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!
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Peace in the world...
We prescribe for one another remedies that will bring us peace of mind, and we are still devoured by anxiety. We evolve plans for disarmament and for the peace of nations, and our plans only change the manner and method of aggression. The rich have everything they want except happiness, and the poor are sacrificed to the unhappiness of the rich. Dictatorships use their secret police to crush millions under an intolerable burden of lies, injustice and tyranny, and those who still live in democracies have forgotten how to make good use of their liberty. For liberty is a thing of the spirit, and we are no longer able to live for anything but our bodies. How can we find peace, true peace, if we forget that we are not machines for making and spending money, but spiritual beings, sons and daughters of the most high God?
...The world is, by its very essence, struggle, conflict, division, dissension. For there to be peace in the world, men must renounce their selfishness in order to make peace, and we cannot make peace with others unless we are at peace with ourselves.
Yet more extraordinary Merton wisdom... How would the world look if we really, for even a day, lived like this, truly lived as people who kept Jesus' command, to love one another as he has loved us? (John 15)
...The world is, by its very essence, struggle, conflict, division, dissension. For there to be peace in the world, men must renounce their selfishness in order to make peace, and we cannot make peace with others unless we are at peace with ourselves.
From: Thomas Merton. The Monastic Journey. Patrick Hart, editor. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978: pp62-3.
Yet more extraordinary Merton wisdom... How would the world look if we really, for even a day, lived like this, truly lived as people who kept Jesus' command, to love one another as he has loved us? (John 15)
Saturday, January 27, 2007
When governing is lacklustre
The people are simple and honest
When governing is scrutinizing
The people are shrewd and crafty
Misfortune is what fortune depends upon
Fortune is where misfortune hides beneath
Who knows their ultimate end?
They have no determined outcome.
Rightness reverts to become strange
Goodness reverts to become wicked.
The confusion of people
has lasted many long days
Therefore the sages are:
Righteous without being scathing
Incorruptible without being piercing
Straightforward without being ruthless
Illuminated without being flashy
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 58
Translation by Derek Lin
Taoism is an extremely ancient Chinese philosophical system - the Tao Te Ching was written around 600BC - much beloved of Thomas Merton, who produced an interpretation of another great Taoist text, Zhuangzi, named after its author, writing in the 4th century BC.
As an aside, Taoism is not in any sense contradictory to Christian belief, a fact which is recognised by most contemporary Taoists. It is a living philosophy, not a religion, as has repeatedly been pointed out from the Tao Te Ching on: its metaphysical views are strikingly in accord with the Christian account of creation; its ethics, and its teaching on simplicity, share many things with the teachings of Jesus... and hence with the Franciscan way!
I just wish our Western governments would read this passage, and live by it! "When governing is scrutinizing / The people are shrewd and crafty" - isn't this just what we see around us every day? Lacklustre government is the last thing the spin doctors would ever wish to see, but it may well be the only way to a world of simple and honest folk!
The people are simple and honest
When governing is scrutinizing
The people are shrewd and crafty
Misfortune is what fortune depends upon
Fortune is where misfortune hides beneath
Who knows their ultimate end?
They have no determined outcome.
Rightness reverts to become strange
Goodness reverts to become wicked.
The confusion of people
has lasted many long days
Therefore the sages are:
Righteous without being scathing
Incorruptible without being piercing
Straightforward without being ruthless
Illuminated without being flashy
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 58
Translation by Derek Lin
Taoism is an extremely ancient Chinese philosophical system - the Tao Te Ching was written around 600BC - much beloved of Thomas Merton, who produced an interpretation of another great Taoist text, Zhuangzi, named after its author, writing in the 4th century BC.
As an aside, Taoism is not in any sense contradictory to Christian belief, a fact which is recognised by most contemporary Taoists. It is a living philosophy, not a religion, as has repeatedly been pointed out from the Tao Te Ching on: its metaphysical views are strikingly in accord with the Christian account of creation; its ethics, and its teaching on simplicity, share many things with the teachings of Jesus... and hence with the Franciscan way!
I just wish our Western governments would read this passage, and live by it! "When governing is scrutinizing / The people are shrewd and crafty" - isn't this just what we see around us every day? Lacklustre government is the last thing the spin doctors would ever wish to see, but it may well be the only way to a world of simple and honest folk!
Monday, January 22, 2007
Keep on praying for the protesters...
