Our sharing of a common destination should highlight for us the absurdity as well as the injustice and underlying evil of superficial differences that so often keep us apart. Any separation based on who or what we are, or on who we appear to be, is contrary to all that Our Lord has taught, and is in direct conflict with any proclaimed attempt to work towards unity.
As St Paul said, ‘There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female - for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians 3:28).
It is faith in Jesus that brings us together, it is our sharing of the journey that makes us companions, and it is our mutual following of His teaching and example that draws us towards life as brothers and sisters in His name. We are His, and it is in that belonging that we can find ourselves reborn.
Our external differences are frequently experienced as being of great importance in this life. Even those which lead to so much of the aggravation and conflict in the world, and which clearly engender in so many people thoughts and feelings we know to be unacceptable at the very least, can lodge, uncomfortably or otherwise, in our own awareness. We know that all men and women are equal in the eyes of God, and we like to think the same applies when the world is viewed through our eyes. But even when we do pause to consider our attitudes towards the world at large, the result is often that we do no more than bolster our belief that this is the case, and in so doing we unknowingly bury ourselves further into our failure to recognize that, one way or another, we are all part of the problem.
This does not mean that we all have clearly defined racist, sexist, ageist, and every-other-ist attitudes, but that each of us is to some extent the product of the world around us and that world is riddled with these mindsets. The effective changing of any strongly held belief, whether collective or individual, is only achieved through a combination of faith and the passage of time. The faith begins in small ways in each one of us, with our suspicion that an attitude is wrong. The time is needed because in most adults with these wrong convictions there will be no appreciable change in their lifetimes. The strength of feeling, whether of hatred, disgust, revenge, injustice or superiority, has to be allowed to die away. The death of individuals removes their influence from their families and communities, and those who follow on, though their attitudes have been coloured by such people, will - we hope - live with a less pronounced bigotry. (For those of us who remember him, without God bringing about such a change, could we imagine Alf Garnet ever really being anyone other than who he was ?) This process, continuing through the generations, will dissipate the once intense feelings upon which inhuman attitudes were constructed, though it seems there is always somewhere in the world where differences flare into brutality, leaving us wondering if any conflict ever truly comes to an end.
This is of course a simplistic view of the problem, and similarly simplistic suggestions or proposals with regard to solutions should rightly be discarded as being naїve. However, simplistic and simple should not be dismissed as being identical twins any more than naїveté should be understood as meaning the same as some of the words found as alternatives in a thesaurus: words such as innocence, immaturity and trustfulness.
These three words are worthy of a few moments thought: they are each relevant here.
Innocence is what we do not have but should long for; immaturity is what we have but should long to be without; trustfulness is the atmosphere in which we grow into a maturity, the roots of which, though firmly embedded in a lack of innocence, draw nourishment for our re-growth. Such roots are capable of separating the good from the bad, and supplying both our present and our future with the framework for God’s work within us. This allows us to turn our backs on all that has deprived us of innocence, and any concerns we may have about being simplistic, while recognizing the simplicity of the solution as conveyed through the gift of God’s Word in Jesus. It is through continuing our process of coming together as fellow travellers with Him, following Him, and learning to see others through His eyes, that we gain an opportunity to short-circuit the far too slow passage of time in the destruction of un-Christlike and separatist attitudes.
Another word to pause with for a moment: ‘Separatist’ has been used to describe various groups of people in the past as well as the present, including those who wanted Home Rule for Ireland at a time when England still imagined that Land to be hers.
The conflict over Ireland – and we need only think of the actions and words of both Nationalists and Loyalists over Northern Ireland in the last third of the twentieth century – created much that I would have included among attitudes that could have been expected to live on until a whole generation had died away, and even then to have remained at a lower level for a further fifty years or so.
Note that I say Nationalist and Loyalist, not Catholic and Protestant. The divisions were along clearly defined lines that corresponded with the perceived differences between these two bodies of Christians, but the whole destructive struggle was a political one brought to a head by social inequalities laid over centuries of history. Religious and denominational differences became a readily available means of labelling within the media and especially within the bigoted segregation and inequality of that fractured community.
But what happened ? If we know the details we can point to any number of things, and to particular people, but still, for anyone who had any idea of the depth of feeling, the question remains: - What happened ?
‘Simplistic’ is dead and buried, but the word ‘simple’, seeming so naїve in its everyday ordinariness, points to the pre-existing simplicity and truth that is manifested through our faith and the passage of time; not our slow passage of attitudes and lives into graves with individual names, but the unnoticed approach of dawn within the hearts and minds of those who long to live, and who place their lives and loves into the hands of God. There, our innocence, maturity and trust will grow, and shall prevail.
The smallest of things can begin a minor annoyance that could eventually cause major rifts. I have purposely written naїve and naїveté above instead of naive and naivety. If any reader thinks something along the lines of, ‘What on earth has he written it that way for?’, it has perhaps demonstrated that fact.
'(Without discounting) the help of other humans in helping us draw near to God, or minimising the importance of others as God's instruments in accomplishing his work in our lives, we must ... recognise that human knowledge, wisdom or teaching, even concerning the gospel, cannot replace our need to receive revelation from God himself. It is only this direct revelation of God to our spirits that can change us and bring us new life.' (The Word Among Us. October 1992)
'The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.' (Paula D'Arcy. Where The Wind Begins.)
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Wednesday 20 February 2008
Tuesday 19 February 2008
... but never alone
At first glance it is not surprising that we can be supported, encouraged to persevere, and enabled to accomplish things that would otherwise remain undone, or even un-attempted, by the mere knowledge that others are thinking and feeling in ways similar to our own experience. There is no element of surprise because we tend to have inbuilt assumptions that these people are close by, and that even if we do not really know them we know their names, and if not that we see them or hear them – at least occasionally. It is unexpected, however, to find that same sense of support and encouragement when our knowledge of such like-minded persons includes the fact that they are not only unknown, but unheard, unseen, and possibly living their lives in unknown and distant places. Such is the all-encompassing and instant reach of the internet; and such is its potential for anonymity.
It is, however, only a momentary surprise, because while it is our knowledge of the existence of these people that brings it in the first place, that same knowledge instantly dispels and banishes the surprise with its inherent comfort and feelings of shared experience. It brings something we long for, perhaps unconsciously, and it provides something we need. A satisfied longing or need invariably counters, and at the very least diminishes the feelings that preceded it, whether they be the longing itself or the immediate response to its satisfaction.
This points to fundamental differences between our physical, our emotional and our spiritual needs.
Where physical help is required, as in the provision of goods or services, we need to have people coming to us and working close to or alongside us; without this closeness, help can be neither given nor received. The victims of natural disasters, war, terrorism, ethnic and sectarian hatred, all need to have others bringing the food, water, clothing and shelter that they need. There are those who give and send but their generosity alone is not enough. Someone has to deliver what has been given: someone has to actually go to the people in need before they can realize that help is coming. In such situations there is of course a corresponding need for emotional support, and this can come through those who have brought the physical help.
When our need is solely for emotional support, in situations other than where much of that need stems from physical desperation or deprivation – through having no food or water for our children, for example – we do not have that same urgency of need for the physical presence of people; we may desire it, and we will always benefit more from having it than not, but, it is not absolutely essential. We need to talk to people, the right people, and if they are unable to be with us we are still able to benefit from their listening and their reassuring input via the telephone, especially in this age of mobiles, and through email, the ability to chat via our computers, video links and so on, and for those who are not part of this technological advance, the telephone land line is still as straightforward as it was, and letter writing remains as an effective and personal way of making thoughts and feelings known.
Clearly our spiritual needs will frequently overlap with our emotional ones, as do these, in turn, with our physical circumstances, but the need for the physical presence of others is related to our worldly weakness and our natural tendencies, not to our supernatural confusion and our spiritual doubts or emptiness. Unless we know who to talk to and who will be able to guide us, we have no more chance of finding what we need with a person known to us than with a complete stranger. That does not mean we can walk down the road sticking our thumb out and hoping someone will stop and take us to our destination. They will be going where they are going, and they have come from wherever they have been. They don’t know where you are on your journey; they don’t know where you have been, and they don’t know where you are going. They certainly don’t know where you are meant to be going.
It is the stranger who makes known aspects of his or her spiritual life that resonate with our own, who is no longer a stranger to us. Simply knowing of the existence of that person with their inner life so similar to our own, lays a foundation for our security in what had been only loneliness and doubt. To expand this awareness until we not only suspect, but believe in and sense the presence of many such people in the world around us, is to realize that we are not alone in our search. Though remaining for the most part unseen and unknown, the knowledge of their existence assures us that we are in good company. It is from the relative stability of this low-key sense of union of purpose and direction, that we are enabled to calm ourselves sufficiently in faith, in trust and in prayer, to sense the reality of our only real and ever-present companion.
