Author: Ian Trimnell

Morning Prayer Monday, 7 December 2020

My Heart Leaps Up By William Wordsworth   My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I...

Music to End the Day, 6 December 2020

Good evening, friends. Our music to end the day features wonderful repertoire by the great baroque composers Bach and Handel. Bach wrote the glorious cantata ‘Wachet auf rift uns di stimme’ (Sleepers Wake, the watch-cry pealeth) for Advent Sunday 1724. He takes the original hymn melody by Philipp Nicolai (1599) and gives it a joyful and...

Music for the Service on Sunday, 6 December 2020

[The following is a list of music from the Service of the Word on the Second Sunday of Advent, 6 December 2020] Prelude Sonata No.4 in B♭ major From 6 Organ Sonatas, Opus 65, by Felix Mendelssohn 2nd Movement – Adante religioso Short Introit How beautiful are the feet Aria from “Messiah” (HWV 56) by George...

Evening Prayer Wednesday, 2 December 2020

You who want knowledge, see the Oneness within. There you will find the clear mirror already waiting. Hadewijch II (Antwerp, 13th century) [translated by Jane Hirshfield] Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayers That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful, let us pray with one heart and mind. Silence is kept.  As our evening...

Evening Prayer Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Che Fece… Il Gran Refiuto For some people the day comes when they have to declare the great Yes or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes ready within him; and saying it, he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction. He who refuses does not repent. Asked again, he’d...

Morning Prayer Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Already I By Choi Seungja  Translated from the Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Cathy Park Hong  Already I was nothing: mold formed on stale bread, trail of piss stains on the wall, a maggot-covered corpse a thousand years old. Nobody raised me. I was nothing from the beginning, sleeping in a rat’s hole, nibbling on the...

Evening Prayer Monday, 30 November 2020

Afternoon in the House By Jane Kenyon  It’s quiet here. The cats sprawl, each in a favored place. The geranium leans this way to see if I’m writing about her: head all petals, brown stalks, and those green fans. So you see, I am writing about you. I turn on the radio. Wrong. Let’s not have...

Morning Prayer Monday, 30 November 2020

A  Familiar  Silence … Harlon Rivers  The hollow wind funneled the voice of the distant night-train crossings, awakening  a  familiar  silence hanging from the vast wilderness sky A restless heart hearkening the echoes, imagining  a  runaway  Pullman flew away off the rails,    airborne on the winged wind headed north Winter  pausing  for a moment in  the  shadows  of  familiarity, as if parsing the unspoken breathings in an  echoless  surrendered sigh; uncertain...

Evening Prayer Wednesday, 25 November 2020

A Vision By Wendell Berry  If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it, if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live...

Morning Prayer Monday, 23 November 2020

Awakening By Christi Michaels Moon Flower  I have traveled this road. I have traveled this road since first I came to be here. This journey was my awakening to the new existence I would step into. Foreign to me the illustrious homes. Dripping willows, old oaks, poplars… Perfectly kept grounds. Checkerboard patterns carved into lush grass....

Music videos for Sunday, 22 November 2020

Prelude Harpichord sonata in C Andantino Composed by Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti c. 1740. Introit Responsorial Psalm 97 “The Lord is king, most high above all earth” Hymn The king of love my shepherd is Composed by Henry Williams Baker in 1868. Tune: DOMINUS REGIT ME by John Bacchus Dykes composed also in 1868, arr Adrian Boynton....

Evening Prayer Tuesday, 17 November 2020

WHEN WAS THE AWAKENING? by Amy Perry The freest we can be Is between our Mentality. Fiends try to ween us From seeking the unseen. Heed what we need from those Who lead with dishonorable greed. We are a tough breed And we’re planting the seed For a new Mentality. The history that we read Is...

Morning Prayer Tuesday, 17 November 2020

GLIMPSE Chase Twichell It was as if a window suddenly blew open and the sky outside the mind came flooding in. My childhood shriveled to a close, thread of smoke that rose and touched a cloud — or the cloud’s replica adrift on the slow river of thinking — and disappeared inside it. In that dark...

Evening Prayer Monday, 16 November 2020

Be open to the night… Pray with open hand, not with clenched fist… Shapes loom out of the darkness, uncertain and unclear: but the hooded stranger on horseback emerging from the mist need not be assumed to be the bearer of ill… The night is large and full of wonders… Lord Dunsany Good evening and welcome...

Music videos for Sunday, 15 November 2020

[The following videos were provided for the music in this morning’s Service of the Word.] Organ Prelude “Humoresque L’organo primativo” (Toccatina for Flute) Composed by Pietro Alessandro Yon, inspired by a folk-made organ encountered in a museum. Hymn Come to us, creative Spirit Words by David Mowbray. Tune: ANGEL VOICES composed by Edwin George Monk. Hymn...