...it becomes more and more difficult to estimate the morality of an act leading to war because it is more and more difficult to know precisely what is going on. Not only is war increasingly a matter for pure specialists operating with fantastically complex machinery, but above all there is the question of absolute secrecy regarding everything that seriously affects defense policy. We may amuse ourselves by reading the reports in mass media and imagine that these "facts" provide sufficient basis for moral judgments for and against war. But in reality, we are simply elaborating moral fantasies in a vacuum. Whatever we may decide, we remain completely at the mercy of the governmental power, or rather the anonymous power of managers and generals who stand behind the façade of government. We have no way of directly influencing the decisions and policies taken by these people. In practice, we must fall back on a blinder and blinder faith which more and more resigns itself to trusting the "legitimately constituted authority" without having the vaguest notion what that authority is liable to do next. This condition of irresponsibility and passivity is extremely dangerous. It is hardly conducive to genuine morality.
From: Thomas Merton - Passion for Peace: The Social Essays. William H. Shannon, ed. New York: Crossroad, 1995: 113-114.
It seems to me that this question, more than 40 years on, is at least as acute as it was when Merton tackled it. The fact that we are in no position adequately to judge, let alone influence, the morality of our countries' policies scares me. Democracy is so illusory in these areas. If the only two parties with the slightest chance of actually being elected both support war as a means of expressing foreign policy, and I don't accept that, what can I do about it? Very little, except protest.
That brings me back to a point I made some time ago here: we need to pray for the protesters. Of course we need especially to pray for the ones who are attempting to express our own point of view; but we need also to pray for the ones we think are wrong. We need to pray for anyone who keeps open the possibility of effective - or even ineffective - communication in the face of "the anonymous power of managers and generals who stand behind the façade of government..." and is prepared to risk life, limb or liberty to do so. Really. I can't say how important I think this is.
Pray, and keep on praying, for those who are prepared to risk what, often, we ourselves would not dare to risk, in order that justice and morality - even their own sometimes unusual concepts of justice and morality - might not slip unnoticed from our lands.
That brings me back to a point I made some time ago here: we need to pray for the protesters. Of course we need especially to pray for the ones who are attempting to express our own point of view; but we need also to pray for the ones we think are wrong. We need to pray for anyone who keeps open the possibility of effective - or even ineffective - communication in the face of "the anonymous power of managers and generals who stand behind the façade of government..." and is prepared to risk life, limb or liberty to do so. Really. I can't say how important I think this is.
Pray, and keep on praying, for those who are prepared to risk what, often, we ourselves would not dare to risk, in order that justice and morality - even their own sometimes unusual concepts of justice and morality - might not slip unnoticed from our lands.
The Road to Understanding
My good friend Nancy Wagner wrote this to me the other day - I thought it was so encouraging I asked her permission to share it here. She wrote:
I have something I would like to share with you.
A few years ago I did a fall scene of a tree lined uphill road, and I wrote the following to go with the painting. Here is what I wrote:
The Road to Understanding
To live life fully as God ordained, one must walk with Jesus on the Road to Understanding - following the light of His Wisdom.
It's uphill most of the way and when the storms come and your getting deeper and deeper in the dark valley, as the road before you twists and turns in frightening confusing directions, it's then in anguish your heart cries out, "Jesus help me." You call on His name and the light of His Love gives you inner vision, where you had none.
His Light glows within your heart giving you courage and strength to resist the fear of the dark and unknown paths that lie ahead. So you forge out in faith, not seeing, not knowing where the path you've taken will take you.
You walk eagerly forward in faith and arrive without even knowing how you got there - high on top of a mountain with heavenly clouds and birds, lush trees and a stream of fresh clear, flowing water. And as you drink in the beauty and the crystal clear fluid of life abundant - you cry out once again, "Abba, Abba, merciful Father, thank you."
I have something I would like to share with you.
A few years ago I did a fall scene of a tree lined uphill road, and I wrote the following to go with the painting. Here is what I wrote:
The Road to Understanding
To live life fully as God ordained, one must walk with Jesus on the Road to Understanding - following the light of His Wisdom.
It's uphill most of the way and when the storms come and your getting deeper and deeper in the dark valley, as the road before you twists and turns in frightening confusing directions, it's then in anguish your heart cries out, "Jesus help me." You call on His name and the light of His Love gives you inner vision, where you had none.
