In the third episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Love (III)” by George Herbert.

“Over my years of reading Herbert, I have come to see him as the poet who most expresses our relationship with God as a friendship,” Mark says. “I’m not talking about friendship in terms of the 600 ‘Friends’ we have on Facebook, but rather the one or two people who have changed our life for good and maybe at some cost to us both.

“Thinking about these friends can dare us to reflect, as I think did Herbert, that our life with God is a friendship that asks of us a mutual freedom. Friendship deepens as honesty deepens. We cannot put the other on a pedestal. We must try and prize off the mask that has begun to eat into our face. We need to be brave in hearing what we don’t like or saying what we have never dared.

“Friendship requires courage enough to stop skating so quickly over our own thin ice in case we disappear through the cracks. Instead, we face the fact that we need support and connection and that, also, we have much to give as well.”

The material in this podcast is taken from Mark Oakley’s book The Splash of Words (Canterbury Press), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing.

Canon Mark Oakley is the Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge.

Artwork by Emily Noyce

Producer: Ed Thornton

Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader