The trapdoor...

If God is crucified flesh for Paul then everything is a disguise: weakness is really strength, wisdom is really foolishness, death is really life, religion is often slavery and sin itself is actually for Paul the trapdoor, that's my word, the trapdoor into salvation.

We looked for an omnipotent God and we lost faith when God appeared to be weak and not in control.

So the truth in paradoxical language lies neither in the affirmation nor in the denial of either side, but precisely in the tug of war between the two. Now hold on to that...


The human and the divine co-existing at the same time is real religion. This creates honest people. People who don't waste time proving they're right, superior, or saved.

They spend time on a journey falling deeper into the mystery of God where they feel safe enough, secure enough, and loved enough to admit such things.

That is how one gets into the mystery of freedom, and why this notion of freedom is so scary.

Richard Rohr, from Great Themes of Paul


[God] said to [Paul], My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
(2 Corinthians 12.9-10 NIV)


Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Romans 5.12-21 NIV)


Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

(Romans 8.1-4 NIV)

I have deliberately used the NIV translation here, where the Greek word "sarx" is translated "sinful man" or "sinful nature" according to context, which brings out the meaning of the writing. Strong's G4561, σάρξ "... 4) the flesh, denotes mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God." Otherwise, translating "sarx" simply as "flesh" tends to a Gnostic-style dichotomy of flesh=bad, spirit=good.

But of course Paul also says, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6.1-2)

I was so struck by this, since of course it is the hidden power-source of one of my own key verses from Paul, Romans 8.28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

If I look back over my own rather tattered life, I can see so clearly that the real progress, if that's the right word in the context, the beginnings of actually following Christ, came not despite my own weakness and fallibility, but because of them. Praise be to Christ!

More of that paradox...

Do not place your happiness in what you can hear or feel of God in prayer but rather in what you can neither feel nor understand. God is always hidden and difficult to find. Go on serving God in this way, as though God were concealed in a sacred place, even when you think you have found God, felt God or heard God. The less you understand, the closer you get to God.

Prayer will teach you, too, that God is nearer to you than you are to yourself. After passing the fiery crucible and stepping through the narrow doorway where you can bring nothing with you, enter the cave of your heart that contains God, whom the universe cannot hold.

Pierre-Marie Delfieux - The Jerusalem Community Rule of Life, with thanks to Jan

 

Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the ‘one thing necessary’ may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, with thanks to Inward/Outward

The Spirit and the Word, and the paradox...

Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life. We feel no desire to pray, don't experience God's presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.

Then it is important to realise that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts. It is a great grace to be able to experience God's presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don't, it does not mean that God is absent. It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

 

In paradoxical language if you try to rest on one side and forget the other, you lose the truth.

We've seen some Christian cultures that are entirely centered on the Cross and they lose the resurrection. In wealthy countries like our own we have a desire for victory theology as it is called - all resurrection and almost no reference to the pain and suffering of the world.

You've lost the mystery as long as you do that.

Richard Rohr, from Great Themes of Paul

Somehow for me these two quotes just came together. Not only is it paradoxical, in Rohr's use of the word, that when we feel ourselves most abandoned by God, he is about to do his greatest work in us, but it is, as Nouwen says, that as we remain faithful to "our spiritual discipline", our regular times of prayer, our form of office, our set Psalms and readings from Scripture, that we are set free to grow, leap sometimes, into a new intimacy with God.

As Rohr says, we in the "West" have lost sight of much of this. We cannot accept paradox, and we call it "contradiction". Many of us, especially in churches where "victory theology" is paramount, think of regular discipline, rules of life, liturgical forms of worship, as stultifying, formal, lifeless "religion" that can be distinguished from "Spirit-filled, Bible-believing worship", where we can be "free in the Spirit" to "worship as we are led". But "you've lost the mystery as long as you do that."

For thousands of years now the Spirit has worked in people's hearts and minds, to give us the strong, flexible framework for life and worship that is found in liturgy and the daily Office. God is present in these words too, just as much as in those transcendent moments of inspired Charismatic worship - and unlike Charismatic worship, those words will still be there in our driest times, when we are alone, and heartbroken, or worse, bored stiff. They will still be there when our minds wander, when we are filled with lust, and anxiety, and greed, and we can hardly lift our heads to see the page.

God does not abandon us when we can't, or even when we won't, sense his presence; and the words of the Office in particular show us that, in the concrete form of ink and paper, or even pixels on a screen...

All those long years ago, the anonymous writer of the great acrostic Psalm, 119, knew just what all this was about:

Your decrees are wonderful;
   therefore my soul keeps them.
The unfolding of your words gives light;
   it imparts understanding to the simple.
With open mouth I pant,
   because I long for your commandments.
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
   as is your custom towards those who love your name.
Keep my steps steady according to your promise,
   and never let iniquity have dominion over me.
Redeem me from human oppression,
   that I may keep your precepts.
Make your face shine upon your servant,
   and teach me your statutes.
My eyes shed streams of tears
   because your law is not kept.

(Psalm 119.129-136)

The intersection of the timeless moment...

What is it about Meister Eckhart today? Three of my favourite blog authors, Jan, Gabrielle and Inward/Outward, all mention him this morning. Well, to be strictly accurate, Gabrielle mentions Thomas Merton mentioning Eckhart. She quotes Merton as saying, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, "Eckhart, in a sermon on the divine birth, says that, when a person is about to be struck by a thunderbolt, he turns unconsciously toward it.  When a tree is about to be struck, all the leaves turn toward the blow.  And one in whom the divine birth is to take place turns, without realizing, completely toward it."

I was myself struck all of a heap when I read these words. Scientifically, I think they're true. The electric field that precedes a lightning strike can reach tens of thousands of volts per square inch (ref.) and I can well imagine the leaves of a tree, probably already wet with rain, turning in a field of that strength. I was once within 10 yards of a direct cloud-to-ground stroke that completely destroyed a small stone building, and I will never forget the deep sense of power, almost a sub-bass hum, and the peculiar prickling of my skin, that preceded the stroke. I certainly turned directly towards the building, which seemed to shine briefly with a brilliant pink glow, an instant before the stunning crack of the ground stroke, and the huge physical blow of the shock wave. I can't say I actually saw the little generator house explode - but when I came to myself a second or two later, it was in smoking, roofless ruins.

If that is what a mere electrical discharge is like, how much more amazing is the work of God?

Inward/Outward quotes Eckhart, "Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive."

Isn't that preparedness turning towards God, towards his transforming gift, just as we turn instinctively towards the glorious power of the lightning?

Jan quotes from Pierce, Brian J. We Walk the Path Together: Learning from Thich Nhat Hanh and Meister Eckhart, Orbis Books, 2006:

Meister Eckhart says emphatically, 'There is but one NOW.' In other words, This is it! For Eckhart, to limit the understanding of eternity as life after death is rather strange. When we pray, are we not in the presence of God's eternity, God's fullness? Rather than life after death, it would be better to speak of life after life. In other words, the God who is present now, and the God who will be present then (i.e., after death) is simply present - now and always. God is not limited to time and space. It is not that God lives an endless number of years and can be everywhere at the same time. The eternal presence of God is like our very breath. We cannot touch it or measure it, but without it there is no life.

Praying in the presence of God's eternity, God's fullness - isn't this like standing in the presence of that great electric field, feeling one's skin tighten and tingle with voltage, seeing ordinary things transformed into transcendent beauty in the very instant of their ending? You know, I wasn't afraid in that storm - though I had the normal shock reactions afterwards, as well as some temporary hearing loss, and so on - I was exhilarated and somehow glorified by the sheer wonder of that power. There was something sacramental about that moment. No wonder the psalmists connected lightning with God.

"There is but one now." TS Eliot said:

          If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

(Little Gidding)

"The intersection of the timeless moment" - that's it, isn't it? The place where our temporal self comes into the presence of the Eternal, in an instant beyond all measurement of time...

Paradise on Earth...

Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you will inherit everlasting life. Behold, in the cross is everything, and upon your dying on the cross everything depends. There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the cross. Go where you will, seek what you want, you will not find a higher way, nor a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the cross. Arrange and order everything to suit your desires and you will still have to bear some kind of suffering, willingly or unwillingly.

There is no escaping the cross. Either you will experience physical hardship or tribulation of spirit in your soul. At times you will be forsaken by God, at times troubled by those about you and, what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself. You cannot escape, you cannot be relieved by any remedy or comfort but must bear with it as long as God wills...

If you willingly carry the cross, it will carry you. It will take you to where suffering comes to an end, a place other than here. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it... When you willingly carry your cross, every pang of tribulation is changed into hope of solace from God. Besides, with every affliction the spirit is strengthened by grace. For it is the grace of Christ, and not our own virtue, that gives us the power to overcome the flesh and the world... When you get to the point where for Christ's sake suffering becomes sweet, consider yourself fortunate, for you have found paradise on earth. But as long as adversity irks you, as long as you try to avoid suffering, you will be discontent and ill at ease.

From "The Royal Road" by Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, quoted in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough Publishing House, 2003), with thanks to Vicki K Black

Reminds me of Francis' recipe for perfect joy!

Lambeth...

Far be it from me to get involved in the kind of things that excite journalists about the Lambeth Conference. I just thought I'd share some comments from Brian McLaren which I read on the Church Times blog:

I know that most people think the "news story" here is about divisive controversies over sexuality, but my sense is that the real news story is very different. There is a humble spirit here, a loving atmosphere, a deep spirituality centred in Bible study, worship, and prayer, and a strong desire to move beyond internal-institutional matters to substantive mission in our needy world.

In every conversation and gathering I've participated in, the spirit has been kind and holy and positive. That sort of good news doesn't attract the media the way a salacious or pugilistic story does... It will be interesting to see whether the press reports what is actually happening here, or if they need to rewrite the narrative to fit the shape of war-tales they are more accustomed to telling.

My sense is that the quiet, prayerful, and humble patience of Archbishop Rowan Williams is leading the way to better days for the Anglican Communion. It feels like the bishops gathered here are turning a corner together. I feel that I'm witnessing the emergence of something good, beautiful, true, and blessed... Hearts here are sincerely open to the Spirit of God.

I think we all need to keep comments like this in mind when we think, and even more when we pray, about Lambeth, and about the Anglican Communion. Despite (because of? (Romans 8.28)) previous controversies - the Charismatic Movement (not, of course, at all confined to Anglicanism, but causing tremendous waves) the Oxford Movement, Methodism - the Anglican churches have grown in God, and in godliness, and grace. "Give thanks, with a grateful heart" for our church, and for our bishops gathered at Lambeth...

Salvation comes from the word...

Salvation comes from the word salus, which means healing. It is not dependent on feeling or any person's response to me.

It is a gift received when the will has given up control and we are standing in that threshold place which allows us to see anew.

When we stand at the threshold, we stand before sacred signs. The true helper will get out of the way and encourage us to get out of the way so we can see them. Grace, then, walks us into the temple...

We all are deeply hurt people, and we've all been infected. People are not whole and yet they constantly long for holiness, for wholeness. That's why Jesus' call to holiness is paralleled by the healing ministry.

In fact, you could say that's almost all Jesus does: preach and heal, preach and heal, preach and heal. For the mature ones, the preaching is already healing and the healing is its own sermon.

Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

It is in our acknowledging our need for healing that we are healed; it is in our being healed that healing comes to a broken creation. This is surely what Paul means when he says, in Romans 8.18-23, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies."

But how do we pray for a thing like that? I know I keep on about this - it lies at the heart of all that God has been teaching me about prayer all these years - but Paul has an answer for us in vv. 26-27: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."

As Maggie Ross said, "Even something as simple as refusing to anesthetize the gnawing pain in the pit of your soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition is a form of habitual intercession. To bear this pain into the silence is to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy. It is in our very wounds that we find the solitude and openness of our re-creation and our being. We learn to go to the heart of pain to find God’s new life, hope, possibility, and joy. This is the priestly task of our baptism."

It is in this priestly task that we find our own call to prayer. I wrote about this in my article on Intercession & Contemplative Prayer on The Mercy Site:

Brother Ramon SSF in Praying the Jesus Prayer (1988): "We have seen that the Jesus Prayer involves body, mind and spirit – the whole of man. If the whole person is given to God in prayer, then it reflects the greatest commandment, [to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' (Mark 12:30 NRSV)] The cosmic nature of the prayer means that the believer lives as a human being in solidarity with all other human beings, and with the animal creation, together with the whole created order... The Christian is well aware of the fact that the world is evil. There is a falseness and alienation which has distracted and infected the world, and men and women of prayer, by the power of the Name of Jesus, stand against the cosmic darkness, and enter into conflict with dark powers [Ephesians 6:12]... The power of the Jesus Prayer is the armour against the wiles of the devil, taking heed of the apostle's word: 'Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. [Ephesians 6:18 NRSV]'"

As intercessors, all God asks of us is broken hearts - we do not need to find solutions to the prayers we pray, nor just the right words to frame them. God knows what is on our hearts (Romans 8:26-27) - we need only be honest and courageous enough to feel: feel the pain and the grief and the confusion and betrayal and despair the world feels, and to come before our Lord and Saviour with them on our hearts, and ask for God's mercy in the holy name of Jesus.

A call to prayer (and action)...

Communities as well as individuals suffer. All over the world there are large groups of people who are persecuted, mistreated, abused, and made victims of horrendous crimes. There are suffering families, suffering circles of friends, suffering religious communities, suffering ethnic groups, and suffering nations. In these suffering bodies of people we must be able to recognise the suffering Christ. They too are chosen, blessed, broken and given to the world.

As we call one another to respond to the cries of these people and work together for justice and peace, we are caring for Christ, who suffered and died for the salvation of our world.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

More from the wilderness...

The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection… I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness - mine, yours, ours - need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

Peter Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, with thanks to Inward/Outward.

Devastation as a seedbed for new life? It does seem to be so. If it is so, though, then it makes everything different from the way we thought it was. Perhaps if we read the Sermon on the Mount, and the Good Shepherd passage from John 10, in that light, they may just begin to make sense for us...

Flesh and blood...

We've got to give the material world back its power, its importance, its Divine Indwelling, and its sacredness. And that's why St. Francis couldn't step on a worm. We are learning to allow creation to be a subject and to speak its truth to us.

This will lead to the beginnings of love, love for that tree, for that animal. You wonder what this communion is that is passing back and forth between you.

