On mercy and flickering light. Merry Christmas!

"For you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways,

to give knowledge of His salvation to His people 

by the forgiveness of their sins" 

Luke, 1:77-78

A friend told me yesterday that he had written a sonnet in which he expressed his sadness over the world that rejects Christ. I nodded in silent recognition - yes I know: a sore sadness over some stupid wrongdoing, some stubborn blindness, some pointless conflict... A truly universal feeling, I am sure everyone knows it.

And I thought: let this sadness be not only for the world, but on behalf of the world; and let it always be lifted up to the Lord by a plea for mercy, for "they know not what they do". All this kicking and shrieking, all this rejection and unwillingness to receive God are symptoms of the disease the world is suffering from...

Only mercy, only patient, gentle understanding of the deep distress of those very people who kick, shriek, bite a giving hand and otherwise "trespass against" can bring about a fully authentic, healing forgiveness, and therefore, knowledge of God's salvation; only patient, firm and consistent refusal to cease channeling God's love to the world, however lost in tantrums of denial, can bring peace to the confusion and tumult of our lives.

This plea for mercy was Christ's response to violence and rejection, as He was hanging on the cross. I want it to be mine, as I look at the center of my being today, discovering, amazed, that beyond weakness and confusion of my own heart, beyond inconsistency, violence and cruelty of the world Christ is born there again - a voice crying for mercy, a desire to bring God's love to the world, a refusal to hate, judge and deliver a blow for a blow.

This is the common ground we are standing on. This is the source to which we are and will always be free to return, grateful to perceive the light that shines in the darkness, and confident that the darkness will not overcome it. Not a cold mechanical neon light, nor a fierce bonfire - a flickering flame dancing within, always in danger of extinction. But here it is, suddenly bright and clear; and whereas so many things remain obscure, subject to doubts and hesitations, one thing I know today : here I am, to welcome, protect and share with others the life of Christ who is born today to share and restore mine.

All Souls

...Memory lives, sweet, undisturbed, plain

like the sound of falling rain,

in a fragrant  garden; tears of grief and then

silence and sleep, and rain, rain again.

Memory, live, sweet whisper, run through my veins

less than a hint, keep me within your embrace. 

Painful foreboding, watchful, exhausted, strained

drinks of your waters, o memory, looks for your face

blindly, with feverish lips saying prayers to leaden gods,

asking whatever may please their joyless unyielding mirth

Hold me, o memory, sweetheart, and be my abode

under the snow, under the ice, under earth. 

Paris, 25/09 - 02/11 2012

Thich Nhat Hanh on being fully conscious of reality:

"If we're really engaged in mindfulnesss while walking along the path to the village, then we will consider each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower. enabling us to enter the world of reality.

"I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognise: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes. All is a miracle."

Thich Nhat Hanh - The Miracle of Mindfulness p. 12





Amongst the paperbark trunks

On throwing shoes

I just love the moment when, after having literally killed his - enemy? sparring partner? - after having shot him, nailed him and otherwise destroyed him, the guy on the left takes off his shoe and throws it at the other! Hilarious. Can't quite grasp why it makes me laugh so much, but find it very funny.

Rolling In The Deep (Fever day)

Disclaimer (an example of non-ambivalence :)

One rather lively offline discussion about the Roots of Ambivalence prompts me to clarify a couple of basic assumptions.

What I described is obviously not The Ultimate Truth about any particular person as he/she is; nor does this text pretend to be a full picture of the human being as such. I simply attempted to outline, based on personal experience and on some reading and reflection one of the defence mechanisms that we tend to develop in early childhood as a means of coping with reality. I have been dealing with what Richard Rohr calls “shadow”, and Thomas Keating “false self”: emotional and behavioural patterns that hinder our development and prevent us from reaching our full human maturity in God.

Thus, in a sense, I have been describing what we are not, because of course there is much more than just these patterns to the human being as a whole. The question of what we can know at all about human souls as a whole is open to debate. Meanwhile, knowing a tiny little something about our limitations and the way they affect us and other people seems to me not only feasible, but positively desirable and necessary if the Christian call to conversion, new being and life in God is taken seriously.

Talk

Here is a poem I wrote a little while back as a response to the group I am doing telephone crisis counselling with. Each one of us has to provide an 'Epilogue' at the end of each session. I know there is a line I used before, and I'm a bit embarassed to be using it again, but it seemed to fit again. So forigve me.

