So much is involved in that one instruction, to ‘clear the ground that lies neglected’; so much effort for some, so much time for others, so much of both for most of us.
It is the endurance of that effort, and a patient and persistent hope in the passage of time that comprise perseverance: a constant application of commitment from us that allows the constant flow of grace to touch our lives, to enter our consciousness, and to work within our hearts.
Each of us will have both task and trek before we can make our inner ground fully available, but let us look ahead, beyond the edges we shall encounter on the way, to the expectancy awaiting us when we have cleared that ground.
We are ready and we are receptive; we await the seed God wishes to plant within us. We have no way of knowing what He may ask of us, but we are alive in a way we have never before experienced. We are spiritually alert.
Anticipation fills our waking hours, and falling asleep at the end of each day takes on a whole new significance; we feel we may not awake the same as we were the previous day.
The concept of ‘watching’, which may have been unknown to us, or may have been vaguely understood as trying to keep at least a small part of our awareness in touch with the possibility of Christ’s return, is suddenly experienced as a lump-in-the-throat reality.
An overriding sense of unseen but all-pervading power brings, perhaps for the first time, awareness and conviction that we are not masters of our own destiny.
Our free will allows us to decide where we do in fact go, but our real selves, the persons we were made to be, are drawn into a communal desire with the will of God. We are called to a realization of truth, to a manifestation of love, and to a fulfilment of our deepest longing in the following of our Lord’s call.
But having reached this point, having been prepared to follow wherever God may lead us, what then? Where will we go? What will we do? And more disconcerting than either of these concerns, how ever shall we know?
Will we be granted some form of conviction as to the path to take? How will we know to trust the conviction? How will we know the path? Will we take a course that suits our own desires or imagined destiny?
If God provides a guide: if someone arrives in our life - a Spirit filled person to beckon and to lead - will we know them? Will we hear? Will we see? Will we follow? Will we see them in the right light? Or will they become an attraction or distraction in themselves?
Such provision may be simply for support: to enable us to hold firm; but it may be that God is granting us the chance of a relationship that will take us forward in ways we could never have imagined.
The close followers of Jesus – his apostles – were taught by Him in order that they could become the people His Father created them to be: the people He chose them to be. Jesus was their teacher. We also may be blessed with Jesus as our teacher, but the Holy Spirit may grant the provision of a human companion who, for a time, may be our mentor, our teacher in the ways in which God needs us to become competent and effective.
Such was the prophet Elijah to the young Elisha.
Elisha was chosen by God to be Elijah’s successor: to become His prophet after him.
Their meeting (1 Kings 19:19-21) is first seen as the call of Elisha, but is also the fulfilment of God’s instruction to Elijah.
‘… he came on Elisha … as he was ploughing behind twelve yoke of oxen, …Elijah passed near to him and threw his cloak over him. Elisha left his oxen and ran after Elijah. … following Elijah, (he) became his servant.’
It was God’s plan that the two men should meet at this time.
Elijah: the mature man of God, knowing God’s will and acting upon it. He was God’s servant: His prophet.
He had no need of a servant, but Elisha had been chosen by God, and he needed to serve, and to learn. He was not yet ready to serve God as His prophet, but he was ready to follow the man appointed by God to be his teacher; to learn to be in God’s presence, to know His will, to respond to His prompting, and to become the person he had been chosen to be.
Elijah was God’s servant.
Elisha became servant to God’s servant, that he may himself become effective as a servant of God.
By spending time with Elijah, seeds would be sown in the prepared ground of his heart; seeds gathered from the inner harvest of Elijah’s maturity in the presence of God.
Elisha would be formed from the example, teaching and Godly power of his appointed mentor.
Elisha was ready for God to move him.
He was ready to do God’s will; ready for Elijah when he came, and ready to leave everything to follow him.
His inner ground had been prepared and lay ready for God’s leading.
He was found ploughing the land, but God had another plough waiting for him.
In a similar way Jesus called the fishermen, Peter and Andrew, and James and John, away from their boats and nets, saying, “I will make you fishers of people.” (Matthew 4:18-22).
