Emmanuel

Emmanuel

The silent anonymity of conception
Self-abnegates, as life utters
Into harmony with flesh and bone:
Grown onto rootstock of creation's own
Irrepressible fountain of possibility.

Diversity pulsates to the beat
Of the eternal drum,
cascading truth and certainty.

God's dream becomes the waking womb;
"I am" is echoed in all things,
And, in the silence,
Being sings its throbbing song
And trembles into life.

© Paul Amphlett 2002

Here and now

‘I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers,
at the moon and the stars you set firm –
what are human beings that you spare a thought for them,
or the child of Adam that you care for him?’

(Psalms 8:3-4)

There is nothing that brings home our apparent insignificance, and leaves us with no adequate means of self expression quite so profoundly as searching a starlit sky. Orion’s winter presence has drawn me out once more.
Some three months ago I spent time watching for shooting stars on a night when we were all told there was the possibility of witnessing a spectacular shower. The night was wonderfully clear, and midnight found me well wrapped, and stretched horizontal across garden chairs to make looking heavenward more comfortable, more relaxed and therefore more conducive to quiet contemplation. I remained there, thinking deep into what lay spread before me, and searching those depths for longer than I have for some years, and though it was worth looking for and seeing the shooting stars, those short-lived trails were simply a sporadic and superficial dusting across the incomprehensibility of the silence and the depth of the abyss behind them.

I remember seeing shooting stars as a child. I do not recall having consciously spent time looking for them, or gazing at the stars in general, though I must have done so. See them I did, and frequently enough for me to become accustomed to their occurrence; they were always good to see, and worthy of a momentary excitement, but were not rare or unusual enough to give that excitement any real intensity or power.
That all seems so long ago, not so much in terms of the intervening years, but in the sense of it being one more thing of which I have been reminded; another memory lodged in such a way that, though the image is retained as of a recent occurrence, the reality is far more distant than I would otherwise have realized.

While staring into the cold and star-filled heavens, time had become almost meaningless, just as distance was being shown to be equally beyond all meaning and understanding.
Everywhere was there, right where I lay, and all time seemed held in those few moments.
I had been made aware, yet again, that I had been looking without seeing, and that seeing brings an appreciation of our utter insignificance and of the futility of almost all that we assess as wisdom and knowledge. Infinity goes beyond not only all that we can see, but beyond all comprehension of that which is see-able.

In looking at Hubble telescope pictures it is so easy to lose oneself in the seemingly infinite expanses of space and time. And in that brief release from the usual restraints of the mind, all those words that usually swirl past with a superficial and pointless whisper, - words such as eternity, peace, love, holiness, uprightness, repentance, forgiveness, unity and hope, - suddenly hint more clearly at something as they pass.
Attempts to grasp the thoughts fail: they are gone, but something is stirred within us. Hope is now a word with potential meaning, a disturbing possibility that draws the previously unattended concept of trust into our sphere of experience.
In the short-lived awareness of our nothingness, we may sense the presence of a lifeline of which we are already a part.
What are we? Who are we?
What is our life? Our awareness? Our sorrow? Our joy?
What is it for which we endlessly long?

Who am I that You, my God, spare a thought for me?

Future Certain

The season of Advent begins today.
In looking forward to the coming of Jesus as a child in our world we are looking forward to Christmas.
In following this annual leading with its expectation and its excitement, initially suppressed but increasingly bubbling up and shared with those around us, let us pause frequently to ask ourselves what drives this inner process.
In looking forward to Christmas are we looking forward to the coming of Jesus or are we solely bundled along by the commercial powerhouse with its extravagant glitter and noise? If not that, is our love of the season locked into the goodwill and increased harmony for which we all hope, together with its giving, receiving and sharing? Do we take our place in the collective anticipation without a moment’s thought as to what it is towards which we are being drawn?
In following the world we can miss the meaning of Advent and of Christmas, but in being aware of what we are asked to anticipate and celebrate in the birth of Christ we must be aware that we are involving ourselves in an event that occurred only once, and that was two thousand years ago.
We remember it, we commemorate it, we celebrate it.

Underlying these weeks of Advent is a constant reminder of our need to see clearly when we look back to that time in Bethlehem.
We must bring what it shows us into our present day, that we may look ahead once more with a realization that, contained within the brightness of the glory ahead of us, there is another advent, another arrival, another coming. Jesus is coming back. Christ will return.

Wake up!
I say it quietly so as not to disturb those who are determined to remain asleep.
They can then go away saying to themselves, ‘But I didn’t hear him! He didn’t speak loud enough. He didn’t get the message across. He didn’t get through to us.’
The truth stands squarely in the quiet. It has little to do with whoever may speak it, or however it may be spoken.

“The calm words of the wise make themselves heard above the shouts of someone commanding an army of fools.” (Ecclesiastes 9:17)

Making it louder may attract more immediate attention, but would not convey the message with any more urgency or success. Saying it louder places the words - in the ears and mind of many hearers - alongside others regarded as annoying, aggressive and offensive, with the result that the message remains unheard.
However quietly it may be said, and however remote the possibility may seem, He will return, and we know not when.

Wake up! Remain awake, look for Him and be ready for Him. Look forward to His coming while looking back to His infant birth.

“Year passes after year silently; Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was.”

(Parochial and Plain Sermons. John Henry Newman)

Certainty and doubt

It is not my present tendency towards preoccupation, nor is it preoccupation itself that enlivens my perception.
Indeed, that predisposition and the absorption to which it inclines, though aiming me in the right direction, has its own way of blinding my heart and mind by encouraging me to gaze blankly at the brilliance of the light. I am blinded by it, and find myself going nowhere in the disintegration of what I had thought to be a deeper search.
The gentle coalescing of an ever-growing belief that all in life - that which is gone, that which is presently around and within us, and all that is still to come – is relevant to the steps we make or fail to make on our spiritual journeys, brings a deepening of that belief but is not what makes it real for me.

That gift derives from an infrequent but recurring certainty that stops and holds me with the power of its revelation, leaving me in no doubt that life is governed and led by something completely beyond my own comprehension. The certainty is fleeting, and its recurrence in no way embeds a memory of what it is about which I feel certain, but each moment leaves a distinctive and compounded effect on my own presence within myself.
Experience is not the right word, but though the occurrence may be experienced differently each time, there is a realization that the happening itself is the same and is being repeated. The entire experience is encapsulated in each of those moments; I am stopped and I am, as it were, turned around to look back at where I have just been.

Being unexpectedly brought up short is the effect of knowledge gained through looking back at the now more clearly illuminated path. It is the consequence of having been touched by that ungraspable certainty, when the provision is of a conviction which clearly opposes every anticipation. In my own life these moments have centred on a seemingly endless uncertainty as to what I am required to do: whether I should step forward or remain in the background, speak up or maintain an inconspicuous presence in which continued silence at times feels burdensome.

Certainty and uncertainty walk together in our lives.
Do we speak out or do we hold our tongue? Which will dominate our inner doubt, the blazing torch or the glowing ember?
The safety of inaction tugs at our conscience in face of deeds we dare not risk, while the wisdom of truth and the folly of lies entangle and begrime our friendships and the fractured unity of mankind.

Life may be governed and led by something completely beyond our interpretation, but it provides no foregone conclusion.
Fatalism is dispersed on the winds of its total freedom, while it lays its awesome gift at our feet. That gift is the very same freedom: access to all or nothing, and it is there to be claimed by each one of us, as blessing or curse. It is beyond comprehension but the availability of its gifts is not beyond our own influence. Within the freedom laid down before us is the outline of the path we are to tread; we see it or not, we follow it or not. It leads straight to the heart of the light that blinds our worldly understanding, and, when those moments of certainty arise, we have a glimpse of undistorted truth and of undefiled direction in our lives. A single moment of clarity reveals the trace of the path right back to our earliest days.

I have said that these rare moments stop and hold me with the power of their revelation, with the impact of what has amounted to a complete reversal of my intended course of action. Conviction and confidence resulting from lengthy deliberations and eventual decisions, have been swept away in an instant, leaving a clear understanding that that which I had been about to do was an entirely wrong course of action, and that the complete opposite was required of me.
At first this is quite unnerving, and finds me thinking I shall be unable to make any worthwhile judgements in the future, but within hours I have settled into the happy realization that such moments are increasing the likelihood of future decisions being the right ones. I am left in the warmth of the ever increasing awareness of being guided along my path, and am humbled by my flawed assessments of my world, and by God’s timely prevention of my misguided words and deeds.
I am His, and in my longing to do His will He assures me that He will not let me go.

“… the word that goeth from my mouth …will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do.” (Isaiah 55:11)

Our way may be narrow, but if we strive to keep to it regardless of the ease with which we can be pulled down and diverted from it, it becomes clear that it is plenty wide enough, even when we are carrying our greatest burdens.
It is memories of our failures and of what we continue to regard as our unforgivable mistakes that make the path too narrow for us, particularly when God has already placed such things behind us.
Lay all such things at his feet, repent, and leave them there. You may have been carrying them for years; lay them down, not for a rest or to adjust your grip on them, but to let go of them completely. Then stand, brush the dust from your knees and leave them behind as you learn to delight in the road ahead. It is then that you may come to know you have not simply been touched and left, and you have not been grasped at some point, only to be released and allowed to fall away. So long as you have no wish to break free, the touch is ongoing and the grasp is for life.

You are now one of The Held. God holds you fast.
He has claimed you as His own.
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A backward glance

Rain, thoughts of streams and visions of floods washed silently through me as summer matured and shortening days began to search the horizon for signs of autumn. Memories backwashed and eddied into slow-turning pools of superficial pondering, there to settle into a deeper meditation. Raindrops and falling leaves have since smoored the trains of thought that flickered and flared throughout the previous months, leaving them to smoulder, and enabling their further transformation in the moist warmth of contemplation’s womb.
Such is the quiet within which I have wandered since last I made a conscious visit to this, my chosen vantage spot at the very edge.

I had thought my reflections may lead me to something I had not anticipated, and unsurprisingly - as anticipated - that is just what happened.
I had assumed that whatever that something may be, it would in some way increase my awareness of the journey and clarify the meaning of steps already taken: shine light on the road that has brought me to where I am today. I had also assumed that such clarification would somehow indicate more clearly the direction of the steps I have yet to take, and, though having learned that the destination will not be fully revealed during this life, I had anticipated a clearer view of that which I hope to approach.

It is a source of amazement for me that I am able to repeat those same assumptions and anticipations, when on previous occasions I had thought to have learned that while the one may be granted, the other, at least in the way that I envisage, will not.
We are unable to fully comprehend our present until we either step from it or stand while it passes us by. Once we are able to look back at it, and so long as we have the eyes to see, we are able to begin an interpretation of what had confronted, confused or captivated us, and to weigh the consequences of whatever actions we took or failed to take.

If we are travelling in the right direction, the light is always before us.

‘The Lord preceded them … in a pillar of fire to give them light …’ (Exodus 13:21)
As our belief increases, as our trust and our faith in it grows, we see it more clearly and the increasing brightness gives the impression that we are drawing closer to it. We are indeed approaching but the immeasurable void between us is not one of physical distance but of awareness and understanding. It is so great that any advance on the scale of cosmic awareness is as nothing, and is even less in the all-encompassing mind of God. From our puny perspective however, that same advance is a potentially stunning leap into a level or form of knowing that we could not have imagined beforehand. That shift in our knowing brings a corresponding shift in our seeing, our hearing, our feeling and our thinking. It is the combined effect of all of these that makes the light suddenly seem so much brighter. Every such moment brings us closer to an understanding of just how far we have to go, and how very far we are from appreciating how embryonic that understanding really is.
The light increasingly dazzles as we progress, but with every step we place our present moment behind us, in a place where - if we turn our minds to look – that same greater brightness illuminates the path we have taken in ways that reveal what we were unable to see while stepping upon it.

Why is it that, in spite of past experiences, we slide ourselves out of that astonishing but fleeting understanding, and back into a blindness which we ourselves control? We become so sure and secure, and then so accustomed to our newfound clarity that we forget we are already in a dimension beyond the imaginings of our earlier years. We surely know that this has not ended: that this can happen again and again, each moment taking us further from where we are today and toward a level of truth of which we cannot begin to dream.
We remain oblivious to what we do while creating what feels like absolute conviction. From what has been demonstrated as an unpredictable sequence of steps, and an unconquerable lack of certainty, we conjure new blueprints and dig new foundations on the supposed solidity of our pride.

Even now the grains of sand gently tumble between our toes, and with the world asleep, one can almost hear their smiles …

‘We wander the dunes in dead of night,
no pillar of fire, no guiding light.’

... and shadow

Thinking back to the stream by which I was standing when these thoughts first began, and to the shadows on the water, even when those shadows do reveal what is otherwise hidden, we fail to receive the complete picture. We still see only in our limited human way, viewing from one angle, and in a logical attempt to fill in all the details we use our accumulated knowledge of the world, and our imagination.
Having thus patched up and retouched the image, we have no further need of consideration. We think we know. What we believe to be the truth is calculated or estimated, and that which is the truth therefore remains hidden.
The true form of what we see can only be understood when we have viewed it from different angles. The beauty which may be apparent from the side may be unsuspected when viewed from above. The two Salmon beneath the bridge are examples of this: the grey torpedo shapes giving no hint of their magnificent silvery flanks.
If the possibility that these images and ideas may be carriers of meaningful information, has any bearing on reality, then the same must apply to the messages themselves and to their significance. Understanding the fullness of any such communication must be beyond us until we learn to completely re-tune ourselves to a spiritual awareness, and to search for the many hidden angles of view before rushing ahead with the apparently obvious.

We should strive endlessly for intellectual and emotional patience, as the gift most needed in our world today is the same as it always has been: - discernment.
All the other gifts are maintained and used correctly through the gift of discernment. Without it we are led into blind alleys and subtle forms of idolatry which scatter us instead of bringing us together. When we have learned that our being apart is not just the result of our not having approached each other, but is the continued aim of forces we all too often fail to recognise - forces which endlessly work to ensure that God's Kingdom will not come - we begin to understand why discernment should be acknowledged as the essential foundation upon which all other gifts must be built.

The two fish being together seemed synonymous with Marilyn and Tracy, who worked so beautifully together: the one blind, the other deaf. Alone, neither could have done what they were doing, but together they amounted to so much more than the sum of their individual talents. Their combined resources enabled them to communicate with, and respond to, all that went on around them. The apparent disability of the one was entirely negated by the abilities of the other. They had discovered that together there was nothing to hold them back. They were doing God's work with joy.
The two Salmon were waiting: waiting for rain.
And when the river clouded and began to rise - when the time was right - they would know what to do. They would rise from the depths of that pool in readiness for moving into the mainstream of life once more, to continue ever upwards on their journey to the waters of their birth, driven by creation itself until the plan for their lives was completed.

Haunted for a while by the knowledge that in their entire lives, those two fish may never have been seen by anyone, except in that pool, at that moment, by me, I realised that had I crossed the bridge at any other time they would not have been there. They would never have been seen at all.
Or, was it possible that all three of us were meant to be there at that moment, to be illuminated, and to meet in that shaft of light?
The image slipped away, and I returned to the now rather boring looking stream by which I was still standing.
The clouds were darkening; - it looked like rain.

'Listening to God' had been the theme of the day, and in following the stream, perhaps I had opened the way for God to be heard in an unsuspected way. The time had been right, and the message was clear enough to me.
"Better two than one alone, since thus their work is really rewarding. If one should fall, the other helps him up; but what of the person with no one to help him up when he falls?" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

When I took that walk along the stream, I needed that message, and writing about it later was an aid to my own understanding as much as anything else.
My dwelling on it again now has resulted from aspects of the rainfall and flooding three weeks ago.
The streams clouded and rose, the floods did their damage and receded.
Amid the destruction and loss, what has been washed away? What has been cleansed? What has been uncovered and brought into the light? Among the sorrows and grief, the bitterness, the anger, the depressions, the fears and the futility, what new lights have begun to shine? Where are the newfound whispers of joy?
Before the shadows of that day are fully cast aside, let us dwell within that clarity; let us see through the surface image to whatever lies beneath.
Among the countless good deeds done among neighbours and strangers, will have been many meaningful thoughts, touches and words which have carried the presence of God’s Holy Spirit into people’s lives. Someone you have met during this or other times of crisis may be God’s provision for you, just as you may have become His provision for another.
May each of us recognize our place, our calling and our direction, and may we know those beside whom we are called to stand.

“Where one alone would be overcome, two will put up resistance; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)
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... upon reflection ...

While dwelling on thoughts of reflection and shadow, my awareness of the stream beside which I had been standing was swept away by an image from long ago.
I was standing, once more, on a footbridge in Glen Feshie. The memory came, not so much out of the blue as from the clarity of the shadows: out of the darkness that covered the deeper recesses of my memory, my understanding and my will. The feeling flooded back for a moment as the image filled my mind: the thrill that had burned that memory into place.