Richard Rohr, from the Medicine and Ministry Conference

Yesterday a group of us from churches across our part of the Salisbury Diocese met to discuss Back to Church Sunday. During the meeting we watched videos of the event from churches who had already piloted the scheme, and one of the priests involved said something to the effect that it is important that the service on Back to Church Sunday is a Eucharist. We are after all, he said, a Eucharistic community, and to do a non-Eucharistic service would be to present ourselves as something we're not.

I was so struck by this. We Christians are a Eucharistic community. Christ was born of a woman, a real, live, flesh and blood woman, and though he died, rose again, and ascended into Heaven, he remains our real, live, flesh and blood Saviour. He gave us a concrete, physical Eucharist of bread and wine, not only to remember that, but to actually make our relationship with him, and our relationship with each other and sisters and brothers in him, real. We eat his flesh and drink his blood; he becomes, by the ordinary process of digestion, our own flesh and blood. We are what we eat.

We can only give the material world back its power when we realise that we are a Eucharistic community, in literal, living, breathing fact, and not as some kind of pious abstraction. Otherwise we seem to ourselves ghosts, living in a world of concepts and categories: how then can we treat anyone, or any part of creation, with respect, let alone reverence? Hey guys, wake up - this is real!

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

Chasing Francis...

I don't often do book recommendations per se on this blog, but I have to make an exception for this one! Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron is superb. It's a novel about one man's loss of faith in the Evangelical mega-church he founded years before the story begins, and his (re-)discovery of a living faith in Christ by "following Francis following Jesus." Chase Falson has the great good fortune - if that's the right word for it - to have an uncle who is a Franciscan friar based in Florence, who leads him on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Francis. What happens then is far too good for me to spoil by writing it down here. Get the book - it's less than £10 including the postage - and don't expect to put it down till you reach the study guide in the back. (It's a 21st Century postmodern American spiritual novel - of course it's got a blinking study guide in the back...)

Peace...

Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or 'fight for.' It is indeed 'fighting for peace' that starts all the wars. Peace is something you have or do not have. If you are yourself at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Then share your peace with everyone, and everyone will be at peace.

Thomas Merton: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, with thanks to Inward/Outward

One in Christ...

When we gather around the table and break the bread together, we are transformed not only individually but also as community. We, people from different ages and races, with different backgrounds and histories, become one body. As Paul says: "As there is one loaf, so we, although there are many of us, are one single body, for we all share in the one loaf" (1 Corinthians 10:17).

Not only as individuals but also as community we become the living Christ, taken, blessed, broken, and given to the world. As one body, we become a living witness of God's immense desire to bring all peoples and nations together as the one family of God.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

This verse, which in the NRSV reads, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread", must be the strongest argument anywhere for the generous, open spirit that recognises all Christians as our sisters and brothers in Christ, one flesh with ourselves, be they Catholic or Baptist, emergent or Anglican, Vineyard or Eastern Orthodox. We are all one in Christ Jesus, and let no man (or woman, though they are generally less contentious) say otherwise!

Out into the wilderness...

The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men.  The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing.  There was nothing to attract them.  There was nothing to exploit.  The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone.  They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had travelled directly to it.  God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.

Thomas Merton:  Thoughts in Solitude, pp. 4-5, with thanks to Gabrielle

I love the word, wilderness. I remember hearing it first from my mother, describing patches of waste ground near our home by the sea at Felpham, in West Sussex. I know the Judean Wilderness is not by the sea (unless you count the bit along the Dead Sea, which is pretty unlike the English Channel anyway!) but the phrase always takes me back there, to the dunes and the marram grass, and the salt wind off the grey sea. Somehow it still has that sandy, salty tang to me, fifty-odd years later. and when I read the word in the Gospels, my heart aches for those lonely places along the Sussex coast.

This old photograph I found at the South Downs Shoreline Management site gives something of the feel of the place when I was growing up:

Christ in all things...

Either you see the body of Christ everywhere or you don't see it. There are finally no divisions. But that is a mystical seeing that connects everything universally.

God is perfectly hidden in this material world. And for those who have learned how to see, God is perfectly revealed. God shines through all things. You want to kiss trees and honor what is.

You are even brought to tears sometimes by the least of the brothers and sisters because the divine image shines through so clearly.

Richard Rohr, from Creating Christian Community

To see Christ in all things seems both glorious and heartbreaking to me. If he is indeed in all things then he suffers in all things too. That is the terrible thing about the second half of Romans 8: the futility, the anguish of fallen creation is where Christ is. As Helen Waddell once pointed out, all the pain of the world is Christ's Cross; it wasn't just an event 2,000 or so years ago - it goes on.

Jesus is given to the world. He was chosen, blessed, and broken to be given. Jesus' life and death were a life and death for others. The Beloved Son of God, chosen from all eternity, was broken on the cross so that this one life could multiply and become food for people of all places and all times.

As God's beloved children we have to believe that our little lives, when lived as God's chosen and blessed children, are broken to be given to others. We too have to become bread for the world. When we live our brokenness under the blessing, our lives will continue to bear fruit from generation to generation. That is the story of the saints - they died, but they continue to be alive in the hearts of those who live after them - and it can be our story too...

Whenever we come together around the table, take bread, bless it, break it, and give it to one another saying: "The Body of Christ," we know that Jesus is among us. He is among us not as a vague memory of a person who lived long ago but as a real, life-giving presence that transforms us. By eating the Body of Christ, we become the living Christ and we are enabled to discover our own chosenness and blessedness, acknowledge our brokenness, and trust that all we live we live for others. Thus we, like Jesus himself, become food for the world.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

Christ in all things is Eucharist - his presence in the broken world is his presence in us. The Mass makes that manifest for each of us, makes him real, tangible, edible; and makes us able to be sent out into the world to live Christ, to ourselves be broken. I think this may be what Paul meant when he said so mysteriously that, "in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." (Colossians 1.24)

Lord, if that is so, have mercy on us, for to live your life is to be crucified with you (Galatians 2.19) and that scares me, very much...

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274)

Bonaventure, Franciscan, theologian, doctor of the Church, was both learned and holy. Because of the spirit that filled him and his writings, he was at first called the Devout Doctor; but in more recent centuries he has been known as the Seraphic Doctor after the "Seraphic Father" Francis because of the truly Franciscan spirit he possessed.

Born in Bagnoregio, a town in central Italy, he was cured of a serious illness as a boy through the prayers of Francis of Assisi. Later, he studied the liberal arts in Paris. Inspired by Francis and the example of the friars, especially of his master in theology, Alexander of Hales, he entered the Franciscan Order, and became in turn a teacher of theology in the university. Chosen as minister general of the Order in 1257, he was God's instrument in bringing it back to a deeper love of the way of St. Francis, both through the life of Francis which he wrote at the behest of the brothers and through other works which defended the Order or explained its ideals and way of life.

Bonaventure so united holiness and theological knowledge that he rose to the heights of mysticism while yet remaining a very active preacher and teacher, one beloved by all who met him. To know him was to love him; to read him is still for us today to meet a true Franciscan and a gentleman.

from: St. Bonaventure - Saint of the Day - American Catholic

And so theology is the only perfect science, for it begins at the beginning which is the first Principle, and proceeds to the end, which is the final wages paid; it begins with the summit, which is God most high, the Creator of all, and reaches even to the abyss, which is the torment of hell.

