On The Horizon
The Mustard Seed
A children's play about Mary Jones, a Welsh girl of Georgian times who saved for six long years and walked 25 miles barefoot to obtain a rare copy of the Bible in Welsh. Her amazing story saw the British & Foreign Bible Society launched in 1804. This edition launched to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
This is a one-act/4 scenes play for 8-11 years and has been successfully performed in the UK and New Zealand. It runs for approximately 30 minutes and is especially designed as a children's presentation within an act of worship.
The play can also be read as a story.
Excerpt:
Narrator (1)
It was autumn of the year 1792. Across the Channel, Revolution was rife and King Louis XVI had only months to live. In Britain, John Wesley was at rest in his grave after a lifetime of service to his Lord. His zeal for the gospel had fired all parts of the country and had helped to stem a crisis of the kind in France. Everywhere, chapels were springing up. The Methodist mission hall in the village of Llanfihangel in North Wales was well-attended and one of its most enthusiastic worshippers was a young girl of eight. Her name was Mary and she was the daughter of Jacob Jones, an ailing cottage weaver, and his wife, Molly, who made ends meet with a patch of land and their loom and spinning wheel. Mary loved nothing better than to sing the Lord's praise and to listen to the spellbinding tales of olden times from the Bible.
One evening, after a bright and blustery day, when folk had deserted the market in Abergynolwyn and gone home to supper...
In Progress...
JERICHO ROSE, Songs from the Wilderness
These poems are told through the eyes of several New Testament characters. The title piece is a prose poem of about 6,000 words, related by Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as she struggles to reconcile the human and divine nature of her mysterious child. The Gospel tells us that 'Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart' and I've tried to capture a certain reflective wisdom as she begins to piece the jigsaw together.
The Jericho rose, or Resurrection plant, is a bit of dry, unattractive tumbleweed blown hither and thither about the desert. When it reaches an oasis, it begins to blossom within minutes and within hours has become a viridescent green. The biblical promise that 'the desert shall blossom as the rose' probably references this plant rather than the species we tend to imagine. It evokes images of craving thirst and living water.
Awaits Editing...
Entertaining Angels
Dysfunctional family wrestles in the aftermath of two World Wars under its dour but charismatic oracle, Sibyl, in pre-millennium Britain. This book is completed but has not yet been prepared for publication.