how thin the thread

Foolishly, lazily, I took a week off.
You will not mind, I said to myself.
Everyone needs a break now and then.
And now . . . . I find I have to start all over again:
the thinnest thread almost - but not quite -
broken.
twisted and feeble
Now, knowing almost nothing,
I am a beginner again. 

Time after time . . . .  

but, don't forget,
the thread is purest gold still.
Source of life;
more valuable than life itself.

Karen again

Page 234:
All ideologies imagine an unrealistic and, some would say, an unrealisable utopia.

Page 236:
It is always impossible to obliterate the past, which continues to live on in the minds of its people, even if old institutions and their personnel have been removed.

Without silence, the words about you - however profound they may be - will always skew the reality.

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong in "The battle for God" page 201
It is important that we understand the dread and anxiety that lies at the heart of the fundamentalist vision, because only then will we comprehend its passionate rage, its frantic desire to fill the void with certainty and its conviction of ever-encroaching evil."
(Come to think of it, this is rather the way I feel about Brexit!)


This amazing book has helped me a lot although not especially because of its lucid and compassionate research into the reasons for the fundamentalist´s point of view. Her emphasis on the gulf between what she terms "mythos" and "logos" is useful certainly, but is it really that simple?

page 233:
During the '60's the youth revolution was, in part, a protest against the illegitimate domination of rational language and the suppression of MYTHOS by LOGOS. . . .
 . . .but because the understanding of such disciplined ways of arriving at a more intuitive knowledge had been neglected in the west since the advent of modernity, the '60's quest for spirituality was often wild, self-indulgent and unbalanced."

memory and faith

you do not show up in photos.
there can be no memory of you from yesterday.
and  I think this is why we forget you so easily; so speedily . . . 

"last week I gave you space and I knew you and loved you
(to know you is to love you)
on monday (I am speaking hypothetically) I didn't have time
then on tuesday I forgot . . . mostly . . .
then on wednesday I couldn't remember   . 
on thursday I doubted
on friday I resented
on saturday I stopped believing
then on sunday I was just angry"

you are only present in the now -
in the here and now.
this is the only place we can meet you . . . 
which is why there is the daily struggle to stay with you.
and why the thread that binds is so fragile; so easily broken

another thing.

I realised today:
when I speak to you it is not I who speak but the spirit speaking through me.
the "trinity" is not just a philosophical implement but a reality.
I have glimpsed this before but it's important to fully understand this: it helps so much in the blank times. 
you are never absent;
those dark times are not absences but places where I do not comprehend.
then I need to remember the essential word "faith".
having faith is not something I do by myself because faith itself is a gift from you;
but not just a gift from you - more a gift of you - to me.  
so there is no faith that is not given to me by the spirit - which then carries me into the life of God - into the "trinity" itself
the dark place becomes a stepping stone into your very presence.