His Light glows within your heart giving you courage and strength to resist the fear of the dark and unknown paths that lie ahead. So you forge out in faith, not seeing, not knowing where the path you've taken will take you.
You walk eagerly forward in faith and arrive without even knowing how you got there - high on top of a mountain with heavenly clouds and birds, lush trees and a stream of fresh clear, flowing water. And as you drink in the beauty and the crystal clear fluid of life abundant - you cry out once again, "Abba, Abba, merciful Father, thank you."
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Love never ends...
I just wrote the something similar to the following in an email to a friend, but I thought maybe I'd share it here, too, since it's been increasingly on my mind the last few weeks...
It's becoming more and more clear to me how it is the love of Jesus that is at the centre of it all - everything he did on earth, and everything he now does from glory, in us and through us.
I don't know too much about the theology of all this, but what I do know is that the way to follow our Lord, to do the things he did, is the way of love. 'This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you... I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.' (John 15.12, 16-17)
I think Francis understood this perhaps better than anyone, when he wrote:
Lord, make us to walk in Your Way...
Where there is love and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance;
where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor annoyance;
where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice;
where there is peace and contemplation, there is neither care nor restlessness;
where there is the fear of God to guard the dwelling, there no enemy can enter;
where there is mercy and prudence, there is neither excess nor harshness.
This we know through Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen .
It's becoming more and more clear to me how it is the love of Jesus that is at the centre of it all - everything he did on earth, and everything he now does from glory, in us and through us.
I don't know too much about the theology of all this, but what I do know is that the way to follow our Lord, to do the things he did, is the way of love. 'This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you... I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.' (John 15.12, 16-17)
I think Francis understood this perhaps better than anyone, when he wrote:
Lord, make us to walk in Your Way...
Where there is love and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance;
where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor annoyance;
where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice;
where there is peace and contemplation, there is neither care nor restlessness;
where there is the fear of God to guard the dwelling, there no enemy can enter;
where there is mercy and prudence, there is neither excess nor harshness.
This we know through Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen .
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Brother wind!
The weather has gone wild again - BBC Weather reports gusts up to 80mph, and there's been slashing rain most of the morning. Though our little development of 26 houses is quite sheltered, having been built in an old chalk pit, the trees along the top of the bank are lashing crazily, and most of the birds who normally fill our garden have taken cover. One big wood pigeon, though, flew over a few minutes ago, and a little flock of blue and great tits has just arrived from the bushes under the big cedar, and are feasting on peanuts, and a big seed & lard ball that's hanging on the feeder pole.
As you can tell from this post, we've so far been spared any problems with the electricity and internet connections, which is nice, especially as we've no gas, and no fireplaces, in these houses!
I pray God will protect those on the exposed coasts today, anyone out on the sea, and those in places in danger from flooding... from here in the warmth and peace, with the cats curled up on the bed asleep, it's hard to imagine how grim it's going to be for some of us...
As you can tell from this post, we've so far been spared any problems with the electricity and internet connections, which is nice, especially as we've no gas, and no fireplaces, in these houses!
I pray God will protect those on the exposed coasts today, anyone out on the sea, and those in places in danger from flooding... from here in the warmth and peace, with the cats curled up on the bed asleep, it's hard to imagine how grim it's going to be for some of us...
Be praised , my Lord, for brother wind
and by air and clouds, clear skies and all weathers,
by which you give sustenance to your creatures.(Francis of Assisi - from The Canticle of the Creatures)
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Very Peculiar....
 | My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Most Serene Highness Lord Michael the Introspective of Durdle Door Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
Miffy has this extraordinary link to a remarkably silly site - but by some cyber-serendipity it has come up with this title for me - an INFP who lives but a few miles from Durdle Door, as anyone knows who is at all familiar with this part of Dorset!
Oh, well... at least we weren't blown away by the gales today!
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Beautiful Day!
No, not the U2 song, but the weather here...
Last night's wind has dropped, and it's bright and chilly, with fluffy white clouds in a pale blue sky. Just the day for - well, just about anything really - but especially for walking down the road to drop in a church welcome pack to whoever it is has moved into that newly built bungalow.