How had something so strong apparently slipped away for so long? Why had it been brought back so suddenly, and with such force?
The river - not a large one - was particularly narrow at that point, where it flowed between two large rock outcrops, and I found myself looking once more to the bottom of the deep pool over which the bridge had been built. There, again, was the Salmon I had watched with excitement and awe all those years before. The fish could be clearly seen as the pool lay in the shadow of the rocks, while, at the same time, the bright light of the morning flooded the pool from upstream. The shaft of light cutting under the rock that overhung the pool, contrasted with the deep shadow in such a way that the river was, at that one point, totally illuminated.
The fish held station with a gentle waving of its tail: almost still, waiting, going nowhere, and doing nothing.
Was it simply waiting?... for what? Or was it resting? Or hiding?
That last question particularly struck me. Why had that thought come?

I felt strongly that the memory had been lodged and retained for a reason; that the experience, as well as having being memorable in itself, had been meant to speak to me in deeper ways many years later. I was suddenly receptive to the idea that it had now returned for that very reason: - that the time was now right.
Could that be why some things are remembered so clearly, while other seemingly more important or significant things are not? Are these seemingly random memories only conspicuous through the forgetting of so much else, or could they be a great deal more? If the former, they can be of little or no consequence, other than in relation to our own personal interests and subtleties of character, but, could it be that they are meaningful moments during which we have failed to recognize that God is trying to attract our attention? - That he is speaking to us? And could these moments be used years later when we have begun to see and hear more clearly? If we are still unaware of God's presence in our lives, could it be that a similar situation may trigger the remembrance of a previous encounter, and will at least get us thinking, and wondering, and searching for Him?
My own feelings at the time, clearly led me to believe that the memory had flooded me at that moment for a reason. And what did I do? I began to think; and as a result, I was left with my own reasoning and tenuous interpretation instead of what might have been.
If only, dear God, I could still my mind and move only with the breath of your Spirit!

When the images first returned, I thought there was only one fish, and I at once felt that fish to be me: me hiding away, out of the mainstream of life and hidden from other people. Not moving, so as not to attract attention, and if possible, so as to remain unseen.
I found all sorts of feelings and thoughts, some previously unrecognized, that seemed to be part of me, blending with the fish at the bottom of the stream.
I became aware again of the awe and wonder which I had felt when looking down into that pool; the excitement contained in the knowledge that I was seeing something that, in all probability, would not have been seen at all had I not seen it. And a stunning awareness of the potential contained in that quiet and almost still shape at the bottom of the pool.

The awakened awareness of potential instantly drew me deeper into the reality of that long gone moment. The outer confusions of the memory were shaded for me, and I saw through to the truth that lay beneath. It was illuminated from within, and I saw, realized and remembered, there was not just the one: there were two Salmon poised side by side.
I recall that when actually there, my feelings intensified at that moment. The potential suddenly seemed so much greater. Potential for explosive power: for accelerating through the water and leaping skywards into waterfalls up which many of their kind are compelled to swim. Potential for long sustained effort: for the swim through the North Atlantic, and the journey up river to the distant waters of their birth.
They did not have to be doing anything strenuous or spectacular to be powerful: the power was there even when they were not using it, and somehow the fact that there were two of them made it all seem normal, natural, healthy; - as planned by their creator.
If there had been only the one, I may have wondered if it was unwell in some way; exhausted perhaps: or dying even. But there were two of them, and that had assured my youthful heart that all was well.
I could not know what they would do once I had moved on, but whatever they would do would be done naturally, skilfully and wonderfully. Their potential would find expression in power.

My conviction that this was happening for a reason, later found me struggling to recognize the significance.
What was all this saying to me?
I can do nothing alone? The journey is difficult if done alone? God is always with me, to guide me and give me encouragement?
I am hiding my own abilities: my gifts? Hiding and not using the power of God within me? Perhaps I was not hiding anything; perhaps I was only now being given something which I would later come to recognise. But maybe, (and this is what I now believe), this was part of an awakening: a rousing of gifts and of a power lying dormant within, placed there and held as a secret, even from myself, until the time was right. A prompting, and a builder of self-confidence. Something was surely going to be asked of me.
As with any such moment, our faith and our confidence can and will waver. I sank back into the shadows at times, asking myself whether there could really be any significance at all in any of this. Is the whole series of events, feelings and memories just another pattern produced by a fertile imagination? A spiritual placebo that covers the cracks, and fills an empty space that longs to be filled?
With the years steadily layering over the re-lived memory as well as the original experience, my answer today is most assuredly no!

“The natural person has no room for the gifts of God’s Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognize them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

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Reflecting ...

Recent thoughts and experience of rain, of streams brimming over and of floods, have brought memories back to the forefront of my mind.
The stream that caused the recent problems at The House of the Open Door (HOD) had set me thinking after a visit there in 1993.
I wrote about it soon afterwards, and included it later in something I put together for my own children and for my godsons; other than that it has remained unread. Some of those thoughts seem relevant to whatever it is that I am attempting to do here, and I shall therefore dip into those earlier words whenever I am reminded of something that may be worth repeating. Reflecting on these earlier reflections may lead me further into something previously unsuspected, thus continuing a spiralling advance in my awareness of the journeying that has led me here.
Knowing that we are on a spiritual journey brings the recognition of stages in that process, and sometimes even a step by step knowledge of short sections of our walk. Reflections can bring certain insights but we should always strive to see through them to whatever may lie beyond. Whether meditative or physical, they are a form of barrier to the clearer vision of that which we seek. As we focus more intently upon them they become another form of that thinnest of dividing lines separating us from our full potential in the stream of God’s awesome loving presence; they place us once more at the very edge, the edge beyond which we must long to go.

Streams speak of our journeying through life.
An uncertainty accompanies their changing course, character and mood, which points to something deeper than the obvious effects of nature. Terrain, geology, vegetation, climate and weather all combine to make each stream the singular feature that it is, but between source and inevitable disappearance into a larger waterway, they carry a mystery. The peaceful stretch of deep and silent water, with the changes it undergoes to become the shattered and sparkling rapids or waterfall round the next bend, encompasses the thoughts which may come to mind.
As in all things however, - there is more.

Two streams have spoken to me in ways that left a lasting and meaningful memory. One flows, unimpressively and barely visible, beside a country road in a place that enabled the emergence of my true self; a place that became my gateway to so much of which I had previously been unaware. The stream spoke, and as I walked beside it the smiles increasingly welled up from within: for the first time I became aware that my emptiness was being filled with something beautiful and joyful. There were no delays; I heard it, and I understood, though today I have no remaining impression of what it was that I understood.
But (and this took me more than thirty years to find out) there is another, larger, more impressive and clearly visible stream which revealed only part of its message in the form of an ensured memory: a memory which, through its undiminished clarity, could remain alive while awaiting recall and explanation at the appropriate time. This was a potentiality of which I had been completely unaware.
My awareness of the possibility of meanings being given in this way, by a delayed comprehension, or ‘reflective revelation’, came as a result of that visit to HOD, where the stream that caused their recently changed circumstances, offered me, at the right time, its own reflection.
While there I heard Marilyn Baker, a singer, accompanied and assisted by Tracy Williamson. Marilyn is blind. Tracy is deaf.
The theme of the morning had been "Listening to God", and, after the cogs within me had slowly turned into place, I found everything about my visit had fitted so well into that context.

While there, I walked along the stream which flows through the garden and adjacent farmland, and began to think about the face the water shows to us. For much of its course this is not the stream at all, but only reflections of its surroundings which prevent us from seeing the truth: - that which lies beneath the surface. We are able to see some of it only where there is shadow, and where the water is deep we can still not see the bottom. The only way to see all that is there is to have total shadow - always assuming that the water is completely clear.
Total shadow, with its complete absence of reflections, implies total darkness, as where there is light - however dim - there also is reflected light. That is the nature of illumination.
But in total darkness we can see nothing of the stream. It is only through coming to a realisation of this blindness that we can begin to think and feel beyond the reflections that so readily swamp our senses. Illuminate from without, and by seeing the reflections on the surface, we at least know where the stream is. Illuminate from within, and we become able to see everything, especially if darkness covers all else.

Likewise, with our seeing God, each other, and even ourselves. It is only when things are lit from within that we can see clearly.
The same applies to situations around us. It is only when places, events, people and relationships are lit from within by the Holy Spirit that we can see clearly and begin to understand in God's way, rather than the way of the world. It is the darkness around us which, though so frightening and lonely, enables us to see beyond the surface with all its misleading and distracting reflections.

