Jay Hulme - The Backwater Sermons

The Backwater Sermons Jay Hulme Jay Hulme 2021 Published in 2021 by Canterbury Press Editorial office 3rd Floor, Invicta House, 108114 Golden Lane, London EC1Y 0TG, UK www.canterburypress.co.uk Canterbury Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity) Hymns Ancient & Modern is a registered trademark of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd 13A Hellesdon Park Road, Norwich, Norfolk NR6 5DR, UK All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press. The Author has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 978-1-78622-393-7 Typeset by Regent Typesetting Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd Contents Poem Order Introduction I often speak of being a Plague Christian I found God in November 2019, having been brought up so Atheist that at 23 I didnt know what date in December Christmas Day was. And soon after, a global pandemic changed the world. Despite spending my entire life feeling drawn to churches and cathedrals, Id spent years in denial, certain that I was too poor, too queer, too dodgy, to even enter them, let alone belong in them. Even after plucking up the courage to step inside, Id tell myself that the sense of joy and peace I kept feeling in and around churches was just down to my appreciation of their architecture.

Finally, after meeting and befriending Real Life Christians (who just happened to be queer), a few more years of denial, and a dramatic and honestly miraculous incident involving Durham Cathedral, a boy, a bridge and an impossible moment of survival, I finally admitted God was real. I stole a Bible, phoned one of my Christian friends in a panic, was gifted more Bibles that were less obscure and outdated translations than the one Id nicked, and read them cover to cover. Repeatedly. A few months after that, Covid changed the world forever. In a dark piece of irony, all of the Church of England churches closed. I, a man who had found God through these physical buildings, was stuck, alone, in a room, with no connection to Christianity aside from some Bibles, and the phone numbers of the four Christians I knew all of whom lived in distant cities which were suddenly illegal to visit.

Leicester was hit hard. Our lockdown never really ended. As I write this, its been ongoing for over a year. Dozens of my friends, Atheists faced with Christian grandparents who were dying alone, began asking me, the only Christian friend they had, to pray for them. When the pandemic began, I was supposed to be writing another book of childrens poetry. Instead I found myself writing this.

And as the pandemic rolled on, I realised that though it is possible to be Christian alone it is indescribably hard. I scoured the internet for a queer-friendly church and found St Nicholas Church the oldest church in Leicester, built in AD 879, and radically inclusive. I emailed the priest, asking how I would go about joining the church during a pandemic. She didnt know. I didnt know either. The church remained closed, even for private prayer.

Wed meet up in parks, when it was legal, and talk about faith. I learnt to find God everywhere not trapped in church buildings, but in every inch of earth. When St Nicholas finally opened again in September 2020, I was there. On the 24th of October 2020, I was baptised in that tiny ancient church. Many of my loved ones couldnt attend, so I asked online if people would light candles for me. Thousands of people from all over the world did, people from countless religions, and none.

When my priest signed me with the cross at my baptism that was the first, and, to date, only, time a member of St Nicks and I have ever touched. Soon, the churches closed again. I continued to find God in the ruined factories and polluted canals of this city. I discovered that God is just as present here, among the death and the urban decay, as They are in the astounding beauty of the grand cathedrals and open countryside that it was suddenly illegal to visit. Among the struggles, and the closure, I was welcomed into St Nicks. Over time I was brought onto committees; given keys to the church; asked to show contractors around when we needed repairs.

The poems in this book were arranged on the floor in front of the altar poems laid out before God in an empty church. This collection reflects the pain, and the beauty, and the strange perspective I have gained through being a Plague Christian. Of having to find God everywhere, and in everything, during a time of incredible difficulty. Of seeking grace in agony, and finding it in abundance. Of calling out to God in anguish, and being comforted by limitless love. Of the beauty, and possibility, and wonder that can be found even in such terrible times.

March 2021 Isaac The Lord does not ask for that which is easy nor takes that which is too much to bear Take These Words Having come to God in the closing phase of my secondary adolescence, I find myself wondering: At what point did my prayers become real? At what point did my wordless pleas to unnamed deities become something more than back-alley begging to a bargain basement belief system, built on bad behaviour, bad attitudes, and brokenness? If I were to ask a priest, I think theyd say they were always prayers, even when I didnt pray them; that God was always waiting, in the silence. Perhaps this is a prayer too even this; perhaps poems are just prayers, in their way. We offer up the edge of things, and say: Take this, take all of this. Take these words that I have found in the wilds of creation. On Realising God Exists The sky is falling and nobody has noticed, there are chunks of it everywhere, with sharp edges. Slabs of solid air and glints of light; not blue like youd expect, but simply shining.

A jogger steps on a piece and it splinters, with shards of the sky on her trainers, she carries on. I want to gather it up in armfuls and put it back, but theres cracks all over the clouds and I think its too late. Between the edges of one patch of sky and another I see darkness, and shafts of light. The sky is falling and nobody has noticed. Theres something set behind it we cannot quite reach. Now youre Christian, do you pray and all that? and please can you pray for my nan? I, accidental representative of a dying religion, am kneeling for the thousandth time today, asked by unbelievers to say: God, if these strangers must die, let them die well.

England, the Twenty-Fifth of April 2020 Flowers are falling from the trees again, as they have every year since my birth. They fall without witness, petals congregate in gutters, pink and white in the dust. Flowers of flesh and bone. If a tree blooms by the roadside, with nobody around to see it, was it ever beautiful? And if a loved one dies in a hospital, with nobody allowed to visit, will the world remain bearable? And if their funeral is attended by none but the vicar, can you truly wish them goodbye? A boy walks out of his garden, always watching for death in the form of a neighbour; his eyes fracture at the edges, spinning off into other realities, creating undefined worlds. In the 1900s, scientists found that a baby monkey, given a choice between a wire mother, who could feed it, and a cloth mother, who could provide nothing but touch, would choose to starve, every time, in return for that touch. The world is paused.