Author: gideonheugh

Hope is a golden leaf
falling to the ground.
It knows that one day
it will become the soil;
it knows that one day
a seed will settle
into its dark arms;
that roots, blind
but seeking still
will spread into the deep.

Gideon Heugh

Today is Yom Kippur – one of the oldest sacred festivals in the world. At the time Jesus was born (roughly 2,000 years ago), Yom Kippur would already have been ancient. As a Jew, it would have been the holiest day of the year for him.

One of the rites performed on Yom Kippur is to say the Yizkor – a prayer of remembrance for loved ones we’ve lost. This feels particularly apposite given the year we’re having.

I’ve written a Yizkor below that you are welcome to use. It’s also traditional to light a candle. Whoever or whatever it is you’re grieving (because it’s not just people that we grieve), I hope this helps.

Or, if you have someone or something in mind that you’d like prayer for today, let me know and I’ll include them as I say my Yizkor.


If we wished for a lighter life,
It would be a life without love.
Spirit, be with me as I carry this weight.
If we wished for a unbroken life,
It would be a life without love.
Spirit, be with me as I carry these wounds.
If we wished for an uncomplicated life,
It would be a life without love.
Spirit, be with as I carry this pain.
We mourn those we have lost.
We give thanks for their lives.
We remember them.
We hold them now.
We hold the weight of grief
We hold the wounds
We hold the pain
And above all
And above all
And above all
We hold the love.
Amen.

Gideon Heugh

Love is strong because it is vulnerable; it overcomes because it serves; it is powerful because it does not strive for power.

Love doesn’t climb ladders to get ahead; it mucks in at ground level. Love is not desperate for the dawn; it sets up camp in the dark night of the soul and builds a fire.

Love does not dominate, segregate or accumulate. Love would rather get nailed to a cross in a posture of inclusion than take up a sword to conquer.

Love wins because it is willing to lose.

Gideon Heugh

I thought I dreamt of a forest once, darkly green,
a place where the wind could hide
and becoming lost we would find ourselves.
I thought I dreamt of fallen leaves,
of decay enriching the soil; life rising
from the sweet sting of impermanence.
Now awake, enclosed by undying concrete,
I think of the beginnings that will never come
because of the endings that cannot.

Gideon Heugh

After perhaps fifteen minutes or so
I gave up looking for the song thrush.
Not because I am impatient,
though there is that,
not because I didn’t want
my coffee to get cold,
though there is that;
no, it is because I realised
that as long as I was searching
I was not listening,
as long as my mind was grasping
my heart was not receiving,
as long as my eyes were straining
to find the source of the music
I could not stop to revel in the fact
that there should be music at all.

Gideon Heugh

All that is good is growing.
Yesterday and so many yesterdays
it seemed dead. But now
the deep God stirs in her earth,
and seed and root remember sky
and brightened make their move
towards it. Life rubs its eyes, spring
no longer a dream to sustain
through the colding days
but a reality born from sunlight
and bluebells and the sure refrain
of the chiffchaff.
All that is good is growing;
the darker season has had its time
and will do so again, a knowledge
to make these thrill bloomings
all the sweeter. The return of the swallows
is only marked because they left,
and will leave. But today in the fields
the lambs are becoming sure of their feet,
and green is dancing once more in the trees,
and in the gardens there is a tenderness
showing itself in the eyes of the flowers.
I see that I am not dead,
nor is the hope that I was once born into.
I see the meaning in our burials –
that despairing we might rise for air
and unexpectedly find it, and explore it
with lungs made new by thankfulness.
Even though the last stands of cold
may cling to us, along with the clenching memory
of winters past – all those dyings of our hearts –
even so, today and so many todays:
all that is good is growing.

 

Gideon Heugh

 

May this be a year
in which we slow down,
pay close attention,
pause, breathe, be still.

May this be a year
in which we reconnect with nature,
use all of our senses
and re-tune our souls to wonder.

May this be a year
in which we are kinder
to the Earth, to each other
and to ourselves.

May this be a year
in which we say no:
no to busyness, no to more stuff,
no to anger and hatred and despair.

May this be a year
in which we say yes:
yes to stargazing, yes to birdsong,
yes to hope and forgiveness and love.

May this be a year
in which our minds are open,
our arms wide,
our hearts full.

Gideon Heugh

A Christmas poem

Stop. Do you not know?
Life doesn’t have to be this way;
something new can be born in your heart today.

Listen. Have you not heard?
Your whole being sings the love song of Christ;
this world is drenched in the wonder of his light.

Breathe. Will you accept it?
You can let your striving fall away;
let it dissolve into beauty and grace.

Open your eyes. Can you see it?
You have nothing to prove, nothing to fear;
God is with us, heaven is here.

Gideon Heugh

Lord, help me to love myself
in the same way that I love
the sunbeam
and the scent of fallen leaves.

Help to hold myself
in the same way I am held
by the Autumn morning
stretching its golden arms
around my heart.

And help me to believe
increasingly
in this world of aching wonder,
which somehow
includes me.

Gideon Heugh