The dark and the cold: the desert through which we pass at times, is as the shadow of God's cloak thrown over us, cutting out the reflections. It is as a hand held over the surface of our watery spiritual vision. Though we may feel God to be far away at these times, he has in fact come very close. It is He who casts this shadow for us.
He can be seen more clearly in this lack of light, and we can see ourselves more clearly too: our fears, our failures, our sins, but also our strengths, and the gifts He is holding out to us. The difficulty and the challenge is to overcome our natural responses: to keep our eyes wide open, both literally and metaphorically, that we may come to see Him in the clarity of these shadows.
It is within these shadows that we may sense a hint of that infinite simplicity which mankind has as yet been unable to grasp.

“In the beginning … there was darkness over the deep …” (Genesis 1:1,2)
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Alongside

It is our faith that invites us to walk alongside each other, to carry the internal message that strives for recognition within us and which would guide our lives, into the unobservant existence and everyday routine of our days, as well as into the perceived burdens and turmoil of the people around us. To lighten the darkest days and to point to the true glory that lies behind the brightness of those that already seem ablaze; to throw open the shutters and roll back the blinds, that the constant flow of grace, which will fall freely upon each one of us, may be made known, received, shared and acted upon.

So easy to say when the sorrows and hardships are not our own, and yet, somewhere in the middle of the whole confusion of birth, life and death, of otherness, time, vanity and futility, of infinity as concept, impossibility or reality, of permanence and the ephemeral nature of all things physical, there lies an empathetic glow which cannot be disregarded nor detuned into a superficial and therefore meaningless form of sympathy. If we are aware of this feeling within our hearts, we will most probably dwell upon it with our minds, and, whether this results in a form of shutting-down, or in our responding to it in some supportive way, the consequence will be the product of our thinking, our vanity, and a sincere belief that prayers can be answered that is irretrievably entwined with an ongoing sense of futility.

This raises nervously asked questions within us; Should I say anything? What should I say? When should I say it?
If we have been made aware of a situation in a way that makes it clear to anyone directly involved in that situation, that everyone knows about it, is it sufficient to walk away without saying anything? Is it right to maintain an anonymous distance with the presumption that those closest to the reality of the situation will themselves be presumptuous with regard to our level of awareness? Will they know, presume, assume, hope or doubt that we are thinking of them? That we are praying for them?
Remembering that their minds are filled with the moment-to-moment actuality of their circumstances, will they even give a passing thought to such things?

Good people frequently hold different views on almost any subject we can think of, and this is no exception.
This was highlighted for me recently, when, after leaving church, and having briefly stood beside someone who is at the very heart of a long running struggle and sorrow, I was asked, by someone I have known for many years, if I had spoken to them. Confirmation that I had done so brought a surprised (and for me, a surprising) response.
This kind of sincere amazement and apparent disbelief demonstrates how very differently we can think, believe and act in the presence of other people’s distress.

We are individuals: we are individual creations and we each have our own outlook and view of the world, however similar our surroundings, upbringing, faith and fortunes, and yet there is only one truth. There is only one right way to live, to react and to be.
In any particular situation, at any particular time, there can be only one best way to respond, and that is the way God would have us respond. We may discern what that response should be, but, no sooner do we move in that direction than we override and exceed the limits of God’s guidance and instruction; the approach may be as intended, and the touch may be in response to God’s leading, but then we speak …
Our spoken words are so closely connected to our thinking that we almost certainly go beyond the utterance of anything that carries the blessings inherent in words given through inspiration. Discerning those words – if there are any – is an ability acquired and refined only through experience, and that experience does not even begin until we are in a position to receive and understand such touches of God’s will. And then, only if He wills that we should hear Him in such a way; He alone decides who is required to receive, carry and give these words. There are many gifts and we are each gifted in different ways according to the work God requires of us.
Perhaps, in my own case, the touch was all that was required? Perhaps that was all that was asked of me? Perhaps not even that?
A not too obvious approach, with a glance and a quiet nod of awareness perhaps, and not a single word?

We are individuals. As well as having our own outlook and view of the world, we have our own needs and our own responses to the needs of others. Beyond these facts of heart and mind, lies their spiritually calm and fruitful equivalent: the needs and responses of the persons we were born to be. Certainty may be regarded as a dream by many of us, but degrees of clarity are available to those of us who trust and obey at the very edge of our belief. In the presence of the Holy Spirit, and with that same Spirit welcomed into our hearts, we are increasingly enabled to judge the right response as we journey towards our full potential.

To be aware of someone’s fear, distress or pain, to share in sorrow or grief through the publicising of a situation, or through a knowledge of their involvement or close proximity to an announced need for prayer, is, in itself, not enough. If we give no hint that we have heard the message, or that we recognize their need, how are they to know that we are there for them, that we are truly aware, and that we shall indeed pray for them? Such moments carry feelings of uncertainty and risk, and it is this that makes us keep our heads down; we lower our eyes or otherwise avoid any near-contact that may cause embarrassment, especially to ourselves.
We make a point of superficially focussing ourselves and our conversation on others around us as we consciously drift back towards our comfortable everyday lives, leaving the devastation of the other’s need to the silent and unseen dignity of an uninterrupted solitude somewhere in our wake.
Having failed to consider alternatives, we do not even tell ourselves that this is best. We are not prepared to risk taking the risk.

Without a word our voice remains unheard; without a touch our presence remains unfelt; without a glance we are seen ever as unseeing. Without risking an admission of our own sense of helplessness and vulnerability in the face of another’s pain, our standing beside them can be little more than a sterile intrusion.
Our faith carries us far beyond a mere invitation; in that one glance, in a fleeting touch, or in the single word, we can fulfil its demand that we bring Christ into the heart of the situation: that we make known that we shall stand and walk alongside each other.
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“God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
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House of the Open Door

I have just been looking through this morning’s mail.
Among it was a letter from the House of the Open Door, a genuinely open and welcoming Christian community at Childswickham, near Broadway.
It is a place that has always quietly attracted me, though I have rarely visited in recent years.
There is never anything on the envelope to say where it has come from, but, as a result of a mistake made when jotting down my name and address long ago, I always know its source as soon as I look at it. The details incorrectly include the word ‘rower’, and how apt that seemed when I read the news it contained.

As already described, I have been conscious of the misfortune of others as a result of the rain on 20th July as contrasted with my own successful avoidance of any real inconvenience, but I now realize how general and how thinly spread my awareness was. I confess I had not given HOD a single thought until opening that envelope, and the shock brought me into reality once more.


House of the Open Door Community, Childswickham House, Childswickham, Broadway, Worcs WR12 7HH
As on 31st July:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Greetings in the name of the Lord!

Along with many homes in our part of the country, HOD was badly flooded on Friday 20th July.
A torrent, waist-high, swept through all our buildings and the farm. Thank God no-one was hurt and even the animals survived!

In this last week we have been so aware of God’s care and provision in many ways. Villagers opened their homes for the first couple of nights to accommodate the 25 young people staying with us in the run-up to Focus. Meals were cooked for us until we were given the loan of a cooking trailer.
The mountain of washing has been taken care of by some lovely ladies from the village and from our parish in Broadway. Trish and Rob’s tiny bungalow made a warm, dry base until we managed to clean up a little. And we have already received financial help from generous friends.

Ten days on, we have cleaned up most areas but are still waiting to get our electricity checked out, and we have no hot running water, and even worse, no internet, email or phone line! Although we quickly got moving with our insurance company, the damage is such that we will not be able to run the retreat centre until January/February at the very earliest. This of course means we have lost our main source of income, and Bernie has calculated that we have enough reserves in the charity, plus one immediate large donation, to see us through until the end of October. Another issue is that due to our open life-style and unlocked doors we were not able to take out contents insurance. Although we managed to lift some furniture and rugs upstairs before the water came in, we lost a lot of furniture, and community members with downstairs rooms lost many personal possessions.

The need now is for money to replace lost furniture and electrical items as well as for money to live on day to day. Your prayers too are appreciated for us at this time, that we would hear God’s direction in the midst of the disturbance.

In preparation for the Focus Conference (which should have started on Monday 23rd), Suzanna, one of our CRC, had made a set of banners which turned out to be quite prophetic in their watery theme.
He is the God who pulls us out of the deep water and rescues us even though the oceans roar.
We do praise Him for He is sovereign and He is in control.

With love and thanks,
Fiona

Fiona Hendy

An update on the situation can be found on their website, which is worth visiting for the inspirational effect of seeing the laughter and smiles on the faces of those whose lives have been so disrupted.

www.houseoftheopendoor.org


Take a look, pray for them, and help if you can.

