shrinking

if we shrink from death
aren't we also shrinking from life too?

mission

the trouble with the english benedictines:
they have become missionaries.
how could I be a missionary
when I wasn't sure?

perhaps this is just a convenient excuse

the past

we live amongst the detritus of yesterday.
change happens a tiny thing at a time,
and, unless I am mistaken,
everywhere at once.


yesterday,
a million years ago,
the big bang:
which is the furthest away?

the problem is that,
because the legacy of the past is all around me,
I constantly confuse the living present with this dead past.
life (and change) only happens in the present.
the very present
not the general present which is today
or this week
but the NOW, this minute:
the only place where you dwell
[but, of course, the only place where I dwell too!]

this knowledge momentarily terrifies
as much as death
and overwhelming diversity.
[all aspects of you: awesome god]

my instinctive fear for that which I do not understand
is only overcome by trust.
I do not mean a 'shrug of the shoulders'
but rather an 'approaching';
a 'walking towards'.

a 'drinking of the cup'
and a warm welcome

faith and trust

today I see that there is 'leaning on'
and there is 'searching for'

there is distance between us
and you are close.

annoying contradictions but
expect these
I must allow you to be as contradictory as you actually are

pointlessness and point
hopelessness and hope
despair and joy
all at the same time.
I want to ask
how can that be?
but try not to!
the singularity which is you
is diversity itself!
and whilst language seems to get in the way:
without it we are lost before we can start.

trust

in the last post I used the word trust
which sounds passive.
trust sounds like 'leaning on'
but it really isn't what I meant.
in your presence there is certainly 'leaning on'
but in your absence there can only be 'searching for'
which is faith and not trust
they clearly aren't the same . . .
sometimes I let you slip away
and sometimes I'm the one who slips away.

as if we travel at different speeds
and it takes all my effort to keep up.
so I fall behind then?
that has to do with rhythm I suppose.
never having had a good enough sense of rhythm -
not even in my music come to think of it:
days of complete meander . . . .
only when I discover the rhythm is it possible to move on.

for a while that was my mantra:
moving on through.
it should be again perhaps?

no, for the moment,
just keep up! you say,
smiling
no dilly-dallying please!

pointlessness

the pointlessness of life;
sounds depressing
suicidal even.
but only if we think there was a point in the first place.

human education is designed to instill purpose,
aims,
goals,
reasons why.

It is only when all of these have proved
hollow
empty
futile
that we can move beyond this.

prayer does the opposite of education:
you lead me straight towards the wall.

the wall has always been there:
terrifying
unbearable
desolating
I've seen it many a time and run.

but the only way forward is to
face it
walk it
and trust.

trust is all that can carry me beyond my own terrifying pointlessness
to where you are:
the pointless one;
the happy one

the key is to be able to be nothing.
once there,
things happen

old posts

reading back through my posts
some are already very obscure:
yesterday's step along the way.

scouring my own texts for meaning
will get me nowhere.

you shake me until I fall off.