He is the only real teacher and guide, who, though seeming to be a fellow traveller walking with us every step of the way, is in fact the one we strive to follow. We find ourselves in a place of safety, and it is in this gentle embrace that we hear His words; we come to know that He is speaking, not only to others, but to us.
It is, however, only a momentary surprise, because while it is our knowledge of the existence of these people that brings it in the first place, that same knowledge instantly dispels and banishes the surprise with its inherent comfort and feelings of shared experience. It brings something we long for, perhaps unconsciously, and it provides something we need. A satisfied longing or need invariably counters, and at the very least diminishes the feelings that preceded it, whether they be the longing itself or the immediate response to its satisfaction.
This points to fundamental differences between our physical, our emotional and our spiritual needs.
Where physical help is required, as in the provision of goods or services, we need to have people coming to us and working close to or alongside us; without this closeness, help can be neither given nor received. The victims of natural disasters, war, terrorism, ethnic and sectarian hatred, all need to have others bringing the food, water, clothing and shelter that they need. There are those who give and send but their generosity alone is not enough. Someone has to deliver what has been given: someone has to actually go to the people in need before they can realize that help is coming. In such situations there is of course a corresponding need for emotional support, and this can come through those who have brought the physical help.
When our need is solely for emotional support, in situations other than where much of that need stems from physical desperation or deprivation – through having no food or water for our children, for example – we do not have that same urgency of need for the physical presence of people; we may desire it, and we will always benefit more from having it than not, but, it is not absolutely essential. We need to talk to people, the right people, and if they are unable to be with us we are still able to benefit from their listening and their reassuring input via the telephone, especially in this age of mobiles, and through email, the ability to chat via our computers, video links and so on, and for those who are not part of this technological advance, the telephone land line is still as straightforward as it was, and letter writing remains as an effective and personal way of making thoughts and feelings known.
Clearly our spiritual needs will frequently overlap with our emotional ones, as do these, in turn, with our physical circumstances, but the need for the physical presence of others is related to our worldly weakness and our natural tendencies, not to our supernatural confusion and our spiritual doubts or emptiness. Unless we know who to talk to and who will be able to guide us, we have no more chance of finding what we need with a person known to us than with a complete stranger. That does not mean we can walk down the road sticking our thumb out and hoping someone will stop and take us to our destination. They will be going where they are going, and they have come from wherever they have been. They don’t know where you are on your journey; they don’t know where you have been, and they don’t know where you are going. They certainly don’t know where you are meant to be going.
It is the stranger who makes known aspects of his or her spiritual life that resonate with our own, who is no longer a stranger to us. Simply knowing of the existence of that person with their inner life so similar to our own, lays a foundation for our security in what had been only loneliness and doubt. To expand this awareness until we not only suspect, but believe in and sense the presence of many such people in the world around us, is to realize that we are not alone in our search. Though remaining for the most part unseen and unknown, the knowledge of their existence assures us that we are in good company. It is from the relative stability of this low-key sense of union of purpose and direction, that we are enabled to calm ourselves sufficiently in faith, in trust and in prayer, to sense the reality of our only real and ever-present companion.
He is the only real teacher and guide, who, though seeming to be a fellow traveller walking with us every step of the way, is in fact the one we strive to follow. We find ourselves in a place of safety, and it is in this gentle embrace that we hear His words; we come to know that He is speaking, not only to others, but to us.
‘And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’ (Matthew 28:20)
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Sunday 17 February 2008
Walking alone ...
Whoever we are, if we live without being able to share thoughts and feelings with at least one other person, we are living alone.
To allow someone else to get to know us, to understand what matters to us, what makes us joyful and sad, angry or embarrassed, what our strengths and weaknesses are, our hopes and fears, our ambitions, failures and regrets; this is to have a real friend.
Some people seem able to share most of these things with almost everyone they get to know, but part of that apparent ease of opening up may be their own building of a protective wall which, while appearing to do the opposite, successfully keeps something hidden from others: something unspoken and unsuspected. Such people are surrounded by friends but may still lack a real and complete friendship.