Talk

 

Talk

The expression of two selves

Can be monologues in parallel

Solo soundings splitting experience

Into I and You;

Transmission but no cennection.

 

Returning to solitude

Nothing has changed:

The body remains charged,

Sprung insides still taut.

 

But see the dusting of gold on beeswings!

In vivid, blundering meetings

Transformations are set in train

and partings are such sweet celebration

 

So when you talk to me

Let us hear invitations

For intimacy

Within seperately shared experience.

You and I

Collude in change

And bring about the new,

Feeling relief and surprise

In the recognition inside



Enneagram Two, or The Roots of Ambivalence

Some souvenirs from a short but intense excursion into the land of the Two – an exciting although absolutely exhausting journey!

Generally speaking, children evolve as Twos  if, in their strive for affection, they learn that the key to being loved is being helpful. This happens when their environment – parents and other caregivers – consistently sends the message : “you are loved when you are helpful, caring and self-sacrificing”, and “you are not loved when you request something, do not share or refuse to help”.

Receiving such a message (verbal or non-verbal), little Twos develop an immense helpfulness which goes along with the denial of their own needs. These needs themselves do not go away, though – realities are not changed by repressing them. But as the Twos fear that stating their needs / desires will deprive them of love (parental first, later on that of their partners), and on the other hand the needs in question still have to be satisfied, they learn to hide these needs behind the needs of other people, because the latter are perceived to be more powerful arguments than their own (thanks mum and dad!).

Example: a Two who wants to go to a party will argue by saying :  “They really want me to come, I cannot possibly refuse!”. If, on the contrary, she does not want to go, that would become : “Sorry I cannot come, my father wants me to help him with his computer”. Thus, her own desire is “clothed” in the needs/wishes of others. If parents and other significant adults encourage this strategy, the little Twos will learn for life that in order to do what they really want, they must find the reason and justification in others. In doing so, the Twos may completely discharge themselves of all responsibility over their own wishes – “they want me to” becomes a leitmotiv of their lives, so that whatever they are doing, they are doing it “because someone else wants them to”. If a Two is intellectual enough, “they” may be replaced by any kind of abstract imperative, such as the Christian ideal of selfless love; anything at all, in fact, provided it enables Twos to avoid stating their wishes clearly.

Many conflicts with an average or disintegrating Two arise because the partner fails to perceive the ambivalent nature of Two’s verbal communication. Typically, a Two will say, “I am not coming because you will certainly be tired after work”, while in reality he just has his own reasons for not coming (often he would project his own problem on his partner – this is a clue to the real reason, by the way). Unable to state these reasons clearly because of the fear to be perceived as selfish, and remembering that being selfish is punished by withdrawal of love, a Two will hand you over the responsibility for the decision not to come (“it’s not me! It’s you!”).

If you take his statement literally, and honestly say that actually you do not feel tired at all, the Two will be frustrated and may become aggressive, because his real need – that of staying home – is not being perceived, and he is faced with the necessity to find another “selfless” pretext to satisfy it. If, on the contrary, you decode correctly the real need that he is trying to hide, and abound in his sense, the Two feels reassured and may relax, as he follows the pattern that proved to be successful in the past. The worst thing you can do is to ask a Two what he really wants – because she feels that to be direct is to take the risk of being punished by the withdrawal of love. To avoid this, she will say “I do not know!” and wrap up the conversation, leaving the voiceless partner wondering what the heck is going on.

Of course this mechanism is unconscious, so it would be wrong and unfair to picture the Twos as cold and cruel manipulators seeking to appear selfless while they are in fact selfish. The trouble is, the Two perceive the very fact of having desires as “selfish”. Therefore they pursue a totally fantastic ideal whereby un-selfishness equals not having needs. Their ambivalent communication, their inability to come up with a direct statement of their wishes comes from a deep-seated insecurity, from a terrible fragility that begs compassion and understanding. No “shoulds” and “oughts” can heal this fragility – only love that chases away fear is able to pass across the special message to the Two: you are loved for who you really are, what you want is essential to your identity and will never be punished by withdrawal of love. 

On Theory and Practice

“Cease, anxious world..”

Georges Etheredge

This year I feel my soul and my body crack and give way in a terrible clash between facts and imperatives; theory and practice; law and love; things as they are and things “as they should be”.

