蜜芽传媒

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Canon Simon Doogan

Good morning.

There鈥檚 a clachan or close of holiday cottages in the Mountains of Mourne lovingly restored from the 1600s, and with access to the Kilkeel River. Beside the water, a granite chair by renowned local stonemason Joe Rooney is carved with Seamus Heaney鈥檚 words: 鈥淵ou are everything you feel beside the river.鈥�

It鈥檚 from a poem called Casting and Gathering and it depicts two fishermen with very different approaches to their craft. One鈥檚 technique is free and unfussy; the other鈥檚 is taut and tetchy. Their contrasting styles reflect their personalities and even outlooks. They are friends despite holding fundamentally irreconcilable opinions, and the river represents the uncrossed line.

In the water鈥檚 polyphony of sounds Heaney hears the river baiting and playing them, though as a friend of both he trusts their respective integrities, and can go with either angler鈥檚 temperament and worldviews. Yet in that moment, 鈥淵ou are everything you feel beside the river鈥� points to something none of them can disguise about themselves.

The voice in the Gospel accounts of Jesus鈥� baptism at the Jordan, comes from heaven rather than the river. But God鈥檚 You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased can only be read as one heart speaking to another. There is a directness in the sentiment, which, presumably, met with a correspondingly direct resonance in the one who received it - and the setting can鈥檛 be coincidental.

If Heaney is right, and rivers do free us up physically and emotionally, surely they can open us up spiritually as well?

Our Father, you know us and love us as we really are. Help us strip away the layers that separate us from one another and from you, and so discover our true identity as your children, brothers and sisters of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen