mother teresa: a quote from the group today.

"God is the friend of silence. 

His language is silence. 

And he requires us to be silent to discover him. 

We need, therefore, silence to be alone with God, 

to speak to him, 

to listen to him 

and to ponder his words deep in our hearts. 

We need to be alone with God in silence
to be renewed and to be transformed."

I read in the tablet today that a book about jesus by Jose Antonio Pagola has been banned in Spain. Here is a blog entry about this book. I was immediately struck by the author's words.

In the blog entry there there is a reference to a book by Hawking about the existence of God so I went in search and came up with this relevant article by him.
While I was reading this, it struck me that the universe - since the big bang - for all those billions of years, was totally unseen by any living thing - until we came along. But how can time be registered at all if there are no creatures to live it out day by day?  It got me wondering if, perhaps, the 'urge to consciousness' is also actually a part of universal law. We, after all, made of stardust, are indeed the universe contemplating itself . . .

Here is a youtube video of a demonstration outside Quantico in support of Bradley Manning who is being held there in appalling conditions. 

today's reading at vigils:

God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord. To Abraham and Isaac and Jacob I appeared as El Shaddai; I did not make myself known to them by my name THE LORD. Also, I made my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land they lived in as strangers. And I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, enslaved by the Egyptians, and have remembered my covenant. Say this, then, to the sons of Israel, “I am the Lord. I will free you of the burdens which the Egyptians lay on you. I will release you from slavery to them, and with my arm outstretched and my strokes of power I will deliver you. I will adopt you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that it is I, the Lord your God, who have freed you from the Egyptians’ burdens. Then I will bring you to the land I swore that I would give to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and will give it to you for your own; I, the Lord, will do this!”’ Moses told this to the sons of Israel, but they would not listen to him, so crushed was their spirit and so cruel their slavery.

just a very slender thought on the eucharist: 

'we are what we eat'. 

Jesus proclaims a kingdom at hand.

as he dies, it arrives and the land in which we lived as strangers becomes our own.

comment underneath a graphic video of the japanese tsunami at youtube:

OMG where is PRAYER BUTTON?????

from a youtube video: Tom Wright (bishop of Durham) speaking:

"(Unlike the other three gospels) John's gospel has not been shaped by the church telling the story so often that it fell into an anecdote form . . . I think John's gospel grows out of a memory of a man who has been praying over this stuff again and again and again. I can't prove that but it makes quite a lot of sense to me. Within that, of course, his life of prayer and preaching and devotion and holiness has coloured the way he says it but I think that John's gospel goes back to Source rather than to sources . . . . . ."

and in another video:
"and what is this trinity? It is the Jewish monotheism of the Exodus stories seen in the light of Jesus and the Spirit."

Clare Bryden, in her blog today, mentioned Woodbine Willy who is commemorated on 8th March in the Anglican church. He was a chaplain on the western front during the first war and wrote quite a bit of poetry. There were several which I really enjoyed. Here is just one:

SET YOUR AFFECTIONS
ON THINGS ABOVE

HOW far above the things of earth
      Is Christ at God's right hand?
How far above yon snowy peaks
      Do His white angels stand?

Must we fare forth to seek a world
      Beyond that silent star?
Forsake these dear familiar homes
      And climb the heights--How far?

As far as meaning is from speech,
      As beauty from a rose,
As far as music is from sound,
      As poetry from prose,

As far as art from cleverness,
      As painting is from paints,
As far as signs from sacraments,
      As Pharisees from Saints,

As far as love from friendship is,
      As reason is from Truth,
As far as laughter is from joy,
      And early years from youth,

As far as love from shining eyes,
      As passion from a kiss,
So far is God from God's green earth,
      So far that world from this.

puppet video

Bradley Manning

presently awaiting trial in solitary confinement in medieval conditions.

here is the video that he leaked.

I wasnt aware of this video until I received a link to the plight of Bradley Manning through moot today. Why wasnt this covered more seriously in the British press when it was first released?

Here is a recent news report on the conditions that Bradley is being kept in and the way in which his friends and colleagues are being harrassed when they try to visit him.