Figgy is having a lazy day, but Lulu has been out chasing leaves, and hiding under the Choisya bush near the back fence, and looking at the bird feeders wondering why there are no birds there - like they'd come to feed with a slightly fat white & ginger cat standing looking up at them ;-)
Really neat thing earlier on this morning - I was just on my way out to church when a delivery man stopped me, and asked if I could take in a parcel, as the young couple next door but two were out. Later, Jody called in for her (heavy, bulky) parcel, and I was able to carry it home for her, and say hallo to her big rough-coated terrier sort of dog. We've hardly exchanged a word since they moved in a couple of years ago - they work all hours, for one thing - so it was nice to be able to say 'hi' in a useful kind of a way...
Last night's wind has dropped, and it's bright and chilly, with fluffy white clouds in a pale blue sky. Just the day for - well, just about anything really - but especially for walking down the road to drop in a church welcome pack to whoever it is has moved into that newly built bungalow.
Figgy is having a lazy day, but Lulu has been out chasing leaves, and hiding under the Choisya bush near the back fence, and looking at the bird feeders wondering why there are no birds there - like they'd come to feed with a slightly fat white & ginger cat standing looking up at them ;-)
Really neat thing earlier on this morning - I was just on my way out to church when a delivery man stopped me, and asked if I could take in a parcel, as the young couple next door but two were out. Later, Jody called in for her (heavy, bulky) parcel, and I was able to carry it home for her, and say hallo to her big rough-coated terrier sort of dog. We've hardly exchanged a word since they moved in a couple of years ago - they work all hours, for one thing - so it was nice to be able to say 'hi' in a useful kind of a way...
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Windy day
It's been the windiest day here - not a moment without the trees whipping and lashing across the back of the wet garden, and the roofs of the two little plastic greenhouses making - well that plastic greenhouse noise - all the day.
The cats have been spooked - Figgy hasn't been out all day, and Lulu went out, then hid under the patio table and chairs, which are under a plastic fitted cover, and wouldn't come out. She did eventually, but Jan had to pick her up and carry her inside, as she seemed to have lost all sense of direction in the wind and the horizontal drizzle. Mild, though, unpleasantly mild, mild enough for grim thoughts of global warming...
I pray for enough sense among our governements to act decisively, before this whole climate thing gets to the point that people really start to suffer...
The cats have been spooked - Figgy hasn't been out all day, and Lulu went out, then hid under the patio table and chairs, which are under a plastic fitted cover, and wouldn't come out. She did eventually, but Jan had to pick her up and carry her inside, as she seemed to have lost all sense of direction in the wind and the horizontal drizzle. Mild, though, unpleasantly mild, mild enough for grim thoughts of global warming...
I pray for enough sense among our governements to act decisively, before this whole climate thing gets to the point that people really start to suffer...
Be careful of our language and motivation...
...is something I have often said here in past posts.
It also happens to be the title of a post on Malcolm Duncan's excellent blog, where he links to a Faithworks article he wrote on evangelical reactions to the government's proposed Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs).
Hat tip: I was alerted to the Ekklesia report on this article by Maggi Dawn. (See also Malcolm's own comment on my last post.)
It also happens to be the title of a post on Malcolm Duncan's excellent blog, where he links to a Faithworks article he wrote on evangelical reactions to the government's proposed Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs).
In it he links to the Faithworks Press release page - here.
Do please read Malcolm's comments - this is a most important article politically, but far more than that it is an impassioned plea for real Christlikeness. You may or may not agree with his politics, but the way he argues for "an opportunity to demonstrate grace, inclusiveness and love... Christians are called to follow Jesus' example..." is surely beyond question.
Hat tip: I was alerted to the Ekklesia report on this article by Maggi Dawn. (See also Malcolm's own comment on my last post.)
Friday, January 05, 2007
Michael Sandler
I have just discovered an wonderful composer and musician, Michael Sandler. If you like Eremos music, you'll love Michael's extraordinary work. His massive 7-part work, Geschichte, a musical account of salvation history(!), is one of the finest pieces of modern abstract (ambient) music I've heard for a long long time.
There are also a couple of tracks not available elsewhere, 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and 'The Silver Waves', free to download at Michael's DMusic page.
Do go and listen - you can download the whole thing, freely and legally, if you're as taken with it as I am. (Go, Michael! The more of us who can use the power of the Internet to freely distribute what God as given to us, the more we provide an antidote to what the world does with art, and indeed with God's gifts in general!)
There are also a couple of tracks not available elsewhere, 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and 'The Silver Waves', free to download at Michael's DMusic page.
