two thoughts

I suppose saints are people
who are loved so much by those around them
that their faults pale into total insignificance.

if st paul had never gone to damascus
what would my prayers have been tonight?

pain

so what if it hurts a bit.
it's bound to:
it's a tiring journey

knowing

knowing is not really what we are designed for.
knowledge can never bring us joy.

isn't our desire to know
really the desire for control?
Ultimate Power

of course we need to know stuff to get by
and mend broken things.
but, in order to be
[human being not human knowing.]
the quest for perfect knowledge becomes a weakness,
and not a virtue.

canoe

if you stop paddling
you drift

nothing to go on

but of course there must be:
otherwise how could I be starting over?

meanwhile:
struggling through job:
the jewish cry from the heart.
the anomaly just won't go away

joy

my prayer: an untamed, distracted wilderness;
yet later, at unexpected moments,
I find myself struggling with strange joy

wuthering heights

I am reading wuthering heights again.
not the best choice when unwell.
[I am peevish linton heathcliffe]
it's been hard uphill work this time around
but the gentle kiss that catherine bestows upon hareton
has made it all worthwhile.

elemental things

within the heart of man are elemental forces
which may or may not manifest themselves
in the life of an individual person.
whether they do or no
he nevertheless participates in a life
which has unfathomable depth.

john donne says no man is an island.
I had always understood that
as a personal revelation on donne's part.
I see that I still have not understood this aright.

it is, above all, a statement of fact
discovered or no.
to NOT discover it leads to downward spiral
and personal frustration.

the health of a person
depends upon him discovering,
within his own being,
just how deep the ocean in which he swims
actually is.

one way or another, life does this:
revealing depth to us,
through catastrophe,danger,
tenderness and loneliness.
the last thing we should do at such times
is struggle for the shore.

I still have such a problem
with the name: christ.

a new leaf

today barak obama became president of america
and the world turns a new leaf

life

talking of absurdity:
what can be more absurd
than life itself?

we rationalists like to have an answer for everything.
faced with life we are at a loss.

perhaps coming to terms with life
is what buddha meant by enlightenment.

flaw

the medieval cathedral builders
built a deliberate flaw into their work.

each person has his fatal flaw;
his achilles' heel:
his strength which is his weakness also,
and so ultimately his downfall.
could this not be the case with the 'religions' too?

the spoonful of absurdity which prevents each
from being the Whole Truth

mattering

somewhere below I wrote
that it mustn't matter.
that's what happened to my music!
as soon as it started to matter
it became unbearable;
impossible.
the inadequacy of it
appalls me!

isn't that what will happen to this blog?

looking back, I turn to stone.
aiming, I can only miss.

teaching

I taught for decades
but was I ever really a teacher?

talents or the difference between work and life

in my confusion I turned to the piano
and poured so much of me into it
that I decided on music college.
but when music became my work:
it could no longer be my life.

seeking answers in philosophies
I poured so much of me into them
that college friends called me a 'talking head'.
of course, my philosophies fell apart piece by piece.
until nothing was left but you.

you.
impossibly.
I did convert [or revert?].
there were plenty of reasons.
and I poured so much of me into my newfound faith
that I wondered whether to be a monk.
I wondered and wondered for years
and when I returned from iceland
I did accidentally join a monastery.
but when prayer became my work
how could it be my life?

I couldn't stay. I couldn't stay.
even knowing what I now know
I still couldnt stay.
but when I left, in my confusion,
I did fall into the Deep Dark Hole.

starting with confusion.
my main desire was to get unconfused.
in retrospect, having insufficient talent was no bad thing:
it's easy to get bogged down along the way.

I am still confused of course.
but in hindsight I can see that
being human is learning to live with that.

knowing who I am would be as fatal
as knowing who you are.

could the acceptance of 'not knowing'
(and not needing to know)
be what faith actually is?

something tells me that all will be well
only when I can say,
completely truthfully:
'it doesn't matter.'

how wrong that sounds!
which only goes to show
how far off I still am.

"christian values"

this has to be one of the most destructive phrases
ever invented by a shortcut-loving media.

why are people - even godfearing ones -
so afraid of using the word God?
it's almost a taboo!
so instead they say 'spiritual values'
and miss the point
by about three million miles.*

*a little tribute to salinger

it doesn't matter

the most essential thing about this blog
is that it mustn't matter
if nobody else understands.
(and mostly it doesn't).
the only thing must be to carve some sort of path
across the ploughed field.

