‘Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice’ (Psalm 96: 12) … the sun sets behind the fields at Frating Hall Farm, near Colchester in Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
I have been writing these evenings about our visit to Colchester earlier this week. But for two of us the primary purpose in being in that part of Essex on Monday was to visit Metallic Elephant, a printing machinery business based in Frating Hall Farm Industrial Estate.
Frating is almost half-way between Colchester and Clacton and the home of Metallic Elephant, a family-owned business with a lengthy experience in the printing industry and a team of dedicated, skilled craft workers and engineers.
Frating is a small village with a population of about 540, on the Tendring Peninsula, about 8 km (5 miles) east of Colchester and 15 km (9 miles) north-west of Clacton-on-Sea. The nearest railway station is 3 km (2 miles) away at Great Bentley, so Charlotte and I took a taxi from Colchester through the village of Elmstead Market.
Frating includes both Frating Green and Hockley. The parish church is now a private house and Frating also has a village hall, Frating War Memorial Hall, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022, and one public house, the King’s Arms.
Frating is recorded as Fretingham in the Domesday Book and Frating Church dates from the 12th century. Frae is the Saxon word for a lord, and the name means the settlement of the people of Fraete.
The village sign incorporates a fruited apple tree, recalling the apple-growing industry in Frating during the 20th century, a bell representing the three church bells of Frating Church, a cartwheel representing the 19th century wheelwright of Haggar’s Lane, and a ram’s head from the coat of arms of the Bendish family of Steeple Bumpstead.
Sir Thomas Bendish (1540-1603) of Steeple Bumpstead married Eleanor Ford, a daughter of John Ford of Frating Hall, and was buried at Frating Church. Their son, Sir Thomas Bendish (1568-1636), was created a baronet in 1611 and was High Sheriff of Essex in 1618-1619 and 1630-1631. His son, the royalist Sir Thomas Bendish (1607-1674), was the English ambassador to the Ottoman court in Constantinople in the mid-17th century. Another son, Richard Bendish, inherited Frating Hall.
The barns on Frating Hall Farm, near Colchester in Essex, probably date from the 17th or 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The barns on Frating Hall Farm probably date from the 17th or 18th century. The more recent history of Frating Hall Farm is an interesting chapter in the history of pacifist communitarianism, and the links between pacifism and agrarianism, or the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement, in the mid-20th century, when farm work offered a way for pacifists and conscientious objectors to remain within the law.
Frating Hall Farm is associated with key figures in the pacifist and anti-war movements from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Vera Brittain, author of Testament of Youth and a founding figure in the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) in 1936, along with the Dean of Canterbury, Dick Sheppard (1880-1937), the poet Max Plowman and the literary critic John Middleton Murry, a friend of DH Lawrence.
For many years, a photograph of Dick Sheppard, a former Vicar of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, hung over my desk in my study in the house in Firhouse where I lived for 20 years until the mid-1990s. His pacifism and his social activism were among the many influences on the development of my Anglicanism and my spirituality.
By the end of the 1930s, the Peace Pledge Union had almost 100,000 members, all of whom had signed a pledge declaring: ‘War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.’
Two pacifist settlements in Essex played a major role in developing the link between the peace movement and farming: the Adelphi Centre in Langham (1934-1942) and Frating Hall Farm (1943-1954).
The Adelphi Centre at the Oaks, a rural Edwardian mansion at Langham near Colchester, was a socialist education centre with a degree of agricultural self-sufficiency, and had links with George Orwell, John Middleton Murry and other intellectuals.
Frating Hall Farm, on the other hand, was a Christian pacifist community where a 300-acre arable and livestock farm was home to more than 50 people, including refugees and former prisoners-of-war. The story of Frating Hall Farm is told by Ken Worpole in his recent book No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen: back to the land in wartime Britain (2001). The title of his book is from the opening paragraph of DH Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), and Worpole charts the history of the Frating community over 11 years.
The pacifist community at Frating Hall Farm lasted from 1943 to 1954 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
A group from Murry’s failing project in Langham took over Frating Hall Farm in 1943 and ran it as a radical pacifist settlement until 1954. At its peak, more than 50 people lived and worked at Frating, one of the most successful of the pacifist rural initiatives providing legitimate alternatives to conscription during World War II.
The settlement also provided shelter and accommodation for visiting supporters at harvest time, and offered sanctuary to refugees and former German prisoners-of-war. Over time, Frating Hall Farm became a centre for the arts, winning the grudging respect of their neighbours.
It was an extraordinary geographical and international cultural mingling of religious and political interests – between the steelworks and mines of north-east England, bohemian London, rural Anglicanism, Russian anarchism and Jewish phenomenology. Many of the community members at Frating Hall shared strong religious beliefs and an interest in the works of Leo Tolstoy, DH Lawrence, and religious philosophers, writers and theologians such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Martin Buber and Simone Weil – all referred to in letters and farm broadsheets.
