Hark, the glad sound - the Saviour comes!

A very short horror story. The church building is based on my curacy church, but absolutely none of this ever happened and the lovely people of my curacy church certainly don't care this much about linens! She never turned the lights on when she arrived. It was habit, mostly. Electricity bills were high enough as it was. And even with the door locked behind her, no point announcing with blazing windows that she was there on her own. Not that she didn’t trust the estate, but she hadn’t been there that long and it was as well to be realistic. And anyway, she needed to learn to love this church, to become at home in it, as her faithful were. Generations of the faithful, in this place; all living on the estate, all coming to St Peter’s. It was their church, really, she sometimes thought, and she was still a foreigner. An interloper, and told herself not to be silly. Can’t be a foreigner if you live here. Can’t be a foreigner if you wander round the church at night without even needing...

Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost (Ezekiel 37: 11b) The roof is ribs of stone with no lungs to loose them, no hammer to prize fossilised saints from the cliffs, no spark to make the stone-carved stars shine. If there were angels in the architecture they too are petrified. Visitors pause admiring the arches, commending the craft yet not seeing (not saying?) there is no life here. No. Life is buried here. Fossils are not extinct, but frozen captive in cold stone. There is a hammer to set the saints free, to make the stars shine. I cannot wield it. I do not grieve for death, I grieve that I cannot stir life. I wait for resurrection. As it is written: Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. These bones shall live. These ribs shall rise. This place shall breathe and carry me on its breath.

When my dear (and much-missed) colleague Zack got a new job and proposed to leave England forever for his native Illinois, becoming rector of Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church in the delightfully named Champaign, Illinois, I wanted to write him a hymn in celebration/ mourning. Emmanuel celebrates its patronal at Candlemas, so the theme was obvious - and Zack loves the tune Picardy, so that too was obvious! Go to love the Lord of Light a Candlemas hymn, for the Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano and for his new ministry at Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church in Champaign, IL Come into the Lord’s own Temple, come to see the Son of grace dedicated to his Father, Child who set the earth in place. Here where faithful prayer has sounded see the hope for every race. Come to hear the words of Anna to the fearful and forlorn; to those waiting for redemption Anna speaks of coming morn; broken, waiting, lost and hopeless hear her news and look for dawn. Come to see the hope of ages hidden long and now reve...

This goes to a fine, but difficult and obscure tune - I wanted to use the tune because I like it, but perhaps underestimated its difficulty for a congregation! Might work for baptism or for the Easter Vigil, or maybe to accompany sprinkling of a congregation - written in celebration of the dedication of a new font bowl. In the stillness before God spoke words of creation over water the Spirit was brooding in love; and the water thus hallowed is hope of salvation to a world where dry hearts wait for rain from above. As God brought them from Egypt, the people of Israel went safe through the sea where their captors were drowned. Through the river they came to the land that was promised and they drank from the rock in the desert’s dry ground. In the Jordan all righteousness found its fulfilment and Jesus was known as the Father’s dear Son; in the promise thus given is life for all people washed, watered and welcomed, with Jesus made one. Praise God who gives water to feed and sustain us, p...

Frideswide is an obscure saint and very strongly located not just in Oxford, but in Christ Church. I wrote this hymn for her feast day (and our patronal festival) in 2022. It's dedicated to Richard Peers, then our Sub Dean, a priest of huge integrity, wisdom and gentleness from whom I learnt a lot. The tune is Highwood, because I love it. This is the house which holy Frideswide founded strong in God’s peace, unshaken, unafraid, choosing a life of prayer, of love and service, she taught God’s truth and brought God’s gracious aid. Once in this place, she healed God’s hurting people; here from her faith she built a house of grace; now in her presence we her light remember as she beholds our God with glowing face. Here stands the shrine, its fragments found and mended – marble and stone once carved with faithful care – craft that remade it after years of absence; her silent presence and her steadfast prayer. And here we come, to ask again for healing, kneeling in worship at the broken ...

 One of the pieces of liturgy specific to cathedrals is the annual Chrism Mass (or Eucharist with renewal of ministerial vows and blessing of the oils for the ministry of the Church). It's a huge joy and a huge privilege, even though when it happens on the traditional Maundy Thursday, it is also a logistical nightmare. The renewal of ministerial vows is relatively new; the blessing of oils for the three anointings of priestly ministry (oil of exorcism for baptism, oil of healing, oil of chrism for the invocation of the Holy Spirit) very old, and the symbolism of those oils being blessed on Maundy Thursday by the bishop in their cathedral and then taken to the people of the diocese by the clergy carries a lot of theological depth about the ministry of the church flowing from the self-giving love of Jesus and through those ordained to service. There is one published hymn about the oils for ministry, and after several years as precentor I'd got quite tired of it. So I wrote anothe...