an email from Vopnafjörður.
changing everything.
initial euphoria but now the fall-out is enormous:
the monastic life I have craved all these months will finally go beyond my reach.

Is this what you want for me?
Can I really go back to this?

posted on the yahoo group today: I don't usually do this, but I think what seemed particularly relevant was the idea that contemplation is something for all christians and not just those with 'vocations': it fits in with where I sort of am. Having just read it through again, there's a lot more here too.

The true Christian must at any cost conquer a place in his life for contemplation. He must firmly refuse to let himself be dragged into a whirlpool of activities in which he is driven incessantly from one task to another, purpose succeeding purpose, without a pause. The present period of perpetual unrest, in which the machine has come to be the model, the causa exemplaris, of well-nigh all things, in which everything is caught in a process of instrumentalization, in which Leistung ("achievement") with the emphasis on quantity and mere technical perfection, has assumed priority over being in a substantial and meaningful sense - this period of shallow hyperactivity is only too apt to drag us into that whirlpool of outward preoccupations.


All our actions, even those with a religious or moral importance, which therefore essentially appeal to the contemplative attitude, we tend to perform in the manner of discharging a duty or of acquitting ourselves of a task - not to say, of turning out the required output. We live in uninterrupted tension, never ceasing to be conquered about what has next to be settled; and many of us no longer know any alternative to work except recreation and amusement.


Dietrich von Hildebrand on Contemplation 1

it's as though I have stepped into a world I know nothing about.
psalms are more essential than ever but it is as though I had never really heard them before.
Prayer was frightening: I didn't know why I needed to pray although glimpsed memories saw me through this. (Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells, Newport, Iceland, Eastbourne, Reading . . .)

My lifeline: 'I am yours and I must be yours'.
this is all I really know.

The sense of being in a totally unknown place was at times overwhelming.
[I was anxious to jot down some of the things that were occurring to me but they are all gone now.]

I have had no news from st hugh's and this might be partly the problem.
No niche to fit into. . . . . as though my longing for a clear identity is standing between us.

that the prayer is essential remains clear in my mind but even a single day missed might send me reeling.

I am reading a wonderful biography of Samuel Johnson. Such a warm person!

today I had to start all over again.
the psalms could not be sung, and I needed to try to 'understand' them again.
monday psalms. saying them, and trying to condense them down a little seemed to be important.
prayer too: starting from scratch in a world which I do not recognise.
'religion' made no sense here and there was no recourse to memory either except in the blindest faith I can recall.
but there is life and I am alive and I give myself into that life whatever the consequences. 

je te donne, mon seigneur. je te donne avec tout mon esprit et tout mon corps.

having said that of course this was remembered:
blind faith is from memory:
I knew to do this because I remembered from yesterday and the day before.

a strange sense of stories that I have never heard or understood overlapping with mine.
a sense also of other times and other places crossing mine.
difficult to describe.

if I was an artist I would be doing a collage of old newspaper cuttings, none of which could be complete, and none of which would have matching dates. There would be a few creased pictures too perhaps: faded; hard to discern and incomplete . . . . . .
I look with joy at my collage.

the crucified one.
those who are in pain and broken.
those who hurt and grieve.
those who are in despair and who are humiliated and excluded - in any way at all.
[but I worry here about cliche.]

Is it that I understand them as brothers or that I patronise them and pretend?  

the path to God is nothing if not counter-intuitive.
today it seemed as though everything before had been a wild goose chase.
where nothing was certain in the way that I had begun to believe it was.
like jumping up and down on a floor that I was sure was solid only to find that it rocks and sways under my feet and I must tread cautiously and anxiously all over again.
there was a desire to retreat, but I know this cannot happen. there can be no retreat: there is a certainty, not a certainty that I understand a single thing other than that you are the way that you are even if I cannot glimpse anything of the truth of what this means. I go back to that lutheran thing: the crucified one, and I understand a little about what he means. We look for certainty in power. We desire someone powerful to keep us secure but the power of God does not offer this type of power at all and it might be that the more we seek it the more frustrated we become. There is no security like this in the kingdom of God because it is a false security and I search for it in vain. There are times, I must accept, when I am blind to spiritual things, just as I am deaf to the music of Mozart, or the beauty of Shakespeare. But is this the poverty of the gospel, or something different? just a poverty type of poverty with nothing to do with God? but no, this is what luther means then by 'no hint of religion' perhaps. poverty is just that: poverty; with no luminosity or angel choir behind it. Something grinding and ugly then. the crucified one. Jesus crucified does not have an angel choir backing, or a rich film score to add luminosity and meaning: it is grinding and ugly and it is perhaps the first essential to discovering you as you are that we can glimpse this . . . . is it then a case of seeing beyond the poverty? or something intrinsic in the poverty itself?