Bonaventure, Breviloquium I:1:2, with thanks to A Minor Friar, whose whole post is very well worth reading.

Much, much more about the Seraphic Doctor can be found at the Franciscan Archive, here, including online texts of his writings, in Latin, English, French and Spanish. Superb resource!

Awake or asleep...

The ancient monastic practice of rising sometime between midnight and two in the morning to pray sanctifies the night hours. To me the idea of nuns and monks rising from their beds in the middle of the night and shuffling down a darkened hall in pairs by candlelight, half asleep, to sing and pray in a cold chapel is both appalling and comforting.

The practice appals me because I cannot imagine myself rising voluntarily in the night... As a mother, I have no memory at all of my second child's first year when he could not sleep through the night while the oldest, an active toddler, stayed awake by day. . . . Beyond these memories of sleep deprivation, however, the image of nuns and monks singing in the cold chapel in the middle of the night is comforting. I know a practiced spirit stands as a sentry on the boundary of the soul, watching the horizon for danger or delight...

A friend of mine who is a hermit calls Vigils "the prayer office for pious insomniacs." On a more serious note, though, many religious people are wakened by the Spirit in the middle of the night in order to pray for someone in need. It is a common experience among Christians to discover that at the exact hour when someone needing to be commended to God was ministered to, a friend was raised from sleep on the other side of the globe. A nun once told me about the uncanny intuitiveness of people in parts of Africa, where she served for many years. "People knew of things even before the drumming began," she said. "This knowing is not such a miracle. It is simply that here in the west, we have forgotten how to be connected." ...

So I commend myself to God in prayer before I sleep. Something of our soul will remained linked to that warm darkness beyond its boundary, even in sleep. This dark love, more intimate than a mother's womb, nourishes, encourages, and guides us, enveloping us in its loving, wordless darkness. When we pay attention, and respond with wordless, loving prayer in the darkness of our souls, we know we are connected to divine life. When we commend our souls to God at night, we take this connection for granted. Awake or asleep, we live in the Lord.

From Praying the Hours by Suzanne Guthrie (Cowley Publications, 2000), with thanks to Speaking to the Soul

This is wonderful writing. I love Suzanne's words on connectedness. If I look back over my own life, I can see instance after instance of this sort of thing - not just in myself, but actually more strikingly and humblingly (if that's a word!) in other people's prayers for me and for those around me.

If you're as taken with Suzanne Guthrie's writing as I am, you might like to know that she has an excellent blog, At the Edge of the Enclosure. What with Suzanne, and Maggie Ross, and Laurel M. O'Neal, not to mention so many others, the blogosphere is getting to be an good place for people of prayer...

God is here; perfectly hidden...

God is here; perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in all material reality, even in the least of the brothers and sisters. It is easy to see Christ in the beauty of nature. But can you see Christ all the way at the edges where he is least attractive? Can you see Christ where you least expect him?

Richard Rohr, from Creating Christian Community

I have often thought that this was one of the most difficult parts of living as a Christian. I can see Christ, as Rohr suggests, in nature, in people I love and admire; but see him in tyrants, rapists, pornographers? And yet he was born as man: he gave himself to all that humanity can be, took on himself our own nature. Was this what he saw in the Garden of Gethsemane, as much as the scourge and the nails? Was this what he meant when on the Cross he saw the light of his Father's face dimmed, and cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?"

I once prayed to see Christ for who he is, to know him, truly know him; and the times following that prayer were among the most desolate times I've known. Is this what it is to know Christ? To know the shepherd whose heart is broken for the sheep who are lost, and yet who flee from him, deeper into the dark valleys and the barren rocks? To know the man who wept over Jerusalem, who would have gathered her children together as a hen gathers her brood, and they were not willing?

We talk of becoming Christ-like. Is this what it means?

Sorry...

I've been so uncommunicative this last week. It's just been one of those weeks when lots of bitty little commitments crowd in, just when you're trying to come to terms with all the profound stuff that God was doing on retreat. I have to confess I've not been very good even at the bittynesses - and I certainly haven't had a chance to do anything with this poor neglected blog.

Still, out of the chaos has been emerging - gradually - some kind of order. Jan and I have been trying to work out how practically to deal with the increasing call to prayer that God has been making clear to me over recent weeks. We seem to have the beginnings of a workable pattern in place, and with patience and forbearance we'll be able to debug it over the coming weeks, till we have something we can both live with...

Meanwhile, Maggie Ross says:

We delude ourselves that we pray; only Christ prays. The act we call prayer is yielding to the Spirit of Christ springing from the molten core of love within us that focuses all our being, and this prayer becomes pervasive in our lives as we learn single-heartedness...

As the resurrecting Word has been given to each of us, so we are enabled to give it to each other. When we forgive each other with this Word, we forgive totally... it is about enabling one another to be guilt-free. In daily life it means taking the risk of the fool: to offer love at the risk of having it rejected; to be willing to share pain at the risk of having our own wounds re-opened; to forgive so that the other person becomes guilt-free, at the risk of having to forgive all over again; to place ourselves, our lives, in each others' hands in radical trust... It is trust beyond reason...

Maggie Ross The Fire of Your Life

The true and ordinary Grail...

There's no way you can love until you forgive yourself for not being perfect, for not being the saint you thought you were going to be.

Compassion comes from a spacious place where a lot of things are put together and coexist, where we recognize, forgive and make friends with the enemy within. The passionate struggle with your own shadow becomes compassion for the struggles of our neighbor.

Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace

I think forgiving myself is probably the hardest lesson I have ever had to try to learn. On retreat this last I think I have just begun to glimpse what this could mean in practice. How to explain what God has started to show me is not easy, but maybe it does have to do with this sense that forgiving myself, just like dealing with the things for which I need forgiveness, is not actually something I can achieve for myself, by some effort of the will's muscles. It is much more like accepting the forgiveness of Christ, actually opening my own arms to accept the gift of the Cross, lifting to my lifeless lips the cup, that true and ordinary Grail that is present in every Holy Eucharist in every church through all the world, and always will be, and always has been.

The wrong cross...

Jesus says: "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him ... take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). He does not say: "Make a cross" or "Look for a cross." Each of us has a cross to carry. There is no need to make one or look for one. The cross we have is hard enough for us! But are we willing to take it up, to accept it as our cross?

Maybe we can't study, maybe we are handicapped, maybe we suffer from depression, maybe we experience conflict in our families, maybe we are victims of violence or abuse. We didn't choose any of it, but these things are our crosses. We can ignore them, reject them, refuse them or hate them. But we can also take up these crosses and follow Jesus with them.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

The truth of this has been so clear since getting back yesterday. All sorts of things have poured in on the clean and shining peace I returned with, obscuring and distorting the vision God had given me over those five days away at Compton Durville. Other people's computer problems that they needed urgent help with, meetings, emails... and yet these fiddly and uninspiring distractions must be the cross I seem to have been given to carry. It's no good fretting about them (though I do), no good feeling that if I had a nobler, more heroic cross, then I could bear it with good grace. As one follower of St Francis used to say, "It's always the wrong cross, Brother - always the wrong cross!"

Il Poverello...

The society in which we live suggests in countless ways that the way to go is up. Making it to the top, entering the limelight, breaking the record - that's what draws attention, gets us on the front page of the newspaper, and offers us the rewards of money and fame.

