisibly dominates whatever we think, whatever we say, however we act. There is always the room, hidden from view, shameful, obscene. But it is ours. It is us.

So we live our lives in the front room. That is where we invite our guests, our friends our lovers. We keep it dusted and clean. Everything is neat and tidy. Everything is on show. This is the best of us. It’s comfortable, filled with things we like. It is like a mirror reflecting our heavily made up faces.

At the church, by the alter, on our wedding day when we say “All that I am I give to you” we are offering our partner not only the front room of ourselves but also that hidden and messy back room. And when we say “I do” we are accepting our partner’s back room. We are saying I accept you – even that part of you that I don’t know, accepting even the part of you that you don’t even know exists. And we accept that we will probably never know what is in that room.

Occasionally we may stand at the door and prize it open and let a little light in. We may stare into that gloom, with fierce and bitter tears streaming down our faces - but not for too long.

It is a massive act of faith, a leap in the dark, a step across an abyss.

Suburban Summer Nights 3 am

a flickering patchwork
of shadows -
moths around the street light

Suburban Summer Nights 2 am

still now -
rows of blank houses
and defiant foxes watching

Suburban Summer Nights 1 am

humid blue night -
close together watching
Play Misty For Me

while the midnight sky
tore itself apart
with lightning -
my barefoot chidren
danced in the puddles

Two Concerts in One Week

First I saw James Taylor at the NIA in Birmingham on Sunday 5 July with two colleagues – escaping from three days of IB training at the NEC, and secondly I saw Leonard Cohen at Brooklands Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge on Saturday 11 July with a friend.

After we had booked the concert for James Taylor I checked him out on youtube – just to get a sense of the man again. I watched him in his twenties clearly uncomfortable and uneasy in front of the camera. His long 1970’s hair was a kind of shield hiding him. But the simple guitar man played beautifully.

And so fast forward 30 years or so to a rainy July evening in Birmingham and the NIA.

It seemed that everything needed was here to make a good evening, a great band, a good singer songwriter with a solid American folk pedigree.

But the evening fell flat as the songs unfolded. I think this was due to a number of problems. Firstly the location, the NIA is a vast soulless place. It was built as a sports arena, I think and it lacked atmosphere and warmth. Secondly the set was a soup of unnecessary colour and light. There were at least four things going on behind the band at any one time.

We thought he was trying to satisfy the needs of the half a dozen audiences he was trying to attract – the traditional folkies, a country audience, a young audience – the children and grandchildren of those first hippy listeners, the oldies – the grown up hippies themselves and those easy listeners who had stumbled across his latest CD.

I’m easily pleased really. I’m a simple consumer.

But the final nail in the coffin of the evening was James Taylor himself. His script that bridged the different songs was slick and polished enough. The one liners were delivered in a quiet unassuming voice. But he lacked raw exciting energy, strutting uncomfortably across the stage. At times he looked like a parody of an aging rock star from the sixties. He was a man going through his well worn performance. He could have done the concert blindfolded - a rock concert by numbers. At times I thought he was boring himself.

Leonard Cohen was different. I spotted an advert for the concert in a discarded Metro on a train back from London. Walking home I popped in to see my friend – a Leonard Cohen fan since the 1960’s. We despaired at the ticket prices; we reassured ourselves that they had sold out. We parted resigned to the fact we wouldn’t be seeing him.

But there we were on Saturday night. Two middle aged men queuing up to watch a 74 year old man hold an audience in the palm of his hands. And he did it for over two hours, with a sublime ease, as if he had been born for the part.

I knew we’d made the right decision to come as the first notes reached us. For Cohen had brought together musicians that produce a rich, tight and accomplished sound. I love the way he has fused beautifully electric and acoustic instruments.

I felt at home here with people that swapped seats with us so that I could sit next to the aisle – more leg room. At home with people that talked easily about the last time they’d been to a Cohen concert, then mentioned Nick Cave and The Boatman’s Call.

And he played everything on our wish list. I wanted to hear The Partisan - it was the absolute highlight of the concert for me – Boogie Street – where Sharon Robinson, Cohen’s co writer, sang a solo and Famous Blue Raincoat – a stunning performance. Of course he did Halleluiah but he must be pretty pissed off with that song by now.

A week earlier we had sat in the soulless National Indoor Arena, sheltering from a rainy July evening, watching an accomplished James Taylor go through his paces. But unlike that concert a week later we were outside under a grey sky that eventually rained down on us. We were captivated, totally enchanted – lost in the labyrinth of his songs and the gracious spell that Leonard Cohen cast.

Deer Shadows

at midday the deer
cluster under the shadows
of ancient oaks


Photo by r0b1

Purple Clematis

purple clematis
so dark it swallows sunlight


in the shadows
something darker
purple clematis

Photograph Purple Clematis by KTDEE

Sunset

the river writes its name in gold

the bracken
fully grown
swallows sign posts, park benches, Fallow deer

open windows -
a siren divides the night

Deadly Nightshade

in the hard glare
of the sun -
Deadly Nightshade

Photo Deadly Nightshade by lovepics11

restless humid night
in the sunken garden
a sun dial

no relief -
the office fans turn
dry sterile air

Summer Kingston Market

this early
market morning
filled with light
and fountain spray


Photograph by Paul Easton

Vapour Trail

high above
a white and silent line -
draws across the sky


Photo Vapour Trail by ILMV

the fresh wind chases
hot stagnant air
through deserted corridors

today the restless air
disturbs the trees -
ripples of distant storms

the pond retreats
sculptured by hooves
dries to a crust of mud


Photo Dry Duck Pond by DoubleGrande

an idea from The Fire Sermon by T S Eliot

the summer
river at Richmond -
discarded
beer bottles paper plates
cigarette ends....


an idea from The Waste Land by T S Eliot

summer rain -
sudden sunlight
feeds a forest of ferns

Empty Classroom

June classroom
scattered chairs, empty desks
already forgotten


Photo A Place to Sleep by Hermin

Exam Hall

no revelation
in the hard shaft of light
that falls into
the darkened exam hall
where they sit writing


Exam Hall by non-partizan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/non-partizan/2806197476/

busy flies
at the closed windows -
a rattling restless knot

Twilight Woods

darkening woods
thickens in the undergrowth
dissolves to black




Photo A Way Through the Woods

midday sun -
island shadows retreat
into dark trees

peony -
marble of pink
explodes

Nightingale Bluebell wood

all night her call
echoes through the bluebell woods -
nightingale



Photo Bluebell Woods by clumsy and uncoordinated

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38327179@N07/3525125173/

Light on the Water

spring river
a thousand wings of light
flickering

Photo Light on the Water by spodzone

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spodzone/471616984/

Songs of Spring - The Isabella Plantation

songs of spring -
redstart and white throat
redpoll and
bullfinch, wood pecker,
sparrow hawk and pintail

The Still Pond Azaleas

this dawn morning
Azaleas spill
into the still pond


Photo Richmond Park by paulafunnell

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulafunnell/2695050677/

Richmond Park Azaleas

late May
radiant
Azaleas


Photo Richmond Park Azaleas by sibsson

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbisson/2479454566/

layers of grey
concrete and cloud
swallow me

Heather

sprays of heather
white waves
of clotted frost

Heather

beaded heather
flowers white and purple,
a thick tapestry

Photo Isabella Plantation by KitL Kat

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitlogan/2413370783/

this evening light
the kind, mild, smile
of the sun

after the rain -
slugs suckling in
musty darkness

On the way to Glasgow

under the great grey
weight of cloud
a ferocious green

Photo On the way to Glasgow by Angelrays

http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelrays/890739268/in/set-72157594346353713/

she buried
her wedding ring
before she left -
under the flowering
wisteria

Wisteria

flowering wisteria -
woven
into the warm sunlit wall

Photo Wisteria by Nick Atkins

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickatkins/468191744/

Wisteria

Oxford quad
woven into the walls
wisteria

Warm Tulips

chill spring evening
we warm ourselves
over red tulips

Tulips

red tulips, open mouthed
if you listen carefully
you can hear them sing

Tulips

red tulips, today
their mouths open wide
singing ‘alleluia’

April Richmond Park

ancient oaks
infant leaves
fathomless blue

Tulips

red tulips, church yard
their cupped petals closed together -
palms in fervent prayer

Photo One of our Backyard Tulips by hz56n

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hz536n/3385271871/

April Wedding

wedding party in the rain
her bare shoulders
his protecting arm
embraces rain drops and blossoms
Champagne and confetti

Gorse

on the dunes
flowering Gorse bushes
its petals
cold and yellow tongues
on a pike of thorns

Gorse

Gorse
cold yellow flames
smothered in a bed of thorns


Gorse –
sharp dark needles
pierce the air


Photo Gorse by JeanM1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanm1/3150337277/

April Light

...

from puddles
blinding splinters
of the sun

...

Photo Sun Reflection

by kumquatgirl

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kumquatgirl/4813799/

Three Spring Haikus

...

outside the church
strewn with blossom
confetti


...



a glut of blossom
carried on the chill wind
into the gutters

...




this early April
northern light
so strong and clear


Photo Cherry Blossom in the Gutter by iheartpanda

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Cherry+Blossom+in+the+Gutter&l=3

Night Blossom 2

the plum tree
haloed in moonlight
and blossom

Night Blossom 1

white blossom
in moonlight -
a shroud for the tree

Photo CherryBlossomFracturedMoon by Mark Strozier

http://www.flickr.com/photos/r80o/437682711/in/photostream/

Spring Sunrise

sunrise catches
the tips of trees and roof tops,
a kindling light

Dawn Leaves Lichen

dawn light
a dusting of leaves and lichen -
a radiant green

Spring Equinox

dead tree

a Woodpecker knocking

at the door



Photo Green Woodpecker by Julia_at_flickr's

http://www.flickr.com/photos/julia_at_flickr/2406618894/

Magnolia Spring

the cradled flames

of magnolia blossoms

sets the trees ablaze



Photo Spring in Kew by BerylM

http://www.flickr.com/photos/berylm/424714756/

Magnolia buds

Magnolia buds

cupped in green palms -

sheltered flames




Photo Magnolia Blossoms by jpmatth

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpmatth/2423927375/in/set-72157600135669434/

A New Leaf

on the dark branches

feathered leaves

unfold into blue




Photo A New Leaf by canonsnapper

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canonsnapper/2468122203/

Camellia Spring

suddenly
camellia blossom,
a light in the shadows

Photo Camellia Spring 2 by autan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/autanex/2336947957/

March Light

by mid day the sun
has cracked open the grey mantle of cloud
and floods our suburban chambers
with a hard molten light
disturbing our slumbering darkness

Pink Hyacinth

pink hyacinth, all frills
the scent, a sharp and stinging knot
at the back of the throat

Photo Pink Hyacinth by Paul C. Hankamer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nhankamer/3295369810/

Grey Sky

still no break
in the grey leaden tent of cloud
pegged to the horizon

Photograph Grey Sky by yuankuei
http://www.flickr.com/photos/please/5756350/in/photostream/

Crocuses

suddenly
a bed of crocuses
purple, like a bruise


Photo crocus on black by Swiv

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swiv/421250906/

Dehydration

“There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain…”

T S Eliot

Unexpectedly
a pressure in my head
that grows to a dull prolonged thud
that settles over my eyes
into a strong persistent drone.

Sometimes I’d wake suddenly
in the middle of the night
uncomfortably hot,
a gnawing anxiety
lying heavy on my stomach.
And the unread books
on our shelves accusing me.

I used to forget about water.

And sometimes now
I forget about silence.
My parched mind
in a desert of noise,
and crowded faces looming
out of the anvil glare of the sun.

Sometimes I yearn for disconnection.




© David Loffman

16 February 2009

Snow Melting

All across the Old Deer Park
in the grey dawn light
the scattered remains of snowmen
loom out of the frozen mist
like the ancient ruins
of a Megalithic temple.

Photograph Snow Melting by Michele Morgan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonclouds/3255524246/

Still snowing

through the night suburbs
we slept on a pillow of snow
that fell soft and delicate, down

Photo Still snowing by Goth Phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_p/3245948000
/in/photostream/

Lichen on bare branches

in dawn light

the lichens shine

from bare branches

Photo: trees in forest by simonsterg

At Rhos Goch Chapel

on the black mountain
outside the windswept chapel
the soft sound of sleet
and gravel falling
on the wooden lid

Fruit and Spices

cinnamon and cloves

hot and sweet oranges

still the smell lingers

Photo Mulled Wine by jsarcadia

Epiphany

Where have you come from?

How have you travelled?

And what gifts can you bring?

