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.
.
Saturday 28 July 2007
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)
.
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)
.
Thursday 26 July 2007
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.
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.
.
Sunday 22 July 2007
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)
.
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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Friday 20 July 2007
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.
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.
.
“… if you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal.” (Ecclesiasticus 2:1)
“… if you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal.” (Ecclesiasticus 2:1)
.
Thursday 5 July 2007
... 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)
.
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)
.
Wednesday 4 July 2007
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.
.
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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