... matters not

Life is tied in with matter just as an unborn child is tied in with his or her mother.
Laying aside the reality of today’s fertility and other scientific research and practice, as well as our awareness of today’s increasingly accepted lowering of moral standards with regard to sexual activity, and the criminal doubting of the validity of life within the womb, we inevitably look at this in a simplistic manner.
That in itself, however, is not a good reason for not looking. However complicated we may make it appear, truth and simplicity are inseparable. Absolute truth is absolute simplicity, and, in spite of mankind’s growing belief in his own rapid accumulation of knowledge, absolute simplicity remains far beyond our comprehension.

Regardless of the clearly simplistic nature of the statement, the child’s life was begun as the product of its parents’ love.
They themselves live a physical life inseparable from their bodies and the world around them, and the life they have enabled (not created) through their union, must grow within the safety and nurture of its own developmental universe: the womb.
The womb itself exists for that reason alone, to support life and to provide all that will be needed for the growth and the phenomenal advance in complexity, ability and potential of that life, until it is ready and able to leave that confinement to begin a whole new form of existence: a life which can be lived only by separating itself from all that has gone before.
What had been the child’s universe has passed into an unrecalled past. The new beginning, the new life, becomes all that it can believe, conceive or imagine; the only graspable possibility is that this is all there ever was, all there is, and all there will be. Awareness of a whole new world develops, but, as within the womb, the sum total of what will be learned of the wonder and the purpose of its environment is less than the dimmest glint, of the faintest tint, of the merest hint of what that cosmos contains. And yet, if it were possible to acquire all knowledge of the entire physical creation as we now suppose it to be, we may still know nothing of its purpose, nor of that in which it is contained, until, as with leaving the womb, we have developed to the point where we can only live by leaving it all behind.

Just as entropy may eventually conquer all physical activity and all matter in our universe, life itself will carry mankind, and each of us as an individual life focus, actual and potential, beyond that ultimately meaningless conclusion. Mankind was created and born into this world, this universe, through the love of God, to develop into what we were made to become: Spiritual beings. The Spiritual life is made for a Spiritual world; our new life in another unimagined existence awaits, and He who walked among us two thousand years ago, knew, by incomprehensible and unimaginable means, far more of what is to come than any other physical being.
He has taught us and led us.
His Spirit remains among us, and would dwell within each of us.
He teaches us still, and waits to lead us.
He still reaches His hand out to us, with the words, “Come, follow me.”


I have already admitted that the above is simplistic.
As cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest (1881) known use of the word as meaning ‘characterized by (extreme) simplicity’, is, “The facts of nature and of life are more apt to be complex than simple. Simplistic theories are generally one sided and partial.”
Quite so. The second sentence is simple and true, and the truth it conveys is unchanging.
The same applies to the first sentence; the facts of nature and of life are more apt to be complex than simple, but this is true only through the eyes of our minds as used today.
Where mankind is constantly in danger of misdirecting itself is in the ongoing inability to appreciate and interpret what we perceive as paradox, as demonstrated by the scientific delving (wonderful though it be) into ever greater complexities within the already known complexity. I believe there is something immense before us, but we have completely missed it; we do not have the eyes to see, and few, it seems, are even trying to look.
There is a profound simplicity underlying all this complexity, but until we know how and where to search it will remain lost to us.
Likewise, those simple matters not regarded as worthy of deep examination, study and thought, may hide a miraculous complexity from which the key to understanding the hidden simplicity and permanence of life may well be wrought.

‘For the Lord has infused you with a spirit of lethargy,
He has closed your eyes (the prophets),
He has veiled your heads (the seers).
For to you every vision has become like the words of a sealed book.
You give it to someone able to read and say, “Read that.” He replies, “I cannot, because it is sealed.”
You then give the book to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read that.” He replies, “I cannot read.” (Isaiah 29:10-12)

The eventual revelation of all answers will come through our journeying to our destination; it is among the places into which we shall be led, but only if we allow Him to lead.

Come! Let us follow.
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Matter ...

Last week’s rain had been, for me, a source of deep quiet and contentment: a droned beckoning to drift off into a form of relaxation and ease which enabled a steady and unhurried flow of clear un-tethered thought.
It was the sort of day and the kind of feeling, the degree of peace and the level of awareness that I could long for as a regular part of my week; the sort of day that would bring real meaning to the Sabbath if it could somehow be poured, complete with a full awareness of it, into all lives and minds. It enabled a focussing and a clarity, from within which came an invitation to narrow that focus to the point where it dwelt on nothing, and where the clarity would become totally clear, transparent and containing only the seeming nothingness upon which the focus dwelt. The invitation was to freefall into the true peace which the world cannot give: a peace which can be approached most nearly through contemplative prayer.
I believe I would have laid my books and my thoughts aside if the day had remained the same; I hope so. But I did not.
Instead, I thought and I read, until that moment when I realized the day was not to be entirely one of peace. Perhaps that is how it was meant to be, but I feel, nevertheless, that I missed a God given opportunity: a time made for being alone with Him, rather than simply thinking on matters indirectly related to spending time in His presence.

The influence of that rain having fallen in quantities greater than was comfortable, has not passed.
For many people that discomfort is a depressing form of grief in the aftermath of the destruction or ruination of their homes; a debilitating sense of violation and loss, in the face of a sodden mutilation that brought valued and familiar possessions to an unimagined and polluted end. Even for those who have suffered no such loss, the discomfort of being close to others who have, is a lingering numbness of empathy, sympathy and futility; and this generates that sense of helplessness which makes us feel guilty for having not been similarly devastated.
In my own case, such feelings are even more distant. We have lost nothing. The only possessions that were soaked were those we wore, and the only water that got into our home was that which dripped from our clothes. Our neighbours breathed the same sighs of relief as ourselves when it was over, but we all shared an untroubled outcome.

The garden will not look normal until the trench and its parallel ridge of turf, soil and stones have been rearranged once more into level ground, and then normality will not be complete until the grass has grown and no scar remains. That may take quite some time, as I shall not begin to repair the damage until I have made ‘alternative arrangements’ for the water which will no doubt reappear at some time in the future. It has been twenty five years since our first (not so dry) experience, but I do not think it will be that long before the next.

I would have thought that, by now, everything would have returned to normal; not for those who have been, and still are, suffering from the physical effects, but for myself, and perhaps for others who similarly have no reason to do anything other than return to an everyday, comfortable feeling. But I am not entirely at ease.
I cannot shake off an inner discomfort that has no immediate connection with the consequences of the rain, but is firmly linked to the quiet morning spent enjoying the sight of it, and bathing for hours in the sound of its fall drifting through the house. I had been immersed in peace, and the mild discomfort which persists within me, is only to a very small degree tied in with work that needs to be done before I can turn my back on thoughts of a similar flow running past my door.

My disquiet is born of a gradually surfacing struggle between my need to spend time in prayer, and what presents itself as an almost insurmountable inability to do so. Lodged somewhere in a corner - whether of my mind or my heart - is a small but tight knot of anguish: a low-key but, as it were, persistent hand-wringing. As already described, it is only a mild discomfort, but it increasingly points me to the ceaseless flow of life which maintains each of us in being, and which is at the root of everything around us, everything we know.
That flow is unstoppable, but it is easy to imagine that if we ceased to labour and strive, or, if continuing to do so, that we so utterly perverted our thinking that our labours became entirely contrary to the laws upon which that life is based, then we may self-destruct as a species. However much of the life around us we took with us, the flow itself is unstoppable; life would go on, though not for us. Since life came to be, life is, and so shall it be.

Entropy beckons within all physical existence: within ourselves, and in all that our awareness can comprehend. It is the supposed ultimate equalizer throughout the entire universe.
But, while I am happy to agree with that probability, I remain untroubled by it; something within tells me of the impossibility of the flow of life being inseparably linked with this conclusion of all matter.

“… for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares The Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)
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Reawakened

I have just been reawakened to a half-forgotten reality: to a lamp, the light from which had grown so dim that I had almost entirely forgotten it. I have been shocked back into an awareness of how important it is that such lamps should never be allowed to grow dim, and what has shocked me most is not the pornographic content of what suddenly appeared before me at one innocent click on the mouse, but the fact that I had allowed myself to become so forgetful of the fact that such things exist, that they are so easily available, and that, as well as the market for such things being so great, there are so many people who actively promote the availability and normalization of their unrestrained, abnormal and unhealthy attitudes towards intimacy in general, and sex in particular.
Privacy, respect, restraint and love are words that have little meaning in their worlds, and ‘conscience’ and ‘shame’ have none at all.
This is a dangerous place in which to be, and I have been reminded of why I do not casually browse through the web sites and blogs, and of why I am here in the midst of it all.

