Not Here, But Risen

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churchyard, Cotswolds, Easter, empty tomb, Fairford, Forsythia, gravestone, Resurrection, St Mary's Gloucestershire

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

The Lamb

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Easter, halo, lamb, Paschal, radiance, sheep

The Lamb by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Happy Easter!

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Easter, Easter eggs, Resurrection, victory

Photo by Candia

Easter Garden

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Buscot Church, Easter, Easter garden, hope of resurrection, Three crosses

Buscot Church.  Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Happy Easter!

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Christian persecution, Easter, Easter garden, Sri Lanka

Thoughts and prayers for all affected by the Sri Lankan attack earlier today.  Our happiness is mingled with grief and outrage at the inhumane treatment of our fellow human beings.  Father forgive them, for they know not what they do…

Photo by Candia

 

Visio Monachi de Eynsham c 1196 CE (revised) or The Vision of Edmund, the monk of Eynsham.

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Abbot, Adam of Eynsham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, Benedictine Rule, Bishop of Salisbury, Blessed Souls, chain of being, Charismatic Renewal, Compline, corporal punishment, Easter, Edmund of Eynsham, election, Geoffrey of Eynsham, Good Friday, hallucinatory drug, Holy week, Joscelin, Lent, Matins, nepotism, Osney, Oxfordshire, Paradise, Purgatory, quinsy, Rapture, Saladin, sanctification, Sanctus, St Lawrence, St Nicholas, Sub-Abbot, vanitas

Vision of Edmund of Eynsham

 

 

 

Adam – now there’s a fine symbolic name

for a Sub-Abbot, but it is not he

of whom we wish to write.  No, the fame

belongs entirely to his brother: Edmund.  He

is the one whose ‘deathbed’ revelation

showed him Paradise and Purgatory.

Taken by the hand of St Nicholas,

he saw the penalties of Vanitas.

 

 

We are in twelfth century Oxfordshire,

but the application is for us too,

though believers in Rapture are fewer.

Nowadays it would be put down to ‘flu,

a fever, or hallucinatory drug.

Out-of-body experiences – who

would credit them with the spiritual?

Movements like Charismatic Renewal?

 

 

Imbibing only some tepid water,

for fifteen months, Edmund lay, very weak;

his quinsy made him hotter and hotter.

As Easter approached, he commenced to speak

and, with the help of a supporting stick,

he wanted to celebrate Holy Week

in the monastery chapel.  Brothers

claimed he remained longer than the others.

 

 

From midnight until noon on the next day,

he confessed all his sins and lamented.

The following night, he began to pray

and lay on the ground, as if demented.

Adam had cold water splashed over him.

He thought Edmund had simply invented

this behaviour to gain some attention –

thus he wanted to defuse the tension.

 

 

How Edmund arrived there, without some aid,

was a point to be considered (but post-

Good Friday.)  Yes, though fresh blood was displayed

on the cross, the monks felt the Holy Ghost

was not behind Edmund’s troubling conduct.

Maybe he wanted discipline, to boast,

boost spiritual pride.  He’d asked for penance,

but was too weak for simple observance.

 

 

Through Good Friday evening, the next day,

water dribbled from his lips, till sunset.

They thought he was returning to the clay,

for he made no response and didn’t fret

when pricked.  They blew a horn in his ear,

but he did not stir – at least, not yet –

till Compline, when his eyes opened.  He sighed

and ‘Sancta Maria‘ many times cried.

 

 

He had begged for corporal punishment

and he kept on sobbing into his hands,

while compelling everyone to repent.

One of his more unusual demands

was to have a silver cross brought to him.

No one to this day really understands

why he was agitated; in this state:

raving like some kind of inebriate.

 

 

On Saturday evening, he ate some bread.

Miraculously, he went, unaided,

to Matins, where he bowed his tonsured head

and the cross and relics venerated.

The Prior and Sub-Prior heard him confess,

till no omission had been evaded

and he received the Sacrament as well,

to the ring of the credence Sanctus bell.

 

 

He then shared his dream, which began in Lent:

how a man had stood beside him, who said

that the prayers of a Godstow postulant

should join with his and be intermingled.

Then, roused to consciousness, he kissed the cross,

penitent for time he had spent in bed.

Entering the chapel of St Lawrence

and All Martyrs, he bowed in obesiance.

 

 

He begged Adam for further punishment

and bathed his eyes in blood and swallowed it.

He was birched further and did not give vent

to spleen; nor did he ask for a remit.

Adam denied the Benedictine Rule

condoned this practice.  He felt its ambit

was for daylight hours, but, apparently,

St Nicholas had amended the decree.

 

 

Edmund saw souls flogged and bound together,

but they still had a hope of salvation.

You could have knocked him down with a feather

when he saw, in the throes of purgation,

(previous Abbot) Geoffrey of Eynsham,

negligent in his organisation,

though he’d been in charge for forty four years,

now past nepotism induced his tears.