Do go and listen - you can download the whole thing, freely and legally, if you're as taken with it as I am. (Go, Michael! The more of us who can use the power of the Internet to freely distribute what God as given to us, the more we provide an antidote to what the world does with art, and indeed with God's gifts in general!)
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
A strange thing...
It's the second day of the New Year, and somehow the colour of things has changed. It's not only that the sun's out, after yesterday's rain and hail and darkness, but there's somehow a liminal, edge-of-things feeling about.
Strange thing, time. God's time - if the term has any meaning when applied to him - is so radically different from our own, that we don't have an inkling what's really going on, why things seem to happen when they do, or what they're likely to lead to in the end. We've just celebrated Christmas, and even the people most closely, intimately, involved in those remarkable events only saw glimpses, as the Holy Spirit shone a light on events, and then the everyday cloud of unknowing came down again. It was, after all the same Mary, the mother of our Lord, who, having prophesied in the words we now know as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46ff) just hadn't a clue, twelve years later, why Jesus might have stayed behind in Jerusalem, or where he might be found (Luke 2:41ff). She, whom all generations call blessed, had no more idea than you or I might have done that Jesus had to be in his Father's house.
If we see at all what God is up to in and through time, it is only as his Holy Spirit shows us. Outside his pool of light all is darkness, echoing and strange, and we have no maps for that place. The only thing to do is pray for God's mercy, that as we need to take each step, the light of his Spirit light will go with us: "a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path," as the psalmist of Ps 119 said, who "[held his] life in [his] hand continually," just as we do, and who prayed, "give me life, O Lord, according to your word..."
Give us life, O Lord, according to your word, this year of 2007... and lighten our darkness, one step at a time, as your Holy Spirit shone his light into the life of your servant Mary, all those years ago - so that even though she did not know where she was going, or what her first-born Son would grow into, yet she saw so clearly where the light shone, and listened...
Strange thing, time. God's time - if the term has any meaning when applied to him - is so radically different from our own, that we don't have an inkling what's really going on, why things seem to happen when they do, or what they're likely to lead to in the end. We've just celebrated Christmas, and even the people most closely, intimately, involved in those remarkable events only saw glimpses, as the Holy Spirit shone a light on events, and then the everyday cloud of unknowing came down again. It was, after all the same Mary, the mother of our Lord, who, having prophesied in the words we now know as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46ff) just hadn't a clue, twelve years later, why Jesus might have stayed behind in Jerusalem, or where he might be found (Luke 2:41ff). She, whom all generations call blessed, had no more idea than you or I might have done that Jesus had to be in his Father's house.
If we see at all what God is up to in and through time, it is only as his Holy Spirit shows us. Outside his pool of light all is darkness, echoing and strange, and we have no maps for that place. The only thing to do is pray for God's mercy, that as we need to take each step, the light of his Spirit light will go with us: "a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path," as the psalmist of Ps 119 said, who "[held his] life in [his] hand continually," just as we do, and who prayed, "give me life, O Lord, according to your word..."
Give us life, O Lord, according to your word, this year of 2007... and lighten our darkness, one step at a time, as your Holy Spirit shone his light into the life of your servant Mary, all those years ago - so that even though she did not know where she was going, or what her first-born Son would grow into, yet she saw so clearly where the light shone, and listened...
Happy New Year
I don't think I can give you any better New Year's greeting than to suggest you read Dylan's Lectionary Blog entry for the First Sunday after Christmas. Just superb! The way she explains God's mercy in Jesus, and the gentle but surgical way she deals with the "substitutionary atonement" problem is beyond my ability to précis - you'll have to go and read her text for yourself. Do - you'll be glad you did, honestly!
Every blessing for the New Year to everyone!
Mike
Every blessing for the New Year to everyone!
Mike
Thursday, December 28, 2006
No limits!
Jesus seemed to anticipate that as he said that while "among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God" -- including a prostitutes or tax collector who had received John's Baptism -- is greater than he" (Luke 7:28). And even in saying that, Jesus' ministry issues an invitation in profound continuity with the one John issued to all those who would hear -- an invitation to repentance and conversion.
We need to hear that invitation. It isn't about getting in to God's good graces or avoiding God's judgment -- in Jesus' ministry, God is already extending grace and suspending judgment before we ask. It's about living into the fullness of that grace. We are invited to make our decision to follow Jesus, and that invitation comes not just once for a lifetime but in every moment we live. Jesus is born anew among us whenever two or three gather in his name. Jesus is at work among us wherever the poor, the sick, and the marginalized are received and find healing and power for new life. And when we keep our eyes, ears, mind, and heart open to receive God's good news, we see it finding flesh in our world in places and in ways as surprising and challenging as they are joyous.