My immediate thought is that all this is happening on Obama´s watch. 
I followed another link at moot to the Guardian´s report on Bradley´s treatment which is even more shocking.
On the moot page about this are two pictures of Bradley - as he was and as he is now. 

I´ve just watched a video of an edition of a programme called 'Four Corners' (Australian ABC) entitled "The Forgotten Man:Bradley Manning". Towards the end of the second video is an interview with Daniel Ellsberg, himself a whistleblower during the Vietnam War, saying this about Bradley: 
 "In my case it was when I looked at the Pentagon Papers that I realised, late in the game, that the case for war in Vietnam was never legitimate.  . . .Then I began to see all that killing of Vietnamese as murder and murder, it seemed to me, was something that had to be stopped even if it put me in prison to do it. I would say that Bradley Manning has shown a willingness to give his life, his freedom,  . . . . . . for his country and you can't be more patriotic than that."

Abbot Stuart at Mucknell has this on his homepage at their website:

"Could it be that we have an image, a picture, however vague, of what it would be like to meet Christ, and when we don’t find that, we fail to recognise him – just as people failed to recognise Christ in the person of Jesus 2000 years ago?

On the whole the religious folk didn’t recognise Jesus as the Christ; it was the oddest selection of people who did, people discounted by the respectable Jews: shepherds –who had time to ponder and wonder, the Gentile ‘Wise Men’ –who gazed at the stars with open minds ~ people who had no preconceptions of the Christ. These were the ones who recognised him first, and then those who were mad or out-cast, like the lepers and the prostitutes, folk who were rejected, not wanted, by ‘society’ - people who were forced to wonder what life was all about.

In a sense they were starting with a clean slate in a way we can’t as far as ‘what we expect’ goes. We have been conditioned to assume we know what we are looking for, but both the New Testament and St Benedict suggest that Christ comes to us in the ordinariness of life, inviting us to embrace ‘life’ and whatever it brings with generosity, compassion and an open mind and heart."

It seems relevant tonight.

 

earlier I wrote:

In truth it never did.
and I do not quite know why I wrote this.

when the music flows, the music flows.
I can never know where, how or why.
I can only trust that it flows from you and back to you,
even though it may be by an indirect route.

poetry.
then can be no poetry without you.
poetry without you is no poetry at all
because you are the source of all poetry.
wherever there is beauty, there is you also,
albeit in disguise.


[suddenly, greece occurs to me.
the old, old dualism: greek v jew.
you as singularity.
you as diversity.]

I wrestled with all that, before I discovered you in the psalms:
before I came to understand you as singularity.
but in truth, I'm not sure that that itself isnt a disguise:
a means of approach that then needs to be shed as graven image.

allowing you to be you.
only possible through prayer.


the music can never be allowed to replace the prayer.
but I am a musician.
music needs to happen in me.
why?
not why but because.
because. because.
reasons are not always necessary or clear.


singularity diversity.
isnt this what the trinity is?


the truth is probably neither and both.

really, this blog is completely about my relationship with you.

and sustaining it.

this week has surely been the worst since I came to Iceland. . . . . 

starting over then. 

again, this feeling that my life with you is inseperable from my illness in some indefinable way;

that my journey to health has to start (and finish) with you.

If only I could really understand this consistently.

the voices of derision and irrelevance nag away day by day, 
sometimes overwhelmingly powerfully.
but the same could be said of my work:
this so often seems inadequate. 

really the one needs to feed into the other:
but so far attempts to do this flounder.
(it's not something that one can 'attempt' of course:
a matter of the heart only.)

this blog is also about my creative life.
at the moment it IS my creative life -
my music sparking into life only for briefest moments -
my work should help with this, and indeed it does at times.
certainly not consistently though. . . . . .
not in a way which can help me overcome the everpresent dualism.
(music v prayer)

reading through this again I realise that you ARE my creative life.
I have no creative life apart from you.
my music can now only spring from you and return to you.
In truth it never did.
But instead of freeing me it binds me because this too is a matter of faith.

is this something I have only just realised?
do I - even now - realise this?
will I ever really understand this?