Their inner ground had been prepared; they were receptive, and they were ready.
They too had been ‘watching’, and, without knowing what to expect, had recognized their calling when it came.
As with Elisha, their response was immediate; they followed.
Each of them was called by name: a specific person for a specific place in God’s plan.
We too are called by name.
It is the intimate knowledge of ourselves encapsulated in that calling, that makes it undeniable, unavoidable, and ultimately irresistible.
.
Saturday 28 April 2007
Monday 23 April 2007
Gardening
Until recently, I have never thought of myself as a gardener.
In the way that I automatically understand the word, I am not a gardener: I have never been a gardener; and yet, more than almost anything else, I love spending time in my garden, and that enjoyment comes, in part, from doing and having done those things which make it the place that it is.
I have become increasingly aware that what I have been doing is gardening in one of its pure forms.
I have never spent time creating a wonderful array of variety and colour: filling flower beds with what, for me, represents hours of devotion in the form of propagation, nurturing and weeding, resulting from a consistently maintained focus on the resulting display.
My appreciation of such things has waned from something never particularly obvious, to an unresponsive reaction summed up in the simple question, “Why?”
It is not that I can see no point to any of the labour required to create such beauty; it is that I do not see the result as a form of beauty high enough to warrant the necessary dedication to its realization. That level of organization and neatness, contrived diversity, and density of population can so easily create in me a form of urban suffocation. In spite of the possibility of finding no other human presence in such surroundings, and despite the undeniable loveliness of almost every individual flower in creation, I can feel buried under my awareness of the human activity involved in this form of creation.
I see that way of gardening as being similar to the placing of substantial value upon such superficial things as cosmetics, and the ephemeral waste that is the fact behind such fictions as the world of ‘fashion’. The gardener within us has been drawn into the generation of artificial needs and desires that fuel the supposed civilization of today’s high speed and value-warping world.
The persuasiveness of publicity and advertising, and the greed of business and commerce, have seduced each other into a marriage bed that spawns an ever increasing destruction of the values and the integrity of being truly human.
There is a power for good in all this activity: great and beneficial things are also conjured from today’s seething mass of potential, but so many of us are becoming all but lost in our inability to resist our susceptibility to the bright, the loud and the colourful.
This apparent inability encourages an ever increasing intensity of promotion of those things we do not need but are unable to do without.
Conversely, a garden has the power to keep us in touch with things we truly do need, but which, for most of the time, we believe we can manage without.
Deep within, I am as much a gardener as the person who spends eight or ten hours of every day producing and maintaining his flower beds and manicured lawns; but most of my hours are spent appreciating my ground rather than having to strive endlessly to maintain its image.
I allow nature to make most of the decisions, and recently this was brought home to me when I realized how the whole layout and feel of my garden has been governed by such things as the way a tree has fallen to the ground, or the seemingly random growth of unsuspected plants that nature has provided. There are shrubs and climbers which have been bought and planted near the house, but more than anything else, I have simply controlled what nature herself has decided to do.
The wonder of being in my own garden is similar to, but is more than, the pleasure derived from the countryside with its wildlife, the fresh air, and the quiet. It is the comfort of being in familiar surroundings which are known and absorbed in the same way that I am absorbed into them: the peace and quiet joy of being truly home in a safe haven, where heart and soul sense their true belonging, and where my awareness of God walking with me can flourish.
The sensation of being close to God in a garden, is a blend of the private and intimate nature of our safe haven, with the work we have put into its formation, and with the reality of His presence with us in all places and at all times.
It is a distant echo of the gardener and his God together in Eden.
It is a powerful hint at the reality of His being our greatest, closest, and most trustworthy friend.
For me, the following words of George Eliot are a fitting description of the way God’s presence in our gardens can be experienced.
It also describes part of the sensation I experience when approaching the edge, and which led me to the heading under which I attempt to convey these thoughts: - ‘Soliloquy at the very edge …’
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
.
In the way that I automatically understand the word, I am not a gardener: I have never been a gardener; and yet, more than almost anything else, I love spending time in my garden, and that enjoyment comes, in part, from doing and having done those things which make it the place that it is.
