today I learnt

Today I learnt (again) that we do not need to understand;
(we can never understand)
we are not called to understand! (try as we might)
only to rejoice; to bless; to celebrate; to thank.
Not to bolster or to curry favour or placate
but only to share in your own rejoicing, your own celebration.

celebration wins over suffering.

You are already so much younger than I am!

more contradictions

 In the end, though there will be nothing to show. this will not matter.
You are, and the truth is that this is enough.
actually much more than enough.

The psalmist says "What is there to wait for?"
and it has nearly always been a problematic line for me;
suggesting emptiness; a lack of meaning.
.
"Why even bother?"
A bit like the "all is vanity" stuff. 

But the world shouts its joy in it all
and so do You!

contradictions

how to put this:
it was in those moments when I became acutely aware of your absence -
that hole in my soul perhaps?
that I knew your presence!
I am still quietly reeling; it had been such sleepy, lazy prayer.
up at the point as the light faded.

The Spirit loves you so
and is His love also a yearning?
Silly!
All love is a yearning!
Unquenchable?
This sounds in one way tragic.
but this is not the case
because the kernel of yearning is delight.
that brightest centre of a flame.

contradictions abound where you are concerned.
and I suspect that you delight in these.
teasing us.

 

On Merton

 I watched an old black and white film about Thomas Merton  - made presumably shortly after his death - which includes a filmed extract from his final speech in December 1968 which I did not even know existed. Some shots are then shown of the hotel room (apparently owned by the Red Cross) where he died so tragically from electrocution by a faulty fan. A message below (on youtube of course) mentions a book written in 2015 advancing the conspiracy theory that he was actually murdered (there was no post-mortem). I googled a review in the Irish Times dated from 2018 which makes light of this claim but also, strangely. makes light of Thomas Merton himself in ways that seemed to me just as conspiratorial. All that aside, the reviewer quotes Merton at one point:

"The created world is itself an epiphany of divine wisdom and love."

Review of "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman

 

I have read a couple of books recently about the problems involved in reaching back into the first century AD in search the truth. This book was well-written and lucid but Dr Ehrman started from a fundamentalist standpoint and it struck me over and over again that, despite all, he's still there. His search was always for "first sources"; implying that those first sources therefore possess a "quality of truth" that are then gradually eroded by layer upon layer of human error. The fact that those first sources are forever lost to us creates a sense of near-despair - like a priceless heirloom destroyed for ever. Surely, this is the Fundamentalist view: not being able to get back to the text God actually intended means that His intentions will always allude us.
I found the chapters showing the way that scripture has been manipulated in the light of theological errors along the way (Gnosticism, adoptionism, Arianism, Docetism etc) inspiring because it helped me to form a view exactly opposite to the author. God is no more present in those first sources than He is in the manipulations. Or, put another way, God is just as much present in those manipulations as He is in the first sources. Just as the Spirit of God was at work through those original apostles so is He at work through all the scribes, scholars and theologians down the ages. Similarly though, just as the apostles were men with personal agendas and limited views trying to make sense of strange and difficult mysteries so are the scribes, scholars and theologians that follow them. All trying sincerely to understand but also weighed down by ego and ignorance.
I read a book recently which suggested that Jesus' body, after His crucifixion, was most likely thrown. along with the other criminals, into a lime pit. At first this horrified me but gradually it dawned on me that, whatever happened to His body, He rises again through the literary efforts not only of those who followed Him and believed in Him but also of those who came before. (Namely, the Prophets and more especially the Psalms.)
Ehrman talks much about the literary nature of the Christian and Judaeic faiths and it is through our discernment of these writings that we learn most about God.
The Word.
Not just the first words but all of them. The Bible is just a book until we sit down and actually read it ourselves. This way we become a part, an essential part no less, of that neverending story.