Quiet Space
Sunday 26th April 2020
Praising
Praise to you O Holy Gardener
for what was sowed in tears is now reaped in joy
By forsythia and primrose, you break out in newness
By swallow and swift, your happy return
Praise to you.
Stillness
Be still in the silence and aware of the Love with and within…
Meditation: ‘Resurrection’
Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us
how a stone has been rolled
from the mind, and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.
There are travellers upon the roads
who have heard music blown
from bare bough, and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack
of petrol is covered with flowers.
Text
Luke 24:29
But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
Silence
Beyond our boundaries
God of all creation –
who cannot be contained by our boundaries
or by our definitions –
light from beyond our graves
sea without a farther shore,
you are present in every distinct place,
in every moment in history,
You are here and now.
Help us to understand
that those from whom we are separated
by difference, by prejudice,
by language, by lack of communication;
and those from whom we are separated in death,
by its long silence, its aching absence –
are each of them in your presence:
that beyond our horizons,
beyond our boundaries,
beyond our understanding,
they are in your embrace, Amen.
Blessing
May God of the Easter garden bless in every season of the heart.
May God of the mountainside bless in time set apart.
May God of the beach bless whether tides ebb or flo.
May God of the upper room bless my doubt that I may know
afresh the deep love of God that is stronger than death.
May it fall softly within me as I rest with you this night.
Sources: Tess Ward, The Celtic Wheel of the Year; The Iona Community; R.S Thomas.