The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets, and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

St Francis, whom we follow in each of the Three Orders, was known as Il Poverello, the little poor one. We in the Third Order were originally known as the Order of Penitents. Nouwen's words carry this essence so clearly into the language of our own times: truly following Christ in the 21st Century is a ridiculous occupation in the world's terms. We must be fools to live like this...

I'm back...

Just had an amazing few days away - I'll try and post a bit more tomorrow. Just settling back down now and saying hello to Jan and the cats!

On retreat!

I'm off to The Community of St. Francis at Compton Durville again tomorrow, and I'll be home on Sunday afternoon, all being well.

Here are some pictures I took on my retreat two years ago, just so you'll have an idea of where I am!

        

I'll be back... pray for me...

εκκλησία - Ecclesia, Community...

Fran, over at the Parish Blog of St. Edward the Confessor, asks the question, "What is church?" and invites us all to leave our comments.

Missy, in the comments, gave a wonderful reply:

As an exercise, our catechists made "models of church" using gum drops and spaghetti.

Some created a building. Some an altar with just a priest. Some made a bunch of little people.

The most profound statement came from a 14 year old aid. She took a single gum drop and had dozens of bits of spaghetti coming out of it, all different lengths. At first I thought it was a star, but then she explained her model.

"The gum drop," she said, "is God. We're all the little bits of spaghetti. We're all radiating off of God, since He is our source. And we're all different lengths because we're all at different places in our spiritual journey." I gaped at her as she continued. "See this short one? He's not gone very far on his journey, but this long one has. Too bad we don't have any of that cork screw pasta or I would have put a few of them in to represent the people who are going in circles and think they're not going anywhere, but they really are it's just slower going."

She got a standing ovation.

Yeah, out of the mouths of babes...

I'd like to meet that girl, someday! But I was so struck by what Missy had said, as well as by Fran's profound question, that I attempted to leave some of my own ideas. I'm reproducing my comment here, in hopes that it might get someone thinking, if only to disagree! If it does, head on over to Fran's and leave your comment there, so's she'll end up with our answers to her question all in one place, and not scattered vaguely around the blogosphere...

I said:

What a question, Fran!

Of course we've all seen that cartoon with a church-and-steeple-shape made up of little people all holding hands, or standing on each others' shoulders, and it's getting a bit trite now.

But... for me at any rate, the Church (capital 'C') is the gathering of believers, past, present and future: the body of Christ, "...so great a cloud of witnesses..."

The church (little 'c') is its local and temporal expression - these people, gathered here, now; or else it is the organisation that enables it to meet, worship, hear the preaching of the Word, receive the Sacraments, and its existence helps to safeguard doctrine as well as to facilitate those things.

But all this is under the great wing of the Grace of Christ, and it is holy. We must remove our shoes, and tread lightly, in the presence of a Mystery, as Missy's pasta girl did. "Where two or three are gathered..." - when did we lose our sense of awe and worship in the Presence of Christ?

Lord, take the scales from our eyes, and let us see the glory you have placed among us / placed us among!

Phew - got a bit carried away there, Fran... Still - that's my two pennyworth...

Planting dreams...

A friend just sent me this, while I was writing the preceding post. Do you think God might be trying to tell me something this morning?

"God plants his dream in a person's heart and then moulds the person to fit the dream. Even though the moulding process seems to contradict the promise, the day comes when God moves the prepared person into his prepared place... and the dream becomes a reality."

Growing into the truth we speak...

Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

Thinking of my remark the other day, about not necessarily practicing what I preach, and of Fran's lovely and perceptive comment on it, this is a perfect illumination of that by Nouwen. At least I can hope that I "may gradually grow into the truth [I] speak!"

Firefox 3

In case you've been living in a museum of 19th century technology, and are several steps left of steampunk, Firefox 3 is out.

Having used it for several days now, and knocked it around a little, I can confirm that it is in fact the cat's pyjamas. I shan't go into details here - just download it and play with it. You'll soon see why I'm so pleased with the thing.

Most extensions are updated by now, or will be very shortly. Only one of my favourite extensions, UnPlug, is missing now. There are less themes updated, but they are gradually catching up. Some new ones, too... I particularly like Sky - cool and blue, and it retains the attractive "keyhole" design for the main navigation buttons.

Have fun!

Accepting the gift...

It is not something that most of us like to admit, but the truth is that "fasting," any disciplinary or dour approach to life - productivity - has its own rewards. However difficult the work itself may seem to those who watch us do it, there is something secretly very satisfying about the ardor of doing it. Giving up Spartan routines to visit old relatives or play with children, to write personal mail or take the dog for a walk, to go fishing or have a picnic supper on the shore makes the hardy and virtuous cringe at the very thought of it. We are serious people, too absorbed by important things for those things. We are too "busy" to be human.

So, we drone on through life, wearing our sensitivities to a frazzle. We go from day to day drowning our mind in more of the same instead of letting it run free in new fields of thought or new kinds of experience or new moments of beauty. We just keep doing the same things over and over again. Worst of all, we consider ourselves spiritually noble for doing them. Virtue becomes the blinders of our soul. We never see the God who is everywhere because we never look anyplace but where we've looked before.

Re-creation, holy leisure, is the mainstay of the contemplative soul, and the theology of Sabbath is its cornerstone. "On the seventh day," scripture says, "God rested." With that single image, that one line of Holy Writ, reflection, re-creation of the creative spirit, transcendence, the right to be bigger than what we do, is sanctified. To refuse to rest, to play, to run loose for awhile on the assumptions that work is holier, worthier of God, more useful to humankind than refreshment, strikes at the very root of contemplation...

From Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light by Joan Chittister (Orbis Books, 2000).

With thanks to Barbara, and to Sue...

The enemy uncloaked...

You'll recall what I wrote yesterday, about the spiritual warfare surrounding going on retreat. I've just found a long, extraordinary post by Abbot Joseph, Superior of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood Valley, CA, titled The Enemy of the Contemplative Life.

Abbot Joseph is of course writing of the monastic vocation, very different from my own Tertiary vocation as a kind of contemplative-in-the-world, and many of the challenges faced in a monastic setting are different in degree, if not in kind, to those I might face.

(It's worth noting here that this is my Tertiary vocation: other Third Order Franciscans, whether TSSF, SFO, OEF, et al., will have their own, which may well be very different. See The Principles TSSF, 13: "We as Tertiaries desire to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, whom we serve in the three ways of Prayer, Study, and Work. In the life of the Order as a whole, these three ways must each find full and balanced expression, but it is not to be expected that all members devote themselves equally to each of them. Each individual's service varies according to their abilities and circumstances, yet as individual members our Personal Rule of Life must include each of the three ways.")

Abbot Joseph writes, quoting The Contemplative Life, by Fr Thomas Philippe, O.P.:

Since nature does not have to furnish any predispositions for the contemplative life, the greatest obstacles to this life do not come from our nature. The obstacles that arise from within us are not on the same plane as our contemplative life. Our proper enemy is Satan; being a pure spirit, he is on the same plane as contemplation...

