Poem: Ether

Photo by stein egil liland on Pexels.com

Our Father lives in the charged ether,
above and all around us
in splendid symmetry,
the source of life and love and healing.
The fabulous towers, the spires
and flowering tracery of organic design,
were all conceived and built by better men than us
in an age of gold.
These, the natural avenues of life
in which our ancestors sat, goodness drawn down
into those cleansing naves
where the deep organ soothed,
where we took the true medicine, giving thanks,
not to some mystery or intangible presence,
but the reality of His environment, His conduit,
His soft conversation with us
which we have – nearly all of us –
forgotten, our memory blighted, expunged,
erased, while we plod obliviously
around the stark bare stones and ruined choirs
in awe of a shell, without ever seeing the whole,
the rich truth of the past
and future’s promise
in this penurious present.

Copyright Francis 2022

Haiku: Internal Space

church-cathedral-christianity-faith-3717990 — Photo by **franpics** from **Pexels**

This space is massive
It will fill your mind with awe
Forgotten glory

Copyright Francis Barker 2020

Poem: Edifice

Who would have the time, 
the patience
and the patronage,
to build a new edifice to faith?
Today's monstrosities arise to lesser gods,
steel and glass tombs where no one lives,
while shanty towns mass around 
in some claustrophobic hell, 
whose denizens fight and beg 
just to stay alive.
Such juxtaposition is not new -
only the extremes.

copyright Francis Barker 2020

Lincolnshire Places and People

Lincolnshire churches are quite stunning and varied.

Lincolnshire people are indeed unique – I should know, being one of them!

I sometimes think we do suffer from being ‘in-betweenies’, that is neither northern or southern. Well, the simple answer to that is that we are East Midlanders, of course.

I certainly don’t mind being called a ‘yellowbelly’ and, in all honesty, my part of the county in the south is admittedly extremely flat.

That said, I am very fond of the north of Lincolnshire; the Wolds are gorgeous, reaching as high as 500 feet around Normanby le Wold, and the coast has some of the finest beaches you will ever see.

But perhaps one of the greatest glories of Lincolnshire as a whole, is the quality and diversity of our ecclesiastical heritage. The range of churches is stunning and the county town of Lincoln has, in my opinion, the best cathedral in the whole of England.