I'm thinking about William Blake's poem Jerusalem. Its text was set to music by Hubert Parry, and so the hymn was born that became the anthem of the Women's Institute in 1924 after the suffragettes adopted its use in 1918. Nowadays it's been sung at patriotic events like the Last Night of the Proms, along with Land of Hope and Glory, and Rule Britannia, year by year in England for ever such a long time.
It strikes me as an interesting example of conflict between style and content. Parry's tune is gloriously rousing, and the hymn itself references the English countryside — a vague overall effect is created of celebrating Tolkienesque shires and proclaiming establishment of Englishness in some unfocused way. Because of this, its use is often denounced as jingoistic and tasteless nationalism. In parenthesis, is nationalism a negative thing? I've never heard Bhutanese nationalism denounced, or Swiss nationalism, or Japanese nationalism. Only English. But, moving on — those who so denounce it are, I think responding to an impression that arises mainly from the tune. Maybe they haven't paid attention to the words, or maybe they have but struggle to understand the conceits of poetry; what I mean is, perhaps they don't get it.
Here's the hymn, in case you don't know it (if you aren't English, you might not).
What its critics miss, is that Blake's Jerusalem is not asserting English dominance/supremacy but criticising contemporary aspects of English society at that time.
Blake was vehemently antagonistic to the Industrial Revolution — the "dark satanic mills" of the poem. He hated the child labour, the social inequality inherent in a society where wealthy mill owners exploited their work force in miserable factory conditions. He loathed the mechanisation, and the constraints of social rigidity (including the religious variety). He believed in Nature as a conduit or expression of divine imagination —
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage. (from Auguries of Innocence)
He believed in what one might call cosmic intelligence, or divine inspiration, in being one's natural self. William Blake used to hold nudist tea-parties. He was all about being your real self unadorned in every possible way.
So, in Jerusalem, he's bringing all the power of his spirit, the power of the natural man, to challenge the dullness, the deadness, the grim cramping coercion, that he saw in the Industrial Revolution. He's advocating for the freedom of the human soul, the liberating power and innocence of Christ-consciousness, to redeem what elsewhere is called "the huddled masses" (Emma Lazarus The New Colossus 1883).
The most similar poem I know to William Blake's Jerusalem is D.H Lawrence's Lord's Prayer. I'm not sure if that's in the public domain (most of Lawrence's work is, but not all), so rather than reproduce it, I'll link you to it — here.
Jerusalem is a roar for the freedom of the human spirit, and for the restoration of natural reverence — it's not a jingoistic assertion of political dominance, as those who oppose the singing of it (not those who love it) mistakenly believe.
The people who lived in our house before us (they were our rental tenants) chose the front door when we renewed all the windows.
The door has a glass panel with stylised roses on it, which would not have been our choice, but we wanted the house to feel properly like their home — they rented it from us for about a decade.
On that glass panel they attached one of those sticky wall hooks, so they could put up a wreath at Christmas.
I like that idea but a) I'm too mean to shell out for a wreath, and b) all the wreaths I saw in the shops when I looked at Christmas seemed very heavy to me. I thought they might pull the hook off, and then what?
So since last summer when we moved in, we've had a front door with a glass panel and a hook but never hung anything on it.
That all changed this spring when Grace (my daughter) and Iceni (her daughter) called in after their home-ed gathering where they'd been making spring wreaths.
They brought this.
Brilliant! Perfect! It's pretty, it's seasonal, and because it's made of simple and natural materials, it isn't too heavy. I love it. An Easter wreath, right there.
So that's one thing from our house. Here's another.
My memory isn't completely shot — I know who I am and the name of the Prime Minister and the post code for my house, all that kind of thing. I can remember the words to the Salve Regina and the Hail Mary, and I remember odd things like that the London train that goes through Saffron Walden continues on to Liverpool Lime Street, which is not intuitive in my opinion.
But I do quite often forget to take my pills and unplug my phone after it's charged so it doesn't stress the battery and take my distance glasses on the rare occasions I go to the cinema.
Most of the time, especially when I am writing, my mind is in 14th century Yorkshire even though my body is on the south coast in 2026. So sometimes my body does things by itself that seem to bypass my mind altogether and surprise it later on.
This happened today.
I went upstairs to retrieve something or other (I've forgotten what, now), looked across my room and saw this thing on the table under the window.