 

 

The Bishop of Salisbury – Joscelin –

committed sexual immorality

and, as for the dire dealings of Baldwin,

he had tinkered with criminality:

unwise Archbishop of Canterbury.

(Most preferred Saladin’s mentality.)

Much given to Chapter disputation,

Baldwin funded Crusades through taxation.

 

 

In the next place to which Edmund was led,

he smelled a vile pond and climbed a steep hill:

souls were burned on one side and they perished

with cold conversely.  A rotating grill

principle moved them from one location

to the other, like ants from an anthill.

To see a goldsmith from Osney- a drunk-

being purged here did not surprise the monk.

 

 

The third realm was a place of snakes, devils –

reserved for the homosexual.

A lawyer was suffering for evils

and monks too were punished by gradual

degrees.  Unchaste churchmen who had blasphemed

(so nothing much there far from the usual)

by dispensing holy things with foul hand,

epitomising the wrongs in England.

 

Those who had been successful in the world

endured more than those of a low degree.

Regions of Paradise were then unfurled

to Nicholas, Edmund: a panoply

of Blessed Souls, who approached a huge gate

set in a wall of crystal – so shiny

that, blinded, he scarcely saw the entrance

of those receiving their inheritance.

 

Edmund then saw Jesus Christ on a throne,

but, at this point, his guide made him return

and yet he sensed that there were those who’d flown

to higher realms and who with joy would burn.

They exuded Light Inaccessible,

but he was not yet ready to discern

the joys of one who finished his course –

his sanctification was yet perforce.

 

This vision showed him a chain of being,

linking angels and the perfected souls,

descending from God, who is all-seeing,

to those who’ve just embraced heavenly goals.

Necessary purging of perception

allots individuals specific roles.

Adam wrote this down for our perfection:

Verify your calling and election.

 

Easter 1996

Tags

Easter, eclipse, Good Friday, John the Baptist, Lazarus, Resurrection, The Light of the World

We have just had an eclipse, but here is a re-blog of a poem

I wrote 19 years ago:

EASTER 1996

That week we ventured outside at midnight,

when a shadow gradually snuffed the moon,

till the reddened orb, deprived of its light,

stared like the Baptist’s eyeball. In high noon

we think the spotted sphere no longer there.

All the primitive tribes rise to my mind,

who must have viewed such an eclipse, despair

weighing stricken hearts. How they must have signed

to each other when they became aware

of its reappearance. So a small group

watched the waning of their Son as darkness

covered the earth, but they were to recoup

The Light of the World. This Easter I bless

the God of Heaven for resurrection,

looking to the sky for inspiration

through my cataract eyes. So inspection

of the new moon tends to celebration.

Astrological symbols directed

men to the babe. Lunar allegory,

which by most people would be rejected,

confirms for me the Good Friday story.

Most of the time I look through the wrong end

of the telescope; get a false picture;

let the neon town lights obscure my Friend;

forget he’s an omnipresent fixture.

He who controls the weather, cycles, tides,

is sometimes indiscernible through cloud;

never disappears, though he sometimes hides:

rises like Lazarus minus his shroud.

Wikipaedia image

Palm Sunday in Salisbury

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Arundells, Babel, Bishop's Stall, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Easter, Jobseekers, Julian of Norwich, Living Water, Mammon, Mocha, National Trust, New Sarum, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, patens, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, University Challenge, Yasser Arafat

A re-blog as it is timely:

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!

Easter 1996

Tags

Easter, Good Friday, John the Baptist, Lazarus, solar eclipse

Candia, you are not going to post another poem, are you?  Brassie said.  I

mean, how many have you written?  Maybe your public would like to know

how Augustus Snodbury is doing after his romantic disaster in Bradford

-on-Avon.

Well, it’s the school holidays, so we will have to report on the outcome in a

week or so.  Until then, the Muse dictates what is to be posted.

Oh, go on then, Brassie groaned.  What have you got for us now?

Just an Easter poem I wrote a long time ago, but-hey!- it’s topical at the

moment.

EASTER 1996

That week we ventured outside at midnight,

when a shadow gradually snuffed the moon,

till the reddened orb, deprived of its light,

stared like the Baptist’s eyeball. In high noon

we think the spotted sphere no longer there.

All the primitive tribes rise to my mind,

who must have viewed such an eclipse, despair

weighing stricken hearts. How they must have signed

to each other when they became aware

of its reappearance. So a small group

watched the waning of their Son as darkness

covered the earth, but they were to recoup

The Light of the World. This Easter I bless

the God of Heaven for resurrection,

looking to the sky for inspiration

through my cataract eyes. So inspection

of the new moon tends to celebration.

Astrological symbols directed

men to the babe. Lunar allegory,

which by most people would be rejected,

confirms for me the Good Friday story.

Most of the time I look through the wrong end

of the telescope; get a false picture;

let the neon town lights obscure my Friend;

forget he’s an omnipresent fixture.

He who controls the weather, cycles, tides,

is sometimes indiscernible through cloud;

never disappears, though he sometimes hides:

rises like Lazarus minus his shroud.

Wikipaedia image