As promised I offer you another Betjeman poem. In his poem Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge. Betjeman captures in words the powerful beauty of both Anglican worship and Anglican church architecture. This poem is in sharp contrast to Philip Larkin's poem Church Going and if you take time the following link is to Larkin reading his own poem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN_vWfSgWe4. The very last line of Betjeman's is one I encourage you to ponder.
Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge, by John Betjeman
File into yellow candle light, fair choristers of King's
Lost in the shadowy silence of canopied Renaissance stalls
In blazing glass above the dark glow skies and thrones and wings
Blue, ruby, gold and green between the whiteness of the walls
And with what rich precision the stonework soars and springs
To fountain out a spreading vault – a shower that never falls.
The white of windy Cambridge courts, the cobbles brown and dry,
The gold of plaster Gothic with ivy overgrown,
The apple-red, the silver fronts, the wide green flats and high,
The yellowing elm-trees circled out on islands of their own –
Oh, here behold all colours change that catch the flying sky
To waves of pearly light that heave along the shafted stone.
In far East Anglian churches, the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass
Buttress with prayer this vaulted roof so white and light and strong
And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass
Prayer:
Creator God, today I give thanks
for the artists who work with stone,
wood, and glass. I give thanks for their imagination which
through craftmanship creates such
holy space, full of beauty, which beckons us to
look beyond. Hear my prayer of thankfulness
for the artists who work with words and music, creating
beauty and majesty in worship as we seek to call upon
your holy name.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, unto everlasting days
our song shall rise to Thee.
May the beauty found in village church and in city cathedral
beckon us to worship and praise you today and tomorrow. Amen.
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