tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.comments2024-03-10T12:32:22.562+00:00The Mercy BlogMike Farleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comBlogger1964125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-16392863375035703302024-03-10T12:32:22.562+00:002024-03-10T12:32:22.562+00:00Thank you, Samantha! Thank you, Samantha! Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-13979839160094460722024-03-10T12:10:09.974+00:002024-03-10T12:10:09.974+00:00Thank you. I needed this today.Thank you. I needed this today.Samanthahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18161892513541425103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-89239350707711615432024-03-01T07:10:16.929+00:002024-03-01T07:10:16.929+00:00Thank you, Melanie! Thank you, Melanie! Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-81053249858105066252024-03-01T06:29:32.399+00:002024-03-01T06:29:32.399+00:00This is a wondrous relection. Thank you, Mike Farl...This is a wondrous relection. Thank you, Mike Farley. Amen and amen.Melanie Supan Grosetahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12899775444303606146noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-39596433202265460472024-02-15T11:03:40.396+00:002024-02-15T11:03:40.396+00:00Thank you, Gerard! Thank you, Gerard! Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-34891873509792157402024-02-15T10:11:42.480+00:002024-02-15T10:11:42.480+00:00"These things come to us through our consciou..."These things come to us through our consciousness as they are; and the silence receives them, far beneath thought and feeling. How can we know what is, except in our surrender to that sheer silence of isness, Eckhart's istigkeit?"<br /><br />Terrific. Thank you, Mike.<br /><br />GerardGerard Guitonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13471249923048482398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-69089501466202097252024-02-11T23:20:56.005+00:002024-02-11T23:20:56.005+00:00Thank you, Anon - that's not so far from how I...Thank you, Anon - that's not so far from how I feel myself! Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-7540228002584879342024-02-11T22:31:27.728+00:002024-02-11T22:31:27.728+00:00WowWowAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-74215504344228758632021-01-31T15:28:52.826+00:002021-01-31T15:28:52.826+00:00Thank you, Thomas - and a belated Happy New Year t...Thank you, Thomas - and a belated Happy New Year to you!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-38119397837322506882021-01-31T02:18:55.014+00:002021-01-31T02:18:55.014+00:00Mike, hello!
It's a joy to be reading a fresh...Mike, hello!<br /><br />It's a joy to be reading a fresh post from The Mercy Blog. And as you mention Quaker practice. I hope to learn a lot more about the Society of Friends in the coming year or so.<br /><br />Silence and practice without language. Yes, to make time each day for what you describe, leaving "the field still, and open."<br /><br />Since the pandemic, my community, and my ideas about community have changed, have "morphed" (as we might say in current American vernacular) considerably. As inadequate as online services are, I can be fortified by what I find and by what I've participated in. I'm currently a reader in an Episcopal (Anglican) parish in Cambridge, Mass. (all services virtual, of course). The priest-in-charge even asked me and several others to contribute poems to the weekly liturgies!<br /><br />So there is joy in the words by which we ratify our unity and togetherness. But I wholeheartedly and wholesouledly agree that the Compassionate God whom we seek and who seeks us exists in a realm beyond words.<br /><br />Thank you so much for your characteristically thoughtful reflection!<br /><br />Peace and light.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15150101825377376755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-25036263368288217372021-01-18T15:07:27.551+00:002021-01-18T15:07:27.551+00:00That's a dense and unsettling read, Tim, as is...That's a dense and unsettling read, Tim, as is Anna Rowlands' linked piece. As, of course, is Weil. I've tried to read her repeatedly over the years, and ended up bogged down each time in "the sense of an overwhelmingly strong personality, fierce and intolerant and sometimes almost intolerable." But you and Rowlands are both right - perhaps now is the time to read her, with that attention she herself demands for the intolerable times in which we are living. And that admission is in itself worth the time spent reading both your articles - the demand to "pay attention to what <i>is</i>" in this time, rather than to our own deep hope "that good and not harm will come to us..." A painful kind of <i>vipassana</i> if ever there was one. But it may be necessary, <i>is</i> necessary: we can't truly find hope except on the bare scarp of truth.Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-7846797701280509222021-01-18T13:33:36.773+00:002021-01-18T13:33:36.773+00:00Mike, I've written a bit about Simone Weil her...Mike, I've written a bit about Simone Weil here, in case it's of interest - https://thismagpiemixture.blogspot.com/2020/07/some-disorganised-thoughts-about-simone.html Tim Pitt-Paynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18391344008197172182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-31849990822161098432021-01-17T20:15:29.188+00:002021-01-17T20:15:29.188+00:00Yes, Tim, exactly. That Simone Weil quote is just ...Yes, Tim, exactly. That Simone Weil quote is just beautiful, and fits precisely with what I was trying to say. Thank you!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-7165819875906452992021-01-17T19:08:34.414+00:002021-01-17T19:08:34.414+00:00Thank you for this, Mike. I first came across &qu...Thank you for this, Mike. I first came across "Ground of Being" as a way of talking about God in the mid-1980s, through reading John Robinson's "Honest to God". Ever since, this language has spoken to me. Later, David Bentley Hart's "The Experience of God" left me with the sense that this was closer to the classical understanding of God than Robinson may have realised. And I have been greatly helped by some remarks of Simone Weil, in "Gravity and Grace": <br /><br />"A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion."<br /><br />Yet in the end the purpose of all of these words is to lead us into silence.Tim Pitt-Paynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18391344008197172182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-24748409473510468622020-12-14T18:05:38.438+00:002020-12-14T18:05:38.438+00:00Thanks, Thomas.