If we do have just one person in our lives with whom we share everything, it may be a husband or wife, or a ‘partner’ of similar importance or standing in our lives; it may be a parent or sibling, a close friend, or even someone we have come to trust through a professional relationship: a doctor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Whoever it may be, we benefit from their presence in our lives and from our ability to share ourselves with them.
Often, however, when we are conscious of our lives being overlaid by something beyond the world’s reasoning, and when we find ourselves on some form of spiritual journey, we do not know quite how to tell someone else about it. The person or persons with whom we thought we could share almost anything are proved to be just that; we can share almost everything, but this is somehow different. How do we even bring up the subject ? We have never mentioned this sort of thing before, so how do we know that they will even understand what we are talking about? – especially as we scarcely know how to explain what we are thinking and feeling.
And might it even be something that will come between us and result in a weakening or even the loss of a valued friendship?
Perhaps we regard the risk as too great, and, being troubled by the inner conflict, we remain silent.
The relationship, while being outwardly unchanged, is suddenly not enough: it is recognized as being incomplete.
Even in friendships with people who are known to foster the spiritual dimension or their lives, the surface is easy enough to talk about: we can examine it together, polish it, bounce ideas off it, and enjoy the interaction as well as the benefits it brings, but wherever we are on our journey, and however great or small the number of persons with whom we meet and communicate, without a sharing of the reality of the yearning buried deep in our hearts, we travel alone.
To allow someone else to get to know us, to understand what matters to us, what makes us joyful and sad, angry or embarrassed, what our strengths and weaknesses are, our hopes and fears, our ambitions, failures and regrets; this is to have a real friend.
Some people seem able to share most of these things with almost everyone they get to know, but part of that apparent ease of opening up may be their own building of a protective wall which, while appearing to do the opposite, successfully keeps something hidden from others: something unspoken and unsuspected. Such people are surrounded by friends but may still lack a real and complete friendship.
If we do have just one person in our lives with whom we share everything, it may be a husband or wife, or a ‘partner’ of similar importance or standing in our lives; it may be a parent or sibling, a close friend, or even someone we have come to trust through a professional relationship: a doctor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Whoever it may be, we benefit from their presence in our lives and from our ability to share ourselves with them.
Often, however, when we are conscious of our lives being overlaid by something beyond the world’s reasoning, and when we find ourselves on some form of spiritual journey, we do not know quite how to tell someone else about it. The person or persons with whom we thought we could share almost anything are proved to be just that; we can share almost everything, but this is somehow different. How do we even bring up the subject ? We have never mentioned this sort of thing before, so how do we know that they will even understand what we are talking about? – especially as we scarcely know how to explain what we are thinking and feeling.
And might it even be something that will come between us and result in a weakening or even the loss of a valued friendship?
Perhaps we regard the risk as too great, and, being troubled by the inner conflict, we remain silent.
The relationship, while being outwardly unchanged, is suddenly not enough: it is recognized as being incomplete.
Even in friendships with people who are known to foster the spiritual dimension or their lives, the surface is easy enough to talk about: we can examine it together, polish it, bounce ideas off it, and enjoy the interaction as well as the benefits it brings, but wherever we are on our journey, and however great or small the number of persons with whom we meet and communicate, without a sharing of the reality of the yearning buried deep in our hearts, we travel alone.
'There is talk which can be a great spiritual help to us - I mean the earnest exchange of ideas about spiritual things;
especially when two souls, well matched in temper and disposition, find themselves drawn together in God.'
(The Imitation of Christ. Thomas a Kempis.)
Being a member of a community provides support and companionship, but of itself does little more, and without the freedom to share our spiritual needs and truths, being a member of a church or a congregation alone is meaningless.
The difficulty encountered in trying to do this accounts for the fact that for many of us it is the attentive stranger who offers the best means of opening up in this way. A priest or pastor who does not know us, a stranger who in some way just registers with us as the right person at that moment – a recognition of God’s provision perhaps? Or, again, a professional consultant of some sort.
M. Scott Peck, himself a psychiatrist, wrote in the Afterword to his book, “In the time since its initial publication, I have been fortunate enough to receive many letters from readers of ‘The Road Less Travelled’. They have been extraordinary letters. … (they) have enriched my life. It has become clear to me that there is a whole network - far more vast than I had dared to believe – of people across the country who have quietly been proceeding for long distances along the less travelled road of spiritual growth. They have thanked me for diminishing their sense of aloneness on the journey. I thank them for the same service.’