Photo coldpath by simonsterg

Winter tree

the thick veins of winter trees
black and knotted
crack the sky to pieces

Photo by Afraid of Ducks'

Winter Sun

Today the sun
is made of water
it rises faint and cold

Photo Foggy winter sunrise by sundornvic

Winter Sunlight

a pale sun rises
through winter's stained glass windows
into the vaulted sky


Photo dawn... by EnKay Tee

Black Lines

the lines of black bare branches,
scribbled across a grey
tent of cloud

Photo soul rising by Justin Gaurav Murgai

Bronzed Leaf Moonlight

bronzed leaf
swings on a still tree
silent chimes

Photo The Last Leaf by mholt

Bare Trees

today the horizons retreat into vague grey branches

Photo bare trees by anOnymOusmuse

Dead Leaves

suddenly a limp and shrivelled fist of leaves

Photo Dangle by Streetwise

Earlier

earlier

a thousand red tongues

squabbling in the wind

Photo Fallen Umber... by Trapac

Autumn Colours Again

a breeze stirs a furnace of trees
and deep embers glow

Photo Autumn Colours by flappingwings

Autumn Colours

A day so clear and sharp it could draw blood

Photo Autumn colours byflappingwings

Leaves in the Gutter

after the party
leaves like shrivelled balloons
discarded

Photo Leaves in the Gutter by Kylie Marie

Golden Leaves

gold spills from the fountainhead of deep autumn trees

Photo Golden Leaves by Mexicanwave

Yellow Tree

a fluorescent yellow balloon
tethered by the trunk
to the damp earth


Photo Yellow Tree by Scraggy & Fluffy

Yellow

yellow slips from the trees
spills onto pavements
seeps into drains

Photo Yellow Lines by M.G.W...

Leaves in Flight

leaves, like yellow kites
threaded on the wind
thrown into a clear blue sky

Photo Leaves in Flight by Benjamin Barnett

Sunlit Bracken

copper bracken
and burgundy shadows
in feathered light

Photo Sunlit Bracken by spodzone

Leaves along the pavement

dry leaves, scattered by the winds, trail sparks along the streets


Photo the leaf by dotpolka

Deer in the Mist

first light,
among ancient oaks and grey mist
a low hollow moan rises

Deer in the Mist by nickmilleruk

Blue Mist

in the still morning
a blue mist gathers
in the undisturbed hollows


Photo Blue Mist by Steve0323

One Line Road Mist

the road dissolves into dirty white

as the early morning unfolds

Photo Road intom mist by DavidInc

One Line Haiku Autumn in a Puddle

after the rain
all summer's colours run together
into the puddle

Photo autumn in a puddle by lo_sgabuzzino (del guercio)

One Line Haiku While Picking Blackberries

the warm autumn earth
reverberates with church bells
rippling over fields

Photo Harrow on the Hill by Kaustav Bhattachary

One Line Bronzed Tree

bronzed leaves slowly corroding in soft autumn light

Bronzed Tree Richmond Park by warren49

Dry Grasses Richmond Park

late summer grasses, bleached white and brittle, their dry seeds scatter

dry grasses 2

by warren49

One Line Late Summer Grasses

the heavy headed surf of white seeds in the late afternoon

waves of grass

by Trillian421979

A Way through the Wood 4

as the afternoon deepens, the arc lines of the coppiced trees, dissolve into enclosing shadows

A Walk through the Woods 4 by warren

One Line A Way through the Wood 3

along the path, the hush of soft moss and fallen leaves

A Way through the Wood8 by Warren

One Line A Way Through The Woods 2

inside, close and humid, a scattered mesh of trees and bracken

a way through the wood 4 by warren

A Way Through The Wood

In the greying light, among the bracken and the ash, there is a way through the wood

A Way through the Wood 2 by warren49

One Line Haiku Storm Clouds

grey smoldering sky
binding summer in chains
a restless confinement

storm clouds by dreambird

One Line At Still Pond

at the still pond even my watch stopped

still pond 1 by warren

One Line At Still Pond

soft morning light falls on to the still pond

still pond by warren

One Line August grasses, trees and sky

the wind's strong currents, scatters clouds, tears at grass and bracken


pastoral perfect by kandyjaxx

One Line White Grasses

like a spring, a crop of wild and white grasses, spray and score the summer air

white fountain grass

by warren

One Line Ivy Collage

on the garden fence, a green collage, like the still and sleeping scales of reptile

Ivy collage

by warren

One Line Green Ferns

the bracken full grown, stands shoulder high, buries sign posts, park benches and Red deer.

Green Ferns by barnp

One Line Summer Grass

the summer grasses brown to a crust, flecked with amber, flash of red

kansus long-grassed prairie

by rita be

One Line Bracken

A layered maze of radiant green

Bracken

by Kwozie

One Line Bracken

wild green light arcs, rises into shadow and light

Bracken

by treescaper

One Line Street lights

the banished darkness hovers above the wide white beam of street lamps

street by Sicko Thelford

One Line June Tree

June, a thick voluptuous green

tree by squeegeed

One Line June Trees

the trees heavy headed, the air drenched in fierce green light

tree by Squeegeed

View of the Road

This is the first full poem I've written since October 2007. It has been rushed and will be edited a little over the next couple of weeks. Hope you like it P?

View of the Road

I miss the nights we lay awake
perched on our elbows
reading the sleeping street
from behind the open blinds,
the black bars of our bedstead
and our heavy headed sleepiness.
Our view obscured by the darkness
And the birch tree
that rung out with a thousand silver tongues
like a distant ocean.

On sleepless nights
when the spell of Faure’s “Pie Jesu” had broken
I’d watch for occasional movement
sculptured out of dark incubating shadows.
A fox rummaging in bins,
a cat’s majestic prowl,
a police car’s purr.

Some nights we’d wake together
to the sudden slam of a car door,
an unexpected cough,
or the wind wrestling the silver birch.
And I’d wake to see our rain sequined window.

And I remember lying on our backs
on lazy Sunday mornings,
watching the shadows of leaves,
and sunlight reflected off car windscreens
through the open blinds and dappled light
throwing pretties onto the bedroom ceiling.

But now the contours of this new road are different.
Instead of the silver birch
an open and exposed view of the road
and a disused telephone pole.
Only its bare wires to hold the weight
of the neighbourhood pigeons,
gold finches and long tail tits.

I watch them from the upstairs window
where I have only a muffled sense of the street below.


© David Loffman

5 June 2008

One Line Telephone Pole

wood and wires, disused, suburban furniture

Telephone Pole by drigllybean

One Line Spring Trees

spring trees, a rich and blooming radiant green


spring trees by whimsical Chris

One Line Ferns Unfolding

suddenly the ferns appear, thin green stems spearheaded out of the cradle of a dead brown bed of stalks

Photo fiddleheads

by ellenmac 11

One Line Spring Fern

a thin green tongue of fern unfolds itself, tastes new spring light


unfolding by sbisson

One Line Night Forest

Early May morning, before dawn, in the dark woods, the gathering call of birds.


Night Tree by Chris Tengi

One Line Spring and Winter entwined

The last of the winter trees, smudged, pencil grey, stalks the shadows

Spring's coming

by starrynight1

One Line Winter Trees in Spring

The last of the winter trees, smudged, pencil grey, stalk the shadows

The old and the new
by foxypar4

One Line Spring Tree

each day the leaves, at first a vague green dusting, then clean green buds, emerge, strong and insistent into the clear spring air

Photograph Leafy Tree

by shadowfall

One Line Spring Trees

Spring unwraps its new green gifts in the opening palms of the trees

Why Trees Grow Tall

by simonsterg

Spring Sky through Bare Branches

April’s low strong sun hurts, and the air, a sharp and cleansing cold, scours the park from the east.

Spring Sky through bare branches

by sbisson

Spring Prosperous

clotted blossom pierces the bitter air, sharp with the sting of hyacinth

Prosperous Spring

by xiaotmjm

One Line Snow Blossom

on the branches, delicate blossom and fragile snow

Snow Blossom

by webgirlpip

One Line Sunlight Reflection

jagged pieces of winter sun, slashes out of muddy puddles, sears our eyes

Sun Reflection

by kumquatgirl

One Line Richmond Park, Storm Coming

Thickening waves of cloud, carries the grey weight of rain.

Photo Richmond Park, London #8
by Flickering Image

One Line Lichen and Winter Trees 2

Lichen coats the open arms of winter trees, sky rooted

Photo Winter Tree by Eskimimi

Sermon 17 March 9.30 Service

This was the fourth sermon delivered to Christ Church, New Malden, by me. It was, without doubt, the hardest sermon I've prepared so far. It was a real challenge. The 9.30 service uses slides. And the congregation are relatively new Christians, or Christians with young famalies, or people thinking about becoming a Christian. It took a long time to prepare.

Jesus Never Said Religion and Politics Don’t Mix

Good morning.

This is the third sermon in a series of sermons titled Things Jesus Never Said. One saying that is often quoted is Religion and Politics don’t mix. And that’s the title of this sermon.

Today is Palm Sunday when we remember and celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. All the crowds came out, they lined the streets. They shouted praise and welcome. The air was charged with excitement and expectation. Was this the messiah, the man to liberate Israel from Roman rule? “Hosanna to the son of David” they shouted. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” It must have felt like a political rally.

Jesus’ reputation had preceded him, “the prophet of Nazareth”, the teacher, the man that healed. The man that could bring the dead to life.

But as Jesus comes to Jerusalem he all too quickly collides with the religious, Jewish and Roman authorities. Suddenly within just a few days of Jesus’ arrival his teaching and healing ministry come to an abrupt and brutal end with his Crucifixion.

[Slide Burma 2 Monk]
In Burma in 2007 a small string of protests began against the sudden price rises of petrol and the decline in living standards of people who are among some of the poorest in the world. Surprisingly the protests were started by Buddhist monks. They usually live at a distance from the ordinary citizens of Burma. Thousands of them left their monasteries to march through the streets.

[ Slide 3 Burma Monks on march]

As a result Burma’s military regime attacked the monks. Within days they were scattered. Monasteries were ransacked. And many protestors were killed or arrested as we all saw on our television screens.

Religion can be a dangerous business. Perhaps it would have been better if the monks just kept their heads down. Didn’t make too much fuss. Perhaps that’s what Jesus should have done too. Perhaps religion and politics just don’tmix.

So what place does religion have in politics? What place should we as Christians have in the political situations around us? What do we do? It’s with questions like these you just know you’ve got to turn to the Bible.

The passage that thingy read is one of the most well known passages thought to show Jesus’ view on politics. Some people think that Jesus was saying that religion and politics don’t mix.

So one day The Pharisees and the Herodians try and trap Jesus.

But Jesus knows this is a set up. He is in a tight spot. Herodians stood to on one side of him and Pharisees on the other. These were two Jewish groups strongly against one another. The Herodians were supporters of Herod, Caesar’s puppet king of Israel. Although Herod and his supporters were Jewish, their allegiance was to Caesar, and the Roman Empire.

The Pharisees were the religious rulers of the Jews that adhered closely to the commandments in the law of Moses. They were a deeply nationalistic and religious group. They did not recognize the authority of Rome. They despised paying taxes to the self proclaimed ‘deified’ Caesar. They wanted the Romans out.

And so here are the two groups working together for one purpose to bring Jesus down. Because he was a threat to both their authorities.

First they flatter him and then they ask “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” This is a trick question. If he answered pay the taxes he would have undermined the Jewish book of the Law in favour of Roman laws and Gods. And angered the Pharisees. If he answered don’t pay taxes to Caesar then he was liable to be arrested for subverting Roman rule. Jesus answers by calling for a coin. He asks whose head is inscribed on it and then proclaims.
[Slide 5 Reading]"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

If he answered yes or no it would have revealed where he thought true sovereignty lay. Either it lay with Caesar or with God. Either answer would have got him arrested by one party or the other.

People think that Jesus was saying here that spiritual matters should be left to God and that earthly matters should be left to kings and emperors.

But I don’t think that is what Jesus was really saying.

Jesus says whatever bears the seal; the likeness of Caesar belongs to Caesar. So what is Caesar’s exactly? And what belongs to God exactly? Well apparently a small circular piece of metal about the size of a two pence coin belongs to Caesar. The Pharisees would have been really amazed at Jesus’ answer. For they knew, as Jesus knew that

”God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”.

Jesus is saying that we bear the stamp and seal of our Creator. Our God’s seal is upon us. Not Caesars.

And the Pharisees also knew as Jesus knew that

“The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;”

and that includes its money and politics.

For there are no no go areas of human life that are separate from God.

[Slide 8 Tutu Quote]The former Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu said

“If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics, then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God’s will does not run. If it is not God’s, then whose is it?”

[Slide 9 Hitler, Stalin] According to some estimates these two men were responsible for the slaughter of 100 million people.

It is inconceivable that Jesus would see the two separated like this. Even the history of Israel is a history based on a ruler that combined both religious and political realms starting with Moses.

So what would it mean for us if Jesus had said that politics and religion don’t mix? Imagine for a moment that Christians like William Wilberforce [Slide 10 Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce] had not helped to abolish slavery. Or that The Rev Martin Luther King hadn’t actively campaigned against racial segregation in America.

Instead imagine if Christians looked on at these great injustices and did nothing while it was left to others to do the work of justice and mercy. Surely the best way to be a Christian in the world is to be active in changing the world for good.

As the Irish Political Philosopher and Politician Edmund Burke said

[Slide 11 Edmund Burke Quote] “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

So what about today? What about our own society? And the world around us? Imagine a Christian silence as the nation debates [Slide 12 Slogans] [Gay Rights, Abortion, poverty, crime, the environment, terrorism, the middle east, third world debt, the spread of HIV/AIDS.]