“You should not be doing this”

“I don’t want you to feel that way”.

“It shouldn’t be like this”

This is the kind of expressions I just quit, as one quits a boring and tiresome job. Any idea of “how it should be” is necessarily a brainy generalization based on partial experience and partial knowledge, on cultural and family conditioning; rooted in our personal psychological limitations, blind spots, pitfalls and other manifestations of the original sin. These generalizations are simply security supports to a mind that is, for the above mentioned reasons, struggling against the reality of life instead of accepting it simply as it is.

Now, of course we can not see anything “as it is”, ultimately – everything that is perceived is perceived through our minds, our psyche, our senses, which mediate the reality in a way that, paradoxically, reveals and conceals it at the same time. Reveals, because the glorious creation is made to receive truth; conceals, because the glory of the creation is partially disabled, darkened, weakened by sin*. Given this mediation through the corrupted mind and senses, the reality of life, human beings and situations cannot be fully perceived and known; and therefore, to pretend that we can decide “how it should be” is wishful thinking.

This is why to me the intense plea “it shouldn’t be that way!” begs a dispassionate shrug. I am not interested in virtualities and imaginary worlds – unless they are clearly fictional “secondary worlds” of a good novel, of course. I know that the ultimate knowledge of life is beyond my scope, because I am only a finite human being. I am ready to accept making mistakes and erring, in the darkness of my partial knowledge, because what I desire is not a comforting  conformity to the imaginary rules, but full and unconditional acceptance of life as it is – a unique paradoxical experience given to me here and now, within the frame of my own limitations and those of my partners; an experience that is not to be grasped  by imperatives and definitions, but perceived, received, and known, however partially, by love.

*Sin here is not being understood as a fault to be punished for, but as a pathology to be healed of. Significantly the Hebrew word “sin” means literally “missed target” -- not a sound about guilt, so dear to our Churches. 

Everguide

Here is a poem written for a person who has given me much time and wisdom, on the event of her departure:

Gently

You took me backwards

To lead me forward

And treading in the footprints you made

I looked down with surprise

To find they were mine -

That I had been this way before,

With eyes open but blindfolded

Against the real

Now the mystery, defused, broken down,

Become seedbed,

Births endlessly

In endings are beginnings

In the leaving

The new earth, untrod,

Contains potency:

Both you and I, unhaltered, go together

In separate shared experience

(Richard W.,  July 2012)

Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom

Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise.,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible dissembling
Music in the granite hill. 

Louise Bogan

RSCM Canberra Chorale sings new Australian Anthems - Compilation 2012

Here is footage from a small choral group I was asked to sing in. The singers were quite good and the pieces okay. We had to learn and perform in a few hours so it is very slightly ropey in places, but not too bad. I'm the on ein the middle looking nonchalant.

Thunderstorm

Si in te non essent, non essent!!

St Augustin

A stormy electric day. Swords clashing

in the stark darkness of our partial knowledge. 

Will against will

ignorance against ignorance

misunderstanding against misunderstanding.

Frightening shadows

fighting, in desperate fear

of their own distorted reflections 

until, exhausted, we lay aside

steel and determination,

willpower, and the itch to be right,

until we are weak enough

to cease to resist, 

to lie down in pain, and see 

That there is nothing to fight but love

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Thinking of those cherubims with sleepless eyes... of the Lord, standing amidst us, in flesh and blood. Just look up the text. 


M. 

Things are not what they seem (a riddle)

A husband who thinks he is a husband

but is not

A man who thinks he is being treated as a child

but is not

by a woman who thinks she is being dismissed as a child

but is not 

by a lover who thinks he is not a lover

but is. 

All characters are fictional... of course...  How many of them, by the way:)? 

Adam Lay Y-Bounden (re-take by Richard)

This is silly but I enjoyed it - written quickly merely as an exercise for my Japanese student so he can practise saying his 'a' sounds which he isn't very good at.

Adam ate the apple down

The apple given whole

It was the apple Eve gave him

The apple that she stole

And when he ate the apple whole

He was in agony

Because the apple he was giv’n

Was from a curséd tree

Adam had an aptitude

To feel the world aright

But now he had an attitude

That made his life a blight

Before his eating of the fruit

His way was straight and clear

But now the blighted tree he saw

Confused his heart with fear

The angles in his path ahead

He now saw with dismay

Would be his lot till Kingdom come

Until that happy day

A tree of knowledge seems so fine

Its fruit to be desired

But we must beware of that

Which leaves us mad and tired

Merton on 'The General Dance'

On this wild early Winter's day the trees around my ears are indeed dancing, and perhaps a bit more than they would find comfortable as blasts from the Antarctic do their best to strip the euclypt leaves from their branches. Here is Merton on the dance more harmonious:

"...the Lord plays and diverts himself in the garden of his creation, and if we could let go of our obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear his call and follow him in his mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash -- at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyse them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness,absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance that is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Happy dancing! Will you join me in a reel?

Trees, where you sit (Solmet)

There was a tiny moment, in the company of these pine-trees, when I knew that the same life was rushing through our bodies, the same wind was blowing in their branches and in my soul; that their sturdy rootedness and their gentle swaying are what I am; that they share my pain and my bewilderment, my perplexity and my determination to be rooted in the Real. This is what "here and now" is to me: a communion of all living things, in God. 

Their tops in the clouds, their branches are stout, 

And thin, tall and proud they're swaying about;

     Of sunlight and rain

     They're talking again 

Allowed to spell them aloud 

Richard Lewis, Tenor - Where'er You Walk (from 'Semele' by G.F. Handel)

The here and now in the raindrops

And so, even today when the last attempt to prolong the mild Autumn finally fails and the heart is driven inside, I glanced across the dreary damp scene as I rode past. Nothing more empty than a wind- and rain-swept car park: unpeopled and denatured. And it connected with past emptiness and past nothingness. But stealing sideways glances, I caught a row of waterdrops, hanging from metal - a sideways, waterdrop view of the world - and thought that yes, this is reality too, this is now and nowhere else, this is not even the past I think I am connecting with. And that, amazingly and counter-intuitively, God is in this too, hanging there in the raindrops. I didn't smile and I wasn't happy, but I was really there and determined to be there, as I am determined to be here, listening to the winter raining in and knowing that I am more connected to you and all that I love in being connected to now and here, even when my past tells me it feels like absence.

It is already here --- let me feel it - by Leunig

When the heart

Is cut or cracked or broken

Do not clutch it

Let the wound lie open

.

Let the wind

From the good old sea blow in

To bathe the wound with salt

And let it sting.

.

Let a stray dog lick it

Let a bird lean in the hole and sing

A simple song like a tiny bell

And let it ring

Tragi-comedy

Sitting in the sand

"Charity beareth all things"

As soon as it becomes clear that "I" cannot possibly escape from the reality of the present, since "I" is nothing other than what I know now, this inner turmoil must stop. No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear, boredom or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. The human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not being constantly restimulated by this inner effort to get away from it, to separate the "I" from the feeling. The effort creates a state of tension in which the pain thrives. But when the tension ceases, mind and body begin to absorb the pain as water reacts to a blow or a cut. 

Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Falling into Thy will

I said : to fight for the best, and to accept the worst. 
This is not quite adequate though, 

because in reality, there is no such thing as "best" and "worst" --  these are only opinions. 

There is only  "Thy will be done" - welcome, accepted, made mine. 

There is only what in French is so well called "épouser le mouvement" -- to espouse; to become one; to coincide. 

Falling upwards through the dense clouds, 

falling together, 

heart in heart, falling through 

the unknown skies above the unmapped lands, 

falling into Thy will. 

Delalande: Super flumina Babilonis (part 1)

2 In salícibus in médio ejus, * suspéndimus organa nostra 
Courtesy of Edward Ross

Open thou the eyes of my heart

O Lord Jesus Christ, 
open Thou the eyes of my heart, 
that I may hear Thy word 


and understand 
and do Thy will, 


for I am a sojourner upon the earth. 


Hide not Thy commandments from me, 
but open mine eyes, 
that I may perceive 
the wonders of Thy law. 


Speak unto me 
the hidden and secret 
things of Thy wisdom. 


On Thee do I set my hope, 
O my God, 
that Thou shalt enlighten my mind 


and understanding 


with the light of Thy knowledge, 
not only to cherish those things which are written, 


but to do them; 


For Thou art the enlightenment 
of those who lie in darkness, 
and from Thee cometh 
every good deed and every gift. 