finished 'the idiocy of idears' this morning. although I nearly gave up on this book somewhere just beyond the middle (when the negativity became almost unbearable) I'm glad I didn't because towards the end (especially when he goes on holiday to greece with his family) there are many wonderful passages.
The effect of the book upon me today is a little strange.
the anglo-saxon thing again (perhaps to do with its later domination by the normans?)
chelmsford hall.
failure.
the underworld as a place where you are to be found.
underdogs.
agnar. hoby. george.

Aware suddenly of how cramping this blog is: simply because of a possible audience ( even though I know there isn't a real one, and I try to write with that in mind). Even so . . . .

Aware too of the way in which you pull the rug from under my feet and how I must learn to see this as stepping stone rather than block.
It's been a disappointing week in several different ways but it's important this doesnt disrupt my prayer [even though it already is today] . . . . and the fact that I think it will do that shows, I suppose, how little I have understood anything important. I cling to the knowledge (partial though it may be) that it is at times when you seem so absent that you are actually most present. In other words, when I think I understand then I understand the least. When I know how little I understand then, perhaps, we are getting somewhere. . . . . .

subversiveness, humour and irony: aspects of you.
(isn't rowan williams hinting at this in 'silence and honeycakes'?)

paul lewis playing beethoven 4th concerto last night.

after prayer today I played bach: carefully practising my preludes and fugues.
at certain moments there was understanding without understanding: a happy purposelessnes;
that is, I was not searching around for a reason to be playing: I was playing for the sake of playing, and when I yearned for purpose I thought of you.

strangely enough, at one point in my prayer today I was thinking about whether I shouldnt try to do a little painting myself.
it was only a brief thought: I won't be rushing out to buy paints.

I'm reading 'silence and honeycakes' by Rowan Williams. It's about the desert fathers, and particularly macarius (who is mentioned in the hermit's thatch blog today also). Williams has completely changed my mind about the very nature of the desert fathers' spirituality. I'll quote some later.

prayer today: aching confusion.
the psalms have never been so important: I am singing the lot at the moment and they glint in the light of day: almost visibly.

trying to untangle what is going on in the prayer might not be wise: a few strands: the need to sacrifice everything for the sake of you.
but why?
the need to know this is probably part of what must be forsaken - certainly, the desire for knowledge becomes a problem: you take us into a deep darkness where very little can be known or understood and if we seek to know or understand the only way is for us to rush away from you in order to do it, and then we not only will still not understand but we will have lost our way in the process. 
the desire for knowledge then (by which I mean 'understanding' - perhaps akin to the desire to stand on a hill and survey the entire scene rather than being in the battle itself where nothing can be seen in a helpful context) is linked to the desire for control, which has to be forsaken.
and why?
To say that the relationship between a person and you is not equal is so far a truism as to be ridiculous: like an ant thinking that his own weight compared to that of, say, the moon is probably not quite the same.
But it isnt of course a question of size at all. Size has nothing to do with it. Nor has context, or glory or purpose or love or anything conceptual at all: and I suppose this is where Luther might come in a little handy:
You as gift of Yourself on/despite/because of/ through/ the cross.

[My problem with this idea the other day had something to do with the fact that it is incomplete by itself (the idea I mean - as are all theological concepts in and of themselves I suppose until they are 'self-applied' that is.) The only meaning of the cross is not in itself, or even in your self-sacrifice [of itself], but in the fact that, at the foot of that cross, I am able to actually meet you. know you. discover you. Or perhaps I should say I am enabled to meet you. discover you. know you.
the cross then enables me.

