a quote from the group today ('They speak in silences')

"So the books one loves are those which make one think.
One seeks in them that silence whence the words were
born, which is those depths of soul which no language
can express, for they are beyond expression. It is here
we touch what is measureless, eternal and divine in us."

and I thought immediately of the music I played before the funeral today.

I think that music can reach this place - occasionally, and perhaps circuitously.

monday psalms. 

no time for anything except work at present but part of the only psalm I managed this mornng struck very deep:

give thanks to the Lord upon the harp.

O sing him a song that is new

play loudly with all your skill.

I've read this countless times but today it was you who spoke it.

the command is clear: go deeper.
don't let the technical problems distract you. 
(how many are my foes)

I have the same sunday evening sense of dread that I had when I was a schoolboy at skinners grammar. . . . .

a precarious trip to the supermarket: icy roads.

the empty landscape shouts your name.

In Fréttablaðið today

"Leita munka erlendisKaþólska kirkjan á Íslandi vinnur enn að ráðagerðum um að hér á landi rísi munkaklaustur í nágrenni höfuðborgarinnar. Leit í erlendum klaustrum að munkum til Íslandsfarar hefur ekki borið árangur. Fyrr verður ekki byggt.

  Þrátt fyrir áralanga leit hefur kaþólska kirkjan á Íslandi ekki enn fundið munka til að manna klaustur sem vonir standa til að rísi í nágrenni Reykjavíkur.

Að sögn séra Patricks Breen, staðgengils biskups kaþólsku kirkjunnar, er langt í land að hér rísi nýtt munkaklaustur.
"Fyrst leitum við að munkum og það mál er ekki enn í höfn," segir séra Patrick, en kaþólska kirkjan hér hefur verið í sambandi við klaustur víða um heim vegna þessa.
Séra Patrick segir að kirkjan vildi helst hafa klaustrið nærri höfuðborginni til þess að fólk eigi sem best með að sækja það heim, hvort heldur sem er um helgar eða eftir vinnu virka daga.
Eins vanti kaþólsku kirkjuna samastað fyrir barna- og unglingastarf líkt og þjóðkirkjan starfræki í Vatnaskógi og víðar. "Við erum ekki með neitt svoleiðis og viljum helst hafa munka til slíkra starfa."
Aðalástæðu áhuga kaþólsku kirkjunnar á byggingu munkaklausturs hér segir hann vera fyrirbænastarf sem í klaustrum sé stundað. Þá hafi sýnt sig í öðrum löndum að opin munkaklaustur njóti verulegra vinsælda hjá fólki sem sæki þar helgihald eða leiti kyrrðar."

surely too much to ask . . . . .  

but I am asking anyway

reading on the worth website. Nick was one of the guys in the series 'the monastery'. He later visited St Hugh's for a month and here's an extract from what he says about the experience.

"But the really difficult thing was just being present. This is what Dom Cyril, the novice master would keep emphasising when he came to check up on me every few days or so. “Just be here,” he would say. And for the first week or so he would always ask me whether or not I was there yet. It took a few days to really understand what he meant. With little to occupy or distract my mind I became very aware of how much of my time is spent elsewhere – thinking about all the things I could or should be doing, the people I might be seeing, what I would do when I got out, and so on. Indeed, much of this idle daydreaming was taken up with making plans for the future, surely the most pointless of enterprises, and a clear sign of a distracted mind.
The purpose of cultivating silence is to draw aside the mental screen on which we project the transient and ephemeral phenomena of everyday life, a mode of being characterised by distraction, of being anywhere and indeed everywhere else but here and now. It is to make ourselves present to the presence of God. And I really noticed how most of the time we are simply not present, even to ourselves or each other, never mind God.

The Big Silence. 

worth church: telling me that I could never have stayed there, even after everything I now understand.

leaving was the only way: I think I have finally accepted this

lots of despair and doubt again this week. especially yesterday.

in the midst of my longing to forget I had a moment's inspiration:

you spoke.

what you said was, do not despair. just trust and all will be well.

you have said it before but it is some months since I heard it so clearly. 