Amen.


This is a prayer St John Chrysostom composed for reading the Bible. 
I breathe it as I am going ahead. 


Pray for me too. 


M. 

A Stupid Limerick for the Whirring Minds

A heel at the wheel was driving uphill
And plotting to steal some pills for his meal
     Was sitting upright
     Was thinking “all right”
And suffered from measles and wheal


Thought you might enjoy a bit of rhymed silliness dear Club :)

Memory as constant revolution

"Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of 'memories'. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not 'remember' the here and now, does not 'remember' its true identity, is not memory at all. Those who remember nothing but facts and past events and are never brought back into the present, are victims of amnesia."

Thomas Merton

I take this to mean that we need to constantly re-invent or experience. Life is then not a hostage to past events or constantly reoccurring thoughts, and the mind is cleared out to have the opportunity to experience the present properly. Like much of FUC logic, this seems paradoxical, and yet I think it is the only proper attitude to hold in order to feel the possibility of each moment as fully sacred - even the crap moments too for that matter. Life's not all beer and skittles, but it does need to be experienced without hindrance from past programming.

Whatever it may turn out to be

"Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief", or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be". Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity. 

So...what if I admitted that actually, nothing is wrong with my shaky, insecure world of falling upwards? That I do not have to seek conformity with any way of life; that I do not have to squeeze myself into any idea of how "it" -- God, love, life, family, men, community, religion -- should be? What if all I had to do is to accept, embrace and be grateful for my experience just as it is, without attempting to bring it to some "average" abstract normality? Whatever it may turn out to be, I want my life real. Then (shrug) just go and live it as it is. 

Noli Me Tangere

Holbein clearly knew something the Western civilization totally missed : that the Risen Lord practiced martial arts... 

It is also clear why he said those words we can not digest, Noli me tangere: wouldn't you, facing this life-threatening Mary? 

Happy Easter, dear Club; thanks God, Christ has risen. 

Lazarus' Sister

***

For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always... 

Jn 12:8 

To break, O to break this jar,

Let the sweet oil stream, the fragrant perfume fill

The air, and your smallish hearts, men, your mean

Good-doing, born of hidden pride; stale,

Calculating charity. Oh, could I bring the world

To give its best, it wouldn't be too much,

Could I pour more than I have, more than I am! 

Oh, come and serve Him in my stead, you holy lot,

How come there's none but me, a sinner, to anoint

His feet, with joy and grief; how come you know not?! 

- Gently!  Don't stand in her way, men. Let in. 

Don't you see? You just cannot keep her within 

Limits. Mind your business. She will stay; I say, 

Don't you touch her! Don't you dare to keep her away

From Me.

Paris, 9 April 2012

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, 

your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Let me say it in calm, poised, less violent words. Two things stand out for me distinctly against the darkness of the Good Friday this year.

The Body of Christ : a living reality, a vital organic unity we all participate in. The balance, the homeostasis of this unity is maintained by all its members. So closely knit we are, so essential we all are to the life of the whole, so vital is the exchange of love between us, that when one of us goes, when one tiny member of this Body is taken out -- the whole Body is shattered, the whole Body is crippled and wounded, and Christ Himself is trembling in pain. 

Each and every individual death is a wound to the Body, and an offense to its members. When it befalls those we know and love, we take on the shock, absorb the wave, grieve, and bear the scar; we stand in the frontline, we are the adjacent cells suffering from a brutal removal of the flesh that, we feel, is our own flesh. And so we must, for we are in Christ -- we are allowed to bear a little. But it is no different when death takes people we do not know; their own adjacent cells then absorb the shock, so that the wave of pain doesn't reach us. The wound is nevertheless inflicted to you and me, members of Christ's Body. This happens everywhere, every moment - here and now; we are just spared the feeling of loss, for we cannot bear it all. 

All days are Good Friday. There is no such thing as death or grief that are none of my business. 

Another thought comes from Gethsemany and feet-washing. God's love has no other way to reach the world than through you and me. Through us and in us He loves, and His own very life we carry when we let it happen in our hearts and minds. No Kingdom is possible unless there are people who desire the Kingdom and let it be brought down here -- now and then, little by little, one piece after another, smuggling it in whenever possible. No matter how weak and inadequate, no matter how totally irrelevant we might feel  -- we must forget it all for a while, and let God give, care, help, serve through us;  and sometimes, us!  We have to, simply because there is nobody else to do the job: He has only our hearts and minds, our voices and our hands to make overflow the fountain of His life. 

God's love is running in Christ's blood, like grief is running in mine, and the transfusion is slowly taking place. To be fully human means holding in our hearts both the tragedy of life and the fountain of love; allowing both the sore grief for what is irreversibly lost, and an overflowing gratitude for what is so generously given. 

Poem for Holy Saturday

THE Lord will in the future wipe away the tears from every eye – but not now. .....
Jesus knew something of the glory he was called to – we simply do not.
We do not know where our loved ones have been taken to and we want them back.
The pain of separation is intense, as it was for Jesus’ friends after they lost him.
We may not forget that the Eucharistic meal that we eat commemorates a departure:
a wrenching, tearful separation.
Your grief is your own, all the days of your life.
Let no one deprive you of it, not even out of love.
Pain is inseparable from love; that is a truth we must live with.
It is a proof of our true inner reality, a judgement of ourselves,
as to how and with what courage we face and accept that truth.

Gerard S Sloyan(1919- )

The grass never sleeps.Or the roses.Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybethe wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,maybethe lake far away, where once he walked as on ablue pavement,lay still and waited, wild awake.Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could notkeep that vigil, how they must have wept,so utterly human, knowing this toomust be a part of the story.Mary Oliver, p.45 Thirst, Bloodaxe Books (2007)

Come Round

***

O grief, untimely, come round, come

Sit on my chest, burn in my mind, weep,

Stream in my blood, be buried in my sleep, 

O violent grief for those who have gone

Or yet to go beyond the sacred hills,

And yet to rise behind the earthly veil

O hungry wolf, the wound that never heals - 

Come, break my heart, and go back to hell.

Paris 04/04 /2012 

Lisa Hannigan - Lille

Lucie Thorne Open Sky

Strange Is The Man

Surprise sandwich

I have been going back to sleep after I initially wake up and I find that I dream much more vividly afterwards. This morning's dream was a big surprise. I don't remember the context too well, except that it didn't include anyone I know, but it ended up with being given an award which turned out to be a very long baguette. When I opened the baguette there was a bed of lettuce on which sat a long and toothsome crocodile.

Make of that what you will!

Pont de l'Alma

The message gets clearer, or Kitchen Talk

If anything happens now in my dreams, it is going on within four walls…

I have to deliver a presentation of a project for my job. I am standing in the middle of a square room, facing the window; the light outside is a bit blueish – like a winter dusk in Russia. I know that the room is a kitchen, there is a large wooden table with a bench beside, but I do not remember any other kitchen stuff.

The room is full of people, I recognise some colleagues. There is movement, talk, laughter, hands-shaking: nobody listens to me, I begin to feel panic. I see one of our coordinating doctors [the one I had conflicts with in the past], sitting at the table, and ask him to help me to have people’s attention. He dismisses me with a laugh.

Christian Falk feat. Robyn & Ola Salo Dream On

Prt 4!!!!

damn this technology...

It is the mission of the Word and the Spirit, from the Father, in the depths of our own being. It is a majesty communicated with us, shared with us, so that our whole being is filled with the gift of glory and responds with adoration.

This is an extraordinarily high conception of our own reality, and yet he makes it clear that we do not create it for ourselves - that we recognise it in contemplation and that it is only to be grasped in contradistinction to our understanding of the falseness of our egoistic selves as we build them up in what Rohr would no doubt label as the first half of life container. And it is in letting go of this false self that we come to understand our true reality as utterances of God.

And I promise there are no more posts. A kiss on all of your foreheads as you sleep the last wee hours of night....

Merton part 3

Sorry, this is not working very well. Here's the rest:

When I consent to the will and the mercy of God as it 'comes' to me in the events of life, appealing to my inner self and awakening my faith, I break through the superficial exterior appearances that form my routine vision of the world and of my own self, and I find myself in the presence of hidden majesty. It may appear to me that this majesty and presence is something objective, 'outside myself'. Indeed, the primitive saints and prophets saw this divine presence invision as a light or an angel or a man or a burning fire, or a blazing glory upheld by cherubim. only thus could their minds do justice to the supreme reality of what they experienced. Yet this is a majesty we do not see with our eyes, and it is all within ourselves. It is the mission of the Word and the

Merton part 2

That wasn't all of it! Here is some more:

I shall be lost in him: that is, I shall find myself...

