Abject blogospheric apologies...!

Poking around on Technorati, I discovered that way back last August Charles of New Haven tagged me for a book meme. Brother Charles I'm so sorry - I missed your post!

Anyway, being such an absent-minded procrastinator, I have to believe in better late than never; so, here's my reply (though as this is such ancient news, I'll forbear from tagging anyone else!)

1. One book that changed my life

Oh this has to be Per Olof Sjogren's The Jesus Prayer. Back in 1978 Fr Francis Horner SSM introduced me to this wonderful little book, and I've never been quite the same since!

2. One book that you've read more than once.

Other than the above? Well, loads. I'm an avid re-reader, but looking at my shelf I can see that one of the tattiest is Richard Foster's Money Sex & Power. Terrific book - the classical monastic disciplines of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience re-applied to contemporary out-of-cloister life. Should be required reading for the Third Order!

3. A desert island book.

This is hard, but I guess I'd have to go along with Charles on this, and (assuming, like in Desert Island Discs, I already have a Bible) I'd have to take my TSSF Manual, just in order to keep sane with the daily Office.

4. One book that made you laugh.

I'm kind of torn here between James Herriot and Phil Rickman. I think I'll have Midwinter of the Spirit, not because the plot's remotely funny (it's usually shelved under Horror...) but because I keep laughing either with glee at the utterly irresistible character of Revd. Merrily Watkins, Diocesan Exorcist, or with delighted recognition of my old stomping ground, the Herefordshire hinterland.

5. One book that made you cry.

Annie Dillard makes me cry more tears per chapter than anyone else I know. Which one? Oh, honestly. Only one? Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for sheer terror and celebration. Try this for size:

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am ageing and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down..."

6. One book you wish you had written.

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes. Just glorious! See a couple of posts back... What a man to have as an Archbishop. For all the brickbats flying around the poor man's head, I feel very safe in that particular pair of hands.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

Mercifully, it's long out of print, but Arnold Lunn and Garth Lean, The Cult of Softness. I don't know if I ought even to mention it, in case some religious-right hard man decides to reprint it, with a told-you-so foreword.

8. One book you are currently reading.

To make up for the fact that I'm not going to do the final question (tagging people) I'll have two here, I think! Leslie J Francis, Church Watch - Christianity in the Countryside (quite as scary as any Phil Rickman ;-) and Rowan Clare Williams' beautiful little study of the Franciscan life, A Condition of Complete Simplicity. I guess I could have put this one down under question 2, since this'll be the third or fourth time I've read it.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.

I toyed with the idea of listing one or more of the great spiritual classics I've been meaning to get around to one day before it's too late, but actually I'll be honest. I really want to read The Ambient Century: from Mahler to Moby - the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age by Mark Prendergast. Looks just up my street!

And that's that I think. Phew! Fascinating exercise. I only wish, Charles, that I'd done it when you tagged me... once again, sorry for the inattention!

Thinking about The Mercy Site

I've been thinking about The Mercy Site. It's been around a while, in Web terms, probably nearly seven years now. While it is still attracting a share of visitors, and while it is still hosted for free by the remarkably steadfast Milestonenet people, who seem to tolerate its consuming (according to Alexa) some 90-odd% of their traffic, I've been wondering.

I've been watching the steady flowering of what some people call Web 2.0 - online applications like Blogger, Netvibes, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, not to mention all the Flickr, eBay, del.icio.us thingies there are around. I've also been thoroughly enjoying the experience of keeping this blog. Not the least important things about that are the extraordinary ease of updating stuff with this Whizzy-WYG blog editor they provide, compared with even the simple, simple HTML of The Mercy Site; and the possibilities raised by the collaborative nature of comments.

I've also noticed one or two odd things in the blogosphere recently: things that aren't blogs per se, but aren't quite old school websites either. This tendency appears among experimental musicians, I find: the EMC Blog would be a fair example. Blog novels would be another example, but I'll let you Google those for yourself. There's some weird stuff out there: don't say I didn't warn you... Contrariwise, I've been impressed with sites like A Church Near You, which incorporate blog-like elements, with preformatted pages which can be modified using some kind of online editor application.

A blog-site (or site-blog) like that would be flexible and responsive, could be almost an online extension of what one was thinking about at the time, and could have a degree of collaborative input through (moderated) comments. It would be a separate entity to The Mercy Blog, and would borrow the blog novel idea of posts-as-chapters. It would, in other words, be an online, continually evolving - or perpetual Beta, for you Web 2.0 geeks - book about prayer.

I could give it a try - some of the best bits from The Mercy Site would provide a framework, and the endless generosity of Blogger a platform...

If any of you folks reading this have any thoughts, do post a comment!

St. Theophilus of Corte... and Rowan Williams

St. Theophilus of Corte, 1676-1740


I love this guy - more and more God seems to be bringing people like this to my attention. I think he may be trying to tell me something...

Anyway, the following account of his life is derived from the entry at Saint of the Day:

If we expect saints to do marvellous things continually and to leave us many memorable quotes, we are bound to be disappointed with St. Theophilus. The mystery of God's grace in a person's life, however, has a beauty all its own.

Theophilus was born in Corsica of rich and noble parents. As a young man he entered the Franciscans and soon showed his love for solitude and prayer. After admirably completing his studies, he was ordained and assigned to a retreat house near Subiaco. Inspired by the austere life of the Franciscans there, he founded other such houses in Corsica and Tuscany. Over the years, he became famous for his preaching as well as his missionary efforts.

Though he was always somewhat sickly, Theophilus generously served the needs of God's people in the confessional, in the sickroom and at the graveside. Worn out by his labours, he died on June 17, 1740. He was canonized in 1930.

There is something in the lives of all those we remember as saints that prompts them to find ever more selfless ways of responding to God's grace. As time went on, Theophilus gave more and more single hearted service to God and to God's sons and daughters. Studying the lives of the saints will make no sense unless we are thus drawn to live as generously as they did. Their holiness can never substitute for our own.

Francis used to say, "Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up to now we have made little or no progress" (1 Celano, #193).

Thinking about St Theophilus, and about Francis' remark, reminds me strongly of what I've been reading in Rowan Williams' wonderful little book Silence and Honey Cakes, where he speaks of the Desert Fathers' and Mothers' insistence on what they called nepsis, watchfulness. The same idea seems to be present there: our attentive awareness of ourselves, necessarily of our own sinfulness, turns us not inwards, but towards Christ and towards our sisters and brothers, whom we love with an ever-increasing openness and solidarity.

++Rowan has a passage I simply can't resist quoting in full:

"What is hard for us to grasp is that they [the desert nuns and monks] know with utter seriousness the cost to them of their sin and selfishness and vanity, yet know that God will heal and accept. That they know the latter doesn't in any way diminish the intensity with which they know the former; and their knowledge of the former is what gives them their almost shocking tenderness towards other sinners."

