patrick in the yahoo group posted tonight.

part of his post was a story about faith.

A father and his young son went mountain climbing. After spending an exhilarating day in the cool, fresh air, it began to grow dark. As father and son began to descend the mountain on their way home, the father, being swifter of foot, was soon lost from sight of the son. The young lad plodded on and soon reached a precipice. Being unnerved at the great height from where he stood and the chasm that glared up at him, a plaintive voice cried out: "Dad, where are you? I am afraid". The father's encouraging voice rang out, " I am standing just below you". The lad once more called out uncertainly, "How shall I come down from here? It is very dark and I cannot see you". The father once more called out reassuringly, "But I can see you. Just jump down and I will catch you in my arms".

saying the sad psalms.

with those who are sad.

sitting beside them.

not preaching to them. 

not saying anything to them in fact:

just sitting.

at moot an hour ago a part of a poem:

In time we are all travellers

Who voyage separate roads.

Very occasionally we come together

And share our baggaged loads.

perhaps we start from a place where we are separate travellers,

but our journey is steadily towards one another.

all roads lead to . . . . .

Tom Wright in a sermon in 2006 quotes some Paul:

For in him all the Fullness was glad to dwell

and through him to reconcile all to himself,

making peace through the blood of his cross,

through him - yes, things on the earth,

and also the things in the heavens.

and then says:

St Paul, in writing or quoting this astonishing and very early piece of poetic theology, is claiming for Jesus what the ancient Jewish wisdom writers claimed for the figure of Wisdom - the wisdom by which the world was made, the wisdom you need to be a fully alive human being, the wisdom by which the living God inhabits his world, breathes into it his own warm life, and brings about within it the fulfilment of his strange and beautiful purposes.

prayer so difficult today.

desolate and painful:

too much thrashing about perhaps?

certainly far too much drifting into daydream, but this is a perennial problem.

remember that things are not always what they may seem at the time.

about that chest with seven locks:

the morose gardener placed the chest in the boy's room but why?

surely because he himself needed the chest to be opened and he could not do it himself.

and yet when the chest was opened, terrible things happened;

or seemed to.

or perhaps it is simply the case that things change.

and many of them may seem terrible.

the main essential though is that the most important doors cannot be opened by ourselves.

we need others to open them.
and each door which is opened has become a stepping stone towards you.

another quote in the yahoo group from 'they speak in silences'.

When our heart is torn and continues to be so,
we must give it to Him as it is. 

it sounds so easy but, for me, it's the hardest thing of all. 

allowing things to be as they are.

allowing God to be as He is;

and he allows me to be as I am?

the quote continues:
What He wants is for us to give ourselves to
Him as we are. If there is anything to be put
right He will do that, because we shall have
handed ourselves over completely to Him.
(my underlinings) 

God is faith. 

this thought struck me again just now.

if one has no faith one cannot hope to find you because it is such an essential part of your response to us.

faith is not something which can be argued towards:
either one has it or one doesn't and the only way to move from not having it to having it is to fall there.

the problem here is that, if it is possible for someone to be a truly good person - to do a truly good thing - without faith then it must follow that God is not only faith: that goodness and faith are not necessarily interchangeable. 

but perhaps a truly good thing can only be done when there is faith . . . . . .

certainly it is true that, where there is no faith, it becomes much much harder to do a good thing . . . .semantics perhaps . . . . . 

which brings me back to something I was thinking during psalms. 

in the Carthusian book 'They speak in silences', in imitable Carthusian fashion, the author was trying to put into words things about the link between suffering and the search for God. This either always sounds 'super-spiritual' or just plain glib if the text is not  worded carefully enough.

I think this must be because, though there are links - and very important ones - some chasms seem not to be bridgeable with mere words. Which is I suppose why the very title is a paradox: trying to say the unsayable . . . .
it is not always given to us to be able to see things from your point of view although it is perhaps what you call us towards. 

I just discovered the National Catholic Reporter thanks to some abusive comments about it from a very right wing catholic video I saw at youtube. It's my first glimpse into the "Catholic left" in USA. I wonder why the Catholic right there have a much more prevalent internet presence? Is it because the church itself there is very rightwing? 

Would, for instance, a British bishop excommunicate someone if they took part in an abortion?

On one of the messages, this poem by John Donne.

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe. 

Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?

yes he came but was rejected.

and we have to make a choice every single day not to be amongst those who still reject him.

if we do not make that choice ourselves the choice is made for us:

making no choice is not an option.

still reading the Cromwell biography. Relating to this, there is huge room for misunderstanding concerning the relationship between old and new testaments. The new testament is not an 'add-on' but a total transformation of our understanding of the nature of God. It means that any sally into the Old Testament needs to be seen in the light of the gospel otherwise it cannot be understood. Cromwell and his fellow theologians read the Old Testament (especially concerning the concept of Providence through warfare) without sufficient reference to the New. But then this might also be said of Bernard - regarding the Crusades particularly. Cromwell then is not the 'modern' man that he perhaps felt himself to be but actually steeped in medieval ideas of warfare as an acceptable means of enacting what he felt was God's Will.

