"Done because we are too menny"

How many will heaven hold?

How many does God love?

Is this sounding too bold?

 

What's too hard for the Lord?

What is it he can't do?

Leave your dross for this gold.

 

He hates the death of souls,

He loves the sinner, true,

Longs to enlarge the fold.

 

How many will heaven hold?

How many does God love?

Their number can't be told.

 

I read Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy in my early twenties. A miserable book, it reaches a low point when the socially-disturbed son of the hero and his lover "Little Father Time," comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes and so murders her two children and commits suicide by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." No wonder Hardy wrote no more novels. This was my oblique response.

Kanpur August 31 1979

I know big boys don't cry
But I'm ill and I'm down.
My spirit burns low,
And my heartfelt cry -
Not medicine, father,
Not comfort, not home,
Simply "Mam".
Where's my mother?
O to be in her arms,
O to be cradled, caressed,
To be cared for by no other hand,
Take me home to my mother land!

(As a young man I travelled to India and got sick, as you do. I wrote this then.)

Not hard to believe it

Earthly things seem to me like a day dream,
Like a cornfield lives men sway before me.
O loving God, you're my Lord,
Your Christ is my love and I rest on your Word.

Sinners dance in a trance all their life time,
Grace from the Spirit could save them from their crime.
With him we may mount and ride
Pilgrims to heaven, your Word is our guide.

The Widow's Mite

The widow's might
Might be but a mite,
But oh that we might do the same.
If our mite was our might
And our might was given as a mite,
Then how mighty might we be.

Unborn

While I was still a twinkle in your eye,
Why did you have to blink?

Ambition

When I thought of being
What I am today
Many moons ago,
Little did I know
It would be this way.
No, I never really knew,
I didn't have a clue
But now, I do.

True Love

True love is like the morning sun
It's big and round and lots of fun
But like the sunrise every day
Why is true love so far away?

The fantasist

He imagined Imogen
While on a date with Kate.

Lyrical and cynical

I'm too far sighted
To be incited
To be excited
Over you.

Preacher's Saturday Song

Where's my hymn book to?
Is it in Timbuktu?
Where's my hymn book gone?
It was here all along.

Cool of the day

I'm walking on God's earth
In the cool of the day
Wending my way
In the cool of the day.
On my own
In the cool of the day,
In the cool, cool, cool of the day.

When will I walk with him
In the cool of the day?
With Christ I say
In the cool of the day.
Hold his hand
In the cool of the day,
In the cool, cool, cool of the day.

Today we walk as one
In the cool of the day.
I walk and pray
In the cool of the day.
With my Lord
In the cool of the day,
In the cool, cool, cool of the day.