A Yorkshire Day reflection

'This blessed plot': A Yorkshire Day Reflection by Canon Philip Hobday

You are quoting Shakespeare, Bernard Levin wrote in an infamous poem, whenever you use all sorts of well-worn words.  Not just the famous ones we associate with the Bard – to be or not to be, Romeo, Romeo … – but a huge number of phrases which we use in everyday life without thinking where they come from: stood on ceremony, tower of strength, laughing stock, fair play all found their way into common English through Shakespeare’s poems and plays.

Similarly, lots of phrases we use came into English when the Bible was first translated and widely circulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Not just distinctively Christian ones – ‘The word became flesh and dwelt among us’, as we hear at the Carol Services, or ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ as we hear at funerals.  But ones people, whatever their faith, use every day.  From the Authorised or King James Version (1611) we get a two-edged sword, a labour of love, and to bite the dust.  Even before that, William Tyndale’s 1535 Bible gave us the apple of one’s eye, the signs of the times, to fall from grace and a baptism of fire.  Older still, flesh and blood (though made popular by Shakespeare) is found in an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon gospel-book.

So, on this Yorkshire Day, you might recall the cadences of Shakespeare and celebrate this blessed plot, this throne of kings we are privileged to live in.  You might prefer the language of scripture and acknowledge the lot which has fallen to us in a fair ground, a place which for all its problems has striking landscapes, a proud heritage and culture, and wonderful people.  Either way, or both, give thanks not just for the poets and translators who give us words to match every moment, but the God who inspires them all, and has given this wonderful part of West Yorkshire to be our home.

with prayers and best wishes,

Philip