A man of his time in every sense. The puritanical destruction of images and statues also stems from this overly physical understanding of Old Testament texts.

This does also relate back to the post I made about Hitchens. The God that Hitchens so detests is very much the God of the Old Testament and, just as I have in my own circumambulatory path toward truth, there are times when we select what we want from these colossal and often contradictory texts to further our own theories.
refusing then to let God be the God that He really is.

place.

I am here, but I am still not really here. Perhaps this is my main problem. 

There was a period during my illness when I came to delight, albeit temporarily, in the very ordinariness of my daily life: the towel hanging over the back of the chair, a pile of papers on the table, cushions and such-like. I did begin to do this here during prayer today, and it may be a breakthrough. . . .

In Wales, I even took some photos - which is also what Thomas Merton did in his hermitage as I remember thinking at the time.

relating then to the 'ordinariness' that Stephen Cherry was talking about in his sermon, certain lines from the poems that he quoted struck an immediate chord with memories in my own life of particular moments of stillness in 'ordinariness'. (moments in the church at Worth particularly). This morning I realised briefly what perhaps SC was driving at: in the Moment is where we find you but this happens not when my mind is set on 'higher things' but quite the opposite: when my mind happens to 'touch upon' the Place In Which We Find Ourselves. (Finding being the operative word here).

in this way we come to share in the annunciation also: the moment when your angel stands silently before us.

the angel being none-other-than-you-in-a-particular-place.
this is the central contradiction: you everywhere but you here.  and this isnt some remote concept for intellectuals it is much more fundamental than that. (hidden from the wise and learned).
Christmas, (dreaded word), has a great deal of this about it.

where did that last post come from?

came across this just now:

Human relationships are and always will
be a source of suffering. Even when we
change our surroundings we do not change our
soul with its responsiveness, nor the nature of
our fellow beings, who are so often the cause of
our sufferings. Life is too strong for us, and we
must take it as a powerful force coming from
God, and find him in it. To kiss His hand,
whether it caresses or wounds, is the only true
wisdom.

They Speak by Silences, A Carthusian

[seeing human relationships in terms of suffering is perhaps a little bit Buddhist though.]

the way of life here is something to celebrate.

isnt it the desert I always craved?

without you, nothing! this is surely cause for great celebration, 
in my sillier moments of course I cannot see this.
let them be as few as possible.

I am wondering today why I linked Stephen Cherry's sermon particularly. I think it wasnt so much the annunciation as such but the way in which he integrates poetry into his sermon, less as supplement more as substance. He turns his sermon into a poem: old concepts of what a sermon is supposed to be are broken and reinvented. What he says about 'Under Milkwood' also struck a chord because I too remember driving along listening to this radio play and being totally rivetted by it. He says "And they (works of art) stop us in our tracks precisely because we do not see them coming." (his underlining).

The Smell of Parsley

a sermon from durham by Stephen Cherry.

Yesterday I read right through Clare's blog. Today, in my darkness, I read back through some of my own and found some helpful nuggets. [Perhaps that is what this blog is really for?]

here's a bit I found particularly relevant:

"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 poem also
the one about the field.
this is one I need to look at over and over: I see that now.


my ploughed field.
the one I passed by, half-recognising - even at the time - just like the poet does, that it was beautiful - even incomparably so - but failing to realise that this was where I needed to stay because buried there was indeed the Pearl of Great Price. 


the ploughed field featured so prominently again during the fireheart days.
the same ploughed field I always remember from the short retreat with Fr Tim Radcliffe in that farmhouse near Oxford.

which takes me somehow back to treasure chests.
or the treasure chest.
the one in the front porch at Chelmsford Hall.
the one with seven locks in my story (still unfinished on the blog by the way)
and the one in Spalding church in 1999.
this chest contained the same Pearl of Great Price.
the same Pearl of Great Price which lies under the ploughed field.

I have to face the fact that my prayer is simply taking me further into darkness and confusion.

the temptation is constantly to abandon it as a bad job - as I have often in the past - but this really is no longer an option. (my vows I have made.)

the question is: how much is due to my problems with the work here and how much due to other things?

I'm not expecting to be able to answer that at the moment but teaching in an unknown and complicated environment is inevitably not going to contribute to a quiet inner life. 

There is also a turbulence which I find here - either in the house, or in the village itself - I can't tell which. It did occur to me (for the first time) during psalms this morning that perhaps I should look for somewhere 'quieter' to live. (not quieter in the 'noisy' sense, but quieter in a more inward sense.) or maybe this inner noise is actually all mine (within me) and something I could not leave behind simply by moving.

