Wednesday Words - The Prayer of St Barbara

This week I have prayerful Wednesday Words, (although rather late to the party because I've only just realised it's Wednesday - last day of term should be a Friday, surely lol!) 

This is the prayer that was read at Rich's Celebrations.  It is the Prayer of St Barbara, the patron saint of armourers, military engineers, gunsmiths, and those who work with cannon and explosives.

Prayer of him who suffers

Saint Barbara, many people around me lie. Teach me to resemble you by hating falsehood and treachery, and preferring everything to them – even social failure, even humiliation, even poverty,.


Saint Barbara, many people around me hate. Teach me to be like you by returning good for evil and by praying for those who hate me, remembering that Christ said: “If you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven”, and “The measure you use will be the measure used for you”.

Saint Barbara, I am crushed with suffering, and cannot bear any more. Teach me that suffering offered with love is alms, and that it can save a soul. Christ offered me such alms on the cross, and you imitated him in the torture chamber. This is how he saved the world, and how you converted your country.

Help me to remember under what conditions you lived: It will give me courage. Then I will see that I too, can achieve great things with that I have, and that if I do not like what is happening. I can change it by my hidden acts – even though I am small, even though I am alone.

Why this today?

Why not.  It's been a hard couple of weeks for reasons that I cannot fathom.  I've been mysteriously ill at the start of this week.  I was overtaken by tears again yesterday, when I was home all day, technically off sick, and I was looking out of the window in the AC's room, and was just blown out of the water by the sight of our Very Untended Garden which used to be so lovely, because Rich and AC and I used to spend a lot of time out there.  I can't bear it now.

I will have to bear it.

I have to man up, and change the world by my hidden acts, even though I feel so very small, and sometimes, so very alone in this grief, which is suddenly rearing it's head after so very long.  Or not long enough.

Don't forget to do the linky thing with Crazywithtwins who has many lovely poems and words on her blog, and who has succeeded in making me cry tonight with her beautiful Wednesday Words.

Wednesday Words - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

For a long time, I only knew the last verse of this.  It used to echo around my head in the days after Rich died, and some days those were the words that kept me going "But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."  Promises to keep.  Promises to eat, promises to keep going, promises to be strong, promises that I had made to the boy-child just to keep us together and happy and pushing through for a normal life, except that normal had gone.  Some days, I wanted to sink into woods that were lovely, dark and deep, and stay there, away from everything.

Anyway, my Wednesday Words this week are.......

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 

by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


Beautiful, isn't it?  I am aware actually, that all of my Wednesday words so far are older poems, from older poets, and mostly men. It amuses me that my feminist literature section of my Eng.Lit part of my B.Ed clearly didn't take!

Ah well.

Join up your Wednesday Words with crazy with twins, and find other gorgeous words to read, enjoy and inwardly digest.

Lucky Lucky boy?

On Sunday, J mentioned that we hadn't heard from Scotty's for a while, about going anywhere.

Yesterday, we had some lovely news.

J and the AC have been given tickets for the 6Nations match at Cardiff next week, England v Wales.  They get lunch and guest speakers and a Q&A session with Martyn Williams, and then the match, and then a post match buffet.

J was telling a friend of his about it by text last night.  "Wow, you're so lucky, how did you score those?" he asked.

J showed me his reply, which was about how he'd had to lose a good mate, and how we'd had our lives turned upside down and how the tickets had come through Scotty's Little Soldiers, who'd been given them by one of the rugby charities (I think!)

His mate asked what had happened.

J explained, and didn't show me, because I didn't need to see it in black and white.

Neither of us told AC that we'd had to explain to someone about Rich's death.  It is still a shock to him every time he finds someone who knows us, but doesn't know.

J is excited about going, and AC is excited about going with J.  One of the reasons that I've let the pair of them go on these things together is because I want them to build memories together.  If anything happens to me, they need to have each other.  If anything happens to J, I want AC to have good memories of him, clear ones, of doing cool stuff together.

I can't say it will never happen - because it did.

Because it happened, AC gets to do cool stuff like this.  Inside six months he will have been to both Wembley and the Millennium Stadium.  Both these things are super cool.  I've said before that sometimes he struggles with enjoying the super coolness, because he only gets to do it because Rich died.

This week he thinks that Rich was listening when we were talking, and that's why we got the offer.

Maybe he's right.  I hope so, because then he'd have J and Rich to love him, and that would really make him a lucky, lucky boy.

Wednesday Words - Sea Fever

Last week I used some Milligan as my Wednesday Words.

 I also said if you knew who he was taking off in the second poem I used, to leave me a comment!

 Well, obviously it was John Masefield's "Sea Fever" which is a beautiful piece of writing and very evocative of a day by the sea. I love being at the sea, being around the sea, and mostly I love being in the sea, but sometimes it's too cold - this is the North Norfolk coast after all! Anyway

 Sea Fever, by John Masefield.

 I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
 And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

 I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

See?  Beautiful.

Just beautiful.

I remember several walks along the sea, several times of just being at the sea side, and whilst I have never been in a tall ship, I can almost grasp that which Masefield is after.