I was thinking now, as I prepare to say the evening's psalms, (out of the depths)

how the psalms are the only moment in my day when I know that I am saying things which are wholely true.

they ring through me and at times I can hear the world around me resonate in response.

like music - only the analogy seems weak.

in a meng hu post today (about haiku) he says:

"For the way does not consist in triumphantly proclaiming that we have learned something, learned anything. Conversely, we must not proclaim that we are ignorant, that we do not know, that we have not fathomed any mysteries. We must be comfortable with this quiet insecurity, this not-knowing. No shame attaches to us as if this not-knowing were a failure of diligence and intellect. Rather, it is that we cannot apprehend , we cannot reason our way into the mysteries of existence. Everything in nature shows us that".

apprehension is not necessary to progress I think.

when there is no apprehension, it isnt to say we cannot continue:

we can continue - even in total darkness, even when we don't know where our next footstep will take us. then is the time for trust.   

This is a power which you have given us, and not just on good days: to always be able to walk forwards, if only we will it.

that doesnt sound quite right, because when I say we will it, it is really only you who will it - I know this - but you give us an ability to will as you will.

"your will be done" isnt then a vague hope for what might one day be, but a statement about a reality that is here and now just as you are here and now.

"progress" is not really the right word, because progress is not necessarily progress in the sense that we understand it. It might really mean "no-progress-at-all", but that will not matter because we" walk on through" anyway.

 . . . .  and so, the progress is made because we learn to make progress without necessarily making any progress at all; despite everything in fact. 

to wake up  and find myself longing for the psalms . . . . .

this is how it was, even when things were so bad, and I miss this more than anything.

to have prayer again become a chore to be postponed whenever possible is not why I came here.

without you this place becomes the worst of nightmares -

taking refuge again in my music - this is retrograde. . . . . . . .

I will not allow this place, this work, to come between us.  . . .  .

some steely determination is clearly needed.

it might be worth taking a little look at some of the problems:

thoughts about my work, dilemmas and inadequacies. 

these are a block for sure.

the frequent descent into strange dreams and dramatic scenarios which, when I refocus, I can neither remember properly or even begin to understand.

a complete block over symbols.

today there were glimmers when I became more adamant:

I will stay here.I will not be forced away.

this then is the line I will take. 

ignore all distraction, all daydream, all "attacks":

rather negative perhaps but all I can manage for the time being at least

It wasn't that I understood anything this morning,

it was just that I glimpsed what it was that I was misunderstanding.

essential things which had been covered over,

I' m not sure by what.

I still havent grasped that the enormous emptiness I find here 

isnt that at all.

It is simply the only space in which I will be able to find you.

and I say that still without really understanding,

because the enormous emptiness within me stays as that:

enormous emptiness. 

each day I am wrestling with this space and I cannot find you in it;

instead of searching more diligently though my instinct to run is too strong.

until I stop running, even when things are especially difficult, (especially then)

I will not find you here.

teaching does make it all twice as difficult - but it cannot be impossible surely?

there were moments this morning when I understood,

although it is hard to recognise them.

it is the present problem I have with silence that is the greatest challenge.

lex orandi, lex credendi

'the church believes as she prays.'

isnt this all there is to it in fact?

Reading around a Catholic blog I discovered a passage where he says that the Tablet had 'died' because it had published an article which questioned the extremely dogmatic approach presently taken by the Catholic Church over the matter of abortion. I looked at the article and found myself totally in agreement with it.

There is a way in which the church's present refusal to take a more measured approach to abortion pushes it towards fundamentalism. 

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/14789

I just saw this quote on a very Catholic blog.

It was written during a period of Catholic triumphalism and for many it would epitomise the Catholic church at it's bombastic worst. . .to me, however, it rings remarkably true. I suppose he encapsulates the reason I decided to rejoin.

"There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church… She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s." 

 Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1840

I looked this man up on wiki and discover that he was an historian (books still available). He is buried in Westminster Abbey and was not  himself Catholic.  I'm pleased about this. 
He says it is "a work of human policy" but I would say that the reason the church survives is exactly because it isnt.

yes! a day spent with you.

a spark of life?

I have no inkling of you.

my prayer seems like sleep.