Tag Archives: Malcolm Guite

St. John’s Eve is on my mind…

feasts, history, poetry, summer, , , , , , , , , ,

This year in my parish the birthday of St. John the Baptist, June 24th, falls on Holy Spirit Day, and our youth are also heading off to church camp, so I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Ideally I’d have shared about it last night, on St. John’s Eve, because this year that is the day that has captured my imagination.

Father Malcolm Guite has written more than one sonnet for the celebration of St. John’s Day, the birth of St. John the Baptist. Here is one of them, prefaced by his notes on the feast:

“Now, with the summer solstice, we have come to midsummer and the traditional Church festival for this beautiful, long-lit solstice season is the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which falls on June 24th, which was midsummer day in the old Roman Calendar. Luke tells us  that John the Baptist was born about 6 months before Jesus, so this feast falls half way through the year, 6 months before Christmas!

“The tradition of keeping St. John’s Eve with the lighting of Bonfires and Beacons is very ancient, almost certainly pre-Christian, but in my view it is very fitting that it has become part of a Christian festivity. Christ keeps and fulfills all that was best in the old pagan forshadowings of his coming and this Midsummer festival of light is no exception. John was sent as a witness to the light that was coming into the world, and John wanted to point to that light, not stand in its way, hence his beautiful saying ‘He must increase and I must diminish’, a good watchword for all of those who are, as the prayer book calls us, the ‘ministers and stewards of his mysteries’.”

Midsummer Eve Bonfire – Nikolai Astrup

ST. JOHN’S EVE

Midsummer night, and bonfires on the hill
Burn for the man who makes way for the Light:
‘He must increase and I diminish still,
Until his sun illuminates my night.’
So John the Baptist pioneers our path,
Unfolds the essence of the life of prayer,
Unlatches the last doorway into faith,
And makes one inner space an everywhere.
Least of the new and greatest of the old,
Orpheus on the threshold with his lyre,
He sets himself aside, and cries “Behold
The One who stands amongst you comes with fire!”
So keep his fires burning through this night,
Beacons and gateways for the child of light.

-Malcolm Guite

To hear Fr Guite read his sonnet: Go here.

On Spanish Lanzarote Island

I just now figured out from this Wikipedia entry the source of the word bonfire:

“In England, the earliest reference to this custom occurs in the 13th century AD, in the Liber Memorandum of the parish church at Barnwell in the Nene Valley, which stated that parish youth would gather on the day to light fires, sing songs and play games. A Christian monk of Lilleshall Abbey, in the same century, wrote:

“‘In the worship of St John, men waken at even, and maken three manner of fires: one is clean bones and no wood, and is called a bonfire; another is of clean wood and no bones, and is called a wakefire, for men sitteth and wake by it; the third is made of bones and wood, and is called St John’s Fire.'”

The summer solstice always marks in my mind the beginning of summer, so I’m out of sync with the ancients who called it Midsummer…. even though the other end of the year does seem like Midwinter. Where I am, the heat is just now escalating, and definitely not at its peak, and for that reason I think my personal date for Midsummer would be sometime in July or August. When I get that certain feeling, I’ll let you know what date I choose.

Jules Breton – Midsummer Night Dance in Courrires

Only recently did I learn about St. John’s Eve celebrations at all. [Update: see the video link from Lisa in the comments below, for much more history of the day.] Some online Christian friends in England and Ireland gathered around bonfires last night — while I in California was still at church celebrating Pentecost. I doubt I will ever be able to join such festivities over there… maybe I should try to rouse interest in planning a West Coast Midsummer Fest for 2025. Does that sound fun to you? And do you feel that where you are, it is truly Midsummer — or Midwinter?

The Sun — Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo

(If you enjoy the sonnets from Malcolm Guite, remember that most of them have been published in his several collections. The one here can be found in Sounding the Seasons, his cycle of seventy sonnets for the Church Year.)

To the edge at last, in Donegal.

church, poetry, saints, , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday we commemorated St. Columba. It was the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church, and I was getting ready to chant-read the prayers of the 3rd and 6th Hours before Liturgy. Usually on Sundays there are two changeable parts of those readings called troparia, always one for the Resurrection, and often another for the feast or saint of the day. There was another sort of hymn, a kontakion, for the Blind Man, but there was not a troparian hymn in the lectionary for that event.

So our rector said I might read the troparion to St. Columba, which I did. I can’t find the text of it anywhere online now; I read it in the Horologion, or Book of the Hours, which is a big book of texts used, mostly by the reader or cantor, in liturgical services of the Orthodox Church, both the fixed and movable parts.

He also suggested that I take home a copy of that tome, to spend a while familiarizing myself with it. Occasionally over the years someone instructs me, in a very hit-and-miss fashion, on how to find what I need in the Horologion, but I seem to be dense when it comes to learning anything that I have to read standing, at a lectern, for example. So I’ll be glad to bring the book home and read at my leisure through the church calendar, with its treasures of saints and feasts.

