This is the text of this week's Pastoral Letter I sent out to our folk in Montrose Baptist Church.
Dear Friends,
I went into one of the wee shops where I buy stranded cotton threads for my tapestries. One customer at a time, hand sanitiser at the door, face coverings at all times, and the 1 metre rule between customer and the proprietor. In our quick catch-up chat We decided it didn’t feel much like Christmas. In fact, she was just wanting Christmas to be past. Now, what did I need? I needed yellow threads; not just yellow, but sunny, bright, in your face yellow. She asked me what I wanted it for, what was I doing this time? “Bright wings,” I said. (Photo of work so far)
She looked at me over her mask, and said, “Right. Bright wings. Is that from the poem?” Just now and again these days, even with face coverings, smiles are obvious. The clue is in the eyes, the wrinkles and that instinctive recognition of someone else sharing the gladness of the joke.
“Yes”, I said. “You know it?”
“I learned it at school,” she said. The last three lines go like this:
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
The Christmas story has its own narrative of “bright wings”, thousands of them. The multitude of the heavenly host praising God and singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill to all people.” As I came away from the shop, with several shades of bright yellow thread, I began thinking about the connection between one of my favourite poems, some yellow thread, the heavenly backing group for Christ’s nativity, and this difficult, dismal, depressingly diminished year we have come through.
First, the poem. It is called ‘God’s Grandeur’, and was written by Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1877. It is about the glory and grandeur of the world God has made, and the mess human industry makes by stripping the land, polluting the rivers and the air, and human lives reduced to work and the making of things and money. And at the end of the poem those three lines, affirming a deep Christian faith in the creative power of God to restore, renew and redeem a broken creation.
Second, the yellow thread will be used in my tapestry to outline the wings that brood over the world and will enfold the words “tikkun olam”, a Hebrew phrase that means “to mend the world”. This has been a slow tapestry, because like everyone else, I’ve found these months have not been easy to navigate. Motivation is hard; imagination starved; and sometimes it’s all but impossible to sit at peace for any length of time.
Then there’s the loneliness of not being able to be with all kinds of other people; and the low grade anxiety that a pandemic inevitably produces, and for months the loss of close contact and risk free interaction with all those who share our lives, from neighbours to shoppers, from friends and even family to strangers whose face we now only half see. But remember: Advent is the time when we celebrate the coming of Jesus “to mend the world”. And that coming was announced and lit up across Bethlehem by the bright wings of the messengers from God. God is still the light that radiates the bright wings of hope that still brood over our world with love untiring.
And third, those angels, and their bright wings. The shepherds were terrified. So would you be, if some time around midnight, on darkened hillsides, ten thousand winged singers burst into view singing against the background of heaven’s brightest technicolour lights. Nine months earlier Mary had said yes to another bright winged messenger from God. Now all those promises were coming true in Bethlehem of all places, and on that night of all nights. So take heart. At the end of a year of anxiety, loss and deep uncertainty, Emmanuel – God is with us, still.
This Advent, despite all that has made this year so very hard to get through, remember, this is God’s world, and ours is a God-loved world. “The Holy Ghost over the bent world broods, with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” And as we think of Advent and this year of the pandemic, use the old prayer that we used to sing: O spread thy covering wings around, till all our wanderings cease, and at our Father’s loved abode, our souls arrive in peace.”
May you know the peace of Christ, and find shelter under the shadow of his wings,
Your friend and pastor,
Jim Gordon4
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