John of the Cross

"We must silence the lowly human senses that lead us to false conclusions about God and keep us blind to His constant work and movement all around us.
Coming to a place of inner stillness we can perceive the first true-dawning light of the spirit."

Dark night of the Soul Bk 1. Ch 6.

Birth of Christianity by John Crossan

the God of Justice.

In "Birth of Christianity" on page 182
"And how does one know that God is just? Because God stood against the Egyptian Empire to save some doomed slaves. God does not simply prefer Jews to Egyptians. God does not simply prefer slaves to masters. The only true God prefers justice to injustice, righteousness to unrighteousness, and is therefore God the liberator."


Jesus asks the disciples, at one point in some of the gospels, to go out two by two (animals into the ark?) without money or spare clothes to the villages and to stay (in one house only) wherever they are welcomed and to eat whatever they are given and to heal the sick. It's just crossed my mind that they are NOT asked to "preach the good news" but only to heal the sick.
The way the author of B of C puts it is a revelation.

"Jesus' primary focus was on peasants dispossessed by Roman commercialisation and Herodian urbanisation in the late '20's. The itinerants as the just-recently-dispossessed destitute and the householders as the possibly-soon-to-be-possessed poor are brought together into a new family, a companionship of empowerment that is the kingdom of God. It does not break families apart but regroups those families torn apart already (or soon to be torn apart across the generations.)

Also, on page 321,
"Whenever, in the New Testament, you read the term "poor" in English, it is "destitute" in Greek."
It's a fundamental difference. 

Again, on page 282,
"a God who opposed systemic evil not because it was systemic but because it was evil."
Suddenly, the"Kingdom of God" makes sense!

Star men

A quote from "Star Men", a BBC programme about British astronomers who went out to USA as a part of the Brain Drain in the 60s and did some amazing work over the next 40 years.
50 years on they go back with a film crew.
One of them says, "Death is a part of life. It's an inevitable part of life. It's THE way that new things get going and you don't get cluttered by all this memory of what's gone on in the past."

during illness

thinking of St Bernard.
passionate Christianity.
it sometimes seems sentimental to me.
but passionate love always does to those who do not share it.

your imminence. 

the gulf between us is all our perception.
like a man blindfolded by mischievous friends and taken up imagined steps to what he perceives as a high place. asked to jump from the high place he is filled with terror. When forced, or pushed, he discovers that the fall is just inches. he is laughing then but the terror was real. 


daily life draws us away, back into fear, doubt and separation.  we cannot remember you. we are in your presence or we are not. this is how we perceive.

the reality of your imminence does not make you imminent to us.
seeking, we find.
not seeking, we don't find.

oh one more thing.
spiritual life, musical life. artistic life. emotional life. all tributaries of one river.
except the analogy is wrong because a river flows downhill.

a tree would be a better analogy. trunk and branches.