Thursday, December 24, 2015

Advent 26: 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE....



This brief journal entry is from one of my favorite books: 

Word from Wormingford, by Ronald Blythe


We are beckoned into the life of an English country clergyman.  Please join me.  We can be back in time for evening service Stateside.


Christmas Eve.

A small gift for the postmen--they have a rota--on whose endless kindnesses the logistics of this remote farmhouse turn.

My towering holly hedge is snowily tipped with old man's beard but the lower boughs are a glowing mass of orange and dark green fruit and foliage.  Blackbirds hustle out as I cut branches to hang over the pictures and fireplace.

A ten-thirty 'midnight' at Mount Bures in order that the vicar and myself can get to an actual midnight at Wormingford.  We speed through the black lanes.  Among the new arts of being multi-beneficial is that of appearing to have all the time in the world when one has another church full of communicants three miles and one hour away.  Most particularly at the midnight.  And Mount Bures, such a sacred little temple on its military height, doesn't make this easy.  It is a church to dream in.  Brian plays the organ which commemorates the passing of Queen Victoria.   A starved-looking John the Baptist, the parish's patronal saint, looks down at the Eucharist.  Night has rubbed out the window-pictures.  Joyce's new candles waver in ancient draughts.  I read the Epistle and John 'In the beginning was the Word....'  After the service we stand saying happy-Christmases at the door as though we have all the time in creation.

Then a scamper down Old Barn Hill, past cottages flickering with television, up Sandy Hill, by the Crown and down to St. Andrew's where, mercifully, the only restiveness is in the belfry.  And now, of course, the art of showing no sign that we have said and done all these great things a few minutes before.

It is nearly two in the morning when Gordon drives me home where, now wide awake, I have a whisky and a read.  Lights in the valley go out one by one as the congregation sleeps.

At Little Horkesley matins--crowds of families and famous singing--I preach on time and timelessness, the temporal and the eternal.  I ask the children:

And is it true?  And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

They think about it.

    







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