Merton on discovery of the real self

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself.

A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it.

But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in him

Joke of the Week, or Staring at Cows

Not sure about "peaceful" bit...

Enfolded in... alb :)

Train dreams seem to subside; does it mean Terminus, I wonder... But the whirring mind never stops. That's what it produced last night : 

I am serving at St Georges, there is a large crowd of people at the altar and in the assembly, it is a special occasion, the altar is very well lit. For some reason, I am not at my usual place (went on an errand? do not quite remember), and I am not wearing my alb. 

I know we acolytes must soon pick up the candles and return to the sacristy as we usually do at the end of the Mass. I hesitate – will I have enough time to put on the alb and get back to the altar?

I decide to give it a try; go to the sacristy and start putting on my alb; but in a hurry, put it on the other way round (back on the front), and find myself caught in its folds. 

Woke up to a blasting headache, feeling that I didn’t make it to the altar  after all.

NB : two sources in waking life can be identified. Yesterday during the Mass, a sidesman asked me if I would like to bring an element to the altar; I said "Yes of course"; he was supposed to give me a shout when I had to go, but for some reason did not. He apologized later and said that he didn't see me in the crowd, that's why he picked up someone else. Also, I had a conversation about liturgy yesterday night; remember saying that the church was well lit, among other things. 

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R.S. Thomas

What I really like about this poem is the break between verses - such an eloquent pause between 'hurrying' and 'on'! The other thing, of course, is the sentiment that eternal life is here and now if we take notice of it. One of my top ten favourite poems.

Lenten illuminations: less is more

Meditation makes one see one's compulsions very clearly. 

Thus, after a  long morning meditation, at the lunch pause I found myself struggling with the irrational urge to take a full three courses meal, which was going against the feeble voice of common sense saying that a medium size salad would be quite enough. 

I usually do not listen to voices... But today I was struck by an illumination : that's exactly what is called "avarice": an irrational desire to have it all, born of anxiety to remain unsatisfied. A "just in case",  "what if?" and "better stick to your routine" approach. 

I won my battle this time (a salad after all), and had an illumination number 2 for dessert : that our "ascetic effort" has a very practical purpose, namely, to provide us with a positive experience proving that it is quite possible to resist the compulsion, and be satisfied. In other words, my salad was just what I wanted, in fact: not more, not less. And much cheaper, by the way, which made my wallet considerably happier. Less is more, really. 

Repeated regularly, this experience undermines the power and loosens the grip of the basic compulsion motive: in case of avarice, anxiety. 

Ah, I thought, cheerfully trotting back to the office under the glacial rain, that's what the whole Lent 2012 about : a therapy! 

Unconditional Love

It's not even what exactly he says, it's the way he says it: the experience we are only blindly looking for is there, don't you sense?

And Rumi's line came in today too : "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".

And the rain it raineth every day

Trevor Hoyne

I attended the thanksgiving service for Trevor today, only finding out that he had died a few days ago. We had drifted apart when he left town for the country about 15 years ago, and yet he was one who had been incredibly important to me at one time. We went to the Anglican Franciscan monastery in Stroud, New South Wales together in search of spiritual truth and I can say that he was the first person with whom I meditated and who suggested to me that there may be an inner part of us that is beyond the ego.

Trevor was a troubled searcher after truth, a man born in London during WWII to dominant parents. His father died early and his mother overwhelmed him with suffocating love. He worked with Tom Keating (a different one!), the rogue fine art faker in his early years, and became an art restorer. He married a wonderful German woman, and they moved to Australia and he worked at the National Gallery, but he became very ill through past excesses in life (heavy drinking and smoking) and had to retire early.

Trevor's post-work years were his belated attempts to make sense of it all and he was a brave man who read much, meditated much and maintained a child-like sense of humour and love despite his sadnesses. He drifted off to Indian religion, becoming a devotee of Sai Baba - not my cup of tea but he was clearly trying to escape his straitened English roots. His daughter, Hannah, said to me today that he had not wanted to leave yet, so tonight in the meditation I asked him to accompany me and to leave in peace when the final gong sounded. I felt honoured to have him with me on this journey. Requiescat in pacem.

