On not knowing much at all...

As long as we think that we alone have to save the world, we become arrogant in our methods, impatient in our attitudes and quick in our solutions. We instead must seek the patience and peace of God. The man and woman of God are content simply to lay down their lives for some little bit of unity. Wherever you are, let God create unity. I believe that's what God's doing on earth. I know one sister who sees her primary call as bestowing "benevolent smiles" on everybody she meets. What a threat she must be to disunity!

If Jesus is to be risen among us, we must each individually and in groups together surrender to a love and mystery that is greater than our hearts. We must humbly admit that we really don't know much at all. We have few right answers, it seems to me, and even fewer conclusions. All we can be is what Jesus was: present and enfleshed. In the end it seems to me there's only one gospel: Jesus incarnate, Jesus crucified, Jesus resurrected. Solidarity in suffering and in ecstasy is God's gift to the world.

To be in the Church is to be willing to be part of the rhythm and create little bits of unity wherever we can.

Richard Rohr, from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family

A correspondent challenged me recently that she didn't find enough of (presumably my own personal encounter with) Jesus in my blog. What she wrote made me think. Now I know that I am a terrible one for books, and for their electronic equivalent, and much of my blog is taken up with quotes and snippets and links from and to other people's work. Of course in one sense that's what this blog was always supposed to be: "An online diary, notepad and general scrapbook," as it says in the blog header.

Sometimes I look at the raw honesty of some other bloggers, and think, why aren't I like that? Well, I can only be me, perhaps; and anyway the things I quote from other people I (usually!) quote because they've moved me, because I've seen Christ through the words of someone else, or encountered his hand print in what they write of their own life.

I will think and pray about this, though. I am aware of the danger of a blog's turning into nothing more than some kind of a palimpsest, or a noticeboard with torn pages pinned up. Perhaps there should be more of Jesus in these posts; and yet, being only human, and a fallen human at that, I can only show him - if at all - reflected in my own eyes. And I am at least as aware of the danger of a blog's turning into gallery of self-portraits, a running autobiography of the most self-regarding kind. And even if I am trying to look away from myself, and to look always towards our Lord, there is always the risk of an autobiography turning into an auto-hagiography; and there lies the deepest pitfall of the lot, spiritual pride.

I love to look at, and wonder at, what the Lord has done and is doing in the dear lives of my own sisters and brothers, whether those who are sitting at their PCs or their Macs this very evening, or those whose bones were left in the dust of the Egyptian Desert 1,700 years ago. I find them far more interesting than myself, and I don't think I shall be able to resist showing you Jesus through their words altogether. But I shall listen to my correspondent, who knows rather more than a bit about this life of faith we are all trying to live, and I shall try to share a little more about what happens to me as I try to live, as Father Richard says in the quote above, present to the suffering and ecstasy of the world I find myself in.