Shirley Williams (1930-2021), later a Labour cabinet minister, went to work there as the ‘second cowman’ after leaving school at the age of 18. She was in charge of ‘a herd of Ayrshire dairy cows, handsome red-and-white animals of a certain temper.’
Her mother Vera Brittain (1893-1970) contributed towards buying the farm. Shirley Williams learnt much of her politics at Frating from the earnest radicals there, particularly the charismatic Joe Watson. She later recalled her experiences at Frating in her autobiography Climbing the Bookshelves.
When the co-operative structure was dissolved in 1954, a former Quaker member bought the farm at Frating Hall, and eventually bequeathed it to his stepson, Martyn Thomas, who arrived there at the age of four and then continued to farm there with his wife Barbara.
Frating is part of Clacton constituency, where the MP is Nigel Farage. I had thought of visiting Clacton-on-Sea for a walk on the beach. But, by the time we had finished our afternoon business, darkness had enveloped the Essex countryside, and we returned to Colchester under the January full moon, which is known as the Wolf Moon – because it was thought wolves howled more at this time of year as there was less food in the middle of winter.
The parish church in Frating dates from the 12th century and is now a private house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
16 January 2025
Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025:
23, Thursday 16 January 2025
‘If it be your will / If there is a choice / Let the rivers fill / Let the hills rejoice’ (Leonard Cohen) … the River Great Ouse at St Neots in Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February). This week began with the First Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany I, 12 January 2025), with readings that focus on the Baptism of Christ.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Leonard Cohen on stage in Dublin at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Mark 1: 40-45 (NRSVA):
40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ 42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
Abandoned houses on Spinalónga, off the coast of Crete, Europe’s last ‘leper colony’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Mark 1: 40-45) follows yesterday’s story of Christ healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law with another healing story, the healing of a man with leprosy.
Jesus stretches, out his hand and touches the man, who is made clean and restored to health and his place in his community, socially, economically and religiously. We heard a similar story on Saturday (Luke 5: 12-16, 11 January 2025).
In both readings, Jesus tells the man to stay quiet, to ‘say nothing to anyone’ (Mark 1: 43), ‘to tell no one’ (Luke 5: 14). But why?
I have often said with humour, but with full sincerity, that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love.’
So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.
And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’
I was at most of Leonard Cohen’s concerts in Ireland. He ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:
Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.
If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.
If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?
The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.
Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God.
But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.
Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.
In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.
The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.
‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.
If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.
Advent is a time of waiting. The Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’
But at the grave, at times of desolation, at times when there is no answer, we may also be called to be silent.
Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.
‘From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will’ (Leonard Cohen) … in the mountains in Siburan, near Kuching in Sarawak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 16 January 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Bag of Flour’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 16 January 2025) invites us to pray:
Pray that we remember that all people are made in God’s image and that our hearts should break when we see people suffering. May we not disconnect from injustices happening in other countries just because they are far away or long-lasting.
The Collect:
Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit:
grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit,
that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord of all time and eternity,
you opened the heavens and revealed yourself as Father
in the baptism of Jesus your beloved Son:
by the power of your Spirit
complete the heavenly work of our rebirth
through the waters of the new creation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Heavenly Father,
at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son:
may we recognize him as our Lord
and know ourselves to be your beloved children;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February). This week began with the First Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany I, 12 January 2025), with readings that focus on the Baptism of Christ.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Leonard Cohen on stage in Dublin at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Mark 1: 40-45 (NRSVA):
40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ 42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
Abandoned houses on Spinalónga, off the coast of Crete, Europe’s last ‘leper colony’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Mark 1: 40-45) follows yesterday’s story of Christ healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law with another healing story, the healing of a man with leprosy.
Jesus stretches, out his hand and touches the man, who is made clean and restored to health and his place in his community, socially, economically and religiously. We heard a similar story on Saturday (Luke 5: 12-16, 11 January 2025).
In both readings, Jesus tells the man to stay quiet, to ‘say nothing to anyone’ (Mark 1: 43), ‘to tell no one’ (Luke 5: 14). But why?
I have often said with humour, but with full sincerity, that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love.’
So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.
And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’
I was at most of Leonard Cohen’s concerts in Ireland. He ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:
Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.
If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.
If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?
The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.
Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God.
But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.
Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.
In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.
The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.
‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.
If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.
Advent is a time of waiting. The Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’
But at the grave, at times of desolation, at times when there is no answer, we may also be called to be silent.
Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.
‘From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will’ (Leonard Cohen) … in the mountains in Siburan, near Kuching in Sarawak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 16 January 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Bag of Flour’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 16 January 2025) invites us to pray:
Pray that we remember that all people are made in God’s image and that our hearts should break when we see people suffering. May we not disconnect from injustices happening in other countries just because they are far away or long-lasting.
The Collect:
Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit:
grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit,
that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord of all time and eternity,
you opened the heavens and revealed yourself as Father
in the baptism of Jesus your beloved Son:
by the power of your Spirit
complete the heavenly work of our rebirth
through the waters of the new creation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Heavenly Father,
at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son:
may we recognize him as our Lord
and know ourselves to be your beloved children;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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