What the hey? Jeepers! What the ever-loving heck is that lump of extreme weirdness? — I thought.
After a short while my mind caught up with my body and I knew what I was looking at — a chicken I'd got out of the freezer to defrost. I should explain it was in my bedroom because I have two massive inbuilt wardrobes and not that many clothes, so in one wardrobe I keep a freezer. There is arguably room for it downstairs in the pantry, but that's where we stash the water from the spring and the hoover and our clogs for the garden.
So my life is full of surprises and I know what I'm doing a lot less of the time than I should, but on the bright side I did write two-and-a-half thousand words this morning, which is not bad going even if I did inadvertently leave my consciousness behind at St Alcuins.
For some while now we — Tony (my husband) and me — have been in search of a place we both wanted to worship.
I was very happy in Methodism, and Tony gave it a really good go but never felt quite at home there. That wasn't why I left, but the reasons for that make a story best left to sink to the bottom of the sea.
For a while we worshipped in a very high Anglican Church — all incense and processions. Again it wasn't Tony's thing (at all) but he was willing to go there if that was what I wanted. I liked it, but after I got ill, and wasn't well enough to drive for a long time, the bus times were wrong so I tried a nearer church (Methodist, and had to leave, see paragraph above).
For a couple of years, of course, we ran our own expression of church on Facebook — The Campfire Church that we started when the UK went into Covid lockdown, and it just kept going until more or less everyone had found physical communities to join again.
More recently we went to a low Anglican church — the old-fashioned kind of Evangelical rather than the charismatic sort. Tony felt comfortable enough with that, but I didn't really fit in. At all. There was a darling couple whose house group we went to, really dear people, and I did like the music in the church, though it was all on a karaoke machine, they didn't have any musicians. But it was okay.
Tony wanted to go to church with me rather than finding separate places to go, and I was running out of ideas.
In an ideal world what I'd like is either cathedral worship or to tack onto the worship of a monastery, but neither of those options present where I live. I went once to an Eastern Orthodox service, and found it very beautiful, but I think I'm a bit more informal than that.
I worshipped with the Quakers for a year or so when I first moved back to Hastings, but though I loved the silence I missed the music — and for me Jesus is central, where I think for Quakers these days it's more a meditative political kind of thing. Beautiful in its way, but not really me.
So in the last few weeks we've been going to a church where Tony is really happy — he absolutely loves it, says it feels like coming home.
It's very hip and trendy. Very ethnically diverse. A loud band — the whole place thumps like it was having a heart attack as we approach on a Sunday morning. There are lots of kiddies. The pastor is a very good preacher — the best we've come across in recent years by a long way. Women are allowed to preach as well, which is refreshing. They stick to a spiritual message and don't turn it into a party political broadcast of sorts, which comes as a relief.
The shape of the liturgy is interesting. At the beginning everyone stands up and there is a long time of singing, very repetitive songs with indeterminate tunes in the modern idiom. At some point there's an offering (with card machines!) while the singing goes on and on. Sometimes there will be a prayer put up on the screens for us all to say together. Then there's always a sermon, quite long, usually good. Then there's more singing and an altar call for people who want to be prayed with individually.
At some point there are detailed notices about the life of the church.
Now then — this rocked me back a bit. Last Sunday we went to church and it was the week of the Hastings Half Marathon, so the service was ending early in order for the congregation to go and cheer on the runners as they passed along the nearby sea road.
So there were lengthy and interesting notices about big things coming up to do with a huge programme for restoring the building, and the church had found a goodnatured and cheerful way of encouraging the wild posse of children who attend to walk in church rather than racing round like the Gadarene swine, so that was in the notices too.
There was long long long long singing as usual. Not songs I knew and hard to distinguish one from the other, but hey, that's fine.
There was a competent (not brilliant) sermon about principles of prayer, based on the passage about Abraham's servant choosing Rebekah as a wife for Isaac.
Some more singing and an opportunity for those who wanted prayer. At that point, as they were about to all clatter off to the sea road and cheer on the runners, I went and got a bus home because I'm not good at long standing (one reason why Orthodox worship doesn't work for me).
So that was all okay except... well... hello? Hadn't they missed something out? Like, any mention whatsoever that it was Passion Sunday.
I still can't get my head around that really.