"Almost shocking tenderness..." Wouldn't that do as well for a description of our Lord's attitude to the sinners he encountered during his years on earth? (And my heart tells me that if it was true then, it is even more true now.)

If only we could truly live like that! Of course it wouldn't make us popular among the self-righteous, any more than it did for Jesus, but it would make possible what Rowan Williams calls "becoming a means of reconciliation and healing" for our neighbour - and that surely is what every one of us is called to do, one way or another...

Ascension Day!

Wonderful Ascension Day Eucharist over at Holy Trinity, West Lulworth this evening - Bob the Rural Dean took the service, assisted by our own brand new, freshly licensed Priest-in-Charge, Rhona! She may read this, so I shan't embarrass her by saying what a blessing she's going to be, and what an answer to prayer she is...

We sang (well, the choir sang, and the rest of us tried valiantly to follow in the printed music) a beautiful setting, The Lulworth Mass, written specially for the church by Derek Bourgeois. Really a glorious setting - but elementary it is not, Dr Watson.

Coming back through West and then East Lulworth it struck me yet again what pleasant places our boundary lines have fallen in, to mangle Ps. 16. The Isle of Purbeck in spring is one of the loveliest places on earth. Whatever did we do to deserve to live in such a place?

God is very good... and if our Risen and Ascended Lord is leading the way, it's only going to get better on the other side of the river, "Further in and further up!" as Aslan said...

Paschal's spare moments...

In Paschal's lifetime the Spanish empire in the New World was at the height of its power, though France and England were soon to reduce its influence. The 16th century has been called the Golden Age of the Church in Spain, for it gave birth to Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Peter of Alcantara, Francis Solano and Salvator of Horta.

Paschal's Spanish parents were poor and pious. Between the ages of seven and 24 he worked as a shepherd and began a life of mortification. He was able to pray on the job and was especially attentive to the church bell which rang at the Elevation during Mass. Paschal had a very honest streak in him. He once offered to pay owners of crops for any damage his animals caused!

In 1564 Paschal joined the Friars Minor and gave himself wholeheartedly to a life of penance. Though he was urged to study for the priesthood, he chose to be a brother. At various times he served as porter, cook, gardener and official beggar.

Paschal was careful to observe the vow of poverty. He would never waste any food or anything given for the use of the friars. When he was porter and took care of the poor coming to the door, he developed a reputation for great generosity. The friars sometimes tried to moderate his liberality!

Paschal spent his spare moments praying before the Blessed Sacrament. In time many people sought his wise counsel. People flocked to his tomb immediately after his burial; miracles were reported promptly. In 1690 Paschal was canonized; in 1897 he was named patron of Eucharistic congresses and societies.

Courtesy of Saint of the Day

We have all of us so much to learn from people like Paschal. To give such priority to waiting on our Lord changes everything. We are no longer living for ourselves, in whatever strength we can find within ourselves, or whatever we can absorb, parasitically, from others; we are living for God, in the limitless supply of his grace, and our lives will become signs and beacons to everyone we encounter. Every day I spend outside this way is wasted. Do pray for me, really, please, that I will remember that, and listen; that when I turn to the right or when I turn to the left, I will hear a word behind me, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

"Teach me..."

Just the most wonderful prayer from Thomas Merton:

"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names. Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are.

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hand to work always in my life. I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen."

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. (Journals, volume 4). Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. Harper SanFrancisco, 1996: pp. 46-47

"The glory of the crucified..."

Kathryn, at Good in Parts, quotes Fr Rick, quoting ++Michael Ramsey (!):

"In your service of others, you will feel, you will care, you will be hurt, you will have your heart broken. It is doubtful if any of us can do anything at all until we have been very much hurt, and until our hearts have been very much broken. And this is because God’s gift to us is the glory of the crucified - being sensitive to the pain and sorrow that exists in so much of the world."

She reminded me, yet again, of the words of St Isaac of Nineveh, the solitary, and sometime reluctant Bishop, of the 7th century AD. I've quoted these in this blog before, but I don't suppose this is the last time either...

An elder was once asked, "What is a merciful heart?" He replied:

"It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God."

The Antiphon in our own Franciscan Third Order Office, quoting Galatians 6:14, says it in a slightly different way, but it amounts to the same thing:

"Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."

Sometimes I feel like the the folk Kathryn is thinking of when she describes her group at the Cathedral, who might feel more than a bit worried at the use of ++Michael's quote as a marketing gambit. At our LPA Commissioning last night, I had the same thought. I hadn't read Kathryn's post then, but I thought, for the nth time, "What am I getting myself into?" (Actually, it's more like, "Letting myself be gotten into," but you get the drift...)

Perhaps my question's just been answered...

Serving in obscurity...

Some Franciscan saints led fairly public lives; St. Catharine of Bologna (1413-1463) represents the ones who served the Lord in obscurity. Catharine, born in Bologna, was related to the nobility in Ferrara and was educated at court there. She received a liberal education at the court and developed some interest and talent in painting. In later years as a Poor Clare, Catharine sometimes did manuscript illumination and also painted miniatures.

At the age of 17, she joined a group of religious women in Ferrara. Four years later the whole group joined the Poor Clares in that city. Jobs as convent baker and portress preceded her selection as novice mistress.

In 1456 she and 15 other sisters were sent to establish a Poor Clare monastery in Florence. As abbess Catharine worked to preserve the peace of the new community. Her reputation for holiness drew many young women to the Poor Clare life. She was canonized in 1712.

Appreciating Catharine's life in a Poor Clare monastery may be hard for us. "It seems like such a waste," we may be tempted to say. Through prayer, penance and charity to her sisters, Catharine drew close to God.

There is just something about the idea of "serving the Lord in obscurity" that seems so right. To cling tightly to our crucified Saviour in hidden places, like ivy; to go on without asking for rewards, or recognition, or thanks, just serving. That's real contentment, real joy: to live for him, and not for what he might do for me. How I long to be like that - how far from it I am! God grant me the grace truly and simply to do what I am given to do...

(St Catharine's details courtesy of Saint of the Day)

Astonishing post...

+Martin, of Argyll and the Isles, has the most extraordinary, liberating, glorious post here. I shan't even attempt to precis it - you must just go and read it, without delay, and do what it says!

Be blessed - be very blessed...

More Eremos music...

There's some more Eremos music online at Download.com. It's called 'Arne' - rather unusual stuff, being based on a land art installation by my friend Hannelie Grobler at the Arne Nature Reserve here in Dorset. I took a series of photographs of this last year, and they have haunted me ever since. Listening to some tracks by CP McDill (Akashic Crow's Nest, Djinnestan) set me thinking, so I took the .jpg files of the photographs, and using some excellent image synthesiser software developed by Victor Khashchanskiy in Russia, I digitally converted these to .wav files. These sound files were then imported into the soft studio, and with a little extra work using LADSPA plug-ins, formed the underlying sound structure of the piece.