I have become increasingly aware that what I have been doing is gardening in one of its pure forms.
I have never spent time creating a wonderful array of variety and colour: filling flower beds with what, for me, represents hours of devotion in the form of propagation, nurturing and weeding, resulting from a consistently maintained focus on the resulting display.
My appreciation of such things has waned from something never particularly obvious, to an unresponsive reaction summed up in the simple question, “Why?”
It is not that I can see no point to any of the labour required to create such beauty; it is that I do not see the result as a form of beauty high enough to warrant the necessary dedication to its realization. That level of organization and neatness, contrived diversity, and density of population can so easily create in me a form of urban suffocation. In spite of the possibility of finding no other human presence in such surroundings, and despite the undeniable loveliness of almost every individual flower in creation, I can feel buried under my awareness of the human activity involved in this form of creation.
I see that way of gardening as being similar to the placing of substantial value upon such superficial things as cosmetics, and the ephemeral waste that is the fact behind such fictions as the world of ‘fashion’. The gardener within us has been drawn into the generation of artificial needs and desires that fuel the supposed civilization of today’s high speed and value-warping world.
The persuasiveness of publicity and advertising, and the greed of business and commerce, have seduced each other into a marriage bed that spawns an ever increasing destruction of the values and the integrity of being truly human.
There is a power for good in all this activity: great and beneficial things are also conjured from today’s seething mass of potential, but so many of us are becoming all but lost in our inability to resist our susceptibility to the bright, the loud and the colourful.
This apparent inability encourages an ever increasing intensity of promotion of those things we do not need but are unable to do without.
Conversely, a garden has the power to keep us in touch with things we truly do need, but which, for most of the time, we believe we can manage without.
Deep within, I am as much a gardener as the person who spends eight or ten hours of every day producing and maintaining his flower beds and manicured lawns; but most of my hours are spent appreciating my ground rather than having to strive endlessly to maintain its image.
I allow nature to make most of the decisions, and recently this was brought home to me when I realized how the whole layout and feel of my garden has been governed by such things as the way a tree has fallen to the ground, or the seemingly random growth of unsuspected plants that nature has provided. There are shrubs and climbers which have been bought and planted near the house, but more than anything else, I have simply controlled what nature herself has decided to do.
The wonder of being in my own garden is similar to, but is more than, the pleasure derived from the countryside with its wildlife, the fresh air, and the quiet. It is the comfort of being in familiar surroundings which are known and absorbed in the same way that I am absorbed into them: the peace and quiet joy of being truly home in a safe haven, where heart and soul sense their true belonging, and where my awareness of God walking with me can flourish.
The sensation of being close to God in a garden, is a blend of the private and intimate nature of our safe haven, with the work we have put into its formation, and with the reality of His presence with us in all places and at all times.
It is a distant echo of the gardener and his God together in Eden.
It is a powerful hint at the reality of His being our greatest, closest, and most trustworthy friend.
For me, the following words of George Eliot are a fitting description of the way God’s presence in our gardens can be experienced.
It also describes part of the sensation I experience when approaching the edge, and which led me to the heading under which I attempt to convey these thoughts: - ‘Soliloquy at the very edge …’
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
.
Wednesday 18 April 2007
Rain and shine
The clarity of Easter morning, those early hours with the moon bathing coldly in its void, was the commencement of what has been a lengthy period of beautiful and calm weather.
This may have begun some time before, but my memory does not concern itself unduly with such matters until they coincide with something it recognizes as being of importance: something involving my spiritual awareness, and my journey towards that which calls me endlessly towards and beyond the end of my life here in this world.
All thought of what occurred on that Resurrection Day, and what became available to me – to each of us – through the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, focuses my senses on the superficial but potentially symbolic aspects of everyday life.
I say potentially because symbolism only exists in the mind of one who recognizes it.
At times I find meaning and relevance in a wide range of experiences, places, times, words and people, and through its ability to go almost unnoticed (in any meaningful way) by the majority of people, the weather has to be counted among those aspects with a mere potential for further meaning.
In one way or another we tend to take it for granted, whatever it may bring.
