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Saturday 27th June – Icon of the Day

Chris Williams

“Make of yourself a light”

said the Buddha,

before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal-a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire -

clearly I’m not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. ‘The Buddha’s Last Instruction’

From ‘House of Light’ by Mary Oliver

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Image: The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex (pronounced ‘oh-fee-yoo-ki’ and named after a bright star in the region) is one of the nearest star-forming regions to Earth.

Photo: From NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Explorer, or WISE, April 2011; courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team.


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In St Mary’s prayer cycle for June 2020, today we pray for areas of conflict around the world that have been overlooked in the news recently.

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Please donate if you can!

In these unprecedented times, St Mary’s is reaching out and supporting our community in many ways, especially online. But with Services in church cancelled, we no longer receive income from collections, nor from hiring out the church and hall buildings.

If you can help us financially to continue to offer Christ's love to our community in these difficult times, as those before us have done down the centuries, please consider making a donation by debit/credit card and to Gift Aid it if possible, by clicking this link to 'givealittle':

Thank you!

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If you would like to contribute to these reflections, please do email Katherine Cox at kvcox-therapy@gmail.com

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To keep up to date with how we continue the life of St Mary’s in these difficult times – including our ‘Icons of the Day’, Fr Jeff’s and Fr Piotr’s pastoral letters and reflections, weekly Zoom services and more – do please ‘like’ our Facebook page and bookmark our website www.stmarytwick.org.uk

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