CONCLAVE

New Malden Writers in the Kitchen at Wesleys. Photograph Karl Rutlidge

---

Karl Rutlidge is one of the reasons why the New Malden Methodist Church is currently the social and cultural hub of the high street. With his team, Karl, Lee and others have transformed what was once quite a quiet place, in previous years, into a cheerful, busy place smelling of coffee, and with a regular hubbub about it generated by all the visitors and the different groups the church supports and fosters.

In addition to being the Minister, working towards his doctorate in theology, Karl is an astrophysicist and a prominent campaigner for Trans rights. He does the cryptic crossword in ten minutes. He is also a poet.

Charles Wesley (1707–1788), brother of Methodist founder John Wesley, wrote the vast majority of early Methodist hymns, producing over 6,500 to 9,000 hymns in his lifetime, including “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Karl has also started writing hymns, and one of them was set to music and sung by the Methodist choir.

Phil Hall

The Writers’ Ode

If you should wander through the church building,
keep going straight on till you reach the back kitchen,
you’ll discover a coven, a convent – no, a conclave! – of writers.

There’s John with his archive of verse horticultural,
and New Phil, whose old jokes are not the best ones!
Betty from Babylon shares her rich, gentle wisdom,
and First Phil brings odes of opulent song-prose.

Witness glorious skill played in poetic Roger’s melodical lilt,
while Laurenti’s compositions chime out their sacred visions.
You’ll hear Patrick’s sweet span from the tragic to humour,
contend with Quaker history conveyed in Mark’s learned word,
and eat tasty mints laced with the fruit of the study of silt
as Tom and Joy preside o’er proceedings with wonder and wit.

And last but not least, there’s me, and this is my offering to thee.

Karl Rutlidge

---

This week’s poetic offering is an attempt at an Easter hymn set to the tune ‘Blaenwern’, and based on Matthew 28:1–8:

Easter Hymn

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

Isaac Watts

With hearts by leaden grief laid low,
faith’s quick spark damped down by pain,
one last kind act they would bestow
on him whose flesh bore sin’s stain.

Rome had nail-ed him to the cross,
snuffed out Love’s light with hateful glee;
his tomb the focus of their loss,
life laid down to set us free.

Out of nothing, the spark God lit.
Fizzling like thunder, dazzling white,
an angel did fresh hope transmit
as Love outshone sin’s dread might.

Those women, overcome by fear,
sensed a sizzling energy,
yet they were met by words of cheer –
light and life’s great synergy.

“He is not here”, the angel said;
tomb and stone could not him confine.
Christ is risen from the dead,
radiating sparks divine.

Bolts of thunder break death’s cords.
Sin can shackle our hearts no more!
The world’s great joy, the sacred Word,
hymns God’s love for evermore!

---

Karl Rutlidge

---

Roundabouts

Life is rather like Milton Keynes.
You set out along an apparently lazily linear course,
as sure of the final destination as anyone might be,
but having barely gotten going and out of first gear,
you arrive at another of many, many roundabouts.

And thus you wonder, while looming junction waits,
which way shall I turn off? What option should I take?
If I had picked out a different exit, made another choice,
would this ode have been penned with rose-red wine ink
in some snug Parisian café, punctuated by grumpy sighing
from the waiter wafting abroad the holy, heavenly scent
of freshly baked baguette out into the Montmartre air,
while love-soppy couples mumble sugar-sweet nothings?

Might the road in front of me have led to nowhere really,
another of the routes labelled ‘not quite, but very nearly’?
Or, instead, meandered as river from human affliction spared
towards adrenaline-laced adventures upon far off horizons?
Could it have forced a stop with shuddering shotgun violence,
before brutal bumpers waiting to crumple carriages of dreams?

Perhaps some points of unconscious decision would have gone,
with their sorry songs of ‘Well, I told you so’ playing on the radio,
and the chiding satnav scolding, back to where all this began,
duly chastened but all the wiser for that journey undertaken.

I cannot say, for nobody has true time-bending future wisdom,
where other paths may have travelled at another turning off.
All I know is, like Milton Keynes, life is full of roundabouts!

Karl Rutlidge

---

My first attempt at a Korean poetic form called a sijo, which I am told typically has forty-four to forty-six syllables, an introduction, development and twist, and in English has six lines:

Cherry blossom in brilliant bloom
dispels the daub of wintery gloom.
Glory springs forth in perfect pink.
Flowers feed bees with honeyed drink.
But this does not me fully please,
for pollen always makes me sneeze!

Karl Rutlidge

---

The writer’s Group meets in New Malden at the Methodist Church once a week on Fridays at 11am. If you don’t see us go to the back of the church and look for the kitchen. That’s where we will be.