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 :)