Purposelessness is also immensely important here.
We look for purpose all the time: everything has to have a reason, but with you we find none and even this can send us into paroxysms of pain and confusion.
Getting used to your purposelessness is perhaps the hardest thing of all.
Perhaps this is where children have the advantage and this ties in rather neatly with what I was thinking about 'Childish' yesterday.
He says, "The interesting thing about painting pictures is painting pictures. And with music, the interesting thing is playing it."
'Interesting' is not quite the right word perhaps: its the circularity of the argument which is important here: he paints because he loves to paint; he makes music because he loves to make music. But even this doesnt make clear enough the fact that the act of painting or the act of making music has a sense of purpose built into it which is inherently of itself  and an essential aspect of the act of making art . . . . . whoops, running out of language here . . . . .purpose without purpose. Is there something intrinsically 'of God' in this perhaps?

Which takes me onto another thing today in my prayer: this thing about time and place: how each day, although I am in the same place, I am in a completely different place because it is a new day (time and place are not separate compartments when it comes to the spiritual life: not at all). Nothing of what I learnt or did yesterday makes a ha'porth of difference today (except the thread of continuity, which is so essential).
In prayer there can be no planning ahead, or looking back either come to think of it, although having said that I am very aware of the way in which prayer gathers up memory also and places it very much in the present - where you are. It is the only place where you are; and it is therefore the only place where we can be too. The rest is just sleight of hand and distraction.

reading the idiocy of idears by 'childish'.
its interesting on several levels, not least it's curious 'englishness': something I can't put my finger on but which attracts me in a completely unnationalistic way. This ties in (somehow) with mucknall and the 'anglo-saxon' monastic thing that has been dogging me since I read about william of glassington. . . . . .
On his website (music, paintings. woodcuts. poetry - a kind of Blake figure actually) he talks about 'stuckism', a word that developed from some 'conceptual' artist telling him(?) that his work was stuck. (because he paints rather than 'conceives' perhaps.) the article in times online puts it more usefully: (times online on childish)

“The question of what is art is “very, very simple”, he says. “Would the person do it if he wasn’t being paid? This would eradicate all of contemporary art! You don’t pickle sharks in your shed for 20 years because you believe in it."

I suppose all struggling amateur artists have to agree with him when he says that art should never be about money, but where does that leave beethoven, bach and handel? They all wrote to earn a living didnt they?

further on in the article:
'The first trick was to not care what others might think of my work. The next was to paint and not care what I thought about it myself. That’s why I work quickly, and why I don’t look at it again for another week.” (He paints on Sundays, at his mother’s house.) “So I can see it as if it was done by someone else.” He seems relaxed about work that turns out badly. “I saw some of my paintings today and I’m appalled by them.” For most artists to say that would be devastating, but to Childish it’s just five minutes’ annoyance.


The interesting thing about painting pictures, he concludes, is painting pictures. And with music, the interesting thing is playing it. “When I was a child, people got together and played in the pub and in the car park. And people knew how to do a turn. People think I’m an amateur. That’s become a derogatory term, like I don’t know what I’m doing. But the amateur is someone who does things out of love.”

The article ends like this:

Childish whizzes me back into the kitchen. Looking through my sketchbooks, he says my drawings look a bit “tight”, but stops to commend one hasty study of pine cones. We tear pages from a sketchbook and throw tubes of paint all over the floor, and in the next 15 minutes we make no fewer than eight paintings of each other. The colours are in no way realistic, and the shapes aren’t always right, either. “Is my head really that heart-shaped?” he asks at one point.



Some days later, Childish sends me an e-mail – itself rather a surprise. I almost junk it because he uses one of his many pseudonyms, William Claudius. It consists of a poem he wrote the previous night, inspired by our conversation:
some say im
laurence
some say im
blake
some say im
true
some say im
fake,
       it starts.


I phone to thank him, and ask why he wanted me to paint so fast. He has talked often enough about the need for sincerity and authenticity in art – couldn’t I have achieved those at a slightly slower pace? Or was it simply that we had run out of time? Not at all, he insists. We worked fast, he explains, to feel truly alive: “Every artist knows that if they get something in a sketch it can be impossible to recapture that energy in another medium. And that’s the kind of energy I’m trying to get into everything. When you paint, you’re in the moment. Creativity is the only thing that engages with life. It’s the joining of mind and material. It’s a spiritual thing – and all of life should be like that.”

at the crossroads: juggling lives.
both my music and my prayer reflect this in ways that may not happen again.

