Wildpeace

 

Not cease-fire peace,

not image of wolf and lamb,

just weary words,

strain loosing.                                                                            

 

Not rubber-stamp peace

not the din of forging ploughs,

just words spent,

absence foaming.

 

Not healing peace,

not the lion’s quiet grazing,

just silence,

wounds resting.

 

      Call ‘Mummy, look’

      when the toy guns point

      and the dolls tip

      to close their eyes,

 

      until knowing

      we know how to kill,

      makes us sure

      we are adults now,

 

      and orphans’ cries

      are the baton passing

      deftly from our time

      to the next.

 

Wildflowers must come

unexpectedly

to our waste ground,

so come wild-peace.

 

The poem responds to one by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell) included in U2's Days of Ash released on Ash Wednedsay.  U2 laments the deaths of Renee Good (in the United States), Awdah Hathaleen (in the West Bank) and Sarina Esmailzadah (in Iran), hinting at Christian, Jewish and Muslim perpetrators who are distanced from what Bono identifies as ‘the moral force of Judaism that helped shape Western civilisation’.  

 

The picture was taken in Lincoln Cathedral's Ringers' Chapel. 

Edward Steere and John Hine

 

I was given a particular present yesterday.  It is the copy of R M Heanley’s Memoir of Edward Steere (1888) bought when new by J E Hine.  Steere and Hine were both Bishops of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA).  I was baptised in Malawi by one of their eventual successors, Bishop Thorne.

I’ve read the copy Heanley’s book held in Lincoln Cathedral’s Library.  I’ve also read there Hine’s autobiography.  A retired Professor at Lincoln University took an interest when we talked about them.  Soon afterwards she bought online a copy of Heanley’s book for herself.  It was only when she opened it that she saw J E Hine had written his name on the first page, the year before he first went to out with UMCA.  She appears to have taken particular pleasure in giving it to me.  I couldn’t be more grateful.

There is a bit here about my discovering the Lincolnshire church where Steere was Rector before first travelling out to Zanzibar.

I don’t think I’ve put anything on this Blog before about Hine.  He was Bishop in turn of Likoma (the Bishop who baptised me had his Cathedral on Likoma Island), of Zanzibar (where his Cathedral was the one built by Steere), of Northern Rhodesia (a pioneering task) and then, as improbable as it might seem, of Grantham.  His cremated remains are buried in Lincoln Cathedral.