That sense of aloneness is unavoidable: it is part of the reality of the journey, but becoming aware that we are not in fact alone enables us to find peace and even joy in our experience of being alone.
This returns me to my very first words written on the web: the opening words of this soliloquy. I repeat them here: -
The difficulty encountered in trying to do this accounts for the fact that for many of us it is the attentive stranger who offers the best means of opening up in this way. A priest or pastor who does not know us, a stranger who in some way just registers with us as the right person at that moment – a recognition of God’s provision perhaps? Or, again, a professional consultant of some sort.
M. Scott Peck, himself a psychiatrist, wrote in the Afterword to his book, “In the time since its initial publication, I have been fortunate enough to receive many letters from readers of ‘The Road Less Travelled’. They have been extraordinary letters. … (they) have enriched my life. It has become clear to me that there is a whole network - far more vast than I had dared to believe – of people across the country who have quietly been proceeding for long distances along the less travelled road of spiritual growth. They have thanked me for diminishing their sense of aloneness on the journey. I thank them for the same service.’
That sense of aloneness is unavoidable: it is part of the reality of the journey, but becoming aware that we are not in fact alone enables us to find peace and even joy in our experience of being alone.
This returns me to my very first words written on the web: the opening words of this soliloquy. I repeat them here: -
'Wherever this may lead, I hope it will lead both of us there: not just you, and not just me. We may sojourn here awhile together, but it is in the nature of the very edge that we shall each travel our separate ways towards, or away from our goals. That we share a common destination is the only realization we can truly share, though our meeting, acknowledgement, and passing by, cannot help but feed us and bring that much needed hint of confirmation: - that quiet "Amen" to the sometimes doubted validity of our journey.
Inevitably we shall find ourselves alone at the very edge, but an awareness of other solitary minds close by, each with its own struggle, its own yearning, and its own longing for peace and truth, may enable us to remain close to the edge through every emotion, and in whatever situation or circumstance this day, or tomorrow, may bring.’
Scott Peck acknowledged his own reassurance derived from receiving those letters, while recognizing that the letters had been written because he had provided a similar comfort for others through his written words. Knowing that someone else is there counters all debilitating aspects of isolation.
Similarly, I am encouraged by the knowledge that someone somewhere is reading what I write. I can only assume that whoever spends time reading these words is gaining a form of support or strength from some of what they find; (why else would you spend time here?) However limited that help may be, the result is that we are aware of each other’s existence in a form of spiritual friendship that aids us in our daily toil along the ‘less travelled road’. We are journeying together as members of a loosely knit band of followers, unseen and unknown to one another, but spiritually inseparable.
Scott Peck acknowledged his own reassurance derived from receiving those letters, while recognizing that the letters had been written because he had provided a similar comfort for others through his written words. Knowing that someone else is there counters all debilitating aspects of isolation.
Similarly, I am encouraged by the knowledge that someone somewhere is reading what I write. I can only assume that whoever spends time reading these words is gaining a form of support or strength from some of what they find; (why else would you spend time here?) However limited that help may be, the result is that we are aware of each other’s existence in a form of spiritual friendship that aids us in our daily toil along the ‘less travelled road’. We are journeying together as members of a loosely knit band of followers, unseen and unknown to one another, but spiritually inseparable.
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Thursday 14 February 2008
The unshared secret
In a previous post (15.6.07 ‘Estrangement’) I quoted a passage from one of Cardinal Newman’s sermons. I have always found it memorable and have always been conscious of the truth it conveys, but it has recently returned to me as though of more immediate significance in my present heightened need for an answer to the question, ‘What is it that I should be doing?’
That question can and does take many forms. As written, it is a broad-sounding query without any apparent importance or urgency. It could suggest an awareness that I should be doing some other particular thing rather than that in which I am actually engaged, or that I should be doing something, or even anything, rather than idling my time away doing nothing, but it is a great deal more than that. It is important, and though unable to know whether or not it is in fact urgent, it is accompanied by a sense of urgency born of that lack of knowledge. What if it is urgent? What if I really should be doing some particular thing right now? - Something I am urgently required to be doing, but of which I have as yet no clear idea?
Instead of being a broad suggestion of what could be absentmindedness, indifference or neglect, ‘What is it that I should be doing?’ is etched unavoidably into the surface of my consciousness by the relentless gnawing of my conscience. Whatever the words uttered or heard within, they are felt as a repeated rousing of something vitally important; What am I being asked to do? What am I called to do? What do I need to do? What is my purpose? What is it that I need to accomplish if I am to bear the fruit for which I was created? I may think I know who I am, but who is the real me? Who is it that I am called to be? -That I was made to be? And how near or far am I from being that person?