I hope you like it!

Real Resemblance

I've just been reading a post from LutheranChik, where she links to a poem of Charles Tomlinson's, Mushrooms. It's a good poem, but one bit truly jumped out at me:

"...a resemblance, too,
Is real and all its likes and links stay true
To the weft of seeing."

It reminded me of a comment Kelly Joyce Neff left on a post of mine recently, where she quotes CG Jung as saying, of legend, "...it is all true, even if it never really happened."

There is something more than metaphorical, almost metaphysical, going on here - for nothing that we see or hear or feel is more than the impression left on our senses and our sensitivities by who knows what complex interaction of electromagnetic waves, subtle particles, the echoes and glitches of our own nerves. And yet what we see is real, what we hear matters, what and whom we touch is changed forever...

It is not poets who are unaware of what is real: it is the so-called realists, the people of "muck and brass," who, mistaking the narrow constructs of their perceptions and their preconceptions for the true nature of things, are lost in the twilight of illusion.

Words are odd things. All their likes and links stay true - and I often wonder if that isn't part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Jesus is the Word of God, and through him all things were made (John 1:1,3); in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17) Our own little words are more than sounds on the air or marks on paper. What we say and write matters more than we know. Our words accomplish things we can scarcely understand. The Words of Institution in the Eucharistic liturgy are more than a reminder; what is said at Baptism, at confirmation, at the life profession of a religious, changes things eternally.

We should be more scared than we are. On our tongues and in our fingertips is a little mirror of the power that shaped the galaxies. Oh God, have mercy on our stumblings.

May Day!

I wonder what the phrase May Day does for you? Does it remind you of Red Square, and the parades of terrifying nuclear hardware that used to haunt our childhoods? Does it speak of holidays, of Maypoles? The promise of summer? Dark rumours of pagan celebrations?

In the Anglican Church May Day is the Feast of St Philip and St James, the Apostles; in the Roman Catholic calendar the day belongs to St Joseph the Worker, a celebration instituted in 1955 by Pope Pius XII.

Traditionally though, in the Roman Catholic church this month is associated with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and in many places statues of the Blessed Virgin are crowned with flowers, mayflowers if possible, and the whole month is dedicated to her.

I'm sensitive to the fact that some of my brothers and sisters at the more evangelical end of the spectrum could be feeling uncomfortable at this point, remembering that in the ancient Celtic calendar this is the feast of Beltane, the beginning of the pastoral summer season when the herds of livestock were led out to the summer pastures and mountain grazing lands, and so might be worrying about syncretism, Mariolatry, and other nightmares.

But think again. Mary is most certainly the Mother of Jesus; and in her own words, all generations will call her blessed. (Luke 1:48) What a charming custom to commemorate the utterly astonishing courage and faithfulness of a barely teenage girl who stood before the Angel of the Lord, in the face of surely the most terrifying promise ever heard, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God..." and said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." (Luke 1:35,38) The very words cause the hair on the back of my neck to stand up.

Jesus is, as the Creeds testify, "true God of true God" and Mary is his Mother. Don't we, at the very least, owe her our great affection, our most profound gratitude - for through her faithfulness our Saviour came rescue us from sin - and yes, our awe, that here was a young girl who willingly put herself and all her future into the hands of the living God, whose body was the earthly vessel that for nine long months carried the Son of God, and whose arms held him in all the humble fragility in which he'd been born?

"Mayday Mayday Mayday" is the distress call on VHF Channel 16 of vessels in "grave and imminent danger" at sea. It could well stand for the cry of fallen humanity, of the whole stricken Creation. This May Day, let us celebrate the one who stood before her Maker's angel, and by her submission answered that call, so that our Good Shepherd might lead us out by the path of the Cross to the green pastures of our new life in him.

St Catherine of Siena

I know yesterday, 29th April, is the feast day of St Catherine; but I'm sure she would forgive me for being a day late saying that she's one of those people who always give me goose-bumps.

Catherine Benincasa, born in 1347, was the youngest (one source says the 23rd) of twenty-five children of a wealthy dyer of Sienna (or Siena). At the age of six, she had a vision of Christ in glory, surrounded by His saints. From that time on, she spent most of her time in prayer and meditation, over the opposition of her parents, who wanted her to be more like the average girl of her social class. Catherine received no formal education. At the age of seven she consecrated her virginity to Christ despite her family's opposition; in her eighteenth year she took the habit of the Dominican Tertiaries. As a tertiary, Catherine lived at home rather than in a convent, and she is especially famous for fasting by living for long periods of time on nothing but the Blessed Sacrament.

She began to acquire a reputation as a person of insight and sound judgement, and many persons from all walks of life sought her spiritual advice, both in person and by letter. (We have a book containing about four hundred letters from her to bishops, kings, scholars, merchants, and obscure peasants.) She persuaded many priests who were living in luxury to give away their goods and to live simply.

In her day, the popes, officially Bishops of Rome, had been living for about seventy years, not at Rome but at Avignon in France, where they were under the political control of the King of France (the Avignon Papacy, sometimes called the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, began when Philip the Fair, King of France, captured Rome and the Pope in 1303). Catherine visited Avignon in 1376 and told Pope Gregory XI that he had no business to live away from Rome. He heeded her advice, and moved to Rome. She then acted as his ambassador to Florence, and was able to reconcile a quarrel between the Pope and the leaders of that city. She then retired to Sienna, where she wrote a book called the Dialog, an account of her visions and other spiritual experiences, with advice on cultivating a life of prayer.

After Gregory's death in 1378, the Cardinals, mostly French, elected an Italian Pope, Urban VI, who on attaining office turned out to be arrogant and abrasive and tyrannical, and perhaps to have other faults as well. The Cardinals met again elsewhere, declared that the first election had been under duress from the Roman mob and therefore invalid, and elected a new Pope, Clement VII, who established his residence at Avignon. Catherine worked tirelessly, both to persuade Urban to mend his ways (her letters to him are respectful but severe and uncompromising - as one historian has said, she perfected the art of kissing the Pope's feet while simultaneously twisting his arm), and to persuade others that the peace and unity of the Church required the recognition of Urban as lawful Pope. Despite her efforts, the Papal Schism continued until 1417. It greatly weakened the prestige of the Bishops of Rome, and thus helped to pave the way for the Protestant Reformation a century later.

Catherine spent the last two years of her life in Rome, in prayer and pleading on behalf of the cause of Urban VI and the unity of the Church. She offered herself as a victim for the Church in its agony. She died surrounded by her "children."