I wrote to the group about my letter last night having put the letter in an envelope. I added a second ps earlier today after prayer and having read several helpful replies to my post and sent the letter first class this afternoon.

a lot of posts yesterday: Gilbert of Sempringham:
a link with the ecclesia Anglicana.
but struggling with this new shadow of Luther:
the cross, yes.
But surely, the holiness of the cross is manifest, not hidden - although perhaps only to those who know? a gift of the spirit then?
Your gift to us is yourself. We can only respond in kind as best as we can.
In my blanker prayer it is faith that clears my way, but it is an informed faith - because of what happened yesterday and the day before: so memory is important.
Prayer today: befuddled: clear thought impossible.

Worth was like this. Only, back then, I wanted only to have a clearer mind: anything else seemed unbearable. Now I see that this cannot be: this is simply not possible when we come close to you. Looking back, my arrogance was both mind-boggling and self-destructive.

bound and gagged: only today it was different: blindfolded and . . . . but for now I cannot for the life of me recall the other word. . . . .

yesterday was immensely difficult. separateness, despair, confusion, and much darkness. the letter sits here unsent.
last night I thought: this letter is unsendable rubbish.
he will send a polite two-line reply and put it in the bin.

last night I was reading 'wound of knowledge'.
so much of this book is intellectually beyond me.
I struggle to relate what he is saying to my own experience and some sections fill me with anxious lassitude. Occasionally though I glimpse something that makes sense to me.
I was reading the passage about Luther. It struck me very forcibly and I think that this must be the passage which Father Daniel was thinking of after he got my letter that day.
It's a long passage but all of it is important so I won't try to abbreviate it. (I doubt that I could.)

Knowledge is a historically conditioned affair, it is not intuitive grasp of transcendental states of affairs. But to take this seriously means equally to reject the idea of privileged authoritative propositions delivered from religious illumination. It means to grasp that any speech made about God is speech about an absence: the world we inhabit does not present God as simple fact. God is made known to us in the cross, in a man's death in abandonment. So for all human beings God is to be met in what 'contradicts' or opposes him, in sin, in hell, in pain and guilt and lonely despair; theology begins here, in the Godless world at its most extreme. Only here, in what negates and mocks all human conceptions of God, can God be himself. Paradoxically, the real and absolute transcendence of God can only be understood in circumstances and experiences where there are no signs of transcendence, no religious clues. It is, as Luther again insists in the 'proof' of thesis 20, useless to consider the transcendence of God, 'His glory and majesty', independently of the human encounter with him in the godlessness of the cross. Here, where all theological speculation, all conceptual neatness and controlledness fall away, God is simply God. It is an experiential and historically oriented restatement of the tradition of negative theology: God himself is the great 'negative theologian', who shatters all our images by addressing us in the cross of Jesus. If we are looking for signs of God's authentic life, activity and presence, we shall find them only in their contradictories, in our own death and hell as in Christ's. The theologia crucis concerns itself only with the visible, the worldly; but it grasps and values the worldly for what it truly is, the garment of God. The theologia gloriae seeks to escape from the worldly and so turns its back on God.
. . . . . . . .
and further down the same page (p. 147 in my edition: D,L & T)
That Christian authenticity begins from the wreckage of all human efforts to contain or control God is a view which we have seen to be central to the mainstream of Catholic tradition. What Luther (and the classical Protestant world in general up to the present century) objects to is the perversion of the contemplative approach into a 'mysticism' which imprisons God again in a set of human experiences.
. . . . . .If Luther can be read in the light of Eckhart (and of Eckhart's pupils, Suso and Tauler, whom Luther studied extensively), it is clear that the reformer cannot simply be interpreted as an enemy to contemplative theology and practice: he is, rather, an uncompromising champion of the innate iconoclasm of contemplation.
. . . . . . (p. 150) the fact of Christ's perfect oneness with the Father is not touched by his experienced agony. Christ's cross is, from one point of view, the supreme demonstration that holiness is nothing to do with mere states of mind.

I finished the letter.

continuing confusion:
only trust.
there is joy too - although it is somewhere I cannot quite locate it.

st hugh's.
much disorentiation today.
travelling who knows where.
the main thing is to trust and not fight.