If it is the latter, of course, then I must simply face it. What I cannot do (and will not do) is abandon the prayer. In fact, perhaps the call is the opposite. I have to accept the noise and hope that in time I will understand better what is presently going on.

the psalms this morning: spoken into a howling gale so that the words were gone before I could hear them. 

"perhaps the call is the opposite": thinking more about this I know that it is. 

linked through the Mucknell Abbey website: a fascinating blog by Clare Bryden, who is an 'alongsider' there.

and linked through the blog a poetry competition that she had participated in.

first prize in this competition went to a poem which really struck me 

(I hope it's not breaking copyright to quote it).

I am

the Maker

ripped in two

by the beauty I have born.

Lion, gazelle,

eagle, lamb,

spider, fly:

my heart beats for each hunter,

for each prey.

My will is life, but the way,

death.

O do not ask me why,

but love me as I die

and do not look away.

O stay.

© Antonia Cretney

vocation.

my vocation.

clearly in you, although more or less unknown to me - even now.

set me more firmly, wilfully on this path:

my only path to you.

saying the magnificat tonight 

and facing the fact that I am more often one of the rich who get put down.

feeling hugely guilty tonight because there is a 'do' on at school and I have decided not to go even though I did say tentatively that I was going to (when I was badgered to). Trying to justify this to myself is proving impossible although I can think of lots of reasons. It also means that any prayer becomes extra difficult because I merely come up against my conscience when I do: building the wall between us instead of taking it down . . . . . . . . . .

reading a sermon at the durham cathedral site based upon a quote by Christopher Hitchens seen in a newpaper:

"Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well," he said. "And over us to supervise this is installed a celestial dictatorship. A kind of divine North Korea.”

This is an argument that cannot be won, though the sermon is a valiant attempt to do so.The problem is that there are Christians who do live in this kind of dictatorship and, in my younger days, I battled with the temptation to see you this way too or, rather: this vision of the 'monster God' came close to destroying my own faith - although there were definitely times when it was more convenient for me to see you this way.
 
Mr Hitchens is right to battle against this view of God. So should we.
Of course he is wrong about you. I know this, although I would be hard put to explain how I know this.
This is surely the difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New.

I am presently reading a very long biography of Oliver Cromwell (with some difficulty and very little pleasure because there is noone to like in this book; noone I can feel friendly towards.)
I have just reached the execution of Charles I.
Apparently Cromwell and co were at a prayer meeting during the actual execution. Throughout the book Cromwell is shown to have understood the Will of God by the way the Tide seems to be Turning. If he wins a battle he puts it down to God being on his side. If his plans that day are thwarted, he changes his plan or his mind because he is always genuinely trying to anticipate what God wants. When Charles fails in his attempts at escape, Cromwell reads into this that God clearly doesnt want Charles to escape.
The word used over and over again is 'Providence.'
It is a coherent way of understanding God perhaps and it means that Cromwell can live his life in a 'flowing' almost poetic kind of way but somewhere there is a Fatal Flaw for how, then, does Cromwell interpret the death of Jesus?
Surely, according to Cromwell's theology, his crucifixion must mean failure: that God had deserted him? Surely Cromwell would have shouted with the passersby: 'Let God save him if this is his friend!' 
Isn't Cromwell's God the God of the Old Testament: the God who gets rid of Saul in favour of David; the God who thinks nothing about wiping out a few Canaanite tribes to make room for his people Israel? The God who 'hardens the heart of the Pharoah' when Moses goes before him. A God who intervenes;(some would say meddles).
Certainly, all the vehement, not to say violent, Puritan sermons of the time (at least those that are mentioned in the book) all seem to revolve around the Old Testament stories.

This does link in with Christopher Hitchens view of (and loathing for) the Dictator God.
The point I was originally going to make was that perhaps we have to stay silent for Mr Hitchens and agree with him.
To call his bluff perhaps.

There was a time when I couldnt understand why theologians and popes of old became so obsessed with stamping out 'heresy'. Now though I can see what happens when people get the wrong end of the stick about God. It ruins lives. It really does.
And of course, the result is that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Heresy is when man's view of God goes skewiff. Once this has happened there's no knowing what the consequences will be except, of course, that a whole generation of decent people then decide that it must be Faith itself and not just Wrong Faith which is to blame. Once this has happened who knows where it will lead us?
Except even (or perhaps I should say especially)  in this darkest place you are present. Not the meddling God. Not a God who brings success in war or good exam results or a beautiful family or great happiness because these are just whiffs: bouquets you throw at any of us (raining upon the just and the wicked alike) to help us along the way. Your plan is so much bigger than this. We have to focus on the bigger picture: this is what you call us to and perhaps we can only really become aware of that bigger picture when we have experienced the slings and arrows as well as the bouquets.
perhaps what I am really trying to say there is that you are the bigger picture. (I'm not sure I quite understand what I mean by that but it sounds sort of right.)
Yes it is sometimes better for the Christian to stay silent. If he possibly can.