Let's not begin to talk to ourselves about our impressive spiritual pedigree when the very one for whom our ancestors longed and hoped is coming again among us. Let's not presume to draw limits around what God can accomplish and with whom. Let's not measure God's good news of peace according to our own preconceptions when the most certain word we have of it is that it "surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7). Our conversion didn't end with Baptism; that's just where it began, and it ends only where God's love for us does. In other words, it doesn't end. Expect God's coming; expect the unexpected!
And thanks be to God!
So writes Sarah Dylan Breuer in her wonderful Lectionary Blog, reminding me so clearly, as we come up to the New Year, how profoundly grateful I am to be in a church where this kind of thinking is taken seriously. We are all of us Christians so prone to "draw limits around what God can accomplish and with whom." Truly we must stop it, now: if we are not careful this is where the division in the Church of God will occur, not between Anglicans who do or do not accept bishops of a particular variety. The real danger is of a split between law and grace, with a political extension (seen so clearly in the "War on Terror" and its ramifications) into the triumph of judgement over mercy. As an aside, it grieves me to see the UK Labour Party going down the same road as the US Republican Party over these things, and attempting (albeit feebly, compared with the US Religious Right) to shanghai the Church in support of policies of international intolerance and what could all too easily grow into domestic oppression and the restriction of civil liberties.
Grace is not limited. Mercy is not limited. Only our response is limited - and we must pray that God will wash away those limitations with the living water of his Holy Spirit, and leave us free to respond to God, and to our fellow humans, as Jesus did: directly and openly, his love clean, without the limitations of fear and self-defence, given as freely as the sun and rain.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Eremos - new music for Christmas!
Happy (nearly) Christmas!
To celebrate, there's a new track, "And Be Led Back in Peace" on the Eremos download site - enjoy!
In case I forget to post something more seasonal here nearer the time, every blessing for Christmas & the New Year...
Mike
To celebrate, there's a new track, "And Be Led Back in Peace" on the Eremos download site - enjoy!
In case I forget to post something more seasonal here nearer the time, every blessing for Christmas & the New Year...
Mike
Monday, December 18, 2006
How Long We Wait
How Long We Wait
How long we wait, with minds as quiet as time,
Like sentries on a tower.
How long we watch, by night, like the astronomers.
Heaven, when will we hear you sing,
Arising from our grassy hills,
And say: “The dark is done, and Day
Laughs like a Bridegroom in His tent, the lovely sun,
His tent the sun, His tent the smiling sky!”?
How long we wait with minds as dim as ponds
While stars swim slowly homeward in the water of
our west!
Heaven, when will we hear you sing?Thomas Merton. Collected Poems.
New York: New Directions Press, 1977: 89-90.
Just came home from hospital yesterday (scary, but OK now!) to find this wonderful Merton poem, so central to Advent, the Advent time we all live in, and have lived in for all the generations since that first Christmas, "long, long ago..."
I sense a new seriousness, and a new light-heartedness, in what I must do from now on in. God has been trying for some time, I think, to get me to prioritise what I do, and don't do. I think he is calling me to concentrate on him, and on what he gives me, rather than on what I think I ought to be doing for him. I've known this, in a kind of a way, for a long time; but I've tried to give lip-service to it, rather than admit my deep need.
Hmm. Lots to think about. With your permission, you readers, I'll try and think some of this through with you in the next few posts... After all, we're in this together, somehow!
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
I'm not a heretic!
This is so cool - I'm really truly not a heretic! Hat tip to reverend mommy - whose ear infection I pray will soon be gone - for this excellent link!
| You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.
Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com |
The dangerous memory of Francis
This from Reflections of a Secular Franciscan:
"Live in the dangerous memory of Francis!" Dangerous memory - memories...
I find it so easy to live in safe places, in the comfortable patterns and the cosy locations. Sometimes I look back and wonder how on earth I came to make some of the dangerous choices I did make. It almost seems like someone else. Perhaps that's it, though: perhaps those were the times (few enough, I have to admit) when I just for a moment took my hands off the wheel, and let the Holy Spirit drive. Oh, Lord, as David prayed, don't take your Spirit away from me, even though I so often am too pig-headed to hear his voice in the quiet places, or just too noisy...
