An open post to the Tablet this week:

I am currently researching the background to the Church's traditional ban on the ordination of women. The basis for it lies in the teachings of the Church fathers, the early canonists who drafted the first versions of canon law, and in the scholastic theologians, based mainly in Paris in the 12th and 13th century. Many of the arguments used throughout this period are based not on the person of Christ, or on the function and role of the priest but on women's inadequacies, on their emotional and intellectual instability, on their imperfect nature as human beings, on woman's greater guilt for sin because of Eve, on women's perceived sexual promiscuity as well as on men's greater susceptibility to the distraction offered by women - not to mention the uncleanness of women because of menstruation and childbirth. We can dismiss all these attitudes as being outdated, irrelevant, 'mediaeval', and so they are, they are of their time. But we still live with the effects of these attitudes.
Joanna Waller

the need to persevere despite a thousand apparently impassable obstacles.
most of my own making.

only the psalms as guide

I have failed over the past few days. Ever since a disastrous easter my prayer has been gradually disintegrating. There have been several mild attempts at regeneration ever since and none have really rooted. It is difficult to see the reasons for this except in my own lack of vision, the lack of community to help me sustain the rhythm but perhaps above all my seriously inadequate routine.

The temptation is to blame my predicament and, yes, it is clear that my daily work-routine has made my life with you more difficult but now I am on holiday: there is no shortage of time, only a sense that it doesnt matter enough - spiralling procrastination. 

Then comes the doubt. Doubt that it really makes a difference, that you are listening, that you can possibly get past my hypocrisy, double standards and lip-service. . . . . and so, quietly and gradually, self-pity comes into it as well . . . . .  and the trickle becomes a flood and, before you know it, . . . . scepticism and rebellion!

In years past I have let this happen and havent recognised clearly enough the signs and have ended up on the verge of simple atheism . .  . . . . .

. . . it's tempting to say now that that could never happen again but I know that it could if I do not stay aware enough of my "shadow" [as Jung would call it].

There is no standing still in the spiritual life: I am either growing or diminishing - like any living organism.

Today the thursday psalms took me back towards lucidity: reinforcing over and over the idea of God as the only solidity: more solid than anything I can see or touch or worry about. Refocussing everything.

Whether I can carry that forward and build upon it is another matter.

The silent prayer has become far too inconsistent: it is daily or it is not at all;

when silence becomes the enemy then I am travelling in entirely the wrong direction.

"for he with whom God is, is at no time less alone than when he is alone"
(William of St. Thierry)

you are no luxury option:

without you,  how quickly my life disintegrates!