When I first began writing here I had to ask myself why I was doing it; I was drawn into something I had no clear or logical reason for wanting to become a part of, but I arrived here, and, almost without knowing what I was going to do, I began to write. And here I am still.
If I ever slide into a long-term feeling of futility, that nobody is gaining anything from what I have to say, or even a belief that no one is reading it anyway, I hope I shall have the sense to stop; but so long as I continue to feel filled to the brim, and overflowing with something that is worth sharing with others, I shall continue to draw words out of myself in the hope that – at least some of the time - I can separate the wheat from most of the chaff and put them into an order that speaks helpfully to them.

On 26th December, in ‘The right time and place’, I wrote the following: -

‘The reasons for being here are centred on the simple fact that the world of blogs is a reflection of the real world as it is today. The internet is exactly that, and is partly filled with much of the goodness we can imagine, produce, or hope for. It also contains much that is on a par with the realities of everyday living: the functional, the helpful, the necessary, as well as the useless, the superfluous, the merely attractive and the superficially desirable. It makes available to all, the immense forests of today’s marketplace, where both the supply and the demand are manufactured; where the driving force, in itself, is not one of evil, but where our own susceptibility and weakness result in the outcomes not always being good for ourselves and others. It also gives space and prominence to that which is entirely contrary to the goodness which resides in each one of us. The product of the blackest corners of our natures: corners which are also to be found in ourselves, and which can so easily be enticed to walk more freely in the broader expanses of our lives by those who give free rein to them. Everything we can conjure from our imagination, and much we could never have imagined, will be found waiting for us in what is not a virtual world, but a facsimile, a copy, an alluring shadow of the actual world in which we live. We may have to actively look for the worst of it, rather than finding it thrust upon us, but it is there.
“Seek and you shall find,” is frighteningly true in this world-wide web of availability.’

I have now experienced having it thrust upon me.
If I sense the work of those powers that constantly seek to draw us away from our journey towards our true selves and towards God, it is not in the incident that has awakened me, nor in its content; it is in the quiet and unobtrusive way I had been made to set my awareness of the dangers aside. The last thing Satan would have wanted was to have me jolted back into alertness instead of sidelined from my belief in his existence and my hatred of his insinuating ways. He would subdue, subject and seduce everyone who strives for goodness in this world. Those who appear to work for him and with him are of no interest to him; they are already his. And yet, for each one of them, there is still hope.

Jeremiah says, (4:3) “Clear the ground that lies neglected, do not sow among thorns.”
To walk among such people in a direct attempt to bring Jesus into their lives would be to cast pearls straight into the mud where they would be trampled; it would be to sow among those thorns. But under that tangled and twisted growth, the ground is still fertile. It may be grossly polluted rather than simply neglected, but their potential still lives.

Unlikely though it may seem, some may even read this. Among the words I have just written is ‘sex’; (and that’s twice.)   Anyone searching the internet for anything far beyond the presence of that short word, now has one more angle on it that may appear unexpectedly on their screens.  The same principle applies to all addictions, and all drugs: heroin etc., alcohol, sex … ( three times!).

To anyone who may have landed here by that random route, and who may have read this far, you are truly welcome! Your first question, perhaps, should be: What caused me to begin reading?
We are all friends here, and we would value your companionship as we share our journeys. You may not believe it (yet) but you have something of great value and we wish to share your blessings. They are not lost, nothing is lost; they are buried very deep, but the neglected ground can still be cleared.

May the Spirit that guided you here, find a welcome within you.

Come, walk with us for a while.

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And then the rain

The previous afternoon, my eldest son had greeted me as I arrived home with the words, “Welcome to July!”
The sky, for anyone within even the most distant sight of the Malvern Hills, had dispersed all blues with its blue, and the sun had beamed warmth and light into everybody’s lives. We were reminded of how summer should feel; even the forecast of more rain the next day did not entirely brush aside the possibility of more of these potentially friendly, neighbour-greeting, laughter-filled, soporific, insect-humming and scent–filled days.
But then came the rain.

The day felt good; the warmth was welcomed and God was thanked for it. In what must have been a similar appreciation to that of the inhabitants of Eden when in their garden as the Near-Eastern heat decreased at the end of the day, the raised temperature and the sunshine brought a smile of contentment and an ‘Isn’t life wonderful’ feeling to the moment.
In Eden, “The man and his wife heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, …” (Genesis 3:8)
In my own garden, in the heat of a glorious summer day, I sensed His presence in the light, the warmth, the shade and the gentle whispers of leaves stirred by the softest breeze.
And then came the rain.

I love the rain: I love the rain at least as much as I love the warm sunny days; and with the possibility of the following day not being ideal for cutting the grass, the mower was brought into service for three hours or so as I put the lawn (a somewhat loose use of the word) into the trimmed version of itself that would allow me to enjoy other aspects of the garden, and other uses of my time at home, without the nagging thought that I needed to get it cut.
As I completed the task, and as I relaxed into the knowledge that I would be home for the following three days, the blue sky faded and hid behind a deepening greyness that drifted like a vast stadium roof across my world. July seemed to be disappearing again. Preparation time was over; it seemed that the roof closed in preparation for a major fixture: the big match.
As yet I was unaware of the game to be played.
And then came the rain.

During the evening, the first few spots dappled windows and paths with a sensual touch of life giving water; the quiet sense of nature’s balance and the rightness of all things rounded the day with a continued sense of God’s presence. I was able to look forward to the falling rain in the satisfied knowledge that the mowing was done. The day drew to its contented and prayerful close.
And then came the rain.

I first awoke at 6:00 am. The rain was falling steadily, greyly, beautifully, quietly. I watched from the bedroom window for a while before returning to bed where I slept on for another couple of hours; I had not had much sleep while at work the previous night, and the beautiful sound of falling rain soon drew my consciousness into distant realms.
When I finally arose, the world was unchanged; the light, the sounds and the feel of the morning were exactly the same. I watched the rain once more and then went downstairs where I opened windows and doors to let the sound of it permeate the stillness of the house.
No radio to hear the news, no music of whatever sort to fit, to change, or to create a mood; no sound to interfere with the gospel words of rainfall that blended with my whole being as I breakfasted before the vision of overflowing grace and calm that displayed its silvered greyness across the green of my private world.
And still came the rain.

I spent several hours with my annotated works of St John of the Cross, which I had not looked at for the last ten years or so. I had brought them out to look for the quotation I used in the previous post; the image of the bird restrained by a fragile yet unbroken thread has always been deeply lodged within me since first I read it.
The sight of the rain was a display of beauty; the sound of it was an enveloping and soul-filling whisper that spoke of peace, of gift, of our helplessness in the face of all that is real. The power is not ours; the control is not ours; the will is not ours. Ours is to be as we were made to be. Ours is to empty and deny ourselves before the ultimate truth of our existence, in an attempt to fuse our longing with the unimaginable hand that created and sustains us.
My son had welcomed me to July; he now shared my contemplative peace in the music of a time-annulling drench cloaking our lives.
And still came the rain.

What followed is in fact of little consequence.
Our garden is lower than those of most of our neighbours, and the possibility of a repeat of something that has only happened once in the last thirty years was sufficiently remote to be regarded as well-nigh impossible. This was based on the memory that the previous occurrence involved the combination of heavy and persistent rainfall with the rapid thaw of the heaviest snow we had seen for years; and this after all is July.
The first wavering of my confidence came when the pseudo-pond that I thought we would never see again, began to re-form in the middle of the garden. The beauty of peace laid upon me during the preceding hours, finally gave way to an increasing sense of urgency when a trickle was seen coming under the fence near the house. Surely not! One look into the adjoining gardens was enough; it was about to happen again. Memories of sodden carpet, and hacking plaster off living-room walls do not fade easily, and both my son and I spent the next six hours attempting to prevent the same situation arising again. Because, from previous experience, we knew what could happen, we acted quickly enough and drastically enough to succeed in our endeavours. The grass, so gladly cut the previous day, is now bisected by a deep and ugly scar which is the trench we had to dig to carry water away from the house to lower ground. The flow from the neighbours’ land increased to a freely flowing and seemingly endless stream, but the day ended with our carpets being dry: - just.
And still came the rain.

It was a long time before things could be regarded as being under control, but all the while, without knowing what was occurring elsewhere, there was the overwhelming awareness that we had no problems at all compared with others who would be truly suffering as a result of this same rain in which we had been delighting for much of the day.
And still came the rain.

Of the thoughts arising from the day’s events, two, I feel, are worth conveying to anyone who may read this.
Firstly, however sure we may be that we can control our own lives, that we can make all the decisions entirely on our own, and that our resulting actions will lead to real progress and the empowerment of our true selves, we are not in a position of authority over anything; each of us has a Master, and this Master can manifest Himself in the elements we so easily take for granted.
”I will go tomorrow,” said the King. “You will wait my will,” said the wind. (Hebridean Altars. Alistair Maclean.)