The contemplative life demands a great deal of confidence. Since the intimate knowledge of God grows only in peace, contemplatives are particularly vulnerable to disturbance. The contemplative life is very delicate, a life in faith and in darkness; hence it lacks the security that comes from seeing for oneself. This makes our lives very vulnerable to disturbance the moment we become separated ever so little from the hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Within this sanctuary, in the deepest part of our souls, the devil cannot act. This is the domain of contemplative prayer in which the Holy Spirit alone is master. The heart of Jesus is an impregnable fortress for us. The devil's strategy is to try to make us leave this fortress of love and lead us onto the field of the imagination or of false lights, where he can attack us.

The devil was created for contemplation; the contemplative life is, therefore, normal for him. Along with his intelligence, he has retained a sense of the contemplative life; only it no longer blossoms into love. Having rejected God as his supernatural end, he can no longer find repose in God. He has, therefore, no place of rest, not even a natural one; that is why, as St Augustine says, he wanders about in the world like an intruder.

We can understand his hatred of religious, poor human beings who by nature are not made for a purely contemplative life as he was, but who by grace now possess what he rejected. Knowing only too well the demands of contemplation, he makes every effort to impede it by creating disturbance.

His second objective is to sow the tares of dissension and division. It is easy for him to do this, for the only basis of total and permanent union among contemplatives is the love of God; as soon as we step outside that love, there is occasion for division. As a result of his sin, Satan has fallen into the realm of division, and he seeks to draw us into his wake.

The remedy is very simple. We should always try to come back very humbly into our Lord's presence and into his peace. We should follow the example of the saints and not seek to flout the devil or even look at the temptation. If we stay on his level, we are always in danger of being defeated: 'Satan is an admirable dialectician.' But we have a defense against which he has no weapon: faith, trust, love, and docility to the Holy Spirit. As long as we are in the domain of contemplative prayer with the Blessed Virgin, we are safe; as soon as we leave it, he can do with us as he will. We must never want to 'play' with him, not even to insult him. This can be a subtle temptation, and it is dangerous, for he is intelligent and powerful...

The children of the Blessed Virgin [Fr Thomas will I imagine be thinking of us here as adopted siblings of Jesus, v. Ephesians 1.5] should avoid acting as the children of Eve: abstain from curiosity, and not play games with Satan. Rather, they should follow Mary's faith, obedience, and humility.

I was struck by Abbot Joseph's remark, "The heart of Jesus is an impregnable fortress for us. The devil's strategy is to try to make us leave this fortress of love and lead us onto the field of the imagination or of false lights, where he can attack us." I think this is one of the great strengths of a prayer like the Jesus Prayer, which as well as being used "formally", in a set prayer time, can be repeated continually throughout the day. The problem with "arrow prayers", prayers sent up quickly to God in times of trouble, is that if the enemy has, even for an instant, succeeded in persuading us out of that fortress, we probably won't think of them in the heat of the moment. What's needed is something much more like Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God, and there the Jesus Prayer excels.

Needless to say, if you read yesterday's post, you will realise that I don't always manage to practice what I'm preaching here. But in a sense it doesn't really matter if I don't manage it. God in his mercy will bring good out of my weakness (Romans 8.28, 2 Corinthians 12.9) and will use someone else - like my own dear Jan! - to bring me to my senses. After all, in the Jesus Prayer we pray, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The prayer, thank God, doesn't specify how, or through whom, that mercy will come!

To turn the other cheek...

I really would encourage you to read this remarkable post by Sister Laurel M. O' Neal at Notes from Stillsong Hermitage. I shan't spoil it by extensive quotes, but Sister's concluding sentence will give you a sense of the wonders in store for you!

How ever it is we work out the application of these examples [Matthew 5:38-42] from Jesus' world in our own, we are being asked to witness to a love which goes beyond anything the world has ever known apart from Christ, and to demonstrate this with a freedom and sense of personal dignity which is deeper than anything the world can give OR take from us.

Incoming...

Knowing that I'm going on retreat next week, and that there are lots of things to get done before I can go with a clear conscience has led to a kind of paralysis. After one particularly panicky and desperate moment, it took Jan to point out that I always get like this before I go on retreat. I can't see it, of course, at the time. I ascribe it to all sorts of other things in our life and circumstances. That's all part of the problem: Jan's insight lanced it like a boil, and immediately a sense of relief flooded over me like a breath of light cool air on a stifling, humid day.

You'll understand, then, why I've been a bit remiss about this blog!

It really is remarkable the way this happens year after year. There's obviously much more to it than meets the eye. There are two obviously possible explanations, of course: either part of me doesn't want to go, is nervous about the silence, twitchy about leaving Jan to cope on her own, and reluctant to leave home comforts, computer, guitar, and so on; or it is some form of spiritual attack.

Now, I'm quite happy to accept the first possibility, except that I'm not normally so lacking in self-awareness as to simply not know what was going on, and I'm not normally quite so dishonest as to know it and then deny it! I don't in one sense like the second explanation, simply because it can be too easy to ascribe problems to enemy interference, demons, gremlins, whatever your particular semantic convention dictates, and so abdicate responsibility for them. However, it makes much more sense than the other, and applied rigorously, requires a far greater responsibility on the part of the one to whom the insight is given!

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God..." (Ephesians 6.10-13)

We do not know how to pray...

Henri Nouwen wrote, "Prayer is the gift of the Spirit. Often we wonder how to pray, when to pray, and what to pray. We can become very concerned about methods and techniques of prayer. But finally it is not we who pray but the Spirit who prays in us." (Bread for the Journey)

I know years ago I became very anxious, not so much about "methods and techniques of prayer", as about what to pray for, in what terms to pray for it... There seemed to be so much I needed to know in order to pray "directed prayers" - in any case, even if I knew all the circumstances I was "praying into", how would I know what outcome to pray for? You can imagine something of my dilemma if you imagine praying for a complex political / social / economic situation in a troubled and war-torn country, and trying to get all the analyses of the situation dead right, even down to the cultural milieu and the agronomic background, not to mention the international atmosphere, and all the political and economic circumstances of countries upon whose trade, or assistance, or military support, or arms sales, the nation for whom you are praying depends. Then of course you have to know what outcome to pray for: for the fall of a dictator? foreign aid? foreign military intervention? agricultural education? debt relief? a revolution? democratic elections?

Finally the penny dropped, somewhere along the line, that Paul had had the answer in Romans all along: "...the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." (Romans 8.26f)

God knows, infinitely better than than I, all that is involved in the situation about which I'm concerned. He also knows far better than I what is to be done about it, and he has caused people to be prepared to do it. All that is necessary is for me to care, to love, to become vulnerable to the situation. To stop avoiding those pictures in the paper, and to pay attention to the reports on TV - not because that way I may become better informed, like an intelligence officer, how I should act, but in order that I may love, and grieve, and weep, and come before God with all the pain and loss and confusion raw, unprocessed, honest. God can work with stuff like that.

Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 11.25 NIV)

All the study and analysis in the world will not help us to pray, if we do not care. If knowing the facts truly helps us to care, then well and good; but that is not yet prayer. It is only the love of Christ working in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that allows us to pray, and as Maggie Ross so telling said (I've mentioned it here before):

There are as many ways of intercession as there are moments of life. Intercession can become deep and habitual, hidden even from our selves. There is nothing exotic about such practice. What matters is the intention that creates the space and the stillness. Even something as simple as refusing to anesthetize the gnawing pain in the pit of your soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition is a form of habitual intercession. To bear this pain into the silence is to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy. It is in our very wounds that we find the solitude and openness of our re-creation and our being. We learn to go to the heart of pain to find God’s new life, hope, possibility, and joy. This is the priestly task of our baptism.