Catherine is known (1) as a mystic, a contemplative who devoted herself to prayer, (2) as a humanitarian, a nurse who undertook to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the sick; (3) as an activist, a renewer of Church and society, who took a strong stand on the issues affecting society in her day, and who never hesitated (in the old Quaker phrase) "to speak truth to power"; (4) as an adviser and counselor, with a wide range of interests, who always made time for troubled and uncertain persons who told her their problems - large and trivial, religious and secular.

The works of St. Catherine of Siena rank among the classics of the Italian language, written in the beautiful Tuscan vernacular of the fourteenth century. Notwithstanding the existence of many excellent manuscripts, the printed editions present the text in a frequently mutilated and most unsatisfactory condition. Her writings consist of

• the Dialogue, or Treatise on Divine Providence;
• a collection of nearly four hundred letters; and
• a series of Prayers.

The Dialogue especially, which treats of the whole spiritual life of man in the form of a series of colloquies between the Eternal Father and the human soul (represented by Catherine herself), is the mystical counterpart in prose of Dante's Divina Commedia.

We have so much to learn from people like Catherine. It is so easy to forget that before our own lifetimes, before the wars and rumours of wars of the last century, before the Reformation even, women and men were trying to follow Christ, and encountering all of the same joys and pains we run into ourselves. We so deeply need to listen to our sisters and brothers of the past, and give up flitting distractedly between the end of the New Testament and the beginning of the 20th century!

Sources: Wikpedia; The Catholic Encyclopaedia; Saint of the Day; The Society of ++Justus

"Moral vision should be at the heart of politics..."

It looks as though ++Rowan Williams has delivered a very important Wilberforce Lecture at Hull. The ACN coverage is here, and the full text of the lecture here; there was also an advance extract published in the Sunday Times, which you can read here.

The gist of the Archbishop's point is that, as he says, "Wilberforce and his circle believed that if a sinful system existed and its sinfulness implicated them as well as others, they were under an obligation to end it. There is no simple gulf between personal and public morality; and Christian morality is not about "keeping yourself unspotted from the world" in any sense that implies withdrawing or ignoring public wrongs. But if the state enacts or perpetuates in the corporate life of the nation what is directly contrary to the Christian understanding of God’s purpose, then Christian activism in respect of changing the law is justified, primarily when the state is responsible for - so to speak - compromising the morality of all its citizens."

As Franciscans we are inextricably involved in working for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. In an excellent note on all this at the website of the Province of St. John the Baptist of the Order of Friars Minor, Cincinnati, Sr Donna Donna Graham OSF says, "Francis had a profound respect for all of life. He experienced true solidarity with the poor and marginalized. As he embraced Lady Poverty, Francis was freed to live very simply, making peace in every encounter. It is these values that inspire our JPIC efforts. We work to bring about justice and peace in our world, to end violence and war, poverty and oppression and the destruction of our planet. Our efforts are often directed at the systems that cause this oppression and destruction. We work in collaboration with Franciscans and others around the world. We believe that these common efforts are gradually transforming our world."

I can't believe I am called to do anything less than pray continually about all this. I don't have any answers myself; but God knows what is on my heart (Romans 8:26-27) and through his Spirit he will take my pain and confusion, my sense of profound unease for our country, and for our allies, and will make something useful out of it.

God in our poverty... (Merton)

"Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty. The contemplative life is then the search for peace not in an abstract exclusion of all outside reality, not in a barren negative closing of the senses upon the world, but in the openness of love. [The contemplative life] begins with the acceptance of my own self in my poverty and my nearness to despair in order to recognize that where God is there can be no despair, and God is in me even if I despair. Nothing can change God's love for me, since my very existence is the sign that God loves me and the presence of His love creates and sustains me. Nor is there any need to understand how this can be or to explain it or to solve the problems it seems to raise. For there is in our hearts and in the very ground of our being a natural certainty which is co-extensive with our very existence: a certainty that says that insofar as we exist we are penetrated through and through with the sense and reality of God even though we may be utterly unable to believe or experience this in philosophic or even religious terms. The message of hope [I offer you, then,] is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you have ever found in books or heard in sermons. [I have] nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that, if you dare to penetrate your own silence and risk sharing that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union in the depths of you own heart, of God's spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and God are in all truth One Spirit. I love you, in Christ.

Thomas Merton. The Hidden Ground of Love. Letters, Volume 1. William H. Shannon, editor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985. pp. 157-158.

St George's Day

Today being St George's Day, when we commemorate the patron saint of England (and a good number of other places besides, but we tend to forget that...), I thought I ought to say something about the man behind the ubiquitous red cross on a white ground that springs up everywhere during the World Cup.

If Mary Magdalene was the victim of misunderstanding, George is the object of a vast amount of imagination. There is every reason to believe that he was a real martyr who suffered at Lydda in Palestine, probably before the time of Constantine. There are no historical sources on Saint George. The legend that follows is synthesized from various hagiographical sources, such as the Golden Legend.

George was born to a Christian family during the late 3rd century. His father was from Cappadocia and served as an officer of the Roman army. His mother was from Lydda, Palestine (now Lod, Israel). She returned to her native city as a widow along with her young son, where she provided him with an education.

The youth followed his father's example by joining the army soon after coming of age. He proved to be a good soldier and consequently rose through the military ranks of the time. By his late twenties he had gained the title of Tribunus (Tribune) and then Comes (Count), at which time George was stationed in Nicomedia as a member of the personal guard attached to Roma Emperor Diocletian.

According to the hagiography, in 303 Diocletian issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire. The emperor Galerius was supposedly responsible for this decision and would continue the persecution during his own reign (305–311). George was ordered to take part in the persecution but instead confessed to being a Christian himself and criticized the imperial decision. An enraged Diocletian ordered the torture of this apparent traitor, and his execution.

After various tortures, beginning with being lacerated on a wheel of swords, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia's defensive wall on April 23, 303. The witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra and Athanasius, a pagan priest, to become Christians as well, and so they joined George in martyrdom. His body was returned to Lydda for burial, where Christians soon came to honour him as a martyr.

The Church adheres to the memory of StGeorge, but not to the legends surrounding his life.

That he was willing to pay the supreme price to follow Christ is what the Church believes. And it is enough. The embroidery that has accrued over the years is just embroidery, though it is worth looking at briefly just to show how the "St George and England!" thing developed...

The story of George's slaying the dragon, rescuing the king's daughter and converting Libya is a twelfth-century Italian fable. George was a favourite patron saint of crusaders, as well as of Eastern soldiers in earlier times. He is a patron saint of England, Portugal, Germany, Aragon, Genoa and Venice.