Secondly, we can either help or hinder our neighbours in their time of need.
Whether through the consequences of, or through our reactions to what they may do, or through the effects of our own actions upon them, we can influence the generation or the destruction of harmony between them and ourselves.
My neighbours’ gardens were filled to the brim, and there was only ever going to be one destination for their overflowing: - my garden.
The eventual outcome was that much of what poured towards my home and accumulated as a lake before me, would gradually (very gradually) soak into the ground, but not before the overflowing from my land had coursed through another garden and garage to form yet another pool – a longer lasting one – in yet another neighbour’s garden.
In working to help myself I helped to reduce one neighbour’s problem, but simultaneously appeared to be adding to the misfortunes of another. The reality was that the water would go where it would go; what damage it would do while on its way was partly dependent on what actions we all took to speed it on its way. By hurrying it along we minimized its depth at all points on its journey and thus reduced and prevented the real problems. To have done nothing would have meant that no water would have overflowed to the next home until it had done its worst with each of us.

Before being soaked in rain’s physical presence, I had been immersed in peace. The very rains that caused me some concern, but very real distress for others, had been a source of deep quiet and contentment. It would be easy for me to loll back in that relaxation and ease, and to dismiss the day’s events as a close shave; to mind my own business and leave those who had been less fortunate to fend for themselves. We are not here to blissfully sunbathe in what we hope will be a bright and sunny summer; we are here to turn the black days into grey, and the grey days into gold: to strive for ourselves, for others, and for God, that every day may roll back the roof from our world, and, even if the clouds themselves do not, let the light and the blue sky announce that it is indeed July.


“… I suppose it is a long time before any one of us recognizes and understands that his own state on earth is in one shape or other a state of trial and sorrow; and that if he has intervals of external peace, this is all gain, and more than he has a right to expect.”
(Parochial and Plain Sermons. John Henry Newman)
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The slenderest of cords

The days have come and gone since I last posted anything here, and, despite wanting to write and wanting my thoughts to take an understandable form that would lead to that sometimes (to me) astonishing production of words that not only clarifies for myself, but hopefully conveys to others, the meaning of whatever has been stirring within my mind, I have had no idea what will come next.
Despite all attempts to gather ideas and thoughts in ways that would stimulate the production of explanatory sentences, I have, it seems, increasingly become a blank canvas: a potential means of proclaiming and announcing God’s presence and truth, but with nothing to proclaim except my own willingness and desire to be used for that purpose. One moment a sense of filled and overflowing emptiness, and then, in unanticipated and uncontrollable ways, a wholly unexplainable fullness billowing from the effects of several things coming to mind all at once; an experience which leaves me devoid of all understanding, and certainly without any means of communicating that experience – let alone the meaning of it – to anyone else, or even to myself.

That is precisely what has happened through my thinking about and writing about the tree, trees in general, and the way ivy will overtake them if left undisturbed. The uncovering of that tree has drawn me out of whatever frame of mind enabled me to put together the various ideas and feelings I have had since starting to write here.
So many days have passed that I now find myself looking at the situation as though I have missed something.
I cannot relax my mind’s grip on the possibility of every incident and event being of significance, and of the superficial sterility of these days having hidden what is – in keeping with my undeniable sense of significance in almost all that surrounds me at this time – a serious and profoundly important instruction and direction for me.
Having felt as though drawn away from the edge (though in fact having had the edge transformed for me), and having been taken into a quieter and deeper absorption in the focus of my life, love and longing within this world, the presence of God has been manifested for me repeatedly within the things closest to me: my family , my home, and its calming effects on each of us who live here. My garden has become my lecture hall, my encyclopaedia, my teacher’s blackboard and my revision notes, as well as the screen upon which my heart casts and my mind views its collection of dreams.
I have had the basics of my faith laid out before me in ways that have brought the past, with its touches of wonder and innocent love, into the earthiness of my present. My mature and adult perception of myself, and of my weakness and strength, has brought a needed realism to the fantasy that has for so long prevented my having a real contact with the guide and the source of my faith.

Time has slipped away with a persistent inability to bring my mind to any form of focus; I have strained to utter within myself some coherent and cohesive phrase which will at least hint at the edification for which I long. At first thought so saddening, so hurtful, so strange, though ultimately such a balm, and such a blessing; – a bitter-sweet touch: a velvet-soft piercing by the talons of paradox.
The emptiness is full to the brim with some intangible and unrecognizable meaning which entirely negates all sense of emptiness while simultaneously maintaining and confirming the void. The undeniable sense of fullness and overflowing has at its heart an unassailable hollowness: an emptiness which grasps the heart so tightly that even taking breath becomes a tear-provoking strain against an unyielding and unforgiving chest. A longing manacled to a deepening regret drags at the heels of one who would fly; I am held, as it were, in chains before the seat of all that is, all that has ever been , and all that shall come to be.
Nothing is of any real consequence save that unknown permanence towards which I am drawn, but from which I am held back by other desires and seemingly unconquerable and undeniable weaknesses.

St John of the Cross tells us in Ascent of Mount Carmel. (I:XI) “…habitual imperfections…for example…some slight attachment which we never quite wish to conquer…is of…great harm to (the soul’s) growth and progress in virtue…for as long as it has this there is no possibility that it will make progress in perfection, even though the imperfection be extremely slight. For it comes to the same thing whether a bird be held by a slender cord or by a stout one; since, even if it be slender, the bird will be as well held as though it were stout, for so long as it breaks it not and flies not away.
It is true that the slender one is the easier to break; still, easy though it be, the bird will not fly away if it be not broken. And thus the soul that has attachment to anything, however much virtue it possess, will not attain to the liberty of Divine union.”

I have been allowed to drift within the folds of God’s cloak during these days, as though drawing breath after shedding restrictions of my own devising.
At one point in the freeing of that tree, it took more than an hour to remove ivy from a single foot of branch, so deeply had it embedded in a wrap-around grip that included the encasing of two stumps of smaller branches. These were not visible until the ivy had been removed and were much of the reason why I found the task almost impossible without damaging the tree itself. At that point, some twenty feet above the ground, the ivy and the tree had become almost one and the same structure, with the approaching death of that branch being un-witnessed, unnoticed, and having no effect on the outer image of the ongoing growth that clung ever more tightly to the frame on which it had hauled itself from the depths.
In the same way our own attachments become part of us: they become as natural to us as breathing, but so long as we allow them to thrive within us, they endlessly tighten their grip on our thought, our consciousness and our subsequent behaviour. We unknowingly surrender ourselves to a living death in which our true self is buried ever deeper beneath the lethal caress of those attachments.
The delicate looking tendril of ivy is as the slender cord which prevents the bird from taking flight; it is easily broken, but so long as it remains it destroys all chance of potential being realized.
The bird was made to fly. Can it ever truly be what it was meant to be without the freedom to fly away?
The tree was made to grow unrestricted, to the limits of its potential within the ground that is its home. The delicate and attractive ivy shoots grow, become deeply embedded, restrict growth and eventually kill.
Our worldly attachments work in the same way; our spiritual life is at risk from the very first attractions, and those slenderest of cords, if not severed, soon become unbreakable through our own strength.
God alone can save us from them: He alone can cut us free, but we still have to surrender ourselves to whatever pains may be involved in the necessary amputation.

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“… if you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal.” (Ecclesiasticus 2:1)

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... and of a tree

I think and speak of a single tree, but there are, in fact, two trees growing close together, whose shapes harmonize so beautifully that I tend to think of them as a single unit. The larger and more strikingly shaped of the two was appreciated when we first arrived to live here, but not in any exceptional way.
As with the ivy, thirty years goes a long way, not only with the shaping of a tree but also with the building and maturing of a spiritual life. Without my own journeying through those years, I would not have seen it in the way that has led to me contemplating it every day, and writing about it here.
It has never been in any danger of being uprooted or bowed to the ground, but the ivy had all but obscured it from view, and for the first three metres of its trunk it was clenched in the mighty grip of coils thicker than my arm. I became aware that it needed to be set free, and that became the focus of my efforts rather than the rescuing of the lesser trees around it.
Having completed the task, and having revealed the deep grooves in the trunk that now tell of the constriction against which it had fought, I could do nothing but step back in admiration. The tree had been re-discovered, revealed anew, and now stood as the most strikingly beautiful object in the whole garden. I had not simply uncovered it, it had been revealed to me: what I saw was a revelation.