Eremos - Ubi Caritas

 

Webbed Hand Records has just released Ubi Caritas, the first Eremos netlabel release. Visit the release page for full details - download links are here.

I have to say I'm more than somewhat chuffed with the way it's turned out - Chris McDill has done a terrific job with the cover and general presentation - and Webbed Hand is one of my two very favourite netlabels for my kind of music... the other one being Resting Bell!

In solitude is the wonder of the commonplace...

Sometimes I feel like a little child happily rummaging in an eschatological toy box: the toys are icons and the play is for keeps. One of the toys in this box is a theological construction set. It isn't safe to hang anything on the models I build with it, but they catch light refracting from the soul.

Sometimes solitude is like balancing on the edge of a razor blade with a meadow full of wildflowers on one side and madness on the other. Or solitude is like a tea ceremony, the celebration of life in all its homely movements taken out of time.

In solitude is the wonder of the commonplace, the mystery of ordinary life: eating, sleeping, reading, listening to God's secrets and jokes, a sense of delight, of dance, of fruition, learning that solitude is not something we need to scramble to fill up, but that it is full and overflowing if we can learn to accept the familiarity of insecurity and let go into Silence.

Solitude is the essence of relatedness; solitude is being poured-out-through. We evolve toward simplicity; we dwell in the Word.

Maggie Ross, from The Fire of Your Life: A Solitude Shared, Seabury Books, 2007.

The wonder of the commonplace - yes, and yet it is so often in that commonplace that the way opens onto the sword-bridge, high in the grey wind and comfortless, leading out across no-thing to nowhere we could even understand... and the next minute you realise that it's God's hand in yours, and his kindly gift of frailty reminding you that you are just human, after all, and need to eat, and sleep, like any other creature. There is such refuge, then, in being flesh and blood, and in knowing Christ came this way before...

Hiddenness...

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a  prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1958)

Hiddenness is what is comes down to for me - hard as I find it sometimes, this call to hiddenness is fundamental to who I am. As I said in my post Ivy, back in Lent, it seems odd to be saying this kind of thing in a public blog, which could be construed as anything but hidden; yet it is true, and it is a kind of appetite with me. Where this is leading I still don't know, and maybe it's something that my retreat at the end of this month (I'm going to Compton Durville again) will reveal a little more. I do know that in some way this doesn't contradict the call to use the things I've been given: this blog, other writing, music and so on. More than that, I don't know.

Odd in a sense that this Merton quote should come up to focus this wondering, since the contradiction was present in Merton's life too, between the call he describes here, and his travelling, and his writing, which even in his own lifetime was becoming increasingly well-known. I wonder how it would have worked out for him, had he lived longer... (Not that I'm meaning to compare myself too closely with Merton - given my amazed respect for his work, that would be silly!)

The mercy of Christ...

Jesus, the Blessed Child of God, is merciful. Showing mercy is different from having pity. Pity connotes distance, even looking down upon. When a beggar asks for money and you give him something out of pity, you are not showing mercy. Mercy comes from a compassionate heart; it comes from a desire to be an equal. Jesus didn't want to look down on us. He wanted to become one of us and feel deeply with us.

When Jesus called the only son of the widow of Nain to life, he did so because he felt the deep sorrow of the grieving mother in his own heart (see Luke 7:11-17). Let us look at Jesus when we want to know how to show mercy to our brothers and sisters.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

The mercy of Christ is limitless, and his love beyond understanding. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..." (1 Peter 1.3).

Sitting waiting...

St. Romuald's Brief Rule For Camaldolese Monks

Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms - never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

I love these words, especially the final paragraph. It's strange, but all my Christian life I have found in the Psalms such depths and such comfort - and of course my own Office as a Tertiary is based around the Psalms - that all the Bibles I have used have worn out at the middle first!

I just can't stop thinking about that image of the one who prays sitting waiting, like a chick for his mother, for the grace of God. It would make a perfect description of what happens when one prays the Jesus Prayer - and of course the one who prays receives these morsels of grace somehow on behalf of all creation. This is why in my understanding it is so important - for me anyway - to end the Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" with that acknowledgement not only of my own innate sinfulness, but of my indissoluble identity with the fallenness of all my sisters and brothers, and with the brokenness that is now the condition (Romans 8.19-23) of all that is made.

Brother Ramon SSF, died 5 June 2000

Franciscan spirituality is especially relevant in our own day. Not only does it ground us in the biblical faith from which the Franciscan experience springs, but it roots us into the very stuff of creation, with its immediate awareness of earth, sea and sky.
Our environment is increasingly polluted by modern culture, industry, commerce and warfare, Our natural resources are being depleted by the hour, and we are poisoning and infecting our fellow human beings and other creatures.

In such a world, the Franciscan love of nature, reverence for life and openness to our fellows leads to joy and peace, with a down-to-earth and practical desire to correct our mistakes and reverse our wrong practices.

In our own day, when political ideologies are collapsing, when religion is being exploited as an argument for exclusivism and violence, and when the poorer nations are calling for equality and justice, then the life and teaching of St Francis is a beacon in the darkness. In him the light of Christ shines most clearly, and the love of Christ continues to manifest itself.

Br. Ramon SSF Franciscan Spirituality

The false dichotomy which arose between prophetic and mystical religion was based both on fear and misunderstanding. The fear is that somehow mystical religion blurs the uniqueness of God. Its closeness to nature is disturbing to some because it sounds too much like the celebration of fertility and nature in the old Canaanite religion so opposed in the Old Testament. Together with this is the feeling that with such a religious morality is blunted, and that moral responsibility and individuality is in danger of being lost.

Mystical religion has always been aware of the importance of God in the natural order; and the call of God is primarily one of love, leading to union. The language used by the two traditions has a different emphasis, and whereas union with God is the the goal of the mystical life, conformity of the human will is paramount in the prophetic faith. There are differences of emphases, even paradoxes in the tension between transcendence and immanence, but if properly understood, prophetic religion is rooted in mystical soil. Confrontation with God in the experience of the prophet is shot through with mystical intuition and immediacy of experience of the divine.
As I have listened to the fears of the Reformed side I have found that they defined the meaning of mysticism too narrowly, and related it so closely with pagan mysticism that few Christian mystics would have recognised it. At the same time they broadened the understanding of the prophetic religion so widely that most mystics would feel at home in it.

The Christian faith holds neither the exclusivity of the stark monotheism of Islam, nor the popular polytheism of Hinduism. The revelation of God in the Old Testament is not static, but of dynamic love and mercy. The fullness of the new covenant breaks upon us in the incarnation of God in Christ. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus leads to Pentecost, where not only is the threefold nature of God's person made clear, but the Spirit of God comes to indwell the Church and the individual believer. Thus the Church becomes the body of Christ, and the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 2.21-22; 1 Corinthians 3.15)

Br. Ramon SSF The Flame of Sacred Love

We have seen that the Jesus Prayer involves body, mind and spirit. If the whole person is given to God then it reflects the greatest commandment of all, the command to love... The cosmic nature of the Prayer means that the believer lives as a human being in solidarity with all other human beings, and with the animal creation, together with the whole created order (the cosmos). All this is drawn into and affected by the Prayer. One believer's prayers send out vibrations and reverberations that increase the power of the divine Love in the cosmos.