At its best a strong and prayerful Christian voice can change the world for good. But often public Christian voices are ridiculed in the press [Slide 13 Headlines] when they speak making them sound awkward and embarrassing. They are told to mind their own business and stop meddling.

[Slide 14 Archbishop of Canterbury]

But the truth of what they say can frighten politicians, anger multinational corporations, and challenge governments and the law. A Christian voice can be a voice that no one with power really wants to hear.

Helder Camara used to be an Archbishop in Brazil. He put his finger on this when he said this.

[Slide 15 Quote] “When I feed the hungry they call me a saint. When I ask why the hungry have no food, they call me a communist.”

Helder Camara was criticised by a corrupt Brazilian government because he challenged their policies that reduced most of the population to extreme poverty while a small minority lived like kings.

Like Arch Bishop Helder Camara we should challenge causes of poverty and injustice.

Last year about 40 people in Christ Church did a course here. It was run by members of Tear Fund and they shared with us the Micah Challenge. The challenge is to put into action the famous verse in Micah where it says

[Slide 16 Reading] “And what does the LORD require of you? To do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

The course leaders helped us think of ways of putting that key verse into practical action. They showed us how we could help the poor here in New Malden. And discussed fair trade and third world debt. We talked about ways we could campaign to bring change about.

When I first got married I saw this in action in a very powerful way. I did a series of part time jobs. One of them was for a Christian charity. Every part of the charity was involved important current social and political issues. I didn’t always agree with their campaigns but what really impressed me was their commitment and determination to social and political change.

When I was working there the law on abortion was being amended. On one level they were lobbying members of parliament on the issue of abortion. But at the same time they were providing real, practical help and support for hundreds of young and vulnerable pregnant women.

[Slide 17 Iona Abbey] I was looking for retreat when I first visited the Iona Christian Community. It’s on the remote island of Iona, which is an hour on the ferry from mainland Scotland. I expected a place of quiet reflection and meditation away from all the stresses and tensions of London.

I remember visiting the Community bookshop in the ancient Abbey expecting books on prayer and Christian meditation.

Instead I found political books from a Christian perspective on subjects such as nuclear disarmament, the environment and the role of women in society.

There I was looking for spiritual retreat right on the edge of our British Isles. But out there I found a clear and confident Christian political voice. That was completely plugged into the contemporary issues of the day.

[Slide 18 Iona Cross] Let us…I must learn that lesson for myself. Politics whether it be party political, campaigning on domestic or international issues is a God given requirement. But it is difficult to think of politics as a valuable and God given pursuit today. Politics has a dirty reputation. The papers are full of political scandals and corruptions. But we must not let that put us off.

On the Micah course we learned that to do justice is to be political because justice arises out of the law. To love mercy is to show compassion for our neighbours. And to walk humbly with God is live lives filled with praise and worship. It shows that politics love and religion are inseparable. And the Lord requires that we do all three. So when Jesus says give to Caesar what is Caesars and give to God what is God’s he is showing that we have political responsibilities as well as spiritual responsibilities. Because everything is stamped with God’s image.[End Slide]

Floating Felts The Forest

Here is a Floating Felt by my friend Mary-Clare Buckle, an artist living and working in Dorset.

When we visited Mary-Clare's gallery and studio recently we were overwhelmed by some of the pieces.

I love the way she fills her surfaces with stong and vibrant colours. I love the rich and sensuous textures and depth of her work. I love the intricate patterning and the strong contrasts of colours and shapes.

A Floating Felt is a fine, translucent, abstract fibre art picture, using wool and other fibres – framed by mounting between sheets of clear acrylic, giving a feeling of the piece floating in three dimensions.

I've added a link to Mary-Clare's website on the title of this blog and on the Felt.

The Forest by Mary-Clare Buckle

One Line Rubbish Caught in Trees

torn rags of plastic hang like discarded flags on bare black branches

Photo by Tina 1960

One Line Lichen and Winter Trees

The sun peels away from the horizon, to illuminate green lichen on dark winter trees, a luminescence

Photo Trees in Forest

by simonsterg

One Line

Circular frames of bare iron, skeletal against the grey winter sky

Photo Gas Works 3# by mr_phillip

One Line

Chesil Beach stretches out into mist, a long scythe into the sea

Photo by Flash of Light

One Line Richmond Park, dawn, frost and mist

In the hollows, where frost and mist is thickest, the dregs of night

Photo by David Chare titled Richmond Park February 2008

One Line

Beyond the dark veins of winter tress, a grey dissolve, the muffled lantern sun, rises

Photo Foggy winter sunrise

by sundornvic

One Line

Clear twilight sky, where beads of light, soar low and long above the river's line

Photographed by Vector1771

Uncle Vanya at The Rose Theatre, Kingston

We went to the new Rose Theatre in Kingston this evening to see Chekhov's Uncle Vanya - the first production in the new theatre.

It was the usual ingredients of declining Russian middle class, haunted by the meaninglessness of life, filled with unfulfilled longing.

Suffused with a hint of peasant, an alcoholic stupor and a rant about the decline of the Russian forest.

Laced with tragic foreboding and dark ironic humour.

All done very well. Peter Hall directed an impressive cast.

Sermon Sunday 20 January 2008 8.0 Holy Communion

SERMON 20 JANUARY 8.00 COMMUNION 10 MINUTES

This is the third sermon I've been invited to give at Christ Church. The service is a 8 O'clock Holy Communion service. It uses the book of Common Prayer 1662. I love the service. It has no songs or hymns. Just the liturgy, the readings, sermon and communion. There are usually no more than 25 people present and this gives an intimate and reflective atmosphere.

It takes me a long time to put together a sermon. I start preparing for it when I get given the date and the reading - about 6-8 weeks before the service. And I try and spend some time every day working on it from then on. In the last 3-4 weeks I try and spend an hour a day on it.

Hope you enjoy it.

Love David

Reading Matthew 20:1-16

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard.

2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

4 He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.'

5 So they went.

"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing.

6 About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

7" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

8 "When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'


9 "The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius.
10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius.

11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.

12'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

13 "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius?

14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you.

15 Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

16"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

SERMON

Jesus came to turn things upside down. And our reading ends with Jesus’ saying “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The beginning of this chapter in Matthew is partly an illustration of this saying.

At the beginning of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre’s parents die and she is adopted by an aunt who mistreats her. The aunt spoils her own privileged children and sends Jane to a school for orphans, eventually she becomes a servant in a great house.

Yet at the end of the novel we find those that had treated her badly, despised her, abused her and rejected her have either died or their lives had been ruined. And Jane herself becomes the wife of the wealthy man she has loved for years.

For Jane Eyre “the first became the last and the last became the first.”

In the parable of the workers in the vineyard Jesus gives us a picture of what the kingdom of heaven will be like. He tells us of a vineyard owner going out into the market place and inviting men to work in his vineyard. Throughout the day he goes out to hire more and more people. And to each one he promises to pay them ‘what is right’.

At the end of the working day starting with those that have worked the least he pays them one denarius – a generous day’s wages for this unskilled work.

But those who had worked all day complained that it wasn’t fair. They had worked all day under the blazing sun not just one hour in the cool of the day!! But the vineyard owner protests, if he wants to be generous what is it to you what he does with his money?

It is in this openness, this outpouring of care and full hearted generosity that Jesus offers his disciples and us a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.

You see behind the scenes the disciples have been arguing among themselves. Two chapters earlier in chapter 18 the disciples ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And Jesus gives an astounding reply. “Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And later James and John’s mother asks Jesus “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”

The disciples like the complaining vineyard workers expect honour, status and reward. They are measuring their work according to the values of men. But Jesus calls his disciples to be different. This call to be different is a key theme that runs throughout Matthew’s gospel. And I think this parable is an illustration to the disciples, showing them in what ways they are to behave and think differently in the world.

Because Jesus is not interested in status or hierarchy, he rejects this worldly way of looking at people. In fact he tells his disciples that far from expecting honour, they should seek to serve people. Later on in the chapter Jesus even says to his disciples that the greatest among you should serve you, the first among you should be your slave. He tells them that he has come to serve them, even to give up his life for them.

Jesus had come to turn the world upside down. This was a hard message for his disciples to grasp. And it is a message that we struggle with still, today.

He has no concern for earthly judgments or an earthly perspective. The complaints of the vineyard workers reveal their bitterness, their self importance and their jealousy and small mindedness. Jesus instead elevates those in society that are forgotten, the ignored, the unimportant and the unemployed. He is concerned with the ones left out, those hanging around the market place – a Judean job centre - with nothing to do and nowhere to go. In this parable he echoes The Beatitudes, encouraging his disciples to look with God’s eyes at our world and not with the eyes of the Romans or the Pharisees.

And this is still a challenge for all of us today, for me today. For who do you think you are in this parable? I know who I am. I am one of the vineyard workers whose been working all day. And sometimes I look at the world around me, and I am filled often with jealousy or bitterness.

In this parable Jesus offers me a way of tackling those human feelings. Firstly helps me to recognize when I get angry or bitter or jealous. Naming how I feel helps me to distance myself from these emotions and to realize that I have a choice. I can chose to continue feeling these negative thoughts, or I can chose to see things in a more positive and loving way. And be generous as the owner of the vineyard.

It was a radical teaching for his disciples, what did they make of it? Peter asks Jesus, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us." Jesus was in the process of tearing down the very foundations on which the disciples had built their lives. And that work still needs to be done today. Especially as we come to this table this morning.

Jesus throughout this gospel again and again with love and a great deal of patience tries to show his disciples and us what he means.

One thing I think he means, is that all human merit shrivels before God’s burning self giving love. It is the vineyard owner’s open generosity of spirit and his concern for those that were in most need that were important to him.

Another episode that illustrates God’s priorities comes when Jesus is being crucified. A criminal being crucified beside him recognizes Jesus’ innocence and his divinity. That recognition alone draws Jesus’ immediate assurance of salvation. "I tell you the truth", he says to the man, "today you will be with me in paradise.”

If anyone was less deserving of God’s love it was that criminal. He had committed a capital crime; a court of law had condemned him. This was Justice.

And yet Jesus accepts him with open arms.

Therefore it is God’s gift of love alone that enables us to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

I remember once when I was a teenager being asked to help out at a Christmas lunch in an old people’s home run by nuns. I thought I’d arrived in good time to do work. But when I arrived most of it had already been done. There was not much more that needed doing. So I just sat and chatted with the people in the home for awhile until their Christmas dinner was ready.

I remember going into the kitchen to help serve the food. But instead one of the nuns ushered me out of the kitchen and told me to sit down at one of the tables. So I found an empty seat and began chatting again to the people around me. And then a huge plate food was put in front of me. That was a great Christmas lunch. I didn’t deserve that lunch. Looking back I probably arrived too late to be of any help. But that did not seem to matter to the nuns. I just remember their wide open smiles of acceptance.

And may we turn again today from our worldly view of the world and open up our hearts and minds with a renewed, open, self giving love full of acceptance, as we have been accepted.

One Line

Twilight city, a translucent amber glow, pulsating, haloed blue.

Photo by Kayode Okeyode

One Line

The river writes its name, dipped in ink blue sky.

Photo by six-austins

One Line

Cobalt blue sky seeps through the grey weight of cloud.

Boxing Day 2007

We came to Richmond Park to get some fresh air. As always a dead tree becomes a seat for me and a playground for the children.

Everyone seems to be doing and looking at different things.

It was an uncomfortable walk for me but it was great to get outside. And unlike most London Parks on Boxing Day this one was deserted.

Reading Treasure at The Troubadour

I'm reading this revised poem at The Troubadour on Monday 17 December. The theme of the evening is beaches. I originally wrote the poem in 2006 during our family holiday to the Isle of Mull. It was a very difficult holiday as you can see from the photograph.

We camped on the west of Mull on open and esposed beaches at Fiddon and on this Loch at Killechronin. I moved the car to try and shelter the tent. But it was useless.

Treasure

Drive them to a mountain stream.
Bring them to a rocky beach.

Give them thirteen hours in the back seat of the car
with a book, a pillow and a toy monkey.

Watch the wind splinter the spokes of our tent
Splayed out and flattened against the wind bitten grass.

Make them sleep in the tent
with three inches of rain water at the bottom.

Tell them it will be better tomorrow.

Make them set up camp three times in four days
on abandoned, wild, wind swept beaches.

Bring them biscuits for breakfast,
hot chocolate for lunch and chips for dinner.

Leave them on a deserted rain-drenched beach
for two hours until their hands turn blue.

Tell them this is a holiday.

Show them an eagle,
a shipwreck and a standing stone.

Don’t let them see you cry.

Let them drink mountain water
from Sphagnum Moss.

Show them a rainbow
stretched over the island.

And watch a golden light
shine from their wet and wind weary faces.