As soon as the hidden shape had started to become visible once more, I began to feel that I was meant to be doing this, and soon afterwards, that what I was doing should have a parallel in my own life.
The whole process of uncovering the tree has been the revelation of something that has always been there: the stripping away of all that would hide it, subdue it, and eventually overcome it. Even if it continued to resist the power that would negate all its inherent goodness, it would remain under its influence through becoming ever more accustomed to being hidden from the world around it, and ever less likely to outgrow and to survive the enemy that sought to prevent its beauty being known in the world.
The tree now clearly offers itself to all who approach it, and will put joy in the heart of any who pause to appreciate it.
It speaks to me of a continual need to allow myself to be uncovered: to refrain from the habitual hiding away of my true self that has always been, and continues to be, so natural for me. It reassures me that I am loved just as I am: that God does not demand some drastic change in me, but simply asks that I shed the screens behind which I have been growing for so many years. He needs me to take my place, to play my part, and to know that He has need of me precisely as the person I am today.

During these days I have been carried far from the edge: far from any sense of proximity to the unknown which calls me to soliloquize at the very edge of my experience and understanding. The tree, it seems, has drawn me away from the fringes of uncertainty and absorbed me even deeper into the heart of that which is already my place of knowing, my home of peace and of rest: my safe haven.
I hear another echo of the gardener and his God together in Eden; this time with the presence of a significant tree.

I have said before that most of my time in the garden is spent appreciating it rather than striving endlessly to maintain its image; I do little more than control what nature herself decides to do. I now appreciate that this in itself has created a garden with its own distinct image – the one I love – and unconsciously allowing this particular tree to disappear was part of my acceptance, even encouragement, of the ever deeper seclusion gained from allowing the ivy to have its way for thirty years in that part of the garden. That this began, and with its progress engendered an increasing contentment in being separated from my neighbours, is an uncomfortable admission hinting at aspects of my outlook which are not quite as they should be, and which I know I really do not want to change.
Likewise, I do not consciously strive to maintain an image of myself: I am not conscious of having an image, but I now realize that to be absurd; if I am seen by anyone I have an image. Whether accurate or not, whether worked at or not, it will be built upon how I appear to be, and in the minds of those in the world at large who see me, how I appear to be is how I am: how I am seen is what I am, and what I am is who I am. This is almost certainly very far from the truth, but that is how the world directs the judgement of those it claims as its own.
With my frequent yearning for invisibility, and with my renewed awareness of how that may influence the way I am perceived by others, that should and does concern me; and I am the only one who can do anything about it.

That the work I am doing is not destroying seclusion but transforming it, and ensuring its continuation for years to come, is both satisfying and rewarding. The mellowing of scars under renewed growth over the next two or three years will be a source of joy as the image in my mind becomes reality, but the pinnacle of that joy will always be the continued sight of that tree, and its undeniable significance for me.

I am always asking, ‘God, what is it that you would have me do?’
It would be so easy to convince myself that I have not yet received a reply, especially as the suspected answer is not one to which I have any natural inclination to respond. I have been reminded that I must allow myself to be seen and known as the person I really am; to take my place and make His presence known among the very people from whom I tend to retreat. He calls me, not to forsake my solitude, but to balance my continued withdrawal from the world from which my home increasingly shelters me, with an outgoing invitation for others to share in the wonders of faith and joy and peace that I have gained from my own trust in His presence. To share with others the wonderful consequences of knowing that Jesus has, in effect, spoken to me as He did to his disciples two thousand years ago.

Follow Him, watch for Him, listen for Him.
Choose Him and open yourself to Him that He may reveal Himself to you; that you may hear Him utter those same words within yourself.

‘…my choice of you has drawn you out of the world…’ (John 15:19)
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Talk of trees ...

Finding meaning in outwardly inconsequential things is both a natural and a supernatural consequence of faith.
To suspect for the first time that an incident or concurrence may be more than coincidence; that an unusually felt impact of words may convey something of personal significance; that the timing of someone’s path crossing our own, or of ours crossing theirs, whether apparently fortuitous or otherwise, is somehow an intended and meaningful occurrence, is to have become aware that communication with something beyond ourselves - with God - may indeed be a real possibility.
In our superficial and semi-automatic way we already know this, and our praying – infrequent and unfocused though it be - is possibly the sum total of our unconsidered realization of this truth.
But one day, our mind strangely registers something differently: the world around us recedes from its all-enveloping position of prominence within our consciousness - in itself a new experience - and we stop. In that moment we are focussed beyond our every-day life and we think, we question, we wonder.
We have been told so many times that communication is a two-way thing. Communication with God is also two-way, and it is not Him who holds things back: He is always speaking to us. The limiting factor is us: our lack of faith, our failure to maintain our awareness of Him in all that we do, and our inability to pray.

Heartfelt prayer arises from firm foundations that can only be built with that faith and that awareness. That is not to say that a person cannot be brought from a desert emptiness to real communication with God in an instant; an opening of ourselves to His will, a complete laying of our lives before Him, and an undoubting trust in His judgment and His response brings His word to us.
In a single instant of longing, of peace or fear, of grief or joy, of remorse or determination, of certainty or near despair, He can pierce the divide and find us in the dazzle, bewilderment or darkness of our moment. Whether in a single transforming revelation or in the one-step-at-a-time accumulation of conviction, He can find us, call us by name, reach out and touch us, grasp us and draw us into the safety of His acceptance of us just as we are. His touch and His word confirm His presence; His presence confirms His existence. We are awakened to His truth, and move closer to Life as it is meant to be lived. We are on our way to being, as it were, reborn.
For those of us who, like me, have taken the longer and slower path, the recognition of His presence, His friendship and love, His calling, instruction, blessing or admonition becomes more likely every time we respond to His word with the desired action and with prayer. Prayer, which together with our constant awareness and openness to His speaking to us, forms our part in that two-way process, and maintains our continued communication.

These thoughts have been stirred from me by the sight of a tree. This particular tree has been fixed in my mind throughout the last two weeks, and I am unable to shake off the process of its being revealed to me any more than I can wipe away the image of sinuous beauty that it has burned into my memory.
The experience has been absorbed and anchored somewhere deeper than my consciousness, and it now runs through me repeatedly as a parable. I am not searching for deeper levels of meaning as I am bathed in a significance which confronted me almost at once; a further example of God speaking to me through things I do and things I see, and of which I feel compelled to speak here. And that compulsion, the internal pressure that brings thought to expression or action, is likewise a facet of His communication with us; a leading and empowering that culminates in an overflowing imperative: an undeniable nudge in the direction of the response we are intended to make: the unmistakeable prompting of the Holy Spirit.
I have thus been returned to my thoughts on gardening (23.04.07 post) and the influential place a garden can take in the spiritual life of any of us.

I have lived in my home for thirty years, and for all that time part of the garden has been allowed to go its own way. What was a neglected area of undergrowth with a scattering of damson and hawthorn trees amid the straggly privet, wild roses and small amounts of ivy covering the ground, gradually became a rather wonderful green and shady world of ivy-clad trees rising from a floor of almost uninterrupted glossy green. While the ivy spread across the ground in slender strands, wherever it rose upon the trunks of trees it quickly grew into the stronger growth with which we are all familiar on hedgerow trees around the countryside. Thirty years goes a long way in the transformation of a tender and harmless looking ivy shoot.
The main reason for the whole area being left untouched for so long is that it has always provided a substantial buffer between the utilized part of our own ground and that of our neighbours; it gave us a deep sense of privacy from that side of the garden.
Our children enjoyed its sense of semi-forbidding seclusion when they were younger, and once they had outgrown the tree house built on its edge – since decayed to a roofless danger - it almost faded from our minds, so well did it function at keeping us separate from much of the rest of the world around us. What brought me into its dappled light with a purpose, rather than just for a passing appreciation of its seclusion and quiet, was the need to prevent some of the trees falling under the weight of ivy and top-heavy growth. Several had already gone, and others were only held up by the trees they had leant against when they could no longer support themselves. One in particular, a hawthorn, at the edge of its smothered world and thus clearly visible from the mown grass, was arched in a graceful bow. Having suddenly seen it as it really was – not so much a graceful bow as an agonizing struggle to remain rooted in its world, and unbroken under the burden of its strangled canopy – I began my rescue mission.
I soon became aware that there were many others in a similar predicament; they had grown up in their own private jungle and had to reach high on slender trunks to find the sunlight, every metre gained being another measure of support for the ivy they sought to outgrow.
I now know I have several weeks of contemplative work amid their quiet solitude before I will have made them all safe for the foreseeable future.

Those weeks will be the more enjoyable for being within sight of that one particular tree.
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