Sunday
November 2
The Marsh Spirit
By Marsh Chapel
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My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane…
…Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
Robert Frost
For All the Saints
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of our sin, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following after the commandments of God, draw near in faith, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.
Yours is a living spirit of recollection. Of memory, history, remembrance, recollection.
September: Inquiry. October: Hymnody. November: Recollection.
Revelation
A Multitude that no one could count
Out of ordeal to springs of living water.
Not everything that is meaningful is measurable.
How do you measure a full heart?
How do you weigh a soul?
Prayer. Faith. Hope. Love.
1 John
Children of God
Dislocation and grace. Disappointment and freedom. Departure and love.
Psalms
The Lord redeems.
Redemption. An economic and a spiritual meaning.
To redeem: to buy back. To get back. To pay off. To set free by paying a ransom. E Baptist, The Have Has Not Been Told. To set free. To make amends. To make worthwhile.
Debt and regret.
Be careful, Commonwealth about funding common life on the basis and backs of debt and regret.
In the summer we live near a grand institution devoted to gaming. Young eyes, poor homes, older people. Those at the dawn, twilight, and shadows of life.
Is this the best we can do?
Matthew
The saints: poor in spirit, mourn, meek, hungry, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted.
Someone. Silent recollection. Organ moment.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Presence. Longevity. Heart. Every opening. Physically seen by half the population. Silber Way: Is there any other? Photonics: How should I know?
Robert Frost
Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets. Edward Thomas (d. 1917, France) on North of Boston: ‘This is one of the most revolutionary books of modern times, but one of the quietest and least aggressive. It speaks, and it is poetry.” They had one year of friendship, to walk the sodden pasture lanes of England.
Walked, not walks (in the poem)
Truth instinctively apprehended not intellectually grasped.
Recollection.
Yes, thanksgiving, and yes, real presence, but also remembrance.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
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