If it pours with rain, we comment on it – usually unfavourably - and if the sun is too hot for too long we long for the rain. We may be delighted or depressed by it, fascinated or bored with it, but even our delight and our fascination can be enjoyed in a matter of fact, routine, until-the-next-time kind of way. The weather is there; it was there yesterday, and it will be there tomorrow.
But the awakening echoed in that Easter morning makes the weather’s place in the scheme of things so plain, so simple, so real.
I do not understand its importance or relevance any more than previously, but its significance is somehow autographed across my consciousness by the hand of the Supreme Creative Artist, leaving me enthralled by my own presence within the very basics of physical existence.
The weather, in all its shades, breathes life into the seasons which are themselves the raising and lowering of nature’s heart, and hands, and face, in praise to God.
The seasons cannot exist without each other, and within their ebb and flow, the sunshine gives life only so long as there is rain, and the rain brings life only so long as there is sunshine.
In heat and in cold, in rain and in shine, in darkness and light, in dusk and dawn, each touch, scent, taste, sight and sound becomes a breath within us: a whispered ‘Emmanuel’ – God with us!
It is much repeated that one is never closer to God than when in a garden.
The Genesis story tells us that this is how it was meant to be, with the whole of the Earth as the garden for all mankind.
Eden was planted for both man and God: -
‘The man and his wife heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day …’ (Genesis 3:8)
In today’s world, where so much of mankind has turned away from God, and where so much of Eden has been stripped bare, raped and left for dead, it is not by chance that we are stirred into an awareness of a presence in our own private gardens. Amid their quiet comfort and familiar safety, we bring ourselves within reach of a recognition long missing from our lives: - the sound of God walking close to us in the cool of the day.
‘… God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.’ (Genesis 2:15)
Whoever we have been created to become, whatever our individual places in God’s plan, the gardener was born in us from the very beginning. We each come closer to being ourselves when we create or maintain a garden. It is an inbuilt guide as to how we should care for the Earth and all that is in it.
We are called to clear the ground that lies neglected, to prepare and to care for the soil; to plough and harrow, to plant and sow, to reap and glean, to gather the harvest, and to produce a meaningful fruit from our labours.
The whole process is an inner longing which points to our call to seek and to follow, and to work towards the harvest that we can help to germinate in the soul of every person we meet.
This may have begun some time before, but my memory does not concern itself unduly with such matters until they coincide with something it recognizes as being of importance: something involving my spiritual awareness, and my journey towards that which calls me endlessly towards and beyond the end of my life here in this world.
All thought of what occurred on that Resurrection Day, and what became available to me – to each of us – through the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, focuses my senses on the superficial but potentially symbolic aspects of everyday life.
I say potentially because symbolism only exists in the mind of one who recognizes it.
At times I find meaning and relevance in a wide range of experiences, places, times, words and people, and through its ability to go almost unnoticed (in any meaningful way) by the majority of people, the weather has to be counted among those aspects with a mere potential for further meaning.
In one way or another we tend to take it for granted, whatever it may bring.
If it pours with rain, we comment on it – usually unfavourably - and if the sun is too hot for too long we long for the rain. We may be delighted or depressed by it, fascinated or bored with it, but even our delight and our fascination can be enjoyed in a matter of fact, routine, until-the-next-time kind of way. The weather is there; it was there yesterday, and it will be there tomorrow.
But the awakening echoed in that Easter morning makes the weather’s place in the scheme of things so plain, so simple, so real.
I do not understand its importance or relevance any more than previously, but its significance is somehow autographed across my consciousness by the hand of the Supreme Creative Artist, leaving me enthralled by my own presence within the very basics of physical existence.
The weather, in all its shades, breathes life into the seasons which are themselves the raising and lowering of nature’s heart, and hands, and face, in praise to God.
The seasons cannot exist without each other, and within their ebb and flow, the sunshine gives life only so long as there is rain, and the rain brings life only so long as there is sunshine.
In heat and in cold, in rain and in shine, in darkness and light, in dusk and dawn, each touch, scent, taste, sight and sound becomes a breath within us: a whispered ‘Emmanuel’ – God with us!