Lord, give me too dangerous memories - while I've the foolishness to ask it - this very Advent, when waiting itself becomes dangerous, when the Simeons of this broken world find, against all odds, their consolation right in front of them, in the last form they could ever have expected, and dare to recognise him...
I came across this prayer at the website of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany. They are the ladies responsible for my initial formation as a Franciscan nearly 50 years ago.
May this day remind us of our call and desire to follow Christ.
May the Spirit of the Lord find its dwelling place in us, that the Gospel may come to life in us.
May we live in the overflowing goodness of the Most High.
May crucified love mark our lives this day.
May we forgive our debtors as we have been forgiven our debts.
May we see the leper in our midst and taste their the goodness of the Lord.
May we live in the dangerous memory of Francis!
Pax et Bonum!
-- author unknown
"Live in the dangerous memory of Francis!" Dangerous memory - memories...
I find it so easy to live in safe places, in the comfortable patterns and the cosy locations. Sometimes I look back and wonder how on earth I came to make some of the dangerous choices I did make. It almost seems like someone else. Perhaps that's it, though: perhaps those were the times (few enough, I have to admit) when I just for a moment took my hands off the wheel, and let the Holy Spirit drive. Oh, Lord, as David prayed, don't take your Spirit away from me, even though I so often am too pig-headed to hear his voice in the quiet places, or just too noisy...
Lord, give me too dangerous memories - while I've the foolishness to ask it - this very Advent, when waiting itself becomes dangerous, when the Simeons of this broken world find, against all odds, their consolation right in front of them, in the last form they could ever have expected, and dare to recognise him...
Monday, December 04, 2006
Do we need Superman at Advent?
The certainty of Christian hope lies beyond passion and beyond knowledge. Therefore we must sometimes expect our hope to come in conflict with darkness, desperation and ignorance. Therefore, too, we must remember that Christian optimism is not a perpetual sense of euphoria, an indefectible comfort in whose presence neither anguish nor tragedy can possibly exist. We must not strive to maintain a climate of optimism by the mere suppression of tragic realities. Christian optimism lies in a hope of victory that transcends all tragedy: a victory in which we pass beyond tragedy to glory with Christ crucified and risen...
But the Church in preparing us for the birth of a "great prophet," a Savior and a King of Peace, has more in mind than seasonal cheer. The Advent mystery focuses the light of faith upon the very meaning of life, of history, of man, of the world and of our own being. In Advent we celebrate the coming and indeed the presence of Christ in our world. We witness to His presence even in the midst of all its inscrutable problems and tragedies. Our Advent faith is not an escape from the world to a misty realm of slogans and comforts which declare our problems to be unreal, our tragedies nonexistent.Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950: 88-89
Recently I've been thinking a lot about our "hope... that transcends all tragedies," and about the immense tragedies that face humanity at every turn. I look at the faces on TV, of refugees, of those who have lost everything to war, famine, disease, and now at Advent most poignantly I find myself asking, with the psalmists and the prophets, "O Lord, how long? How much more can we take?"
And yet as Christians we do witness to our Saviour's presence even in the renewed shadow of the nuclear threat, with locations across London contaminated with radiation, and a Prime Minister committing to mortgage the future of our communities' health, education and policing to buy brand new capabilities for thermonuclear war. We do witness to his presence even as concerns over levels of immigration threaten to open the door to institutionalised racism, and "buy to let" fever takes even more houses forever out of the reach of young couples setting up home together for the first time. We do witness to his presence even in the devastated streets of Baghdad, in the refugee camps of Dharfur and the flood plains of Somalia.
"Jesus saves!" crowed the old bumper stickers - and he does, still, save in the most astonishing and immeasurable way the lost and the hungry, the sick and the dispossessed, the rich and the disillusioned, across all this broken, weeping world. Sometimes our faith comes right down to this wire, to the bare truth of Romans 8:28, that "... all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9) and his salvation is sometimes radically different from the kind offered by caped individuals who wear their underpants on the outside.
After all, why would the expected Messiah, King of Kings, be conceived out of wedlock, be born in poverty and obscurity, and freely give himself to die in agony and disgrace, if God did things our way? What would a superhero have to say to a blind beggar, shouting in the crowd, or a broken woman whose illness made her forever unclean? What would he have to say to me?
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