© David Loffman

from the Poetry Challenge Nighthawkes II

Jeff and I met to discuss the final Round of the Poetry Challenge. We agreed that two poems from this round would be in the final. We will have 8 poems in the final for this challenge. Nighthawkes II was written in an hour this morning. Although it was based on lines I'd discarded when I wrote the first Nighthawkes poem that won the first round. This poem and one of Jeff's will go forward into the final.

Nighthawkes

II

The empty line of the street ends here.

A glass cage café
Open onto this deserted corner.

Shrouded in blank shop facades
That dissolves in shadows.

Inside, the hard light
A shining chrome urn
Splinters the bare white walls.

Along the smooth curves of the counter
His hard hunched shoulders
Her heavy dark eyes lowered

Nameless in grey suits
and the grey blades of their trilby’s.

Predators
Among the café’s paraphernalia
And their self enclosing arms.



© David Loffman



17 November 2007

Handling Prayer

My second sermon at Christ Church New Malden.

Hope you like it.

D

SERMON 11 NOVEMBER 2007 6.30

MATTHEW 7:7 – 12

Heavenly Father please take these words of mine and these words of yours and breathe your holy spirit upon them. Give them life to our lives and glory to you. In Jesus name

I don’t know very much about prayer. And it feels quite strange standing up here this evening in front of so many prayerful people. But what I do know I’ll share with you. I’ll share with you what I’ve learnt from the bible and from my own experiences.

A friend of mine told me the other day that Prayer is like a balloon. We fill it up with all our worries and concerns. And then we must let it go. Release it, trusting that it will reach its destination. Believe that it will come to rest in the hands of our heavenly father. We may not like the answers he gives us. They may seem hard to understand. I have made many prayers and I have often been left feeling lost and confused.

The passage we are going to look at this evening comes from The Sermon on the Mount. And perhaps the most important message for us in that sermon is that we must live lives that are different from the people around us. Jesus tells his disciples and listeners to be different from the Jews, the Romans and the Pagans around them. Every part of our lives should be different. The way we treat people and the way we talk to God should also be different.

In this passage Jesus returns to the subject of prayer. His first mention of prayer in the sermon can be found in chapter 6. In that chapter Jesus teaches his disciples to be different from the Pharisees and their hypocrisy. He calls them to be different from the empty and meaningless utterances of the Gentile’s. Jesus also gives a model or a template to his disciples for prayer in the words of The Lords’ Prayer.

In Matthew 7which Katy read to us. Jesus makes us a pretty bold promise.
He says that everyone who asks God will receive what they have asked for. [Pause / Repeat]

Jesus is concerning himself here with general prayers such as requests and prayers for help for ourselves and for others. But he urges us to keep on persisting in prayer. He illustrates his promise by comparing earthly parents to a perfect God.

He ends this part of his sermon on prayer with what has become known as The Golden Rule. This is to treat people the way we would like to be treated ourselves. In doing this Jesus says we are summing up the law and the teaching of the Prophets.

Verse 7 is the key verse in this passage on prayer.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

This simple, direct and bold promise contains some important assumptions. And it is some of these that we are going consider this evening.

The principle assumption in the passage is Faith. The confident hope that our prayers and our requests will be heard. Faith is the key that unlocks this promise. Matthew says later in his gospel “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." When we pray we must pray with confidence and trust that God will hear our prayers.

This summer we went on holiday to France to visit friends. The children’s passports were out of date and I needed them renewed pretty quickly. I was full of agitation. There I was at the Post Office with three weeks to go. I paid for the check and send service and watched the cashier carefully checking each part of the application, measuring the photographs, checking signatures and declarations. Basically I did not trust the process despite his reassuring smile and beaurocratic thoroughness. Eventually the passports arrived and I could breathe easily again and sleep without waking with fear at the bottom of my stomach.

This is not how God wants us to pray. He wants us, urges us, and invites us to pray simply without fuss for what we want. And then to leave it to him. Once we have prayed we should be confident that we will be heard. We must let go of the burden of our needs. Let the balloon go.

And the reason we can have this faith is that the God we pray to is good. The God we pray to loves us perfectly. He wants to give us good gifts. It says in Psalm 103 “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.” But God is not like a father. He is a father. He is our spiritual Father, our heavenly Father. Jesus says earlier on in the sermon “…your Father in heaven is perfect.” Think of your own father or your own children. A perfect Father doesn’t knowingly hurt his children or aim to destroy them. A perfect Father loves his children. He knows what they need most. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He wants to feed and nurture us. He wants to see us grow and mature into full people. .

Some years back I offered to drive a friend to Paris to pick up his belongings and drive him back to London over a weekend. We hired the van, checked our passports and booked our place on the ferry. I wasn’t really looking forward to this non stop, overnight trip. In passing I mentioned the trip to my father in law, who without any hesitation offered to come with me and be my co driver. Actually he didn’t have a valid passport. So when he got to London he spent a frustrating, expensive and tedious couple of days applying and waiting for his passport. Eventually he got it but in the rush he somehow lost his precious Malaya Birth Certificate. But he just let that go.

My father in law saw what I needed. I did not even need to ask. And his giving involved some personal loss and sacrifice. I think God our Father’s love is something like this. And because God is like this we can trust him.

Some translations of verse 7 and eight show that another key assumption in this verse is that we should be persistent in prayer. They use the words “Keep on asking, keep on seeking and keep on knocking.

This principle of persistent prayer is echoed and expanded in Paul’s 1st letter to the Thessalonians. It says "pray without ceasing" . Paul’s instruction to us is to pray not only persistently but also continuously.

Some years ago I came across The Jesus Prayer.

It goes like this

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

For hundreds of years it has become fundamental part of the personal devotion of millions of Christians across the world. It is a prayer that is repeated constantly, sometimes as a meditation, and sometimes it is used by people as a pattern of thought that underpins every moment of their waking life. It is sometimes called the Prayer of the Heart because the prayer becomes as natural and as instinctive as our heart beating.

The first year I started teaching I don’t remember sleeping. I was so busy marking, preparing lessons but mostly worrying. There was one class that were a nightmare for me. I dreaded teaching them. I almost became sick thinking about them and went into each class terrified and shaking with fear. For weeks this went on. It got worse and worse. Until I thought I just could not carry on any more.

Then two things happened at the same time. Firstly I came across The Jesus Prayer and I started to repeat it to myself every morning for the whole journey to college that took about half an hour. I repeated it to myself breathing in with “Lord Jesus Christ”, then breathed out, “son of God”, followed by breathing in, “have mercy upon me”, and finally breathing out, “a sinner”.

Another kind of prayer that I used at that time that usually happened in the middle of the night when words seem so hard to dredge up out of the darkness. I began to imagine Jesus walking with me along the corridor to the classroom. I imagined him opening the door to that crowded room full of bored and insolent faces all staring at me. I imagined Jesus taking me by the hand leading me into the room. I imagined their complaints and moaning. And I imagined Jesus walking invisibly into that room and standing beside me. His eyes never leaving me, And he smiled, calmly as I began to teach.

It was the simplicity of the Jesus prayer that helped me to pray it constantly. And because I used it with my breathing I felt calmer and more relaxed. It was the picture prayer that helped give me strength confidence and authority to handle the class and to carry on every week.

This was my four O’clock in the morning prayer. And each time I prayed it I was able to sleep. Each time I prayed it the dread of that classroom shrunk.

Another key feature in handling prayer is humility. Humility is knowing our true relationship to God. And in verse 11 Jesus establishes the nature of that relationship. He says “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

To address God the creator, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as father, would have been shocking to Jesus’ listeners. But with that one word - Father - Jesus introduces his disciples to a new way of perceiving God. And in doing this Jesus establishes a new relationship with God. It is no longer the remote, elaborate and public displays and rituals of prayer that are emphasised but rather the personal, private and intimate relationship between a parent and a child.

We are not insignificant to God. We are his children and we should approach him as a child calls to a father, full of hope and expectations that something good will happen.

Sometimes we feel our prayers have not been answered. Sometimes we feel we have been punished not blessed. So how can this be when Jesus has already said that whoever asks receives? To answer that I think it is helpful to consider that God knows us better than we know ourselves. Psalm 139 begins “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.” and later in the psalm it says “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.” Sometimes we ask for things we think we need. Search for things that are harmful to us, knock at a door that can lead us to destruction. And so we are left empty, alone, with unfulfilled hopes and desires because we cannot see what God sees in us and for us. Our wills are different from his perfect will. But I do believe that our persistent and continuous prayer can connect our will to God’s will for our lives. Drawing closer to him; align our own desires with his.

This is a hard lesson and in preparing this sermon I have had to confront this difficult truth for my life.

Jesus didn’t need a big screen to get his message across on that mountain side. What he did have were words. But it is as if he had made a fire work display of his message. He must have dazzled his hearers. Shocked and disturbed them with awe and wonder. He used words so powerfully that they were imprinted on his listeners and have been passed down to us.

It was so important for Jesus to get these truths across to people. So to make a lasting impact he uses oratory techniques that are still used today by speech makers.

Firstly he uses the vivid metaphor of knocking at a door. Secondly he gives a list of three imperative verbs – ask seek knock. This repetition is emphasised by the strong rhythm of the verse. All of these techniques are an aid to memory. He uses a combination of story telling with powerful contrasts. He compares sinful people to the perfect God.

Jesus speaks in such a way because his message is so important. He wants to be as direct and simple and clear as possible.

Keep on asking and you will receive.

Finally in preparing this sermon I came across one of my favourite poems. George Herbert a poet and priest in the seventeenth century wrote that prayer is “the soul’s blood.”

So let our prayers and our lives be filled with faithful, continual and humble prayer because it is as George Herbert says the life blood of our soul.

Amen.

One Line

Old autumn plane tree in the courtyard, stands in its own amber and saffron reflection.

10 November 2007

One Line

Autumn trees, a second bloom - fired - till the crisp petals fall, crushed beneath our feet.

Nasrudin and the Perfect Note

I was thinking of a one line project and I remembered this Nasrudin story.

Nasrudin is determined to learn the violin. He borrows one. Locks himself in a room and plays. After an hour or so he comes out, proclaims to his wife he can play, orders her to invite friends, neighbours and family to a feast. “After we eat I’ll play for them” Nasrudin says. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve only played for an hour in a locked room – it takes years to learn how to play the violin.” But he insists.

When the guests finished eating Nasrudin picked up the violin and began to play one long, continuous note. This went on for a few minutes, the guests began to make polite smiles, after ten minutes or so they were restless in their seats and after twenty minutes they looked at the door. After half an hour everyone had left – and Nasrudin stopped playing. His wife looked angry and so ashamed. “I have never been so humiliated, so embarrassed, in front of all our friends and family”….she was speechless. To play a violin you need pitch, intonation, pace, pauses, different notes”. “No, no no wife. All those musician’s are looking for the one perfect note, and tonight everyone heard it.” Said Nasrudin.

I told the story to a colleague of mine and he replied with this story.

Apparently James Joyce was sitting over his writing for the day. He was weeping. A friend came by and asked him what the matter was. Joyce replied that he had only written nine words the whole day. The friend consoled him saying that he would probably write more tomorrow and at least you have written something.

Joyce looked up and said something like I don't mind that its only nine words. The trouble is they are all in the wrong order.










Watch this space!



D

One Line

I'm thinking of a new project for this blog.

What do you think of the idea of writing one line each day or each week? I think it should be each day, actually. Just a single line. I'll let you know.

Love

David

From The Poetry Challenge

We are in the last round of the poetry challenge. Over the year Jeff and me have posted 49 poems each to the challenge blog. Officially I think there is just one more poem to post each and that will complete the challenge.

However we have created a number of poems still in draft and we shall continue to post these to the challenge blog for a few months still to come.

Some of those will end up on this blog I expect.

Love

David

Fire Light

Through the long dark years
The victors crouch over smouldering embers
While the vast and silent shadow places,
Spread to envelop them all.
Slowly they are lulled by the fire’s warmth,
The taste of victory thick in their mouths.

While the defeated ones
Scattered to cold, distant corners,
Sit hungry huddled together for warmth,
Drag yesterday’s ashes over themselves,
Their weary limbs search
For the last traces of heat
Hunched shivering in shadows.

Thin uneasy sleep invades the watchers.
The faded embers splutter, crack
Plummet distant rock walls
Stirs vague incoherent dreams
Of the dredged and dreaded, black leafed forest.

And the fire light flickers on
Bright incandescent filaments dance
Always shifting in the stale breeze
That drifts through the stone chambers
Deep down at the fire’s roots.

It is there in the fire’s deep
With fear stalking the darkness
Our waking dreams were born.


© David Loffman



07 October 2007

Pale Blue Dot (Revised Again)

Some more changes to the poem. Hope you still like it.

D

Pale Blue Dot

‘Earth is the right place for love’
Robert Frost

Four billion miles out
On the edge.
A camera turns
Refocuses robotic lenses
On this dust mote afloat
In a beam of distant sunlight.
Held by a solar thread
Remote and alone
Shrouded in giant darkness.

A self-portrait.

This speck of fertile rock
Like a grain of sand
Suspended in cosmic sea
The fragile petals
Of a wild flower, slowly unfurling.

No one is coming.

It is up to us.



