The Saxon Shore
The Saxon shore: the
shingle clad beach shouts the sounds of the Sea.
Here Cedd the sinner,
storm tossed, lost, came to build on the stones of Othona.
The Light lasting as
Kings and Caearls made Saxon swirls
To break Roman
rigidity in a fresh imagination.
So Cedd brought the
spark to shelter in St. Peter’s name here, on the sibilant shore.
The word, illuminated
in vellum volumes
Preached to the marsh
dwellers by the Blackwater where the curlew calls.
Cuthbert, Cedd, Chad
chanting the rituals of the hours and the days.
English then being
born in the dark age, flaming into light
The vibrant vitality
of intertwined imagery: riotous and rich.
As Barbarians slowly
learning a language for the light,
So we struggle to
find a name for our days and ways.
As the Saints we seek
but do not find, the certainties we can save
Our age is uncertainty,
yet still we fill the gaps with fantastical monsters
Dancing in the spaces
where the truth is not written.
Then who could speak
to us from the rising waves in the darkening storm of night?
Not Bryhtnoth, the
courageous politician, cursing the Danegeld
and lost beneath the waves upriver;
Nor yet those who
would have compromised and paid for comfort with another’s gold.
Not the priestly
hypocrites, also fat on other men’s toil.
Surely we must judge
ourselves- perhaps most harshly- if ever we might find a haven.
Sent by Aidan from
the shore of Lindisfarne, we might follow Cedd’s long pilgrimage.
In ignorance or in
faith he worked within the world, though hoped beyond it.
Can we too find such
grace, peace, serenity, in the face of the storm’s strong surge?
Yet shoreward,
eventually, we must come; the sun setting crimson beyond the evening mist
But will we know
where our life’s journey brought us?
The bewildering
babble of our millennium hides the truth in so much data,
Where once the Saints
–who had so little- sought to find any truth at all.
If we could know all
we might know, would we have a greater truth than theirs?
Or would our understanding
fail us, drowning in a complex sea?
Then the silence of
this Chapel might speak loud at last.
October 2010
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