The week before was Mothering Sunday, and that was marked — nothing about Jerusalem or that it was Laetare Sunday and how it fits into Lent, but daffs for the kiddies to give out to all the women. Women! "Uh-oh," I said to Tone, "let's see how this goes." I mean we live in a world where even our illustrious leaders can't commit to any certainty of what a woman is. Sure enough, one of the kiddies gave Tony a bunch of daffs. "Told you so," I said.
Anyway that was all well and good, but for Passion Sunday to come and go without even a passing glance? Seriously?
I'm not too sure what I think about that.
At Wild Church we thought about spring and nature and new beginnings and the equinox, but that was fair enough — the folk at Wild Church are barely clinging onto Christianity by their fingernails, more into politics really.
But the C of E on Passion Sunday and no sign at all they even knew? Am I in the right place?
I'm tired of leaving things, I'd love to find somewhere to belong. That was why I started writing stories of course — the community my heart was looking for. So I can still do that.
This is what I would have wanted to sing, on Sunday morning.
Or this (the words of the song are given under the video).
Today we had our Wild Church meeting, thinking about the spring equinox, about (as our group leader put it) "facing what is new in our lives".
I was interested in that, because often what is new is regarded as exciting and refreshing. Having it worded as "facing what is new" brought out the other aspect of newness, that it can be daunting. Anything unfamiliar presents a challenge.
We had some new people in the group too, including a young baby — so everything in the whole world was new to her!
And the sun shone. We thought it would be cold, and wore our hats and took blankets to wrap round us, but no — it was actually warm.
This was our circle, the photo taken during the bit of the meeting where we all wander off for a contemplative peregrination to absorb the beauty of the natural world.
We were by the ruins of the old 12th century St Helens Church (there's a newer Victorian version not far away from it). Some parts of it even go back to the 11th century.
If you stand further back from where our chairs were, it looks like this.
There's also a spring nearby it. I know about the spring, but I have never looked for it to see it myself. Here it is — pictures from someone who has been there.
Now I know how to get to the site of the old church (before, I knew only roughly where it is), I'll go back one day when I'm feeling sprightly, and look for the spring. It has all the hallmarks of a holy well, don't you think? Anyway, all springs are holy.
So that was a good day.
My new story is very nearly ready. We've had the proofs and read them, and sent back the corrections to Jonathan. As soon as he's amended the formatted text, Tony will upload it to Amazon and — voilà ! — it'll be good to go. If Jonathan's not busy on other things, tat should be in a week or so. I'll let you know.
Meanwhile I'm about halfway through writing what will be the very last one of the Hawk and Dove books. What a long and happy journey that's been.
Songs often speak for me when talking cannot express what's in my heart.
All my life until recently, the hymnody of church and the songs learned as they were written through the years spoke for the faith I feel, carried the light I bear inside. But the church has moved away from those songs. When I go to worship now, I don't know the songs they are singing. I expect I can learn the new ones — I mean, why not? But it feels as though a lifelong pilgrimage has been erased. The songs were what said it for me.
Today I was online sorting out some financial transactions, and went on to YouTube to see what was happening there. Much to my surprise, I landed there just as a livestream was starting for the funeral of a friend from long ago — a woman I knew at the time my children were being born, back in the days of the Ashburnham Stable Family. It was forty years ago, but she comes back to my mind from time to time, because she was very unusual, a complete original with dauntless faith, full on hope, her life centred on Jesus.
I needed to put through the things I was engaged on, but at the same time I was listening to the prayers and tributes from her funeral. And at one point near to the end, they sang this song that I love.
I've listened to it over and over through this afternoon.
Yesterday, a different song was on my mind. Back in 1972, when I first gave my heart to Jesus, an LP — a vinyl disc — came out, called God's People Give Thanks. I see it's still possible to buy it on eBay, though I no longer have a record player that would allow me to listen to it. At the time I borrowed it from a friend, and the record player I had then was borrowed from another friend. There was one particular song on that album I'd never heard before. I listened to it over and over. I loved it so much. It was William Featherstone's hymn, My Jesus, I love Thee. This one.
And that was what I listened to for much of yesterday.
But then online today I came across this song by Josh Groban, and it struck me as remarkably apposite for the way many of us are feeling as we try to hold our light steady and keep walking forward.
But, honest and real though that is, for me the hymns and songs we sing are not so much to express how we feel, but more to strengthen us, to steady us. And there are few songs I know better than this one, for achieving that.
It was put out for the time of the Covid pandemic, but I think it might be what I want to say for all times, forever.
