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.