George was probably first made well known in England by Arculpus and Adamnan in the early eighth century. The Acts of St George, which recounted his visits to Caerleon and Glastonbury while on service in England, were translated into Anglo-Saxon. Among churches dedicated to St George was one at Doncaster in 1061. George was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers after he was said to have appeared to the Crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098. Many similar stories were transmitted to the West by Crusaders who had heard them from Byzantine troops, and were circulated further by the troubadours. When Richard 1 was campaigning in Palestine in 1191-92 he put the army under the protection of St George.

Because of his widespread following, particularly in the Near East, and the many miracles attributed to him, George became universally recognized as a saint sometime after 900. Originally, veneration as a saint was authorized by local bishops but, after a number of scandals, the Popes began in the twelfth century to take control of the procedure and to systematize it. A lesser holiday in honour of St George, to be kept on 23 April, was declared by the Synod of Oxford in 1222; and St George had become acknowledged as Patron Saint of England by the end of the fourteenth century. In 1415, the year of Agincourt, Archbishop Chichele raised St George's Day to a great feast and ordered it to be observed like Christmas Day. In 1778 the holiday reverted to a simple day of devotion for English Catholics.

The banner of St George, the red cross of a martyr on a white background, was adopted for the uniform of English soldiers possibly in the reign of Richard I, and later became the flag of England and the White Ensign of the Royal Navy. In a seal of Lyme Regis dating from 1284 a ship is depicted bearing a flag with a cross on a plain background. During Edward III's campaigns in France in 1345-49, pennants bearing the red cross on a white background were ordered for the king's ship and uniforms in the same style for the men at arms. When Richard II invaded Scotland in 1385, every man was ordered to wear 'a signe (sic) of the arms of St George', both before and behind, whilst death was threatened against any of the enemy's soldiers 'who do bear the same crosse or token of Saint George, even if they be prisoners.'

St George was not an Englishman; he did not wear plate armour; he slew no physical dragons, and if he rescued any maidens the fact is not recorded. Disturbingly perhaps for some of his more nationalistic devotees, there is even a tradition in the Holy Land of Christians and Muslim going to an Eastern Orthodox shrine for St. George at Beith Jala, Jews also attending the site in the belief that the prophet Elijah was buried there!

Note: I've drawn the above from several sources, mostly from Wikipedia, Britannia History, and AmericanCatholic.org.

Luchesio and Buonadonna

I love the story of these two - this is slightly adapted from the account online at American Catholic.

Luchesio and Buonadonna Modestini wanted to follow St. Francis as a married couple. Thus they set in motion the Franciscan Third Order.

Luchesio and Buonadonna lived in Poggibonzi where he was a greedy merchant. Meeting Francis, —probably in 1213—, changed his life. He began to perform many works of charity.

At first Buonadonna was not as enthusiastic about giving so much away as Luchesio was. One day after complaining that he was giving everything to strangers, Buonadonna answered the door only to find someone else needing help. Luchesio asked her to give the poor man some bread. She frowned but went to the pantry anyway. There she discovered more bread than had been there the last time she looked. She soon became as zealous for a poor and simple life as Luchesio was. They sold the business, farmed enough land to provide for their needs and distributed the rest to the poor.

In the 13th century some couples, by mutual consent and with the Church’'s permission, separated so that the husband could join a monastery (or a group such as Francis began) and his wife could go to a cloister. Conrad of Piacenza and his wife did just that. This choice existed for childless couples or for those whose children had already grown up. Luchesio and Buonadonna wanted another alternative, a way of sharing in religious life, but outside the cloister.

Saint Francis then explained to them his plans for the establishment of an Order for lay people; and Luchesio and Buonadonna asked to be received into it at once. Thus, according to tradition, they became the first members of the Order of Penance, which later came to be called the Third Order. Francis wrote a simple Rule for the Third Order (Secular) Franciscans at first; Pope Honorius III approved a more formally worded Rule, prepared with the help of Cardinal Ugolino, in 1221.

The charity of Luchesio drew the poor to him, and, like many other saints, he and Buonadonna seemed never to lack the resources to help these people.

One day Luchesio was carrying a crippled man he had found on the road. A frivolous young man came up and asked, "What poor devil is that you are carrying there on your back?" "I am carrying my Lord Jesus Christ," responded Luchesio. The young man immediately begged Luchesio’'s pardon.

Luchesio and Buonadonna both died on April 28, 1260. When he lay very ill, and there was no hope for his recovery, his wife said to him, "Implore God, who gave us to each other as companions in life, to permit us also to die together." Luchesio prayed as requested. and Buonadonna fell ill with a fever, from which she died even before her husband, after devoutly receiving the holy sacraments.

My refuge and my fortress...

We must in all things seek God. But we do not seek Him the way we seek a lost object, a “thing.” He is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He reveals His presence to us. He does not reveal Himself simply in our own heart. He reveals Himself to us in the Church, in the community of believers, in the koinonia [liturgical assembly] of those who trust Him and love Him.

Seeking God is not just an operation of the intellect, or even a contemplative illumination of the mind. We seek God by striving to surrender ourselves to Him whom we do not see, but Who is in all things and through all things and above all things.

Thomas Merton: Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp. 223-24

I think it's sad that there is so much fear in certain parts of the Christian community. No, I don't mean 'the fear of the Lord' - that would be a good and healthy thing. No, I mean paranoia, anxiety, suspicion. You can see some of it if you do a web search on say, "contemplative prayer" (double quotes for phrase search). On the first couple of pages, maybe half to two-thirds of the sites will be about contemplative prayer - my own Mercy Site will be in there somewhere - and rather less than half will be various sites dedicated to explaining the 'dangers' of contemplative prayer. Apparently there are people who believe that all there is to contemplative prayer is 'emptying the mind,' and that if one does that, there are legions of demons lurking ready to pounce and demonise the luckless pray-er.

Surely the God we serve, and in whose name we pray, be our prayer never so contemplative, is stronger than that? In any case, contemplative prayer, even that which is basically Christian zazen, is hardly just 'emptying the mind;' as Merton says, "[God] is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He reveals His presence to us. He does not reveal Himself simply in our own heart. He reveals Himself to us in the Church, in the community of believers, in the koinonia [liturgical assembly] of those who trust Him and love Him."

The Church is all of us, it is the community of believers past and present, the whole glorious thing, far greater than our local parish church, or our denomination, and far far greater than any demon. In his wonderful book The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis describes the Church from the point of view of Screwtape the demon as "... spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners." That is the Church within which we pray, and is at least partly why we pray within the church, and one of the reasons why, as Lewis also said somewhere, there is no such thing as a "freelance Christian," someone who is a Christian yet eschews anything to do with other Christians.

No, our God is good, and the Church is his idea. It is a practical community within which, despite the occasional wobbles of individual Christians, and even whole groups of Christians, God's promised grace in Psalm 91 is brought to bear on the "real world:"

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.’
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling-place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will rescue them and honour them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation.