"Do not be surprised that you fall every day; do not give up,
but stand your ground courageously. And assuredly, the angel
who guards you will honour your patience".
St John Climacus

I am not into angels, but I will let this one be. 

Is it that I seek freedom from myself?

this too is foolishness because there is no way to you except through my own being.

this thought does nothing to ease my anxiety.

tonight I was thinking that one day fairly soon the world would be free of me.
this seemed quite a Good Thing. . . . . . .
but such negative thoughts!
do I really loathe myself that much?  
and if I don't like myself how can I possibly like anyone else?

come to think of it, do I really trust anyone else?
probably very few:
even people I have grown to love.
people are not to be trusted.
you can love them heaps, but in the end they may well fail and let you down,
just as I have let others down. . . . . . 
my own response to someone who lets me down is quite often a shrug of the shoulders.
I know not everyone is as unreliable as I am, but many are.
Perhaps I have never expected others to be trustworthy.
Has this kept me safe, or is it my greatest failing?
perhaps both?

the psalmist says, 
" no man is to be trusted."


is he right, or just too worldly wise for his own good?
a tired, weary old man? 

the Christian way is not always the wise way.
or rather, Christian wisdom can seem very unwise indeed to the worldly man.
the Christian way, surely, is to trust even when we know we cannot trust.
isnt this what you do with us?
you trust us, even when you know we are not to be trusted.
you know we will fail you, but you still trust us - against the odds.
the Christian way is your way.

and so trust and love are not the same thing? 
or perhaps it is the response when someone fails us which is important.
in that case is my 'shrug of the shoulders' the same as 'forgiveness' or something less?

again I feel that my work gets in the way of my prayer, 

but I suspect this is still a misunderstanding on my part.

it is as though essential things I learnt at the house in Wales have somehow been left there.

(this is surely why it is important to stay rooted in one place).

it seems to hinge on your 'absence'. 

or rather the way in which you are present in your absence.

(your absence being perception only, but also more than that in some special way).

this 'special way' is something I felt I had begun to understand in Wales.

but now I see I have to relearn all that in this new context.

(place is clearly even more important than I realised.)

the spiritual life then is nothing if it is not a constant 'starting over'.

any sense of 'progress' is probably self-deception more than anything else, and no doubt very dangerous in itself.

in this way, of course, any sense of  needing to 'start over' becomes a blessing because it frees us from that very self-deception and carries us immediately miles closer to you, although it would be similarly dangerous to place any weight upon this.

perhaps this then is where 'absence' becomes meaningful. 

(being aware of your presence certainly carries dangers of its own.)

I am suddenly aware that it is not wise to dwell too much upon the 'dangers' of the spiritual life. That path too is fraught with dangers of its own. 

[and so even the dangers have dangers; one seems surely lost before one has begun and "this can become a great burden to the traveller".]

the essential thing to remember is that none of us travel alone.

prayer may seem the most solitary activity of all but that is perception only and not the truth.

in truth, the work of prayer is nothing if not a 'working together'.

indeed, I would go so far as to say that I am never less alone than when I am at prayer. 

and so when your absence bothers me it is mostly because I do not trust enough and you are calling me to trust more. 

today at psalms: music;

an idea to create a wordless music behind the psalms. (I could even hear it!)

later on, I realised that the psalms are already music:

the musicless words become a wordless music.

[which is what all my improvising already is.]

The Bright Field by R S Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

I found this at 'moot'.
When I googled it to check it was correctly transcribed I discovered it in lots of blogs all over the net so, quite suddenly, something that was fresh and meaningful might already be tired and hackneyed . . . . 
I'll check again later to see which it is, although even a second view (or a tenth) will not necessarily be the truth:
who am I to judge?

the third series of merlin finished yesterday. 

I have watched every episode several times and am really puzzled by how much I love this show.

Some clues though:

morgana in series one, suspecting that she herself has magic, says to merlin:

'what if magic isnt something that you choose; what if it chooses you?'.

a painful, powerful secret; a devastating and hated scar across one's life.
this I understand.  
merlin has this powerful secret and it becomes his greatest strength:
a means of redemption no less.

it strikes me tonight that, when I come home tired from work it is my body which craves first.

but what it wants it cannot have because it does not know.

it is only when I listen to the spirit that I can find peace. 

the body remains in a no-man's land of 'not knowing':

constantly needing to hear the truth afresh. 

perhaps it is that the body has no spiritual 'memory':

the word needs to be heard over and over because it remembers nothing from yesterday . . . . .