It is much repeated that one is never closer to God than when in a garden.
The Genesis story tells us that this is how it was meant to be, with the whole of the Earth as the garden for all mankind.
Eden was planted for both man and God: -
‘The man and his wife heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day …’ (Genesis 3:8)
In today’s world, where so much of mankind has turned away from God, and where so much of Eden has been stripped bare, raped and left for dead, it is not by chance that we are stirred into an awareness of a presence in our own private gardens. Amid their quiet comfort and familiar safety, we bring ourselves within reach of a recognition long missing from our lives: - the sound of God walking close to us in the cool of the day.
‘… God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.’ (Genesis 2:15)
Whoever we have been created to become, whatever our individual places in God’s plan, the gardener was born in us from the very beginning. We each come closer to being ourselves when we create or maintain a garden. It is an inbuilt guide as to how we should care for the Earth and all that is in it.
We are called to clear the ground that lies neglected, to prepare and to care for the soil; to plough and harrow, to plant and sow, to reap and glean, to gather the harvest, and to produce a meaningful fruit from our labours.
The whole process is an inner longing which points to our call to seek and to follow, and to work towards the harvest that we can help to germinate in the soul of every person we meet.
.
Saturday 14 April 2007
Awaiting
The night is calm and clear.
An emptiness - from two thousand years ago - reflects in us as the moon hangs naked for all to see: a lifeless silence cloaked in a promise borrowed from the touch of power and light as yet unseen.
A contemplative and an appropriate setting for the darkness in which we have gathered; for the clarity we seek in our anticipation of light and life: for the dawning of the day into which we shall be led by the priest and by the community; for the reinforcement of a binding together of living and dead in one loving and timeless whole: - today’s nuns assembled with their deceased companions, as the Easter fire is kindled amid a joyful choir of graves.
They are still; we all are still, and each of us knows that He is the Son of God.
Once again, I am on home ground, where preparation began: where the seeds of both my contentment and my longing were sown.
I have come back to Stanbrook Abbey for the Easter Vigil.
No midnight service here … We had assembled at 4:15 am to celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord.
From darkness to light, and out into a misty morning sun; with dew bejeweled grass underfoot.
With birdsong and smiles for company.
With the risen sun proclaiming the risen Son.
With a heightened sense of God’s touch in all things.
With a renewed awareness of the presence of the risen Lord in the heart of each one of us.
There is no other time.
There never has been any other time.
Now is the time.
Now is the time to be born, to live, to die, to be reborn.
Now is the time to yield to the embrace of salvation: to melt in the arms of redemption; to believe, to follow, to surrender to the ultimate meaning of our lives: to give our all to the source of all life: to give our life, in whatever way He wills.
This was one of those rare and wonderful times, when I became aware that I could give up my life in that moment: yield all that I knew as myself to the Eternal Unknown.
In the company of my wife, my living friends in the community, and in company with those who may have known me far better than I ever knew any of them, including Dame Gertrude Brown, who, for the first time lay amid her friends in those quiet graves.
She had been so delighted at the thought that I believed myself to have been conceived on the day she become a nun at Stanbrook.
Until I had spoken with her, I could not have imagined anyone being truly excited at the prospect of their own death.
I thank God for enabling me to meet her joy in this world; He alone knows how great is her joy with Him.
How I have been carried away by thoughts of that dawning!
Little wonder that it took a while to settle into the peace in which I had been called to rest.
I am now there … Thank you, dear, risen Lord.
“… a smile in the mind that furrows the brow beneath the mop that raggles the head of the beggar asleep under whispering rain.”
Mine is that mind; mine the solitary quiet amid nature’s baptism; - I am that beggar.
I thank you and praise you for the smile you have lodged deep within me.
You have exquisitely filled me to overflowing, and I am breathless in anticipation of your constant beckoning … “Come, follow me.”
May your dream become reality in me, and in all whom you seek to do your will.
Reveal yourself to us, that we may follow.
Call us, that we may serve.
Lead us to the very edge, that we may meet you there.
.