As Merton said on p. 52 of the book quoted above, "We possess the grace of Christ, who alone can deliver us from the 'body of this death.' He who is in us is greater than the world. He has 'overcome the world."

Amen! Alleluia!

Divine Mercy...

Tomorrow is Divine Mercy Sunday in the Roman Catholic calendar. Sr Faustina, who unknowingly I think founded this feast, recorded in her diary Jesus speaking these words to her: "My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity."

Tomorrow, let's remember the mercy of Jesus that informed all his relationships, and even the most seemingly casual of contacts, like the woman at the well in John 4. And as we remember how the Lord himself said, (Matthew 5:7) "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," let's recall again the words of St Isaac of Nineveh, the solitary, and sometime reluctant Bishop, of the 7th century AD:

An elder was once asked, “What is a merciful heart?” He replied:

“It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.”

and let's think again about the depths hidden in the few words of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"...

This side of Easter

It is not dutiful observance that keeps us from sin, but something far greater: it is love. And this love is not something which we develop by our own powers alone. It is a sublime gift of the divine mercy, and the fact that we live in the realization of this mercy and this gift is the greatest source of growth for our love and for our holiness.

This gift, this mercy, this unbounded love of God for us has been lavished upon us as a result of Christ’s victory. To taste this love is to share in His victory. To realize our freedom, to exult in our liberation from death, from sin and from the Law, is to sing the Alleluia which truly glorifies God in this world and the world to come."

Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp. 156-57

Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward. O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy! O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day! You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today! The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you! The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn his transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.

St John Chrysostom, Paschal Homily quoted by Karen Marie Knapp in From the Anchor Hold

Truly his grace and his mercy are without end "...if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many." (Romans 5:15) for "...mercy triumphs over judgement." (James 2:13)

We are as free today as feathers on the breath of God, to borrow St Hildegard's phrase... I pray God will never let me forget the immediate and absolute truth that that is how we are, forever, this side of Easter! Alleluia!

Easter Vigil

I love this service - almost my favourite of the whole year.

This morning was cold and crisp, just the beginnings of dawn as we lit the new fire by the side of the church porch, and the blackbirds singing from every direction. As we left after renewing our Baptismal vows, the sun was coming up, deep coppery red behind the trees.

He is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

I can't remember a time when that truth has been so tangible, so absolutely real, as this morning. Lord Jesus, it just isn't possible to find a way to thank you...

Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free. You are the Saviour of the World.

(PS: Chris has posted some excellent photos of this - and an embedded sound clip! - on our church website... enjoy!)

Not long now...

before the first light of dawn comes over the ridge of the Purbeck hills. I'm listening to Brian Eno's beautiful 1'2, with its slow, open piano arpeggios and wordless choir, and the night garden outside the window is still as still.

The silence in the garden before dawn outside Jerusalem must have been absolute, in those last hours before dawn - the air still, no sound from the night birds. Just the whole of Creation, waiting.

I wrote the following, last year, and I'm sorry if anyone's read it before, but I can't find any better words this Easter:

"Tomorrow morning Jesus speaks our name, piercing our incomprehension with his recognition, his knowing, his comprehending us. Our part is to listen – listen into the anechoic disorienting silence, the dead room, the empty garden, long before dawn, “while it was still dark.” This is the time Mary set off, thinking she knew but not even knowing why she went, like we must go, not being able to know why till our Lord calls us by name, but going anyway, into the dark, into the place of tombs, the hortus conclusus, the garden closed to our senses but open to our going in. Listen... listen!"

Good Friday

Couldn't let today go without a post somehow, and yet what is there to say?

Honestly, I'm not trying to be cryptic, but I don't really have words for it somehow. I could describe the Cross service this morning, or the walk I took this afternoon, in the spring sunlight, but that's not it.

Ecce homo...

Watch with me...

For some reason only four of us stayed on to watch after Maundy Thursday communion, foot-washing etc. We finished by saying Compline together in the half dark of the side chapel. Strange silent fellowship of it - the thinning of time again. You could almost sense olive leaves overhead...

It's been a long and rather wonderful day, setting off early to go to the Cathedral for the Chrism Eucharist (renewal of vows and blessing of the oils) - +David preached a truly glorious sermon on unity in grace - and going on till the evening. The grieving stillness after the wonder of the Cathedral was right, somehow reflecting what today is...

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor...

Maundy Thursday tomorrow...

Getting closer... Even now it's still frightening to think of it. I suppose I find the foot-washing hard to handle for that reason - the mist of the time between is breaking down, it's like a prolonged anamnesis, un-forgetting after all these years. Time grows very thin towards Easter.

We do not have to save ourselves...

'The Christian has no Law but Christ. Our "Law" is the new life itself which has been given to us in Christ. Our Law is not written in books but in the depths of our own hearts, not by the pen of human beings but by the finger of God. Our duty is now not just to obey but to live. We do not have to save ourselves, we are saved by Christ. We must live to God in Christ, not only as they who seek salvation but as they who are saved.'

Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration .
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: p. 147

"We do not have to save ourselves, we are saved..." It's no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me, and Christ crucified: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi...

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.

Psalm 36:5-9

In him all Creation is made new - what is crucified at Easter, all that we see as lost, and broken, and hopeless, is truly raised imperishable on the Third Day...

'What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. '

1 Corinthians 15:42-47

Who are the palms for?

Just read a remarkable and uncomfortable post on the Country Contemplative's blog.

Don says, "At Mass today the Passion was read and during its reading and Fr. Bob’s homily I came to realize a significant point, at least for me. The crucified Jesus has become and abstraction. We go to Mass, go through the motions, worship the crucified Savior and don’t see the crucified in our midst. They include the folks on welfare, the wounded and crippled soldiers of our armies, the gay people, the disenfranchised of every sort. They are the crucified today. They are the presence of Jesus in our midst. Whoever is the acceptable victim in our midst can be the crucified Christ for us."

"To accept that sometimes we have to stir up trouble and become very unpopular is to take up a Cross. In Brazil the Bishop said, 'When I give money to the poor they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.' Surely this is the Franciscan way." Tim Tucker, Slogans and Labels, TSSF Studies UK.

To worship the crucified Christ in spirit and in truth is to see the crucified everywhere. Surely that is the point of Jesus' saying, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Mt 25:40) And surely Paul's great concern for the poor and the marginalised in the very early church came from his decision "to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2)

Jesus came that all who believe in him might not perish, and died that all might be free. His death is for, first of all, those who know no freedom. It doesn't matter whether slavery is the 18th century variety, or whether it is more up to date sexual or economic slavery, it is still radical unfreedom. And the Gospel is radical freedom. As Jesus quoted himself (Luke 4:18ff, quoting Isaiah 61)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour."

