Rev'd Joe's blog aka "Stuff".....

23rd April - St. George's Stuff

Hello,

I lead assemblies at Greatwood Primary school every month and I always enjoy going. The enthusiasm is wonderful. I’ve only got to say, “I need some vol…..” and 60 hands shoot up without them even knowing what they are volunteering for. I also get a resounding response at the beginning when I say, “The Lord be with you”. They shout back, “THE LORD BE WITH YOU!”. It should be “AND ALSO WITH YOU” but I don’t push my luck.

Over the past three months I have led assemblies on St. David (patron saint of Wales), St. Patrick (Ireland) and St. George (England), so just St. Andrew (Scotland) to go. For Saint George, I introduced one of my favourite childhood hymns – When a Knight Won His Spurs. Although it was written - and has been used - as a children’s song over the years, hearing the words again at the age of 54 makes me think it’s just as relevant to the lost child in grown-ups. The last verse is full of both pathos and hope, a rudderless adult, maybe finding a reason to be, once again. Maybe not, maybe it’s just about giants and dragons.

The song may track a person’s life over the years, mirroring a sense of wonder in verse one,

When a knight won his spurs in the stories of oldHe was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold,

the sense of youthful aspiration in verse two, when Father Christmas, fairies and ogres are known to be just stories, but you have your life ahead of you,

No charger have I, and no sword by my sideYet still to adventure and battle I ride,

and then the later sense of, ‘I know I’m getting old but surely there must be something left in the tank’,

And let me set free with the sword of my youthFrom the castle of darkness the power of truth.

The hymn was written by Jan Struther and, having only read a Wikipedia account of her life, I can easily believe that there is as much of the adult in the hymn as the child. Suffering from psychiatric problems and dying at the age of 52, she also wrote Lord of all Hopefulness, so plenty to grapple with there. However, that can wait until the next Stuff, once I’ve done some more research.

In the meantime, I have attached a version of When A Knight, for you to enjoy.

Peace and prayers, Joe

JOKE OF THE DAYAn Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were in a pub, talking about their sons. "My son was born on St. Andrew's Day," commented the Scotsman, "So we obviously decided to call him Andrew.""That's a real coincidence," remarked the Irishman. "My son was born on St. Patrick's Day, so we decided to call him Patrick.""That's incredible, what a coincidence," said the Englishman. "I can't wait to go home and tell our Pancake."

11th May 2026 - Lord of All Hopefulness Stuff

Hello,

This follows on from the previous Stuff about ‘When a Knight Won His Spurs’. I discovered that the hymn was written by the same person who wrote ‘Lord of All Hopefulness’ and was intrigued to find out a little more about Jan Struther, a rare example of a female hymn writer back in the 1920s.

It turns out that Jan (real name Joyce Maxtone Graham) wasn’t a churchgoer at all. She was an acquaintance of Canon Percy Dearmer from Westminster Abbey and, in 1929, he invited her to write some hymns lyrics for his new and enlarged hymn collection, ‘Songs of Praise’, which he was working on with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. They were trying to introduce a folk tune element to a new range of songs and Jan asked if she could write something to the tune of ‘Slane’ (Be Thou My Vision). She came up with ‘Lord of all Hopefulness’. (Incidentally, Canon Dearmer also knew Eleanor Farjeon, a children’s writer, who came up with the words of ‘Morning Has Broken).

In the biography of her grandmother, Ysenda Maxtone Graham wrote,

“It was perhaps because Joyce was so unholy that she wrote such good hymns. She could stand back from Christianity and express its essence with childlike simplicity and refreshing vocabulary, from a distance”

It turns out that Joyce didn’t profess any faith in particular and was more pantheistic than anything. She wrote a poem called ‘Intimations of Immortality in Early Middle Age’, and said, “There you have my religious belief”. Her granddaughter comments that some people who discover this about the writer of one of their favourite hymns can feel a sense of betrayal. The fact is that Jan Struther (Joyce) was a good writer, and “Had a gift for turning out whatever bits of writing she was asked for”. The movement of the hymn from ‘break of day’ to ‘end of day’ encapsulates the promise of God to be with us (Matthew 28:20) both on a daily basis and from our birth to our death (and hopefully beyond!). Does this devalue the hymn?

I would argue not. Jan Struther was a complicated character with marital and mental health issues, who had a way of seeing either the sadness or joy in a situation. She loved her children but was more than happy when nannie came to take them away after an hour. She was sarcastic about the church but at times attracted to faith. After Canon Dearmer’s death in 1936, Jan/Joyce wrote about him in the Manchester Guardian:

“I found his faith infectious and his kindliness a warming fire. When one had been with him one felt happier and more alive than before, with widened sympathies, a heightened perception of beauty, and a deepened conviction that - to use a childish phrase – ‘everything would come out all right in the end’”.

Those aren’t the words of a cynic, but perhaps of someone who found it easier to relate to individual Christians than the institution itself.

I will leave you with a few versions of ‘Lord of All Hopefulness’, to go alongside the ‘When a Knight Won His Spurs’ from the last Stuff.

Peace and prayers, Joe

https://youtu.be/LCBjxVP6GWE?list=RDLCBjxVP6GWEhttps://youtu.be/aKcGmlD38hI?list=RDaKcGmlD38hIhttps://youtu.be/G6X5oGCqKpM?list=RDG6X5oGCqKpM