The Christian is well aware of the fact that the world is also evil. There is a falseness and alienation that distracted and infected the world, and men and women of prayer, by the power of the Name of Jesus, stand against the cosmic darkness, and enter into conflict with dark powers. "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." [Ephesians 6.12] The power of the Jesus Prayer is the armour against the wiles of the devil, taking heed of the apostle's word, "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayers and supplication."

...It is the one whose heart is aflame with the love of Jesus who can effectively radiate compassion and stretch out a hand in practical help to those in need.

Br. Ramon SSF "The Cosmic Nature of the Jesus Prayer" in Praying the Jesus Prayer Together

It is one of my great regrets that I never came to know Brother Ramon during his time on earth, though I had loved his writings for many years when he finally succumbed to cancer on this day eight years ago. He has nevertheless been an extraordinary mentor to me through his printed words, and he has come to symbolise for me much that is best in the Anglican Franciscan way: the courage, the open-heartedness, the deep Biblical faith, and above all the defenceless, profoundly practical love, Christ's love, that I have found at Hilfield, Compton Durville and elsewhere is nowhere found so clearly in contemporary writing, unless it is in the writings of Sister Helen Julian CSF.

Brother Ramon lived much of his best years as a hermit, under the aegis of at different times one or the other of the Franciscan houses at Hilfield or Glasshampton; yet if you read any of the biographical accounts of his life, it is his love of people that shines through as clearly as his love of nature, and almost as clearly as his love of the God who created both. In September 2000, the magazine franciscan published a beautiful personal reflection given at his requiem mass in Worcester Cathedral, by Dr Ieuan Lloyd, Companion of SSF. It is well worth clicking on the link to read the whole thing - but the final paragraph will give a better ending to this post than I could write myself:

But what I think he will be remembered for most is the wise counsel and guidance he gave to so many people. Here was the other side of him, listening and not talking, understanding the person's situation, finding the right thing to say at the right time, planting a thought, then suggesting and opening up possibilities, sometimes nudging, never thrusting. He took such great care over his letters. They were usually at least two sides long with single spacing. He kept everyone's letter for a while and carbon copies of his own. He continued to write even when he was quite ill. Not long after Christmas he replied to over a hundred in two weeks, each tailored to the needs of the person. He knew exactly where you were on your pilgrimage. And what he gave - either face to face or in his correspondence - was hope, whether the difficulties were psychological, personal or spiritual. That hope changed the lives of so many people. That hope is something that he had found in his faith and for which he himself was such a wonderful channel.

Liminal...

To be marginal in one's society is not, emphatically not, to withdraw as some would charge. It is to be motivated and led by values and commitments different from and often contrary to the mainstream... New vision is always what any society most needs, and the edges of society have always been the most likely place for it to emerge. To generate something new, one must be listening to voices other than the loud voices of mass society.

If we have read our Bibles, we will know to look and listen for the new word God wants to speak to us on the edges of things rather than at the center of wealth and power. To be on the margins, therefore, is to put ourselves in a position to watch, to listen, and to become engaged in a new way... Part of being on the margins is new association with the people who have been made marginal. The gospel tells us that it is among "the least of these" where we find Jesus.

Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion, with thanks to Inward/Outward

I think this sense of living "on the margins", this sense that God's new word will be found out on the edges of things, is deeply embedded in the core of what it means to be a Franciscan. St. Francis himself lived all his life on the margins; his influence may have extended even in his own time to the centre of the Church's political existence, but his life was lived far away, in the poor streets and villages around Assisi, on the empty slopes of La Verna.

My own Franciscan journey so far has been much more a process of discovering reasons and precedents for the things I have all my life sensed and longed for, rather than a matter of learning texts or rules. I have since I was very young had an instinctive nervousness of success, of being at the centre, where it was all happening. Oh, like most kids, I thought I wanted fame and recognition; but any time I have looked like getting close, something far deeper in me has recoiled. I used not to understand it, but as I have grown older I have come to see this not as a negative shying away from the limelight, but as a positive longing for hiddenness, a positive sense that I was called to the margins, that I was only whole and in God's purpose out of the edge of things.

I even love liminal places for themselves: shorelines, the place where the sky meets the plain, horizons of every kind. The very word, borderline, resonates with something at the deepest level of what I am.

If I could make any kind of appeal or message out of this, it would simply be to look into yourself for the things that call to you, that cry out in your heart in the night: the odd reactions you have to things, the strange and often counter-cultural preferences that would shape your life if only you'd let them; and look for God's call in those things. For myself, this has been a truer discernment than any of the more conventional varieties, which all too often have lead me down blind alleys, and into dead ends!

Falling in love...

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

Pedro Arrupe, SJ

Ours are the eyes...

When we think about Jesus as that exceptional, unusual person who lived long ago and whose life and words continue to inspire us, we might avoid the realisation that Jesus wants us to be like him. Jesus himself keeps saying in many ways that he, the Beloved Child of God, came to reveal to us that we too are God's beloved children, loved with the same unconditional divine love.

John writes to his people: "You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children - which is what we are." (1 John 3:1). This is the great challenge of the spiritual life: to claim the identity of Jesus for ourselves and to say: "We are the living Christ today!"

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

Teresa of Avila wrote:

Lord Christ,
You have no body on earth but ours,
No hands but ours,
No feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which your compassion
Must look out on the world.
Ours are the feet by which you may still
Go about doing good.
Ours are the hands with which
You bless people now.
Bless our minds and bodies,
That we may be a blessing to others.

Amen

This is a shocking thought, yet it is, as I wrote yesterday, nothing less than the plain truth. We are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12) and it is in us that his work on earth is done. It also follows that the world's reaction to Jesus will be its reaction to us. This may prove uncomfortable from time to time...

Compassion for Creation

I can't add anything to this wonderful post - just click over to Perfect Joy and read on...

Plain speaking...

Very often we distance ourselves from Jesus. We say, "What Jesus knew we cannot know, and what Jesus did we cannot do." But Jesus never puts any distance between himself and us. He says: "I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father" (John 15:15) and "In all truth I tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, and will perform even greater works" (John 14:12).

Indeed, we are called to know what Jesus knew and do what Jesus did. Do we really want that, or do we prefer to keep Jesus at arms' length?

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

I've been thinking a bit about this, lately. Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 11.25 NIV) I love these words, and the liberation they bring us from the burdens of intellectual one-upmanship and anxiously elitist gnosticism.

Of course we need to keep awake when we read the Bible, and we need to be sufficiently aware of the different literary forms (poetry, prophecy, historical narrative, and so on) it contains, and the immense cultural differences between the Israel of the Judges, first century Jerusalem, and our own time. But Jesus' own words are better attested than any other Biblical character's, and better than any classical author's.

As Nouwen says, our pretence of scholarly agnosticism is just that, a pretence. Jesus' teachings are plain; and he said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8.31-32 NIV)

Yes, Jesus is the Son of God. Yes, he is the Christ, the Anointed of God. But he was born of woman, and he walked the earth as a man, just as human as you or I. Of course we can know him. He is the way, the truth and the life - and any attempt to evade the possibility of knowing him evades this truth.