There’s always something so hopeful about Lent, like a tiny speck of light on the horizon, reminding me that I’m moving out of winter.
Is it also that because there are so many people around the world praying, fasting, focusing on the journey towards Easter, that the spiritual atmosphere is thinner, that Heaven feels closer to Earth? Or is it just the wonder of this precious time, to journey towards Him, to journey within?
To know a poem
by heart
is to slow down
to the heart’s time
Nicholas Albery (1)
For the past few years Janet Morley’s “the heart’s time” has been my Lent companion (3). The poems she has chosen, and her reflections on each, guide me to come aside, rest awhile, search into the heart of things, search for His heart. No matter how many times I read each poem, there is something new, refreshing, challenging, inspiring.
Ash Wednesday’s poem is The Bright Field by R.S.Thomas. My son Joseph and I have reflected on this poem together, many times. We marvel at its simplicity, and profundity. In it a traveller turns aside to notice the bright light in a field, but then travels on, realising, only later, that they missed something – “the pearl of great price” that we “must give all … to possess” (2)
Janet has some really insightful comments on this poem. What stays with me is that Lent is the time to slow down, “turn aside from the ordinary routines of our life in order to reflect; to notice what is going on, to detect what is really significant”. (3)
Like most people, I cannot simply stop everything for the six weeks of Lent. I have a family, home, friends, church, work. But, over the years, I have found that I have gained a deep return for setting aside time to ‘turn aside’ and ‘reflect…notice…detect the significant’. I simplify my life, doing the necessary, but giving time to what is important. I find space in my day to pause and reflect. Reflect on Him, His face, His ways. I find having a rhythm to my day to do this, to pause briefly morning, midday and evening, has helped me. Nothing elaborate. But totally intentional.
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one filed that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R.S.Thomas (2)
- 1. Nicholas Albery, ‘to Know a Poem By Heart’, A Poem for Day 2, Chatto and Windus, 2003 in (3)p. ix.
- 2.R.S.Thomas, ‘The Bright Field’ Laboratories of the Spirit’, Macmillan, 1975 in (2) p.3.
- 3.Janet Morely, ‘the heart’s time’. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge – SPCK, 2011 p.3 – 5
Into the heart of things 