In that same post I also wrote, ‘Even among our friends we are fundamentally separate ... through our lack of understanding of our place in the world.’ In other words, through not knowing the answer to those same questions.
Reading the Newman passage as though speaking to myself, those parts which seem almost to be a personal reproach combine to read as follows:
‘Perhaps the reason why my attainments are so poor is that I dare not trust others with the secret of my heart, and I fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. I make clean the outside of things; I am amiable and friendly to others in words and deeds, but my love is not enlarged. The presence of Christ is not in it.’
The passage has always made me uncomfortably aware that, other than in a superficial way, I do not share my thoughts and feelings with anyone else, but having personalised it in that way I find further weight being added to a leaning that has already become apparent to me. Though the answer is not appreciably nearer, the direction I should take to find guidance in my search for that answer is perhaps being made more clear.
We all have that same need to become the person we are made to be, and however far we have journeyed, and however vague or intense the questioning may be, there is a corresponding need to be alert, to be awake, to be on the lookout for the help that will always come our way. It is a matter of recognizing God’s provision for us.
This is something of which I thought I was already well aware, and yet, as soon as I found myself deeply embedded in something of importance which has me yearning for clarification, guidance, and a sure sense of direction, all such awareness seems to have drifted away. I have buried myself in a busyness that has apparently prevented me from using abilities I already have: the ability to see and to hear and to feel, in other words, the ability to recognize the availability of guidance in places to which I already have access. God has provided all that I need, but through the narrow-mindedness of my own searching I have walked straight past the doors that are already open to me. Introspection has blinded me, and self-consciousness has distanced me from those who may effortlessly steer me in the right direction. I had been given a key but had failed to see what it could unlock, and I had found the door without knowing that I had the means to walk straight through it.
I have recently written about being free in the hands of God, and have now experienced how easy it is to lose all sense of that freedom as a result of our own striving after that very thing. I already had the freedom, but it slipped away unnoticed as I tried hard to grasp something that could not be grasped. With the return of relaxation and trust, the freedom becomes apparent once more, and with it comes the clarity to see what was already there. It is easy to believe that we have faith, but without a perpetual and living awareness of its life within us the reality will be intermittent at best.
The experience of friendship is warm and it is safe, but the potential within it goes far beyond our normal expectations. Combined with a deeply shared faith it has almost frightening possibilities, and that is why we usually keep ourselves apart at the deepest levels. ‘The presence of Christ is not in it,’ said Newman, and yet we know Christ’s words well enough: ‘For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20)
Therein lies another aspect of my failure and my fault; I have failed to find a sense of direction towards the answer I seek, not only through the blindness resulting from my self-centred search, but through trying to find the answer for myself: through stubbornly going it alone. The answer will come from Christ Himself through the guidance of The Holy Spirit. He has said that He is ‘where two or three meet’ in His name, not to suggest that He is not with the solitary, but to convey the power and the wonder that is manifested more fully when people truly bring themselves together in His presence. Just as The Holy Spirit can be thought of as being the communication and the love between The Father and The Son, so, in each of us bringing Jesus to our meeting with each other, we enable Christ in me to communicate with Christ in you and vice versa. The Spirit speaks to us and within us, and we are in the midst of the shared secret of our hearts; all we have to do is share that secret fully with each other. Then will our love be enlarged.
That is true freedom in the hands of God; and Christ is in it.
It becomes increasingly clear that I have yet to yield myself fully to this freedom in which progress lies hidden. It is only in having been confined by my own questioning that I have seen how incomplete my freedom was, and only in having regained some measure of it that I realize I had been drawn away from my place of peace and solitude: away from the edge at which I am most likely to be in tune with that which feeds me and breathes within me.
It is in God’s hands that all answers lie, and it is where I slip effortlessly out of the noisy activity of the world that I am most aware of being held within them. My guidance will be unlocked through the sharing of my heart’s secret, and my answers will be found while watching and waiting at the very edge. I must return to the path that takes me there.
