Skip to main content

The Saxon Shore


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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...