on one level the week has been hopelessly chaotic - just like all the others . . . .

over and against this: a growing understanding that a fixed timetable is never going to be possible and is not what you ask of me. 

a sense tonight again that when I can focus upon you the horizon moves to a quite different place. 

it isnt that life suddenly makes sense; more that the seeming nonsense of life - particularly the painful and difficult parts of it (and there are certainly plenty of those at the moment) becomes somehow a fuel which burns bright like a beacon in the darkness.

again and again I discover afresh that my whole spiritual life comes through the psalms - or rather my own participation in them. This amazing little book of prayers and cries seems to be a source of constant inspiration, delight and, yes, love. 

I am coming to realise more and more that what these prayers do is to draw me out of myself into a participation in your life. When I pray the psalms I belong in a way which is often utterly clear to me as I read but which is impossible really to define except in terms of the words of the psalms themselves.

a fountain of joy no less.

It strikes me too - as I underline the word your - that you are indeed the Christ - but that this very word encompasses so much more than anything I could myself comprehend or envisage. (It's been a word I have been wary of for so long.) Christ then as 'anointed one of God'. Presently it makes perfect sense to me (at crucial moments at least) that, in the psalms, I participate in the very life of the anointed one because you reach out to me and share your truth with me in that you help me to reach out to you. It is in the reaching out to you that I am reached by you.

in this way then I see the Christian life as wholely 'action'. It doesnt "happen" without my direct attention and participation. I cannot reach you on a wave of apathy and indifference.

and so tonight, I think, in the midst of so much personal misery (and it has been a miserable year in so many ways - never wanting to face the new day and putting off going to bed as long as I can because I know it leads straight into another awful tomorrow.) (Whether this extraordinary unhappiness is justified or not is probably beside the point). . . .  

 . . . .and so tonight I think I must celebrate a little because you continue to lead me on  through. 

For my part I must try to maintain my focus always upon you and only then can all be well.

This must be my main work