That question can and does take many forms. As written, it is a broad-sounding query without any apparent importance or urgency. It could suggest an awareness that I should be doing some other particular thing rather than that in which I am actually engaged, or that I should be doing something, or even anything, rather than idling my time away doing nothing, but it is a great deal more than that. It is important, and though unable to know whether or not it is in fact urgent, it is accompanied by a sense of urgency born of that lack of knowledge. What if it is urgent? What if I really should be doing some particular thing right now? - Something I am urgently required to be doing, but of which I have as yet no clear idea?
Instead of being a broad suggestion of what could be absentmindedness, indifference or neglect, ‘What is it that I should be doing?’ is etched unavoidably into the surface of my consciousness by the relentless gnawing of my conscience. Whatever the words uttered or heard within, they are felt as a repeated rousing of something vitally important; What am I being asked to do? What am I called to do? What do I need to do? What is my purpose? What is it that I need to accomplish if I am to bear the fruit for which I was created? I may think I know who I am, but who is the real me? Who is it that I am called to be? -That I was made to be? And how near or far am I from being that person?
In that same post I also wrote, ‘Even among our friends we are fundamentally separate ... through our lack of understanding of our place in the world.’ In other words, through not knowing the answer to those same questions.
Reading the Newman passage as though speaking to myself, those parts which seem almost to be a personal reproach combine to read as follows:
‘Perhaps the reason why my attainments are so poor is that I dare not trust others with the secret of my heart, and I fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. I make clean the outside of things; I am amiable and friendly to others in words and deeds, but my love is not enlarged. The presence of Christ is not in it.’
The passage has always made me uncomfortably aware that, other than in a superficial way, I do not share my thoughts and feelings with anyone else, but having personalised it in that way I find further weight being added to a leaning that has already become apparent to me. Though the answer is not appreciably nearer, the direction I should take to find guidance in my search for that answer is perhaps being made more clear.
We all have that same need to become the person we are made to be, and however far we have journeyed, and however vague or intense the questioning may be, there is a corresponding need to be alert, to be awake, to be on the lookout for the help that will always come our way. It is a matter of recognizing God’s provision for us.
This is something of which I thought I was already well aware, and yet, as soon as I found myself deeply embedded in something of importance which has me yearning for clarification, guidance, and a sure sense of direction, all such awareness seems to have drifted away. I have buried myself in a busyness that has apparently prevented me from using abilities I already have: the ability to see and to hear and to feel, in other words, the ability to recognize the availability of guidance in places to which I already have access. God has provided all that I need, but through the narrow-mindedness of my own searching I have walked straight past the doors that are already open to me. Introspection has blinded me, and self-consciousness has distanced me from those who may effortlessly steer me in the right direction. I had been given a key but had failed to see what it could unlock, and I had found the door without knowing that I had the means to walk straight through it.
I have recently written about being free in the hands of God, and have now experienced how easy it is to lose all sense of that freedom as a result of our own striving after that very thing. I already had the freedom, but it slipped away unnoticed as I tried hard to grasp something that could not be grasped. With the return of relaxation and trust, the freedom becomes apparent once more, and with it comes the clarity to see what was already there. It is easy to believe that we have faith, but without a perpetual and living awareness of its life within us the reality will be intermittent at best.
The experience of friendship is warm and it is safe, but the potential within it goes far beyond our normal expectations. Combined with a deeply shared faith it has almost frightening possibilities, and that is why we usually keep ourselves apart at the deepest levels. ‘The presence of Christ is not in it,’ said Newman, and yet we know Christ’s words well enough: ‘For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20)
Therein lies another aspect of my failure and my fault; I have failed to find a sense of direction towards the answer I seek, not only through the blindness resulting from my self-centred search, but through trying to find the answer for myself: through stubbornly going it alone. The answer will come from Christ Himself through the guidance of The Holy Spirit. He has said that He is ‘where two or three meet’ in His name, not to suggest that He is not with the solitary, but to convey the power and the wonder that is manifested more fully when people truly bring themselves together in His presence. Just as The Holy Spirit can be thought of as being the communication and the love between The Father and The Son, so, in each of us bringing Jesus to our meeting with each other, we enable Christ in me to communicate with Christ in you and vice versa. The Spirit speaks to us and within us, and we are in the midst of the shared secret of our hearts; all we have to do is share that secret fully with each other. Then will our love be enlarged.
That is true freedom in the hands of God; and Christ is in it.
