Below is the content of what was shared at Revelation Church, Chichester in the UK today in their morning meeting.
England – my beautiful rose in early summer
Your velvet petals gave me softness
As I lay down on your green hills,
I cherish the embrace of your ancient yews.
I love you.
Your rolling hills are the sound of my love,
You took me in – a stranger from a warmer shore
And allowed me to be wild,
England my lion heart that has grown tardy and old
I wish you had not sold your inheritance on the bed of a kings desire.
Where is your fire and freedom? Where is your love?
Your coursing passions of uncontrollable beauty
Kiss me, kiss me, suck me dry,
Ravage me with your destiny
I long for you to love me
For our union to be ablaze with fire
Yet you inject your children with water and call it food.
England my home
I journey to your true beaches of mottled shingle
Where the grass is burnished green
Your Oaks bend at the passing of my footsteps.
Your anthems are old and your banks empty
Your troops fight ignoble wars on foreign soil
That your pregnant youth cannot pronounce – breathe deep
And pronounce love – say it – mouth the words
And you may remember you once knew truth and mercy.
Come my desire and embrace me – hold me
And squeeze my life into you.
The rocks will move for you
The monuments owned by Trusts and ruined by committees
Will come alive again – and sing new songs full of vision.
Let the windmills turn again with the winds of heaven
Driving a new economy – arise you new economy
No longer drawn from the stone of empty banks and the religion of mammon.
You glory in your shame – the shame of dirty streets
Paved with the blood of innocent youth and champagne.
England you died at Whitby, come back to me
Walk again – do not ride the horse of status anymore
Walk in truth, straight truth, honest truth, the heat of truth.
Pray with your villagers again, do not close them down
Because they are not London.
Open up your ancient wells and drink again
Drink, drink, drink…and be drunk on love
Let the Mersey sing again, the mills sing songs at the siren,
The fires of Sheffield roar with muscular vigour
Swing old London to the rhythms of exotic lands
And may your daughters be full of beauty and fragrance.
And you my old Cornwall – where are you – where is your tongue.
I have not forgotten you – I hear you in my dreams and I awake
To the sounds of your rivers and crashing coastlines
Cold deep and spirit filled, come out Cornwall
Speak again.
I ate your mussels with French white wine and you tasted perfect.
Do you remember the footsteps of the Irish and the Welsh,
As they walked over you, prayed over you, called to you,
Called you out -
The ancient pathways are on fire again
Come drink fire and live…there is fire in England
A raging fire – a wild fire wind carousing, dancing spectre of holiness
Screaming freedom in ecstasies and shaking violently
It will not cease England
Until you are consumed in its burning torrent
And your life has returned to your body
I am proceeded by fire – come and burn with me…
Death is the wind of tomorrow
And I am not dead.
In death I see again
I hear the voices of tomorrow calling you through!
The future is not set…
“We three are not ready for you to abstain from your wild freedom”
Why do you talk of self?
Why do you say – maybe? – one day?
Give all in love and unlock time
Give all in truth – pure honourable passionate truth – and change tomorrow
Give your gold to the poor and eat meat with them
Your belly will bloat on a religion called ‘respectability’
Be full of meat brought with pure gold
Drip with my intimacy and the cry of the deer.
Do you think this boarded cross contains my life?
In death I cried for justice
In life I bathe in LOVE.