An emptiness - from two thousand years ago - reflects in us as the moon hangs naked for all to see: a lifeless silence cloaked in a promise borrowed from the touch of power and light as yet unseen.
A contemplative and an appropriate setting for the darkness in which we have gathered; for the clarity we seek in our anticipation of light and life: for the dawning of the day into which we shall be led by the priest and by the community; for the reinforcement of a binding together of living and dead in one loving and timeless whole: - today’s nuns assembled with their deceased companions, as the Easter fire is kindled amid a joyful choir of graves.
They are still; we all are still, and each of us knows that He is the Son of God.
Once again, I am on home ground, where preparation began: where the seeds of both my contentment and my longing were sown.
I have come back to Stanbrook Abbey for the Easter Vigil.
No midnight service here … We had assembled at 4:15 am to celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord.
From darkness to light, and out into a misty morning sun; with dew bejeweled grass underfoot.
With birdsong and smiles for company.
With the risen sun proclaiming the risen Son.
With a heightened sense of God’s touch in all things.
With a renewed awareness of the presence of the risen Lord in the heart of each one of us.
There is no other time.
There never has been any other time.
Now is the time.
Now is the time to be born, to live, to die, to be reborn.
Now is the time to yield to the embrace of salvation: to melt in the arms of redemption; to believe, to follow, to surrender to the ultimate meaning of our lives: to give our all to the source of all life: to give our life, in whatever way He wills.
This was one of those rare and wonderful times, when I became aware that I could give up my life in that moment: yield all that I knew as myself to the Eternal Unknown.
In the company of my wife, my living friends in the community, and in company with those who may have known me far better than I ever knew any of them, including Dame Gertrude Brown, who, for the first time lay amid her friends in those quiet graves.
She had been so delighted at the thought that I believed myself to have been conceived on the day she become a nun at Stanbrook.
Until I had spoken with her, I could not have imagined anyone being truly excited at the prospect of their own death.
I thank God for enabling me to meet her joy in this world; He alone knows how great is her joy with Him.
How I have been carried away by thoughts of that dawning!
Little wonder that it took a while to settle into the peace in which I had been called to rest.
I am now there … Thank you, dear, risen Lord.
“… a smile in the mind that furrows the brow beneath the mop that raggles the head of the beggar asleep under whispering rain.”
Mine is that mind; mine the solitary quiet amid nature’s baptism; - I am that beggar.
I thank you and praise you for the smile you have lodged deep within me.
You have exquisitely filled me to overflowing, and I am breathless in anticipation of your constant beckoning … “Come, follow me.”
May your dream become reality in me, and in all whom you seek to do your will.
Reveal yourself to us, that we may follow.
Call us, that we may serve.
Lead us to the very edge, that we may meet you there.
.
Wednesday 11 April 2007
Waiting
Preparation was the keyword for Lent: that period leading up to Holy Week, to Christ’s Death, and to His Resurrection.
Easter is what makes us Christians. Without it we are nothing.
Without it there was only a man: there was no Christ, there is no Christ, Christianity is nothing.
Preparation - symbolizing Jesus’ forty days spent in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry – preparation for the commemoration and celebration of the fulfilment of God’s plan for Jesus, and, through His obedience to that plan, for all mankind: - for you and for me.
That theme has shadowed me for the last two months, and though my last recorded thoughts have been the briefest reminders of that which filled the three great days of Easter, the need for groundwork - that ongoing preparation of my inner self for the reception and germination of whatever seeds God may sow therein – led me into those days, and, in a remarkable way, has led me through to the other side.
Remarkable in that it has put me down in what so clearly seems to be an unchanged state.
I am so aware of this; I am almost afraid of this.
I had not expected or anticipated anything; in a way I had even assumed that I would arrive beyond Easter without anything having changed.
That appears to be what has happened, but I really had not been ready for this ever-growing awareness of the fact that it has happened.
I spent time walking towards the edges that Lent always places before me; not a frightening experience, as I have come to know those edges a little better over the years, but always troubling, frequently sorrowful, and inevitably a source of feelings of humiliation and inadequacy.
