1989 March/April issue Part 1

Why The Newsletter?

 

I began writing the newsletter in 1982 because kind people of the Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, suggested that I write one and offered all their facilities for the carrying out of the idea.

  Now that my radio programme, “Gateway to Joy,” is in its sixth month I have bethought me again the need for or the wisdom of continuing the letter. I have, after all, a new channel of communication with many more people than on our mailing list. Maybe that’s enough, but then, maybe radio listeners will be wanting a newsletter. I’m in a quandary.

  To call it a "newsletter” is a bit misleading, I admit. It’s nothing like a proper one. It doesn’t keep you abreast of much of anything. It isn’t “relevant” in the popular sense. But I take refuge in C.S Lewis’s remark, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date,” and I try always to include things of eternal. I suppose the heart of the matter is a burning desire, amounting to perhaps a compulsion akin to that of the psalmist’s (“My heart is teeming with a good word;/ I utter what I have framed concerning the King” Psalm 45:1; Kay). Often I have some treasure to share which I didn’t frame – treasures from the pens of long dead saints. Because it’s getting harder and harder to find some of the writings which have nourished my soul, I give you tastes so that you can ransack old bookstores and feast on spiritual food much more substantial than many contemporary offerings. I had wanted to give you something for an Easter meditation. Nothing I can frame comes close to this jewel from George Herbert, born in Whales in 1593.

The Agonie

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings;
Walk’d with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains;
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove;
Yet few there are that sound them, - Sinne and Love.

Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A Man so wrung with pains, that all His hair.
His skinne, His garments bloudie die.
Sinne is that presse and vise, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not love, let him assay
And taste that juice which, on the cross, a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud, but I as wine.