Fr. Malcolm Guite was remembering St. Columba yesterday, too, and tells the story of how his mystical connection to the saint was renewed in his youth, “Columba and My Calling,” on his blog. An excerpt:

“One evening, St. John’s Eve it was, right at the end of my journey, I came round a headland at sunset into a beautiful little bay and inlet on the west coast in Donegal, just as the fires were being lit around the headlands for St. John’s Eve, and there was drinking and fiddle playing and dancing round the fires that evening. And I asked where I was, and they said Glencolmcille, and I felt a sudden quickening and sense of connection, as though a memory stirred. And they asked me my name and I said ‘Malcolm’, and they said, ‘Ah that is why you have come, because he has called you’, and I said ‘who?’ and they said ‘Colm has called you, Malcolm, for this is the place he fought his battle and gathered his disciples and from here he left for the white martyrdom and Scotland.” 

St Columba’s Church, Gartan, Donegal.

He has written a touching sonnet in honor of his saint and that “small epiphany,” from which I took the title of this blog post.  You can read “Columba,” and/or listen to him read it: here. It’s one of the poems in his book, The Singing Bowl.

How often has He called, and wept.

poetry, tears,

JESUS WEEPS

Jesus comes near and he beholds the city
And looks on us with tears in his eyes,
And wells of mercy, streams of love and pity
Flow from the fountain whence all things arise.
He loved us into life and longs to gather
And meet with his beloved face to face
How often has he called, a careful mother,
And wept for our refusals of his grace,
Wept for a world that, weary with its weeping,
Benumbed and stumbling, turns the other way,
Fatigued compassion is already sleeping
Whilst her worst nightmares stalk the light of day.
But we might waken yet, and face those fears,
If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.

-Malcolm Guite

You can hear Fr. Guite read his sonnet HERE.

Shorten winter by this holy vitality.

Christmas, Nativity, poetry, quotes, , , , , , ,

In my Orthodox Christian household we have been enjoying our Christmas holy days, which just began on the 25th. I am keeping in mind the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, who said, “The best way to shorten winter is to prolong Christmas.” That is, as you will remember, the opposite of what the witch did in Narnia, when she cast a spell making it “always winter but never Christmas.”

Hilaire Belloc wrote a lovely piece in 1928 about the way his house kept Christmas throughout the Twelve Days, titled “A Remaining Christmas,” and Hearth and Field has kindly republished it. There are naturally some things we do differently in my tradition, such as, we have Theophany at the end of the Twelve Days, and in the West it is Epiphany. But it is the same story that compels us to “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) Here is one paragraph:

“Now, you must not think that Christmas being over, the season and its glories are at an end, for in this house there is kept up the full custom of the Twelve Days, so that ‘Twelfth Day’, the Epiphany, still has, to its inhabitants, its full and ancient meaning as it had when Shakespeare wrote. The green is kept in its place in every room, and not a leaf of it must be moved until Epiphany morning, but on the other hand not a leaf of it must remain in the house, nor the Christmas tree either, by Epiphany evening. It is all taken out and burnt in a special little coppice reserved for these good trees which have done their Christmas duty; and now, after so many years, you might almost call it a little forest, for each tree has lived, bearing witness to the holy vitality of unbroken ritual and inherited things.”

I didn’t get my greenery and full decorations up until Christmas Eve, so we are definitely leaving those for a while yet. Of course we have been nibbling away on the remains of our culinary feast, and I play carols in the car, and in the house when I remember.

Yesterday the younger house guests and I had a thoroughly sugary and creative session of decorating those gingerbread cookies we’d cut out on the Second Day. Also on the Third Day an impromptu Christmas tea party happened here, when more friends stopped by, and their children played my piano, which I know it was longing for. I brought out my real teacups, and twelve of us squeezed around the table to eat more Christmas cookies and drain the contents of four teapots. “Christ is born!”

On this Fourth Day, I listened to a wonderful story by Chesterton, read by Fr. Malcolm Guite, “The Shop of Ghosts.” It starts with visions seen through a toy shop window, and continues with a conversation with Father Christmas. Thank you, Mr. Chesterton, for helping us to prolong Christmas. It will never die.

I found that Belloc essay, which you can read here: “A Remaining Christmas,” along with his poem I am sharing below. If you want more commentary on the poem, this article by Joseph Pearce might be a good place to start. In it he also mentions T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.” I had thought to post this compilation of Things Christmastide closer to Twelfth Night, but it seems to want to go out now, I guess to help us make the most of the days to come. If we are weary from the busyness that accompanied us to the manger, let’s stay there a while and worship, and find rest.

TWELFTH NIGHT

As I was lifting over Down
A winter’s night to Petworth Town,
I came upon a company
Of Travellers who would talk with me.

The riding moon was small and bright,
They cast no shadows in her light:
There was no man for miles a-near.
I would not walk with them for fear.

A star in heaven by Gumber glowed,
An ox across the darkness lowed,
Whereat a burning light there stood
Right in the heart of Gumber Wood.

Across the rime their marching rang,
And in a little while they sang;
They sang a song I used to know,
Gloria
In Excelsis Domino.

The frozen way those people trod
It led towards the Mother of God;
Perhaps if I had travelled with them
I might have come to Bethlehem.

-Hilaire Belloc