Day Fourteen - The crossover between creation and cultural

The theme for today is creation/cultural. As a Christian, my first thought should be for God the creator but my thoughts have been guided elsewhere…

I keep all the Prayer Handbooks. I don’t use them weekly, as they were intended. Instead, I enter all their Scripture references into a database and access them when needed. Witney Congregational Church began a weekly Zoom reflection back in January. Reverend Ken Lee used to write a series for our church magazine called “Meandering through Mark”; we are similarly limping or lurching through Luke. I always try to use a variety of resources, so the reflection has fewer “I’s” in it than this piece. We have reached Luke 9 and my database directed me to the Prayer Handbook for 1995 “A Restless Hope” edited by Kate Compston with prayers by Francis Brienen and Bernard Thorogood. I found a very useful piece labelled “anon.”

But, being married to an author, I checked the provenance of the piece – by typing a phrase from it into Google. Up popped the full poem, with its author: Rt Rev Graham Kings. Now I am stuck. I cannot reproduce the poem without permission. If I had not checked, and it was indeed by that well-known poet and author Anon, I could have shared it with you. Even though the poem is readily available online in more than one place, I need permission to share more than a few lines with you here.

The Steve Laube agency advises: “Assume that everything created by a ‘creator’ is covered by copyright law (except for that which is public domain)”. The phrase “public domain” does not mean readily available online; it means, generally speaking, that the author has been dead for seventy years.

This is where the crossover between creation and cultural is most valuable. I can simply direct you to a website where you can read the poem for yourself. https://www.spiritualjourneys.org.uk/dream/GKThePrayerStool.pdf

I will risk quoting a tiny bit. It is about spending a quiet time with God and begins: I leave aside my shoes, my ambitions and its second verse begins: I take up my shoes to walk in your ways.

I suspect many of you are old enough to remember when “Footprints” first appeared – also by anon. Since then at least four different people have claimed to have written it: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68974/enter-sandman

Messing with creators is a dodgy business! Let us be grateful that our Creator God shows his splendour and is happy to share it with all.

Creator God, we thank you for the world around us – for the fact that each of us can take a walk and notice something different. We thank you for the world that is brought into our homes via technology. Jesus our Saviour, we rejoice that we too are creators – but the raw materials were spoken into creation by you, the Living Word. Blessed Holy Spirit, the inspiration behind our creativity, we ask you to make sure that we use our gifts and talents wisely. Amen.

Elaine Kinchin