I confess I've watched across...Thanks, Thomas.<br /><br />I confess I've watched across the Atlantic with a kind of glazed stupefaction at the spectacle of the "moral majority" in America - Catholic and Protestant - espousing as a leader a man without, as far as one can tell, a functioning moral in him. Susan and I each spent - in the 70s and 80s, long before we ever met - some quite long periods in the USA, and we have kept saying to each other, "This isn't the country I knew..." Life seemed so much more open, things so much more possible, than it was in little England.<br /><br />I think an unsought gift of this pandemic may be a dissolution of long-held boundaries of thought and practice, not felt as prejudices, but perhaps amounting to prejudices nonetheless. We all have them, but we don't usually notice. With the waters of normality fallen to so low a level this year, they appear like stumps on the lake bed, and we can unhook ourselves.<br /><br />Grace and peace to you<br /><br />MikeMike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-57586680781813333682020-12-14T15:52:23.352+00:002020-12-14T15:52:23.352+00:00Thanks, Richard!Thanks, Richard!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-60196222799817958772020-12-14T13:10:05.427+00:002020-12-14T13:10:05.427+00:00Thanks Mike - your words at this time are like an ...Thanks Mike - your words at this time are like an oasis.....RichardRichard Silvesternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-77673962326890546802020-12-13T00:03:56.877+00:002020-12-13T00:03:56.877+00:00It's good to be reading these words. Caryll Ho...It's good to be reading these words. Caryll Houselander is always welcome chez moi: a true poet and lover of God. And the mystics. And the hermits. And those who must push back, with either prayerful serenity or oratorical vehemence, against the corruption of institutions.<br /><br />You mention Trump's America, and of course I'm in the States, in (praise Heaven) perhaps the least Trump-loving state in the Union. But I see many lay Catholics who insist that because Mr Trump pretends to agree with the Church on, let us say, abortion, a Catholic was therefore obliged to vote for him in the recent election. Hearing such rhetoric from Catholics has disheartened me mightily.<br /><br />And yes, the pandemic. Curiously, the claustration imposed by the pandemic has enabled me to explore church in a way that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I'm currently watching and participating in Anglican and Episcopal services quite often. I've become a reader for an Episcopal church near where I live. (I record the readings for the online service, and upload them, etc.)<br /><br />I definitely feel a shift in myself, I hope toward a more supple and living faith. I'm glad to hear that such a shift might also be taking place among Christians more generally.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15150101825377376755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-47972081559755632392020-11-15T19:00:59.351+00:002020-11-15T19:00:59.351+00:00Yes, that's a good point, Thomas. When we are ...Yes, that's a good point, Thomas. When we are young, responsible parents and teachers try to focus our minds on the idea of "security" - a solid job, our own home, a place in society, life assurance! But it isn't like that. Perhaps that's why Jesus made such a point of the poor - or as Bob Dylan said, "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Without security we <i>know</i> our dependence on God.<br /><br />This morning was sunshine and showers, almost like a chilly spring, and we actually made it out for a walk. The hedges wour ere full of sparrows, who always lift my heart. A good morning!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-11716111811321054242020-11-15T04:56:23.016+00:002020-11-15T04:56:23.016+00:00Mike, hello!
It's perhaps only tangentially r...Mike, hello!<br /><br />It's perhaps only tangentially relevant, but I recently read a line in the literature of my programme of recovery which spoke about "the courage to live with the insecurity of being human." Yes! To be at home in the liminal time, in indeterminacy, in not quite knowing where we're going (Thomas Merton's prayer from the pages of <i>Thoughts In Solitude</i> comes to mind). To know that I don't have all the answers. To accept, to be receptive, of those things (most things!) which I don't control.<br /><br />Such as the weather! Friday was our day of grey and unrelenting rain. I was accordingly grateful for our sunny, cool Saturday.<br /><br />peace and light<br />Thomas DThomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15150101825377376755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-74684428279962002482020-10-13T11:59:27.186+01:002020-10-13T11:59:27.186+01:00Good morning, Thomas - thanks for this, and every ...Good morning, Thomas - thanks for this, and every blessing for your own transition, too. These strange months we've been living through have shaken things loose for many of us, I suspect!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-88790864171984564332020-10-13T03:07:25.834+01:002020-10-13T03:07:25.834+01:00Mike, hello!
This post speaks to me, as I'm ...Mike, hello! <br /><br />This post speaks to me, as I'm going through a time of spiritual transition. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. And I, too, was an Alan Watts enthusiast some three decades ago, and more!<br /><br />Peace and light.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15150101825377376755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-19801413714607513632020-07-02T16:51:19.884+01:002020-07-02T16:51:19.884+01:00You're welcome!You're welcome! Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-86056931173553301672020-07-02T16:20:24.173+01:002020-07-02T16:20:24.173+01:00Thanks Mike !!!
Thanks Mike !!!<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17722848848663224884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15398304.post-56469526498926465152020-06-24T20:57:13.891+01:002020-06-24T20:57:13.891+01:00Thank you, Thomas, for your appreciative comments ...Thank you, Thomas, for your appreciative comments on both my recent posts. It is a kind of a desert at the moment, isn't it? But I love the sense Merton gives it in 'The Stranger' - like his, for us at least this has been a desert full of small birds watching the work of God, and of foxes barking at night to the passing owls, under clear skies, to tell of the way it is. His final words hold so much of it - "Look, the vast Light stands still / Our cleanest Light is One!"<br /><br />Thank you!Mike Farleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06732248182662167951noreply@blogger.com