I have always felt vaguely guilty
about being a private person.
I felt duty-bound to try to be a public one.
the result: total failure.
the trouble is:
I was never quite sure what that actually involved

there's a ying and a yang there somewhere I suppose.
seeing more clearly in retrospect:
(this might be playing with words
in a salinger kind of way)
it's quite impossible to be even a middlingly-good public person
without being a very very much better private one.
and I'm not talking morals here.

thought

still on the subject of thought:
when we think with our minds
its only half the story.
thinking with our bodies
must be our aim.
peace treaties,
compromise
and maybe, one day,
real friendship!

I was going to say
'only love can heal the breach'.
why does that sound like twaddle?

the real problem with the word 'love':
to those who are 'in love'*
it makes perfect sense.
to the rest of us:
it's just a sour taste in the mouth.

*I don't think I mean to be sarcastic here.
I did wonder about removing the commas,
but found that I could not, for some reason.

reading salinger

the trouble is
he makes me want to think
in beautifully original sentences.

holy places

who am I to speak of your placelessness
when my own holy places still sustain?
places, from decades ago,
where we met;
and somehow still do.

yes, a few churches of course:
holy trinity in prince consort road,
lavishly embroidered with saints;
plainer chapels, old and new, at worth abbey,
[still, probably, the hub of it all]
and the side chapel in spalding parish church
reeking of polish and violent reform
(thirty years on, still a favourite:
a quieter corridor of snatched moments down my life)

outdoor places:
the tiny wood at the end of our road in crowborough
where, as a child, I built my first hermitage;
passionate teenage walks on tunbridge wells common -
(the path to Brighton lake!)

and indoors too:
one evening in the attic guestroom
in ljosvallagata in reykjavik
when you peered through the skylight;
and that astonishing afternoon
in the sunlit showers at the sundhollin!
(now that would take some explaining)

the mystery is this:
a time and a place,
once touched by timeless you
can shine again;
[in me!]

our secret.
[why do I so need there to be one?]

treasure

zooey tells franny that her prayer
is merely another way of storing up treasure.

but doesn't jesus say somewhere,
'store up treasure for yourselves in heaven' . . ?

so it's not a problem then?

except that, as we search, you teach us
that treasure in heaven is unlike any other treasure:
it does not exist!

you guide us inexorably
towards a complete emptiness!*

today I have to start over.
again.
but this should not make me sad.
far from it.
I can only come to you as the rawest recruit.

*this sounds terribly sad,
but the sadness wasn't what I meant at all;
not at all!

two things

two things I am certain of:
the relationship between God and man:
[me and you],
as Essential as it is Impossible.

scientists use the word 'assymmetric'.
If it means 'lopsided' then it describes us well.
everything good, everything creative,
however tortured it may seem,
springs directly from our impossible love.

whilst man's physical limits are as tiny as any creature
his imagination knows no such bounds.
without recourse to the darkness of faith,
[the cloud of unknowing],
this disparity leads either to cosy fantasy,
or to disillusion and despair.

manyana

manyana is not in your vocabulary.
and, whenever I use this dreaded word,
I know I am closing the door between us.
once let loose, its power soon overwhelms
like knotweed.

renewal

take up thy lyre and sing, friend!
dance with me also!

but I mope in a corner
licking my wounds.

tobit

one thing about being unwell:
plenty of time to read.
in september I started at the beginning
and have now reached tobit.

tobit is an israelite in exile,
who has managed to stay faithful to the old law of moses.
raphael and amodeus
[an angel and a demon]
are an essential part of the story
(could these be 'foreign gods' of old in disguise?)

tobit's blindness is cured with a medicine
prescribed by raphael.
and the text is littered with phrases
later quoted by jesus.
['feed the hungry and clothe the naked' ]
moreover, the narrative is both detailed and compelling;
[operatic!]

there are more than glimmers here of the gospel style.
why, then, is this only part of the apocrypha?

homelessness

I have been away.
while I was away one thing possessed me:
the homelessness of God.

'the son of man has nowhere to lay his head'.

like the birds, we build nests.
and it's true: we cannot survive without shelter.
making a virtue out of necessity
we lavish them with care.
then we build places for you too
as though you were like us!
your placelessness too hard for us to bear.

our mansions, and yours,
like the doves' heap of twigs,
will be blown down by the wind.
it's only a question of time.