They are the same ones: the familiar but ever disturbing external ones encountered in trying to follow Jesus right to the very end, and the shameful repetition of my own internal failures when, on sensing that He is calling me to follow, I leave Him to walk alone once more.
Throughout this period, preparing the ground has been my underlying focus.
It has been the basis for all that has filled me through the days of Easter, and yet, I feel prompted to open my awareness to more random leadings – after all, this is what the journey has always been like for me: an experience of twists and turns, which, though following a consistent course, feels far more haphazard and aimless during the experience.
Hindsight later reminds me what a good friend it can be, by allowing me to recognize the clear path I have been following.
But here I am, held fast in this spot, having gone nowhere, and anticipating being unable to move for the foreseeable future.
( I should know better. I should anticipate nothing, while being ready for anything. )
A large part of me is ready to grasp at whatever thoughts come my way, to use them as a supply line for whatever I may write in the next few posts, while the other part of me senses a need to rest here: to wait on The Lord; to remain prepared, watching, alert for whatever He may ask of me.
I am writing this as I think, and have become aware that I am steadily settling back into a more peaceful frame of mind.
I feel the situation is being resolved for me, though I am not used to communicating this to others almost as it happens, if at all.
This is not having arrived back in the same place to know it for the first time; this is to have returned there in a state of less certainty than when I previously left it – and without having been away.
.
“Speak, Lord; for your servant is listening.” (1Samuel 3:10)
.
Easter is what makes us Christians. Without it we are nothing.
Without it there was only a man: there was no Christ, there is no Christ, Christianity is nothing.
Preparation - symbolizing Jesus’ forty days spent in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry – preparation for the commemoration and celebration of the fulfilment of God’s plan for Jesus, and, through His obedience to that plan, for all mankind: - for you and for me.
That theme has shadowed me for the last two months, and though my last recorded thoughts have been the briefest reminders of that which filled the three great days of Easter, the need for groundwork - that ongoing preparation of my inner self for the reception and germination of whatever seeds God may sow therein – led me into those days, and, in a remarkable way, has led me through to the other side.
Remarkable in that it has put me down in what so clearly seems to be an unchanged state.
I am so aware of this; I am almost afraid of this.
I had not expected or anticipated anything; in a way I had even assumed that I would arrive beyond Easter without anything having changed.
That appears to be what has happened, but I really had not been ready for this ever-growing awareness of the fact that it has happened.
I spent time walking towards the edges that Lent always places before me; not a frightening experience, as I have come to know those edges a little better over the years, but always troubling, frequently sorrowful, and inevitably a source of feelings of humiliation and inadequacy.
They are the same ones: the familiar but ever disturbing external ones encountered in trying to follow Jesus right to the very end, and the shameful repetition of my own internal failures when, on sensing that He is calling me to follow, I leave Him to walk alone once more.
Throughout this period, preparing the ground has been my underlying focus.
It has been the basis for all that has filled me through the days of Easter, and yet, I feel prompted to open my awareness to more random leadings – after all, this is what the journey has always been like for me: an experience of twists and turns, which, though following a consistent course, feels far more haphazard and aimless during the experience.
Hindsight later reminds me what a good friend it can be, by allowing me to recognize the clear path I have been following.
But here I am, held fast in this spot, having gone nowhere, and anticipating being unable to move for the foreseeable future.
( I should know better. I should anticipate nothing, while being ready for anything. )
A large part of me is ready to grasp at whatever thoughts come my way, to use them as a supply line for whatever I may write in the next few posts, while the other part of me senses a need to rest here: to wait on The Lord; to remain prepared, watching, alert for whatever He may ask of me.
I am writing this as I think, and have become aware that I am steadily settling back into a more peaceful frame of mind.
I feel the situation is being resolved for me, though I am not used to communicating this to others almost as it happens, if at all.
This is not having arrived back in the same place to know it for the first time; this is to have returned there in a state of less certainty than when I previously left it – and without having been away.
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“Speak, Lord; for your servant is listening.” (1Samuel 3:10)
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Sunday 8 April 2007
Friday 6 April 2007
Thursday 5 April 2007
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