On dependency, or The end of the red bubbles

I have been vomiting red bubbles on the word "dependency" for twenty years now, yet I  have always felt that "independency" did not score much better either. 

The text below is from the book I quoted a couple of months ago, "Women and desire", by Polly Young-Eisendrath. Interesting approach that allows to see clearer. Italics are mine: 

"Mature dependency, a term I borrow from the psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn, means a style of dependency in adult life in which you are grateful, appreciative, and free to depend openly because you know the importance of give-and-take and are dependable as well as dependent. This style of dependency should be a goal in all aspects of adult life, both in the workplace and at home. 

Mature dependency is in stark contrast to both the immature, clinging dependency that is exemplified by an infant or young child and the anxious, defensive independency that is exemplified by the adolescent struggling for emancipation....

Instead of believing that we develop from being dependent to being  independent human beings, I believe that we develop our ability to be dependent -- from early infant dependency through the dependency of childhood and the defensive pseudoindependency of adolescence to the final mature dependency of adulthood. 

Mature dependency is a developmental achievement, available only to those who can establish a mutual rythm of give-and-take with a partner or a friend. One has to be an equal in order to respect that other as much as the self (not more, not less). A key part of mature dependency is trust".  

Yes. What I've been vomiting on was immature dependency, what I've been instinctively sceptic of was immature independency. Neither is satisfactory. If  we are to grow up, we have to move beyond, acknowledging  both our frailty and strength, our dependency and dependability. Then, perhaps, we can access the reality of a partnership built on trust as opposed to a manipulative (in)dependence built on fear. 

Rencontre Fatale :)

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Honest Words

The Divine Present

Our life is unfolding here and now. Every breath in is a new beginning; every breath out is a letting go. To be fully present is to say no to the past memory that would paint the future in the same colours (especially where those colours mark fear and lack of courage), not to mention that it dishonours the indwelling divinity. I say this for myself but perhaps it will speak to you too.

When I became a Christian, by Adrian Plass

When I became a Christian I said, Lord, now fill me in,
Tell me what I’ll suffer in this world of shame and sin.
He said, your body may be killed, and left to rot and stink,
Do you still want to follow me?
I said Amen - I think.
I think Amen, Amen I think, I think I say Amen,
I’m not completely sure, can you just run through that again?
You say my body may be killed and left to rot and stink,
Well, yes, that sounds terrific, Lord, I say Amen - I think.

But, Lord, there must be other ways to follow you, I said,
I really would prefer to end up dying in my bed.
Well, yes, he said, you could put up with the sneers and scorn and spit,
Do you still want to follow me? I said Amen - a bit.
A bit Amen, Amen a bit, a bit I say Amen,
I’m not entirely sure, can we just run through that again?
You say I could put up with sneers and also scorn and spit,
Well, yes, I’ve made my mind up, and I say, Amen - a bit.

Well I sat back and thought a while, then tried a different ploy,
Now, Lord, I said, the Good book says that Christians live in joy.
That’s true he said, you need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow,
So do you want to follow me, I said, Amen - tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Lord, I’ll say it then, that’s when I’ll say Amen,
I need to get it clear, can I just run through that again?
You say that I will need the joy, to bear the pain and sorrow,
Well, yes, I think I’ve got it straight, I’ll say Amen - tomorrow.

He said, Look, I’m not asking you to spend an hour with me
A quick salvation sandwich and a cup of sanctity,
The cost is you, not half of you, but every single bit,
Now tell me, will you follow me? I said Amen - I quit.
I’m very sorry Lord I said, I’d like to follow you,
But I don’t think religion is a manly thing to do.
He said forget religion then, and think about my Son,
And tell me if you’re man enough to do what he has done.

Are you man enough to see the need, and man enough to go,
Man enough to care for those whom no one wants to know,
Man enough to say the thing that people hate to hear,
To battle through Gethsemane in loneliness and fear.
And listen! Are you man enough to stand it at the end,
The moment of betrayal by the kisses of a friend,
Are you man enough to hold your tongue, and man enough to cry?
When nails break your body-are you man enough to die?
Man enough to take the pain, and wear it like a crown,
Man enough to love the world and turn it upside down,
Are you man enough to follow me, I ask you once again?
I said, Oh Lord, I’m frightened, but I also said Amen.

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen; Amen, Amen, Amen,