Merton on Liturgy & Contemplation

Contemplation is a gift of God, given in and through His Church, and through the prayer of the Church. St. Anthony was led into the desert not by a private voice but by the word of God, proclaimed in the Church of his Egyptian village in the chanting of the Gospel in Coptic - a classical example of liturgy opening the way to a life of contemplation! But the liturgy cannot fulfil this function if we misunderstand or underestimate the essentially spiritual value of Christian public prayer. If we cling to immature and limited notions of "privacy," we will never be able to free ourselves from the bonds of individualism. We will never realize how the Church delivers us from ourselves by public worship, the very public character of which tends to hide us "in the secret of God’s face."

from Seasons of Celebration New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp 26-27

This wonderful quote explains perfectly just how different true contemplative prayer is from the kind of self-regarding "meditation as self-improvement" teachings it is so often confused with by the uninformed and the prejudiced. Not only is real contemplative prayer rooted and grounded in the common life of the church, it is done for a reason, it is done in obedience to God, and it is done for, on behalf of, our sisters and brothers, on behalf of the whole broken Creation itself. (See my article on intercession and contemplative prayer on The Mercy Site...)

Love Anyway...

Many thanks to Fr. Rick OFM for this wonderful quote from Mother Teresa. I'd read it before somewhere, and had then never been able to find it again...

She said:

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centred.
Love them anyway!
If you are kind, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway!
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and real enemies.
Succeed anyway!
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway!
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway!
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help but may attack you if you try to help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world your best and it will hurt you.
Give your best anyway!

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

Wow!

I just read through my last post, double-checking, and then let my eye run on to yesterday's post about the troubling times we live in. Then, looking back to my quote from Sister Abbess's post, I suddenly read the following, as if for the first time: "...grace is the true driving force of good, not external activism."

And there's my answer. I have known for the longest time that my true call is to prayer, while remaining exposed, in all the rawness that entails, to the pain of Creation, human and otherwise. When will I learn to be faithful to that call?

Maybe that's what Lent is all about for me, this year. Maybe God is giving me a real wake-up call. And maybe, just maybe, this is the Romans 8:28 aspect of all the illness and other nuisances this last couple of years?

Oh. There's a thought. Pray for me, gentle reader, please, that I will hear straight and true, and not get this all messed up with my own personal little hopes, fears and preconceptions.

Enclosure at Lent

There's a most moving post at Clare - Light on the Mountain, the blog of the Abbess of the Bethlehem Monastery of the Poor Clares at Barhamsville, Virginia.

What she has to say about blogging (or not, as the case may be) as an enclosed nun adds up, in fact, to a wonderfully concise summary of what enclosure is all about. Do go and read her last post while you can - it will only remain up for around 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, for those of you who miss the whole post (it would not be right to reproduce it in full here, since the Sister Abbess has decided it should only be up on her own blog for a while) here is the core of what she says about enclosure. It should find its way into a dictionary of spirituality somewhere, in my opinion...

Over the years, I have valued our enclosure as a means of eliminating the distractions that keep us from fulfilling our vocation to focus on serving God in worship and prayer for his people. I also value it for the message it gives to the world, saying that God has exclusive rights over the human being, that we have here no lasting city but are traveling to our true home in heaven, that we are more profoundly united to those we love in the heart of Christ than if we were physically close to them, and that grace is the true driving force of good, not external activism. But I was forgetting something important.

Enclosure is also our way of following Christ in his self-emptying. It is saying to the world in the words of the psalmist, “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory”. We deny our selves, our ego, our desire to be seen, heard, admired in favor of a life “hidden with Christ in God”.

What's the time?

Lent being a time of penitence, and penitence having so much to do with reconciliation, I can't help but find myself continually thinking about non-violence, and what we can or should do to oppose the new totalitarianism in which we find ourselves post 9/11.

Both in this country, and in the USA, the traditional bastions of freedom and democracy, dawn police raids, the deportation of families whose children have been born and raised in our countries, wire-tapping, secret renditions, detention without trial, the manipulation and gagging of the free press, are becoming commonplace. At what point do we decide that we can no longer say, "It's not our business?" At what point do we decide that following our Lord involves more than saying, "Oh, what a shame?"

Like many who will be reading this, and like many Germans in the 1930s, I was raised to respect military honour, and the principle of fighting for what is right. My own father, a much-decorated RAF WWII veteran, who played his own part in the deployment of the cold-war nuclear deterrent, resigned from his post-service job with a major military contractor on moral grounds. We spent long hours, after his retirement, debating the morality of war, and I had, and still have, the highest respect for his integrity and his Christian witness.

Have we now reached the point, or are we approaching the point, where the old values don't apply? Like the many Germans from military backgrounds who finally, and at times at the highest cost, refused to support Hitler, are we being faced with asking the question, "Is this something completely different?" Does a new, and different, set of rules apply?

If it does, then everything is different, and the approach of Martin Luther King, or Mahatma Ghandi, or even of Sophie Scholl, may be the way to go. Armed opposition to injustice only makes matters worse, as thousands of Palestinians accidentally testify. There is a fascinating article on Sophie Scholl, and an equally fascinating debate in the comments section, at the National Catholic Reporter's NCR Café. Go read - prayerfully!

Perhaps some of you out there would like to comment on all this? I could do with some honest and prayerful debate. I have no intention here of thumping any tubs, but I can't just sit still and say nowt!

Back online...

Hopefully, my computer problems are now sorted out... after yet another motherboard transplant, and a new PSU. Oh, well...

If all this kit holds together now, I should be back to (reasonably) regular posts here. If everything suddenly goes dead, just pray for my hardware, again!

More computer problems...

Many apologies for not having posted here this month, and for not having replied to any emails from The Mercy Site - I'm still having hardware problems, which may turn out to be terminal! Not good, as a new PC is not in the budget at the moment, at all...

I'll do what I can, and I'll keep you informed as best I can with what's going on when I can borrow someone's machine to log on for a minute...

Lent continues, and in the open spaces of time God is gradually showing me things I hadn't seen before. I've been reading Sr Helen Julian's notes on The Cloud of Unknowing, and I think I'm beginning to understand just a little. That wonderful book has been impenetrable to me somehow since I first tried to read it many years ago, and it's really quite an adventure to be able to grasp a little of what The Cloud author is getting at... of which more as soon as I get the chance.

It's our TSSF Area Chapter on Saturday - I'm really looking forward to the renewal of vows, and to catching up with everyone... I'll try and post a word or two about it here sometime next week.

Receiving the gift of God's mercy...

Lent is a preparation to rejoice in God’s love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of God’s mercy - a gift which we receive insofar as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.

Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: p. 116

"Receiving the gift of God's mercy" - this reminds me so much of the secret working of the Jesus Prayer, how it softly works its transformations in the praying heart, without our even being aware that it's happening. All we know is that we pray the Prayer as best we can; and then one day we wake up, and we realise we have changed. Maybe we have changed only subtly - or maybe a deep and radical shift has come over us, and everything is different. We don't know how it happened. It is only the gift of God's mercy, that we had been praying for all this time...

"The heart is but a small vessel; and yet dragons and lions are there, and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God, there are the angels, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace; all things are there." St. Macarius, The Homilies.

"We don't say the Jesus Prayer, or enter wordless contemplation, to get 'some benefit.' We don't pray to reduce our stress, or strengthen our immune system, or lose weight, or add years to our life. On the contrary, we enter prayer to follow Christ, to become open to Him. His way is the Way of the Cross." Albert S Rossi. Saying the Jesus Prayer. St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.

Merton - a suitable thought for Lent?

The Holy Spirit never asks us to renounce anything without offering us something much higher and much more perfect in return. Self-chastisement for its own sake has no place in Christianity. The function of self-denial is to lead to a positive increase of spiritual energy and life. The Christian dies, not merely in order to die, but in order to live...

Seasons of Celebration [SC]. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950. p. 130.

Merton has put his finger on the fundamental agreement between the penitential understanding of Lent, and the life-affirming understanding of the season. It's like CS Lewis' picture of the demon of lust, having been killed by the angel, being transformed into a glorious, and rideable, stallion. (The Great Divorce Bles, 1946; Fount, 1977. pp. 89 ff) But Lewis' demonised ghost suffered when its familiar was killed, and we shouldn't think that the pain of that death will be more bearable in view of the life to follow - cf. Mark 8:34. I imagine it's a bit like trying to explain to a cow why she must have her feet trimmed, or to a little boy why he has to go to the dentist...

It's an odd thing, Lent...

It's an odd thing, but there really does seem to be "something in " the penitential quality of Lent. I know people sometimes say these days that they feel there's something life-denying about the idea of a penitential season anyway, and that it should be replaced with a celebration of being human, or something to that effect. I've plenty of sympathy with them: after all, we are fully human, as Jesus himself was in his time on earth, and he carries that humanity with him into the risen life he calls us into. His mercy is upon our humanity and our frailty, not on some perfected, bloodless, alchemical essence; and to pretend otherwise tends towards a very warped and jaundiced view of what it is to be human.

But - and it's a big but - the humanity we all inhabit, and on which Jesus' mercy rests, is a fallen, broken humanity this side of heaven, and different in many ways from the life we shall know with him in glory. And we need to recognise that. We need to truly take it on board, and look our own fallenness straight in the eye, and say, "Yes, that's me. It always has been, and without your grace, my Lord, it always would be."

Oh God, it hurts. It's so degrading, looking at the mess inside the pleasant, wholesome exterior. Come on, it is a mess. No good pretending otherwise.

Of course we are capable of good, and love, and self-sacrifice - increasingly so, as the pure water of the Spirit cleanses us, and the good leaven of Christ works its way through out dough. But we'll always let ourselves down, we'll always let him down, all the way to our dying day.

I used to think Paul was being a bit hypocritical, when he wrote in 1 Timothy 1.15: "The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the foremost." But he's right, and it seems to me the further I go, the longer I go on trying to follow my Lord, the more I realise just how much mess there is still in me. In all of us, yes - but that doesn't lessen or somehow defuse that fact that it is there in me.

And this is what I think Lent is about - this Lent anyway, for me. If God is ever to do anything with me, I have to look straight at who I really am: not who I'd like to be, nor who I hope you might believe me to be, but who I actually am. And then there might be something approaching solid ground...

Ash Wednesday

Yes, I know today's Thursday - I just couldn't write about yesterday while it was still yesterday, for some reason.

Our morning service was one of those extraordinary times when you know God's doing huge things beneath the surface, but you can't see clearly what he's doing. Just huge slow upwellings of the Spirit, like the surface indications of powerful movements beneath the surface of deep water.

Reading Psalm 51 together always brings me to tears - so much so that I could hardly read the printed words, and I sat there in the choir stalls sniffing helplessly. Being such a good (read 'bald') target, I got a specially good mark of ashes, and some very funny looks on the way home... The beginnings of seasonal humility...?

I'll try and write some more tomorrow... for now I'm sort of haunted by shreds of Eliot's poem, and I find it hard to find my own words, "about the centre of the silent Word..."

Our true context

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and "one body," will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ.

From: No Man Is An Island. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company

I'm not sure exactly why, but I found this really encouraging - perhaps it's something to do with the bit about "It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ..." The idea that our failures, as much as our successes, are all caught up in that mysterious intentionality is just amazing... Romans 8:28 applying to what we stuff up, as much as it does to what misfortunes may happen to us!

If you belonged to the world...

If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is not then merely a pious admission that the world is acceptable because it comes from the hand of God. It is first of all an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present. To choose the world is to choose to do the work I am capable of doing, in collaboration with my brother and sister, to make the world better, more free, more just, more liveable, more human. And it has now become transparently obvious that mere automatic "rejection of the world" and "contempt for the world" is in fact not a choice but the evasion of choice. The man, who pretends that he can turn his back on Auschwitz or Viet Nam, and act as if they were not there, is simply bluffing.

From: Contemplation in A World of Action. NY: Doubleday and Company, 1971: 164-165

This is a terrifying quote, really, for someone like me - a man who likes a quiet life, is appalled by confrontation and violence, and just likes to live and let live. And yet our Lord didn't really offer the option of a quiet life. He said, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also..." John 15:18-20 (NIV)

We cannot as Christians sit quietly on the sidelines while the world gets the next Dachau, the next Gulag, ready for action. Even if we know that our call is to the prayer place, and not to the physical barricades, we will have to bear the consequences. The emotional and spiritual consequences most certainly - but we can't forget either the old maxim that we must be prepared to be the answer - or part of the answer - to our own prayers. If we pray for someone to do or say something to stand up against evil, against our growing British surveillance society, for instance, we mustn't be too surprised if God says, in the words of the old National Lottery adverts, "It's you!"

And I shudder.

God, give me the grace to walk in your ways, always, please. Otherwise I'd run in my ways, right away from any such thing...

Back again...

Sorry for more than a week without posting anything here - my PC became rather ill, and had to go in for a motherboard and processor transplant. Radical surgery indeed, and I've only just collected it today. I have to say it's pretty much like having a new machine inside the old casing - very nice!

It's been an interesting week - I've been thinking and praying, and reading Jürgen Moltmann - rather glad of the freedom from electronic distractions, even if it has been occasionally frustrating!

I'll write more tomorrow - it's getting late, and I'm only just getting to the end of the huge lump of (mostly pretty irrelevant) emails that had built up!