© David Loffman

The Earth from the Dark Side of Saturn

Here is another photograph taken from the outer Solar System.

To the left just beyond the bright inner rings is a faint blue dot at about 10 O'clock.

The dot is Earth.

Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot

Four billion miles out
On the edge.
A camera turns
In deep space to face home.
Refocus robotic lenses
On this dust mote floating
In a beam of distant sunlight, drifting.
Remote and alone
Shrouded in giant darkness.

This speck of rock
Like a grain of sand
Suspended in a cosmic sea
Is home.

No one is coming to rescue us.

It is up to us.



© David Loffman


16 September 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot

Handling Anger

Hi the holiday season is coming to an end. Its time to start blogging again. There are quite a few posts I want to send to the blog about the summer but this one got there first. I was invited to preach last night at the 6.30 service by our vicar. He is trying to put a team of readers together for all the different services we have - 4 services each Sunday.

And after preaching last night he has asked me to join the team.

SERMON 26 AUGUST 6.30

Handling Anger

Lord God Please take these words of mine and these words of yours and breath your holy spirit on them. Give them life in our lives and glory to you. Amen.

I have a problem handling anger. We were driving back from France last week. We had been on the road for ten hours; it was eleven thirty at night and we were desperate to get home. We finally made it to the M25 but when we were approaching our exit the motorway was closed and to my horror we were diverted on to the M23 towards Gatwick Airport. I was furious. I was really angry. We got home two hours later than we expected.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at the Sermon on the Mount, and the main reading that Trevor read to us is part of that. Throughout the Sermon Jesus wanted his disciples and us to live righteous lives. He wants people to be salt and light in the world. For that first audience it meant don’t be like the Scribes and Pharisees - who reduced the law to a series of prohibitions and observances. And we shouldn’t be like the materialistic world around us. Yes Jesus wants his audiences to do what the law commands but he wants our hearts and minds tuned into the law as well.

In verse 20 Jesus says “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus sets out to show how we can live righteous lives. Jesus takes the ten commandments as his starting point. And offers practical ways of living by them. From verse 21 – 48 he comments on the commandments, he breathes new life into them, revitalising them making them come alive.

This evening we’re going to look at verses 21 – 26 Jesus’ where Jesus comments on the sixth commandment “You shall not murder.”

In these verses

· Jesus says that anger and insults towards a sister or brother is equal to murder.
· Jesus says to be angry with a brother or sister puts you in danger of the fire of hell
· Anger is an obstacle to worship.
· Therefore be reconciled to our brother’s and sisters.
· Do this quickly
· So that you can return to true worship and living a righteous life.

In verses 21 – 23 Jesus says anger and insults are just as bad as murder.

He says “anyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgement”. Here Jesus talks about the anger that comes from a desire to get rid of somebody; somebody who stands in our way. And that for Jesus is murder. It’s an anger the spills into insults and abuse. It’s an unrighteous anger motivated by hatred, malice and revenge.

Hamlet is a play dominated by revenge. In it we are given a portrait of a revenge hero from ancient Greece. Pyrrrhus – a man seeking revenge for the murder of his father at any cost physical or spiritual.

'The rugged Pyrrhus,,Black as his purpose, did the night resembleSmeared with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,roasted in wrath and fire,And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish PyrrhusOld grandsire Priam seeks.'

Recently I’ve had some difficulties with a neighbour over parking. I didn’t know what I’d done to upset him. He became quite rude. Every time he saw me he’d swear at me. I tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn’t listen. As a result it was me that became angry. Every time I drove home I thought about him. I was like the person in

1 John 2:1 1 where he says “ whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him”. More about my neighbour later.

Hatred changes the way we live. It changes the way we behave towards people. It can turn our work places and homes into battlegrounds. Jesus says the issue of anger towards people is so important that it excludes us from the Kingdom of God. 1 John 3:15 says Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Have you ever been so angry that you have almost lost control? Which is one reason why Jesus wanted any angry disputes solved as quickly as possible. Jesus wanted a nation united so that all their energies could be devoted to living righteous lives, worshipping in truth and purity of spirit. Jesus wanted his listeners to be a light to the world.

But conflicts were common is Jesus’ day. He lived at a time when the Jewish nation was under great pressure. Any country that is occupied by a military force is under stress. People feel fragile, insecure and vulnerable. Under these conditions it is no wonder that conflicts develop.

Also Israel in Jesus’ time was a highly structured and segregated society. And this too can be a cause of arguments. A Roman soldier insults a Jew, a Samaritan attacks a Jewish neighbour, and a Jew fights back. And within the Jewish community there were many different factions.

Is our society so different?

Okay we are not under military dictatorship but many of us live under huge amounts of pressure. Often we are stretched to the limits of our resources. Our neighbourhoods and our homes can become a breeding ground of anger, resentment and hatred. The newspaper headlines this weekend are full of gang culture and gun violence. To Jesus, when we are angry at someone its just as bad as if we were using a gun. For the LORD looks at the heart.

And this makes our worship meaningless. So we need to acknowledge our anger and tackle it. Jesus says a breach in the relations between people makes their worship fit for the rubbish dump.

In verse 24 those who use insulting language “will be in danger of the fire of hell”. The word “hell” is a translation of the word “gehenna”. To Jesus’ first audience it is a word that they understood. It is mentioned throughout the gospels. In the Old Testament it is a deep and narrow ravine just beyond the southwestern walls of Jerusalem. It was a cursed place. It was a place where the rubbish of the city was burned, where the bodies of executed criminals were dumped and where the Canaanites sacrificed children to their God by burning.

Our worship must be without blemish or fault.

It says in Leviticus 22:21 “When anyone brings from the herd or flock - traditionally a peace offering to the LORD - it must be without defect or blemish to be acceptable”.

But Jesus wants more than just the physical details of our worship to be right. He wants every aspect of our worship to be perfect. Our whole lives are to be a living sacrifice. When we have hurt someone Jesus says we should even interrupt our worship and be reconciled to the one we have hurt.

Imagine for a moment what that would have entailed to one of Jesus’ listeners. The penitent and the priest both have their hands on the sacrifice at the alter of the temple in Jerusalem. And the penitent is just about to say these words “I entreat, O Lord; I have rebelled… but I return in penitence and let this animal be for my covering” ……………. when he suddenly remembers somebody he has hurt. He lets go of the animal walks back along the long queue of penitents, to the three-day journey back to his village in Galilee. Where he finally knocks on a neighbour’s door and humbly asks for forgiveness for the wrong he has caused him. Then he turns round and looks down the road and the three-day journey back to the temple and wonders if the priest is still holding the goat he had brought.

Jesus’ solution to the breach in relationships is much simpler. And that is reconciliation, now.

Making peace involves being sensitive to the people in our lives.
It involves letting go of our self-centredness. It’s about being aware of how we affect others. Making peace involves a genuine and humble attitude to God, the people we come into contact with and our worship. It is an on going process; we must attend to it daily. We need to adopt an attitude where we are prepared to change, to admit the pain we cause others and move on.

This happened to me once years ago here at Christ Church just before a Communion service. A friend came up to me. He took me aside and asked for my forgiveness. Actually I didn’t know what wrong he had committed against me but his face was so pained and awkward so I said I forgive you. Then he hugged me and we returned to our seats. He did not want anything to come between himself and God or between God and me. He wanted our worship to be perfect.

Reconciliation is hard. It involves a denial of our pride and our ego. It’s a sacrifice of the heart. It says in Psalm 51 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.” That could not have been an easy thing for my friend to come up to me. He had made himself vulnerable and weak. But he did it anyway.

In Mathew 5:21-26 Jesus’ examples of anger and insults between people show us that God sees our anger as if we were killing someone. Whenever we are aware of the hurt we have caused others we should make peace with them as soon as possible. Without reconciliation our worship is meaningless.

And so now, back to my neighbour and our parking problems. Late one night I met him walking his dog. A few hours earlier he was swearing at me as usual. And then he came over to me and said, “I’ve had enough of all this,” and offered me his hand. And since then we’ve been fine. It seemed as if his anger was a burden to him as well as it had been for me.

Jesus is telling his listeners not to let anger take hold of our lives. Anger locks and shackles us to the world. It keeps us prisoner. In it we can barely see heaven. We should stop it before it affects our worship and our relationships with other people.

We should Be perfect, therefore just as our heavenly Father is perfect.

for the Poetry Challenge and At The Troubadour

I read this at The Troubadour last night. It got a strong reaction from a few people.

When I read the opening a few weeks back to Katy she went Yuk! So I knew I was on the right track. The poem was written as part of the poetry challenge and is part of a series of poems on Intruders.

The theme of The Troubadour evening was Home. It can be a subject that cloaks the past and often pain in soft focus. It can inspire sentimental nostalgia.

I think I wanted something raw and uncomfortable.

Kitchen Intruders

Behind the sink
A crack in the splash back
Opened up black wet, cavernous.
A dark damp nursery
Of slime coagulating
In dank glutinous blindness
Blistered with slugs
Suckling in musty darkness.

Each morning
A faint trace
Of their slow scavenge
Across the floor.
Paths crisscrossing
Like the lines of aeroplane vapour trails.

Each night
We gave the house over to them
To feast on our remains.

© David Loffman

R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts

This is a bit of a test. Hope it works. And hope you enjoy the poem and the video. One thing that strikes me about the video is how it borrows quite consciously from Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.

Anyway - the poem


Stationary

Lonely motorway
Asphalt and aggregate
A long congested tail of vehicles
Convulses to a stop.

A clock on the dashboard
Measures lost miles
As the minutes pass.

Stasis shrivels meaning,
Swallows belief.
Speed is the highway’s only currency.
Blurred lines its only vision
Visible only in movement.

Thoughts are stretched thin
Try to focus
Will dissolves
Eyes glaze
Vague distractions fail
The radio and cross words.

The anchor drags
At a motorway interchange
Layered bridges
Unscalable parapets

Debris in the gutter.
Buckled and rusted hubcaps and beer cans.

We are the discarded,
The forgotten,
On this obscene stationary carriageway
We wait, heavy on processed air.

But in that restless hypnotic emptiness
Drowsing with boredom and shame
A driver seems to rise like an Angel
Unfold himself
Crosses lanes
To the central reservation.

Arms outstretched
Like a messiah of the motorway
A sentinel on the parapets
Offers a benediction to the stranded.
Calls to us out to follow
Like a Pied Piper.

© David Loffman


30 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Vinery

for Giles and Julia

Royal vines

Cut from a king’s court

Hundreds of years old – slow matured

Their roots drawing deep into England.

Their knurled trunks growing

Out of hot black loam

Under the magnified sun light

Of this Hertfordshire glasshouse.

A clot grapes

A nest of magenta beads

Suspended from the sloping glass roof.

Cool marble to touch,

Their fragile skins

Hold all summer’s blood

That breaks and melts

Over our lips

Spills onto our tongues

Then thick and sweet

Crushed flesh at our throats.

A toast to friendship.

© David Loffman

24 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Hi

Sorry it has been so long since my last post - 3 weeks I think.

Jeff and I have had a short break posting poems to each other. But now we are back to it. I'm hoping now that most of the teaching is finished to spend more time working on the poems and the challenge. They have been neglected since February. So maybe you will begin to read poems with a broader vision and better worked.

The poem below is part of a series of poems based on paintings I have stumbled across. Other poems include Hopper's Night Hawkes and Van Gogh's Night Cafe. These poems have been posted to this site.

Hope you enjoy the poem.

Love David



























Portrait

from L’ absinthe by Degas

She sits slumped
Like an old paper bag
That the wind had blown in
Crumpled and wrinkled.

She wears defeat
In her stained faded white bodice.

She has retreated here.
To this bench
With this man,
Beside this cold marble table.

Behind her - the white washed walls
Where pale shabby curtains fall
Against the dead white light of the sun.

There is surrender
In every part of her appearance.
There, in her dull watery eyes
That cannot focus.

There, in the tired cotton frills
That hangs slack around her neck,
Yellow ribbons cling like wilted flowers.

There, in her shoulders and arms
That drop limp and loose.
They carry the heavy failures of her life
That she dissolves
Into the glass that rests beside her.

Her head tilts against the cold
And painful morning light

And he is all in brown.
Crushes her in that hard
Battened down indifferent look –
Seared by the pain of a thousand failures.


© David Loffman

03 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Neighbours

I

Watching Jack

Saturday morning
Quiet cul-de-sac.

The street basks in spot light sun
And Jack takes his dog for a walk,
Passes in front of us
Sitting behind the wide window screen
Relaxed for a moment
Before the children return.
The street, a slow unravelling
A random and effortless soap opera.

Jack passes by on the other side
He’s eighty, his dog, Alsatian,
Young, gangly and alert
On the lead – their daily exercise.

Then Black Harry comes across the road
At Jack’s dog
Barking and jumping up at his throat
There is the roar of dogs
And Jack shouts
Pulls at the lead
Then bends down
To put his arms around his dog.

When we get there
We don’t know what to do.
Jack won’t let his dog go
Harry is all jaws and saliva
His teeth around the Alsatian’s neck.
So I grab at Black Labrador Harry’s collar
Pull him straight off Jack’s dog.
He comes away easy
His anger retreats
With adult authority
Then seems disinterested
When his owner comes
To grab him off me.

