​Forget me not Lord
I long to see your face
you say I am fearfully and wonderfully made, but I am lost within this noisy, busy world, so much clamouring for attention overload.
That must watch tv program
That email that needs attending to
That website I must visit, 1 hour later and I’m lost, falling into the abyss.
 
I forgot you Lord, my life, shaken, fragmented, I am lamenting soulfully my eyes once bright with kin-dom coming now feels empty, desolate and barren, my soul cries out, LISTEN
I hear you lord, you forget me not, I’m

re-minded
re-newed
re-hopped
re-membered
Held in divine steadfast love now and always.  

 
In the Celtic tradition, they talk about ‘thin places,’ a thin place is where you can almost touch, sense even smell heaven. Heaven to me is like when the outside and inside temperatures reach a certain point, condensation appears on the window, yet unknown to us the droplets of water are around us all the time, yet we don’t see them until the conditions are exactly right.

Heaven, I believe is not above us in the clouds, God does not sit on some cloud with angles and archangels flying about attending to God’s every whim.  Heaven is an altered reality, it’s is all around us, we just don’t have the ability to see it yet.

Those that have died are with us all the time, a mere hair breathes away, some would say that our loved one who has died is closer to us in death than they were during their time with us in this reality.

Death is never easy; we will always have that ache within us, that person’s shape, smell, voice still exists within our soul, it craves to sense it again, cries into the reality that for a while at least it has to do without it.

I see that with each death there is a new birth into a new reality a newer experience – I wonder what the next death has in store for each of us.

​To whom it might concern
to God big man in the sky
Queen, Elz not Lilly.
Ant or maybe Dec,
maybe chuckle brother – the one left
to me, to you
to who?
When, where why
what song to sing
what lament to cry forth into the void
where are we,
why is this happening
who’s to blame, not me, no
but someone, something
out of control
out of mind
out of food
out of out
not out, Joe rooted to the spot
not coming out or in

Trump on the way out, Biden on in
reforming or just redressing
 
 
Reforming: turning over the page
moving on
last experiment over, next experiment just starting
safety harness slit, smashed

or

redressing but battered,
bruised
contorting
reforming blank page
rehash past mistakes
old ghosts to new memories


To whom it might concern.

A sense of place 
Back last year, on the radio, they ran a series of programmes entitled “A sense of place.” This series focused on what it was like living in various places around the south of England.
 
But what is a community, these days we have so much to do that it seems we have lost it among our new (so-called “improved”) living, our pace of life has stepped up a gear, we no longer really know the people who live around us. I remember not so long ago hearing of an elderly man who died, but it was a week until his Daughter visited and found him dead, none of the neighbours had noticed he’d not been around.
 
I’m not old enough to remember the war; but I’m told that during it there was a great sense of togetherness, a oneness in spirit. Everyone knew each other, and looked out for each others needs. This oneness was shown after the deaths of Princes Diana, Queen Mother and just a few weeks ago the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It was noticeable on the streets that people were not rushing around so much, were willing to engage in conversation with total strangers. Does it really take a death to regain a sense of community?
 
The bible, in particular the New Testament shows clearly that Community is a central focus, Jesus said “Love they neighbour as thy self”
 
With the world in such a state of anxiety there is a greater need for us to refocus on community life is greatly needed, so why not visit a neighbour who is on his or her own or ill or maybe just moved in and let them know you are there for them.
 
We may not be able to change the world but we can help change where we live for the better.