She was in the back garden
Her mate in the shower
Harry must have slipped out unnoticed, she says.

So there’s Jack now
Shouting at her
He’s losing his breath
But he keeps on yelling
He changes colour.

We try and calm him
But he takes a few steps into a driveway
To get some distance from us
Pulls his dog with him.
Then he stumbles onto his knees
And crumples onto the ground.
Lies there, motionless,
Accusation and anger in his stare
With his face turning blue.

That was the last we saw of Black Harry
And Jack, stretchered into an ambulance
The driver shaking his head.


© David Loffman

from The First Poetry Challenge

It's been about three weeks since I'last posted to the Blog. So here is a picture and a poem to cheer you up.


The photograph was taken last Tuesday 10 April with our friends in their wood in Kent.
The poem was written on a visit to the wood in 2000. Hope you like them both.

Moment in the Wood

I first heard the wind
blowing far off trees.
A hushed restlessness
that could have been rain.
Then granite grained
light dissolving fast,
sun cloaked.
The wind, louder now,
metallic sounding.
Could have been
farm machinery.
Suddenly tree tops
convulsed wildly,
branches flung helpless
crisp leaves hissing
like radio static.
Now here upon us
flapping tarpaulin
smoke scattering
all over the camp,
bushes and branches
bent to knotted brambles
and the heat swallowed
up by sudden chill.
Then the wind running
off to somewhere else
leaves, everything, still.

Wind came, stopped our work,
like unwanted thoughts,
disturbed our peace,
like a door slammed
against the summer.


© David Loffman

Photograph of The Speech

A Speech in the Members' Dinning Room

It is great to get comments from visitors.

On Wednesday March 14 there were many great speeches in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons were debating Trident - there was a water cannon on College Green. The Lord's were debating their own extinction. And in the Members' Dinning Room at 4.30 I got up to address and audience of Royality, Lord's and Ladies, Ministers, Members of Parliament, an assortment of minor celebrities and many disabled students who had just been given a grant by The Snowdon Award Scheme - a charity that helps disabled people back into education.

This is what I said.

Lord Snowdon
Lords
Ladies and Gentleman

It’s really great to be here today and speak with so many people that have recently started such a varied and diverse range of courses of study. It is exciting being with people making a new start and making positive changes, a new beginning. It’s so positive and life affirming. Though I expect with your excitement there are doubts and fears.

But so many people here have struggled and overcome so much already.

Here is a bit of my story. I hope it will be an encouragement.

I left school at 16 in 1975 with no qualifications at all. I remember walking out of the school gates for the last time with a huge smile on my face and victoriously telling myself that I would never open the door of education again.

However I returned to full time education just two years later. I was recovering from a serious illness and when I went back it was to a further education college. There I started an academic journey that has redefined and changed my life completely.

At first I didn’t know what I could do so I enrolled on a basic pre O level vocational course. At the end -clutching a handful of credits and distinctions - I asked my lecturers well what should I do now – and they replied, why not try some O Level’s. And when I’d completed those I looked around wide-eyed with a beaming smile and asked again – what should I do now. Another lecturer answered well why not try some A Levels now David.

As I was completing the first year of A Levels – everyone around me seemed obsessed with universities and application forms. I had some struggles with the recurring disease but I asked again what shall I do after this. and one of the lecturers said rather impatiently I thought – you should try a degree. And so I did.

I was the first person in my family to study for a degree. It meant leaving home. It meant setting up a life independent of my family. It meant spending money my parents did not really have. And more scarily It meant taking my own responsibility for managing the disease and the damage it had left by myself.

But there seemingly out of the blue – suddenly – there was the Snowdon Award Scheme. It gave me an award that helped me be independent in those first tentative steps away from home - studying, buying books, fares back home for hospital appointments, and desperately trying to buy food that I could make into something edible.

[It was a difficult first term. And I remember sitting in a student bar on a cold January evening in the ruins of my first university relationship. I was surrounded by fit and healthy people that could party all night and walk without thinking about it. I felt that I wanted to go home. I wanted to stop and start the degree again. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.]

One night very very late we were sitting in my room drinking port and listening to David Bowie. A good friend said to me I’d make a good teacher. And I immediately thought of the Further Education. What they had given me, I could give to others: a second chance at education and the enthusiasm and wonder of learning.

And so when I completed my degree I went on to train to be a lecturer in Further Education. and that is what I have been for the last twenty years a: a lecturer in Further Education And sometimes I teach on that same basic vocational course that I first studied back in 1977. Along with becoming married, raising children, I also write a ridiculous amount of poetry – some of which is about illness and recovery.

Finally. I remember being sent an invitation to what must have been the first Snowdon Award Ceremony back in 1981. And I remember very clearly declining to attend. I remember I felt quite awkward, clumsy and very shy. I think I felt overawed and out of place.

So it is quite ironic really that 25 years later I would be given this rather wonderful and public opportunity to say thank you to Lord Snowdon, the supporters, sponsors and all the people working behind the scenes at the Snowdon Award Scheme.

And great also to have this opportunity to wish you success and satisfaction in all the diverse courses you are undertaking.

Thank you.

It was great fun.

from The Poetry Challenge

Composing Poetry

We stayed up late
through winter nights
long before you both came,
and played with names
conjuring you out from the darkness,
drawing you into our lives.
We lulled each other to sleep
with you on our lips.

We spoke them to each other,
surprised ourselves with their strength
and strangeness,
tried to catch ourselves
off balance with them.

We collected names
like given clothes
for a bottom draw.

Sometimes we’d take them out
when no one was listening
and try them on.
We savoured them on our tongues
and sounded them for size and fit.

At first all we had of you
were your names.
We covered you both
in long soft vowels
and granite consonants
years before you arrived.

© David Loffman

The Third Round

Jeff and I met today to read our second round poems to each other and vote on the best poem for the round. It was a great afternoon despite the blustery rain and wind on the South Bank. We sat outside to read and drew on the help of two waiters to help choose the best poem of the round.

It was a magical afternoon despite the cold.

Jeff won the round with his poem All At Sea, based on a painting by Turner - Fisherman At Sea. I'll post it to this blog - check it out - but I may have to remove it. I'll have to check with him. My poem The Samuri Sunset came a close second. You can find that poem on this blog too.

All At Sea

by Jeffrey Loffman

Prompted by J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Fishermen At Sea’

The open boat slaloms across the mounting wave
Crash upon crash against starb’rd
Hanging on to masts and fixed boxes
Showered awash and swathed in fear
We cling on – our faces blinded by wash
Our noses full of fish piles in baskets
Fins flapping like sails wrapped by storm
As full moon occasionally glints between black sky
Winds whip around and, distantly, a thunder burst
Far from home we are told to keep nets out
And the boat is beaten and pummelled
Will we see the dawn rise? hear gulls scream?
All we can hear is the roll bellow of towering sea
All we can feel is sodden and still soaking
All our clothes drip under our waterproofs
All on the North Sea angling for our future
Our well-being, praying to dock and beach
See lights on the shore, see home again.

And here is a poem from me that Jeff rather liked.

Music Box

Even nowthirty-seven years later
I’m still unwrapping
the gifts inside
the music box
he bought for us
one quiet Christmas morning.

And still I plunge my hand
into that darkness
and pull out the music
still hidden deep inside.
Music now so far from him
it lies out of his reach
an unfamiliar language.

But I remember
long lost Sunday mornings,
sitting at the dinning table
in his vest,
his soft voice rising
while his hands tapped out
the beat from an old biscuit tin.

And I can still hear
those first songs
strong and clear,
and see in his blue eyes
“a bright golden haze on the meadow”
the “cattle standing like statues”
and an old river of sound
flowing out through the years.


© David Loffman

I hope you like the poems

David

A Short Break

I'm poemed out.

We have come to the end of the second round of the poetry challenge. The third round starts on the 24 February. Until then I'm building up draft poems so that I have a good number that have been worked on for some weeks. It's slow work at the moment. So much is going on at home and at work as usual.

Jeff seems to have all his poems written for the entire challenge - right up until November - so he seems well ahead of me. He will spend these months editing his poems.

Although I have over thirty poems in draft I only have a handful of drafts at the moment that have been worked on enough to become finished poems. I generally choose a draft from the draft pool and work on it over a period of weeks or months before I post it to the challenge blog. At any one time I'm working on about 5 or six drafts.

The week after next is the half term holiday and at the end of that week Jeff and I meet to choose the best poem of the second round and we start posting again.

Hope you enjoy the posts.

I'll try and post to this blog every two weeks with a poem.

Take care

David

from The Poetry Challenge Quiraing

Quiraing

for Pam and Simon

Trotternish escarpment
still slow landslip
to the sea.

We came this way
low and long
along the Trotternish ridge
that towered beside us
and the steep fall to Raasay Sound below.

We walked that rough track
one late October
where we fought the wind
wrestled the cold, breathless
with thick clotted cloud
scouring the sky
picking the bones
of the exposed land.

We hardly spoke
in that roar and twist of the air
that tore into us,
picked us clean.

I waited at The Saddle
where the wind rose to meet me from both sides
wind bitten, hands numbed
as I clutched at the hard neck of rock
like riding the rock fall deep,
plunging long into the sea far below.

And watched the distant Torridon Hills
glowing red in the growing dusk
beyond the far Inner Sound.

© David Loffman



20 January 2007

from The Poetry Challenge The Samurai Sunset

The new year has begun quietly. We saw it in with friends. It is always an awkward moment for me and I never feel comfortable with it. But this was easy. We made our peace with the old year and welcomed in the new with old friends, plenty of wine and good things to eat and lots to talk about.

2006 was a difficult year in lots of ways but I think 2007 should be more straightforward. We are still settling in and adjusting to the major disruptions of 2004/5, as well as coping with new challenges at work and with the children.

Any way here is a poem from the poetry challenge which is going well I think. The poem comes out of some of the stresses and tensions brought about by 2004/5 changes.

Hope you like it.

Happy New Year!

Love

David

The Samurai Sunset

I brought you back this glass plate.

A peace offering,
that came with its own light,
as red as a hard pulsating bruise.

Translucent.
The colour of blood
skeletal shadows
inhabit its depths.
Deep magenta
too dark to fathom
a flame too hot to touch.

Incendiary,
incandescent magma spill
to cauterise the wound.

In the gallery where I found it
they framed the Samurai Sunset
with smooth glass pieces
soothing curves
pale shimmering lights
soft undulating lines
of green blue sea surge
and aqua-dark cyan.

I bought it for you.
It spoke my rage for me
transformed it into something of beauty.


© David Loffman


29 December 2006

from The Poetry Challenge A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms

I've had a couple of comments from friends about the blog. As a result I shall be posting a couple of poems from the challenge now and will try to update the blog every two weeks rather than four. I miss the one hundred word project but the poetry challenge is quite demanding. I am working on about twenty poems at the moment.

So here are a couple of very recent poems from the challenge. One friend commented on, A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms, saying it was the best poem she had seen from the challenge so far. I'm not so sure its even a poem.

These two poems are a short sequence and were written together.

Hope you like them.

Happy Christmas


A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms

That first time at the checkout
he was pissed.
A basket full of condoms, Stella and Whiskey
and his mates
wildly pushing their way
to the front of the queue
shouting slurred and angry at everything.

But her eyes
filled the numbed wreckage
of his thoughts.

When he was outside
he looked back at her
through the big windows.

The second time
just the paper and fags.
Alone he waited –quietly
and choked out a thank you
as she dropped the change into his hand.

The third time he chose more carefully.
Baked beans and a microwave meal for one,
she made her customer smile
but he didn’t believe it.

He thought there was more.

So he came back the next day to check.
Bought chocolates and offered her one.
He said something about the weather
then wished he’d said nothing
as she moved on to the next one.

Once he thought he saw her in Woolworth’s
and he followed her for a while.

Then he came in at the weekend.
Casual, jeans, clean T shirt
The store filled with families
and their juggernaut trolleys, overflowing.
In his basket, CD’s The Kooks and Kaiser Chiefs.
He was serious,
and worried that she was Rap and R & B.

On Tuesday he filled the basket with fruit.
Stuff he’d never eat.
Large Medjool dates, ripe mangos
and small fur green looking eggs
he didn’t know the name of.
But the smell was sweet and rich
as he watched her carefully weigh
and price each one.

He thought about her
with the fruit in a bowl
while he drew a mango to his lips.

He thought about her at work
and driving home.
He thought about her in the pub on Saturday night
with his mates
and Sunday morning in the shower.

On Friday he thought about her
in the long agonizing queue.
In his basket,
red roses, the chocolates
and a packet of condoms
and when he faced her
and looked into those eyes
that seemed to swallow him whole.
He said, “these are for you,
what time do you finish here?”


© David Loffman

I Carry A Knife Now

“Once he thought he saw her in Woolworth’s
and he followed her for a while.”

Afterwards I never felt safe. Never!
Even though I moved away.
I ain’t stupid!

I always keep it with me.

Safe!

Lates is worse!

Though I still wake nights
screaming, tears in me eyes.

No one knows me here
though I’m always lookin over me shoulder.
I can’t be sure.

Like yesterday, lunch.
I’m in Woolworth’s and I see this face.
He looks familiar.
He clocks me.
Can’t place him though.
Looks a’right s’pose.
But I can’t be sure
so I try and lose him.

But he’s following.
And I lose me breath
and I’m all hot n cold
and me heart’s like thumpin hard.
Fuck! I think
and I run out the store.

Razor must ave sent him.
Dunno ow e found me.

When I get back I just wanna leave.
I’m not hangin round here.
I tell Janice, the superviser.

She says if I leave on Saturday
she’ll pay me the week
which is good cos of the rent and stuff.

But I can’t wait.
Maybe I’ll just go.
I’m like so scared.


© David Loffman

from The Poetry Challenge Treasure

Here is a poem written about our summer holiday. It was the worst holiday we have been on as a family. Possibly the hardest holiday I've ever had. But one amazing feature of the holiday were the children. They were fantastic! Always hopeful, always optimistic, full of patience and good humour, always helpful and caring.

Arran played the hardest game of football he has ever played yesterday. He was cold, wet and muddy, he felt really low and his team let him down badly I think. But he made a real job of being in goal. He stuck it out. He dived hard into the mud again and again and saved many difficult shots.

I was so proud of him.

Anyway I hope you like the poem.


Treasure

Drive them to a mountain stream
Drive them to a rocky beach
Bring them to a mountain path
Bring them to a white sandy beach.

Give them thirteen hours
in the back seat of the car
with a book, a pillow and a toy monkey.
Give them a steamed up window
to play noughts and crosses on.

Bring them a two-hour traffic jam
diverted at midnight on the M6.

Show them a couple of sheep in a field.
Show them a sparrow,
a shipwreck and a standing stone.

Bring them biscuits for breakfast,
hot chocolate for lunch
and chips for dinner.

Show them grey skies
and a thin seam of silver light
stretching over a Loch.

Show them swallows at dusk.
There are eagles in the hills.

Make them sleep in a broken tent
with three inches of water
at the bottom.

Tell them this is a holiday

Leave them on a rain-drenched beach
for two hours
until their hands and toes turn blue.

Tell them it will be better tomorrow.

Buy them fishing nets and a football.

Make them set up camp
three times in four days
in hard wind driven rain.

Don’t let them see you cry.

Show them flowering Lichen
Orchids, Rock Rose,
Cotton Grass and Heather.

Let them drink mountain water
from Sphagnum Moss.

Show them a rainbow
stretched across the island
we are leaving.

And watch a light
shine from their wind weary faces.
And watch their smiles lift you higher
than all the rain grey clouds.

© David Loffman

Upgrade

I know it looks pretty much the same but I've upgraded this blog.

One advantage of this is I've been able to add Links to the blog - something I've been trying to do for a while and now I've done it.

Over the next few weeks or months there will be some changes and I hope the blog will look more personal.

Watch this space.

David

from The Poetry Challenge Hearing 'The Thought Fox on the Radio'

The Thought Fox by Hughes

I wrote this poem last winter. I was asked to read at The Troubadour one animal poem no more than 25 lines and there was a week to go and I still did not have a poem. So I thought I'd read Hughes poem about the thought fox.

I was driving back late from somewhere and I put the radio on and suddenly there it was, Hughes larger than life reading the poem. And I knew I could not read it.

The next morning we were driving down to Guildford and out of the corner of my eye I saw a dead fox in the gutter of the A3. It was then I knew I had a poem at last.

At the reading, Hugh and me did a double act, he agreed to read The Thought Fox by way of an introduction to mine that followed straight after.

Hearing “The Thought Fox” on the Radio

Midnight. Winter darkness.

I drove home
through lonely silent suburbs.

Frost gathered –
formed a white lining
in the streets.

Then the hard dark grain
of Hughes’s voice
burst into the car
conjuring his midnight fox

so loud I thought he sat beside me
haloed in neon and moonlight –
the creature hidden
in the folds of his coat.

Later, in the road
among fallen leaves and branches -
a dead fox

rolled up like a discarded carpet
rust coloured
slumped in a gutter.

The insistent reach
of Hughes’s voice still
shadows me
now, as I write.


© David Loffman

11 December 2005

from The Poetry Challenge Nighthawkes

Nighthawkes

In the late night diner
they perch on bar stools
leaning forward
hunched against
the vast seamless window
that frames them.

In the darkness
hard fluorescent light
bares them blind
to the deserted streets.

They wandered in
on a troubled night.
To pick at the bones
of their marriage,
savaging the reaches
of their revenge,
in this mime of misery,
where there is no escape
and the coffee offers
only stinging bitterness.

They sit in the empty yellow
glare of spotlights
on this sprawling midnight canvas
that spreads its wings
and submerges us all.



© David Loffman

21 October 2006

from The Poetry Challenge The Bell of All Hallow's

Here is a poem from the poetry challenge. Just in case you were wondering what I've been getting up to. I'll try and post a poem a month from the challenge. Hope you like it.

The Bell Of All Hallow’s

Each morning
during the summer term
with all the classroom windows open
and the wind in the right direction,
the bells of All Hallow’s
comes to us
like a solemn whisper
a hushed promise -
its faint chimes
ripple out over the town.

They come to us
a gentle gift -
a wave that flows
above the low drone
of pre motorway traffic
and over the hard
lines of the roads.

Between our words
a soft peal drops -
sky music.
A quivering island of sound
blown by the wind
reaches out over the suburbs
calling to us
as pleasing as a tuning fork
resonating to the bone.

© David Loffman

25 September 2006

The end of the One Hundred Word Project

This post marks the official end of the One Hundred Word Project. The project started over a year ago.

The poetry challenge started three weeks ago and the challenge is due to end at Christmas 2008. I intend to post my challenge poems to this blog on a regular basis -not always once a week. The occasional One Hundred Words will slip through and the usual book, film and I also intend to post Poem Reviews will also be posted. I also hope to make more use of photographs - my own and those on the net.

Watch this space!

One Hundred Words About Summer's End

The summer holiday has come to an end.

Our lives have come back to us with a sudden rush of activity. So much is happening around us it is hard to keep track of everything. The children have started their different secondary schools. And seem to be settling in. They are managing their very different school journeys, meeting new friends and keeping contact with older ones.

Katy and me are settling into our own new routines.

Katy is establishing her freelance work, she has been writing and talking to potential clients and these contacts really seem positive. She is so much happier when she is plunged deep in the middle of work – the difficulty is establishing the right balance.

One Hundred Words About Silence

I have a difficult relationship with silence.

I think we all do.

At the moment I am writing a sequence of poems on silence. It begins with a simple Sunday morning before everyone wakes up. But ends – probably seven poems later – connecting silence with death and finally our society’s war against silence.

In the front line are the ipod and mp3 players. I watch the ipod generation in the classroom, not just blocking out the voices of their friends, or my teaching voice, but their own inner fragile voices that speak of what they need and who they truly are.

One Hundred Words About Reading

I’ve not read a book all holiday.

I have tried but I can’t get passed the first few pages. There may be a couple of reasons. Firstly I’ve spent a lot of time since June writing poetry in preparation for the poetry challenge with Jeff. Writing always seems to make reading – especially novels - very difficult for me. Secondly I seem to be having a reaction to the pressure of reading. I’m a member of two book groups where I’ve been reading books set by other people and I’ve not enjoyed them.

I’ve not even enjoyed the novels I've set.

One Hundred Words About My Holiday

Streetmap.co.uk- search results

Disturbingly these have been the best two days of my holiday so far. Disturbing because the children are away. Yesterday we handed my son over to his grandmother at St James, Piccadilly. Then hand in hand we made a dash for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. At six we walked to Wagamams in Lexington Street and then from there to the Coach & Horses in Great Marlborough Street to hear a comedy show. We then walked to Oxford Circus and home.

We spent today with old friends. It was just wonderful. Sunshine, good food, long talks and laughter.

One Hundred Words About The Children On Holiday

On our last visit to Iona, cloud was dark and low. The island a grey, vague blur. There was no wind but it was raining. It was a soft and constant rain. A rain so finely grained we breathed it in. I made my way to the Abbey, Katy wanted to browse the village store and we left the children on the beach.

When I arrived back two hours later - in a shroud of mist and rain - the children were there, changed into swimming costumes, building sandcastles, digging holes, skimming stones and throwing sand into the sea.

One Hundred Words About Our Holiday

Map of United Kingdom | Multimap.com

Scotland was difficult.

After driving all night we set up the tent at Fiddon the beautiful and exposed southwestern tip of Mull. However by mid afternoon the wind broke one of the tent poles and we retreated to a hotel. Our second camp was wild and exposed too, near Killechronan but after a night of rain the morning brought more wind that damaged the tent further. Our third camp was set up on the sheltered east side at Tobermory – tamer and more built up. From there we ventured out in the safety of the car, west to Iona and Calgary.

A Film Review Nil By Mouth

Nil by Mouth (1997)

Nil By Mouth A Film Review

Gary Oldman has made a harsh and brutal film that is very disturbing and utterly compelling, about a working class family living on a council estate in east London.

From the opening credits the focus of the film is Ray a very violent and disturbed man, married to Val who is pregnant with their second child. Around this couple are Val’s brother Billy, a heroin addict, Janet, Val’s mother and Kath, Val’s grandmother.

What we are confronted with throughout the film is the suffering and poverty of these people’s lives. Janet watches helplessly as her son Billy slides further and further into heroin addiction and her daughter Val is beaten up by Ray in a obsessive and jealous rage killing his unborn child.

Ray is a man tortured by his own upbringing particularly his relationship with his father. In the most powerful scene in the film Ray, drunk and full of rage and despair Ray tries to grapple and overcome his pain and anger of the past; to take control of his emotions instead of allowing them to control him.

The acting is outstanding. Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke are totally convincing.

By the end of the film there is a sense of reconciliation the family gathered around a kitchen table. Ray has redecorated and fixed the flat he had earlier demolished and quietly accepts the compliment from his mother in law.

The hope for Val and Ray lies in that one expression of Ray’s quiet humility.

It is so different from the blind and uncontrolled monster that dominates the film that casts a sinister and dangerous shadow, a Kurtz figure presiding over a modern day wasteland.

The setting is November around these South London concrete and graffiti estates. it is always dark, claustrophobic, a yellow anaemic florescent light illuminates abandoned walkways and faces filled with fear and pain.

The film is a harrowing and breath taking achievement from beginning to end, difficult to watch but harder to turn away from.

One Hundred Words About A Job

I glanced at the job specifications a month ago and decided the post was not for me.

Then on the day after the deadline passed my head of faculty asked why my letter of application was not on her desk. I told her she would have it that afternoon.

Since then I have barely thought of anything else. I’ve been in turmoil about it. The post includes supporting staff, raising student achievement, moderating coursework, and running meetings.

The interview was Tuesday. I have the job of course coordinator for the second year of the English Language and Literature A Level.

One Hundred Words About Hammocks

  

I'm sitting in a hammock swinging gently under the shade of Ash trees. Hard bright sunlight filters through leaves. Over there I can hear the laughter of children and before me the wood in radiant July stretches out with birch and hornbeam.

The children cannot see me and I drift unnoticed for a few minutes before lunch.

If I look back towards the camp I can see a new hammock with someone else lying in it. And in my dreamlike state I imagine hammocks surrounding the whole camp where each one of us can slip away unnoticed for a while.

Our Sun In Ultra Violet

  

I thought you might like this amazing photograph of our sun using ultra violet light.

One Hundred Words About An Ending

It has been a busy few weeks since my last one hundred words. Most of my free time has been spent thinking about the poetry challenge which has left little time or energy for this blog.

So I announce that from the 29 July the one hundred word project will end.

In its place I will post my contribution to the poetry challenge each week. The occasional one hundred words may slip in from time to time and there may be a week or so when my poem is so poor I cannot bare to post it to this blog.

One Hundred Words About The Poetry Challenge

The last challenge was in 2001.

At the end of this July we begin our second poetry challenge.

Each week for one year my cousin Jeff and me will post to each other a poem a week. It can get quite stressful and competitive.

We will meet four times during the year to read, discuss and judge each quarter’s poems and at the end of the year we will meet to judge and proclaim the winning poem.

I wrote 56 poems for the last challenge and I worked on one quarter of those and now consider 12 of them good.

One Hundred Words About The White Castle

Amazon.com: The White Castle : A Novel (Vintage International): Books: Orhan Pamuk

It is Orphan Pamuk’s first novel. Set in seventeenth century Turkey. A Venetian scholar is captured by Turks and sold into slavery. Hoja – meaning master - buys him because of his learning and thus begins the tale of a relationship characterised by envy and competition. Almost identical the pair are bound together in an obsessive attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe. But the more they strive for external knowledge, the deeper, more complex, cruel and claustrophobic their relationship becomes.

Against a backdrop of Turkish decline and European cultural and economic accent Pamuk explores issues of east and west.

Film Review The New World

The New World (2005)

The New World

This is the story of Pocahontas and John Smith but this is not Disneyland. It is a harsh and powerfully realistic demythifying – yet beautiful retelling of the Pocahontas story.

The film follows Pocahontas’s life as she chooses the settlers over her people. It follows her marriage and family – not to John Smith; and journey to England and a royal audience with the King at Hampton Court. Then finally, her mysterious death soon after her final meeting with Smith; the man she truly loves.

This latest film uses and develops many of the techniques Malick has used in previous films. The most impressive of these is his cinematography. Beautiful sweeping landscapes are caught at twilight. Malick, I think like Bergman has a real feel for the quality of light. The land is presented as green and lush; there is a freshness and clarity in the settings. He pays special attention to the natural world and focuses on the little details of a rich and unspoilt America just as the Europeans begin to settle the land.

And then the familiar narrator – this time the voice of John Smith – like Private Wit in The Thin Red Line, Malick has adopted an adult male voice, reflecting on what he sees describing thoughts, actions and plans. We see the film from Smiths’ perspective. Yet because he is absent from at least half the film the voice over is far weaker. It is also more prosaic, thinner and flatter than his other films –especially Badlands and Days of Heaven - even the hardened voice of Linda in Days of Heaven conveys poetry in its gritty and earthy strongly accented monologues.

Surprising is the treatment of the Europeans in the film. Their life is presented realistically and sympathetically as they struggle to survive and establish themselves in the New World. The native American’s treat them suspiciously. At first befriending them but later attacking them once they realise they are plan to stay.

Yes there are the usual symbols of colonial rule. She, the native American representing the spirit of the land which is ancient, fragile, beautiful, full of life and fertility, the other. As Donne puts it, “Oh my America/My new found land.” And Captain Smith the male, European settler, seduced by the land and her beauty and vitality. But these traditional images are perhaps undermined by Pocahontas’s dominance of the film and Smith’s fading away.

I think the film lacks a strong and dynamic conflict. The tension between white men and native American’s smoulders and never really sustains our engagement. The relationship between the lovers is dramatic but soon turns to loss, melancholy and longing that takes up much of the film. Malick just manages to hold our attention in this 150 minute epic.

One Hundred Words About Anger

It happened about twenty-four hours ago and it still dominates my thoughts. It becomes a pain at the back of my throat and I feel sick. If I can be distracted then the pain eases a little, for a while. But it’s never far away and easily exposed.

This anger is deep. It touches something inside me so raw, painful and strong I can barely cope with it. It is about control. For a year I had little control of my life or even my body. To survive I accepted that powerlessness. Now I find any loss of control difficult.

One Hundred Words About A Birthday

 

Thirty-three years ago today I bought my first LP.

It was June the first 1973, my fourteenth birthday and I asked my father if he would buy me Aladdin Sane the new record from David Bowie. I had already bought two singles by Bowie, Starman and John I’m Only Dancing. And had only recently realised they were by the same singer. And then Radio One previewed his new LP.

There was something delicious and different about this music. But more than this, this music was mine. I drenched myself in it for months until it became part of my soul. 

One Way Of Posting My Photograph Into My Profile

  

One Hundred Words About New Malden

The soul of my New Malden cannot be seen from the high street.

But New Malden’s face is the high street. Its late Victorian backdrop of shops, red London brick, with sand stone arches, covered with plastic laminated shop façades. Nothing special. The usual chain of names, like Boots, Woolworth and Waitrose and then the occasional independent shop like Tarmal’s – ironmonger, Pengilies – cobbler and Tudor Williams – a family department store. Recently Korean shops have sprung up, a travel agents, supermarkets and restaurants. And charity shops have filled the gaps where small businesses have failed.

Trees line the renovated high street.

One Hundred Words About Oxted, Surrey

We visited friends in Oxted yesterday. We had lunch and then walked down to the green. At one end a cricket pavilion and ground. At another corner a section fenced off – a playground, “for the enjoyment of all.”

On all sides of the green, the small town seemed to radiate out. On the playground side, the ninth century church with a clock tower that tolled the hours. At another corner the high street filled with small independent shops, a cinema and theatre.

Hills rise up on each side of the town.

I can see why they came here to live.

One Hundred Words About Joy And Fear

It still does not feel like our home.

Sometimes when the children are busy in the garden or in their rooms, and Katy is in the study, and I’m reading in the sitting room, I become aware of the wonder of our home. And I am filled with a sudden joy, a tingling excitement.

At the same time, falling like a shadow in happiness’s wake is dread. The family scattered through the house appears like a beautiful dream that is out of our grasp. It fades as fear begins to spiral into panic. I have to keep myself in check.

One Hundred Words About Holiday's

Being busy is easy.

I don’t have to think. Life has meaning.

Twenty students in a class, sixty in a workshop, students calling from the team room door, colleagues wanting to talk, emails and memos, lessons to prepare, work to mark, lessons to teach, meetings to attend, paper work in order.

On holiday time works differently.

The first day is always busy with urgent or left over jobs. But then the gaps start appearing. And all those buried thoughts and fears I didn’t have time for rise up.

It’s the sudden silences and the empty days that feel so difficult.

One Hundred Words About Silence

I am making peace with silence again.

It is never easy. At first I have to convince myself that silence is precious. I sit impatiently, looking for a distraction like the television, the phone, radio and the CD player. I can feel my computer calling me.

Mostly I give in.The house is a trap of sound. In every room it waits for me, I struggle against it.

But sometimes silence becomes a gift.

I become still and just focus on the moment. I become aware of a great thirst, hidden by all the noises.

Only silence can quench it.

One Hundred Words About Tiredness

It feels as if I have lead weights in my pockets that tempt me off balance. I feel like a tent straining against guy ropes, pegs and poles and long to collapse in a heap. I stumble through the day tripping up over my words and sway as I walk. I stand in the classrooms and avoid the chairs. I drank two cups of strong coffee today. I cannot concentrate my thoughts keep drifting in a mental blur. When I lay down I cannot lie still, in the distance I hear the television and there are things still to do.

One Hundred Words About A Busy Term

The mock exams for my six A level classes have been marked and handed back to the students. Feedback lessons on each question they answered have also been done. Timed essays have been marked and handed back with extensive feedback lessons. A Hamlet revision workshop on Hamlet’s soliloquies was prepared and delivered to over fifty students. Revision lessons have been given on Hamlet, Frankenstein, American Poetry, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Spoken Word. I’ve co judged a creative writing competition and co hosted the prize giving.

I have three classes of communications portfolios still to compile, manage and assess.

Three Haikus With Knots

Here are three Haiku's inspired by the comments on One Hundred Words About Knots.

I

almost asleep
the smooth thread of your body
twisted into mine

II

harbour rope holds
the stinging smell of the sea
wind bitten splices

III

on the granite cross
ancient double stranded plaits
woven into worn stone

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About The One Hundred Words

Welcome to 100 Words

I’ve been reading through the One Hundred Word project entries recently.

I started the project almost a year ago inspired by a website – one hundred words.

It has been quite an amazing year for the family and my one hundred words chronicle some of the dramatic events of the year.

But the entries are more than a diary for me.

I’ve tried to use the entries as notes for new poems.

Only a handful of entries have become poems and some of those poems have become one hundred word entries themselves.

It is often good to put feelings into words.

One Hundred Words About Knots

Barbican - LSO Chamber Ensemble

The first knot were the essays I had to mark this morning a knot of ink and thought and paper.

The second was an argument that flared up just before I left the house and gradually frayed out to a fragile peace as I left.

The third, were the long and tangled roads of the city that eventually drew me to The Barbican.

Then finally a fourth knot, a constant unravelling of sound that untangled all the other knots in my head. Different strands, overlapping, sometimes running, or plunging, was pulling towards or against each other out into the night.

One Hundred Words About A Party

Until early Saturday morning our party only partly existed in Katy’s mind and partly in mine. It also existed in all the people’s minds that were going to come, but nowhere else. We had not made any plans or preparations.

At eight we had a plan. In a hectic whirl we did supermarkets, prepared food and organized the house.

By six o’clock I was shattered. Then the first guest arrived.

It was a great evening. I welcomed people while Katy disappeared into the kitchen.

At one o’clock I sat on a sofa with Katy and my second glass of wine.

One Hundred Words About Fear

At first fear hangs in the air, I breathe it in. It is an ache in my stomach. It is heavy, screwed down and locked tight. I don’t want to let it out. I know what it’s like and I’ve felt it before. It is a wild blind thing that has no thought; it speaks in screams. Speed and action are its limbs. It destroys everything in its path. It feeds on ignorance. Time contracts.

I feel it stir inside me. Tonight I will sleep in it and when I wake tomorrow it will still be there, clawing at me.

One Hundred Words While Drinking Coffee

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Border’s Bookshop, drinking coffee. All around me are people sitting at tables alone or in pairs. A mother and daughter, a retired couple, single women surrounded by shopping bags, and a few men, brief case or rucksack beside them.

All of them are busy either talking, reading newspapers or new books, a woman is fidgeting with her mobile phone. A man in his twenties is fiddling with his i pod. Two women are sharing a joke.

I take a book of poetry from my bag and open it, reading, I slip silently away.

One Hundred Words About Escape

I used to be able to escape but not any longer. When I was a child time was like a great cloak that I could wrap myself up in and hide for hours.

But now I am always visible to the world and the world is always visible to me. Time is no longer a cloak but a constant light that exposes me.

Sleep is a temporary refuge. And films have reduced to a thin flickering veil.

Sometimes I rush for the stairs where I work, each slow step lifts me out of sight, a cloak that barely hides me.

One Hundred Word Poem For Good Friday

"Mercy"

A fragile cry
struggles free
into the parched night.

Then silence
except the low drone
of the wind
through bare winter branches.

Until the cry rises again
splits open the darkness
with a long low moan
strong and insistent,
falls to hard wrenched sobs
then to sudden silence.

Heartbeat.

Again.

Now raw and wild,
gouged out of fractured breath.
Throat muscle and tongue
sculpt air
to a single word
that hangs trapped
in cold moonlight.

In the darkness
I imagine
a naked thing
cowering in the dust
red faced
twisted limbs
blood stained,
torn bandages
searching the darkness.

(c) David Loffman

The poem is inspired by different sources. The most important one being Prayer of the Heart a piece of music by John Tavener - which I comment upon in an earlier post.

One Hundred Words About The Troubadour

The Troubadour - 50?s coffee house in Earl?s Court with a deli, gallery, club and garden.

I read at The Troubadour last Monday. Despite being exhausted, it is always a warm and friendly place to be. I always come away from an evening feeling strong and positive about my writing. When I get home it always takes awhile before I can relax.

At the end of a season Anne Marie organizes a poetry party. Poets come up and either read one of their own poems or someone else’s on a theme. This season ended with the theme of coats.

I read At Penmon Point. (see 19 February post)

When the evening finished I just wandered around chatting to Troubadour friends.

One Hundred Words About An Anniversary

Today we celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. It feels like yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. Last night we ate at an Italian restaurant just round the corner. It was a gorgeous evening.

Our wedding day was a fragile spring day. It hailed in the morning but the afternoon glittered with low dazzling light. Pam was in Africa and sent us a telegram. I walked in on Katy – her sisters sewing flowers to her dress. I wanted the day over and the two of us driving away. Our car decorated inside and out with balloons, beer cans and confetti.

Another One Hundred Words About Joy

Despite the pain and the morphine that dripped periodically into me, in the recovery room, after the last amputation, I felt a joy already surging through me. What I felt was a deep and fundamental sense of wholeness and completeness.

At that moment I was for the first time in years healthy. The disease that had rumbled inside my body and had so spectacularly erupted in February 2004 was no longer active.

I know it was not the drugs that gave me that feeling, because in the days and weeks and months that followed, that feeling is still with me.

One Hundred Words About Praise

People’s praise is overwhelming. Wide smiles full of shock and surprise, sometimes mixed with pride, or sympathy or wonder and disbelief, terrifies me.

Praise is like a mirror in which I see myself through others eyes.

It is a false reflection.

Belief in it would destroy me.

Even writing about it maybe dangerous.

In those looks and words of praise, I see my tightrope walk each day and the bottomless chasms that open up on either side of me. I’m frightened of losing my balance and falling far to earth.

It’s the feeling of vertigo that recurs in my dreams.

One Hundred Words And A Poem About Joy

Once when I was failing, I'd come outside and sit in the graveyard beneath a church. The deer park and the Hall shimmered in late summer heat. I watched the strong clotted green of ancient oaks, the drone of lorries carrying grain from the fields and watched House Martins gathering along high cables.

And from this, a deep glorious joy stirred and rose up through me. In these moments, every afternoon, I felt angels were beside me, feeding me. The earth was holy and as this joy pulsed through me I felt lifted up and made strong and holy.

House Martins

Late summer
and the harvest almost over.

Each late afternoon
I closed my books
and left a room
that reeked of defeat,
where each word I read
joined the liturgy of failure
I was reciting to myself.

So I came outside
to sit beyond the church
among the grave stones.
The sky poured light,
the dark lines of clotted oa