It becomes increasingly clear that I have yet to yield myself fully to this freedom in which progress lies hidden. It is only in having been confined by my own questioning that I have seen how incomplete my freedom was, and only in having regained some measure of it that I realize I had been drawn away from my place of peace and solitude: away from the edge at which I am most likely to be in tune with that which feeds me and breathes within me.
It is in God’s hands that all answers lie, and it is where I slip effortlessly out of the noisy activity of the world that I am most aware of being held within them. My guidance will be unlocked through the sharing of my heart’s secret, and my answers will be found while watching and waiting at the very edge. I must return to the path that takes me there.
‘... let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God ...’
(Romans 12:2)
Friday 1 February 2008
Another tree
The freedom we must not merely allow, but must actively encourage in all who follow after us as well as in our own children, is the same freedom in which we are now able to live our own lives. It is a freedom to become, to be and to live as ourselves: as the people we were born to be. The world effortlessly drowns our recognition of it, and little wonder perhaps, as even for those whose lives are a continual quest for understanding, for meaning and for truth, it does not appear to be any form of freedom until they are already living within it.
Every aspect of a journey of faith is a further step on the journey into an even deeper faith, and every such step transforms us: we are brought to a place we could not have imagined before arriving there, and the shift in our awareness, hope and trust – however small the move may be – could not have been anticipated. It is granted through an openness to the unlimited possibility of God’s presence and His awareness of us as individuals. With every small step we take towards Him, He reveals all that we need to draw us ever deeper towards our goal: freedom in His hands with a longing for nothing but to do His will.
Viewed from without, faith brings restriction and self-denial, endless struggle with temptation, inevitable failure and consequent feelings of guilt: a mental and emotional incarceration without the merest hint of freedom. And yet, though unrecognizable, this is the freedom for which we long. It is what seems to be another paradox, but when that freedom is attained even in the smallest measure, the contradiction dissolves into an appreciation of the impossibility of comprehension without our own experience.
The whole process of journeying into the arms of God can appear to be one of walking blindfolded on a narrow and difficult path, and in allowing ourselves to be guided along the way, of being led by others who are equally blind. This is one of the sad products of our living and growing in the world with no conscious trace of that ‘first light’ with which we had been born. Instead of growing both naturally and supernaturally into and through the stages of realization, we have to battle our way back to the beginnings of that essential awareness, and then, building on a hesitant faith in an unknown Presence, we find ourselves among The Found, we hear ourselves being called by name and we feel His touch; He grasps us and steadily draws us toward Himself; we know we have been claimed as His own, and we begin to feel the impregnable safety that is His embrace. All this leads to the fulfilment of our worldly life: we are fully transformed into the men and women He made us to be. We truly become ourselves, and we are able to put every facet of our being and our longing into the words, ‘Do with me what You will Lord.’
Mark 4:28 speaks of the growth that occurs in the transformation of a seed while unattended in the ground. This is how our spiritual growth should have been, but the reality is that we have to strip away all the veils and curtains that separate us from that growth before we can begin the process of recovery.
My garden once again provides me with physical reminders of the extra labour and support needed to achieve what nature would herself have accomplished without effort if growth had been allowed to continue undisturbed from seed to maturity.
The established root system of any plant is the source of life and the stability that enables it to take its place in the world, standing strong and fulfilling its purpose. This is particularly evident to us in the life and the strength of a tree.
Every aspect of a journey of faith is a further step on the journey into an even deeper faith, and every such step transforms us: we are brought to a place we could not have imagined before arriving there, and the shift in our awareness, hope and trust – however small the move may be – could not have been anticipated. It is granted through an openness to the unlimited possibility of God’s presence and His awareness of us as individuals. With every small step we take towards Him, He reveals all that we need to draw us ever deeper towards our goal: freedom in His hands with a longing for nothing but to do His will.
Viewed from without, faith brings restriction and self-denial, endless struggle with temptation, inevitable failure and consequent feelings of guilt: a mental and emotional incarceration without the merest hint of freedom. And yet, though unrecognizable, this is the freedom for which we long. It is what seems to be another paradox, but when that freedom is attained even in the smallest measure, the contradiction dissolves into an appreciation of the impossibility of comprehension without our own experience.
The whole process of journeying into the arms of God can appear to be one of walking blindfolded on a narrow and difficult path, and in allowing ourselves to be guided along the way, of being led by others who are equally blind. This is one of the sad products of our living and growing in the world with no conscious trace of that ‘first light’ with which we had been born. Instead of growing both naturally and supernaturally into and through the stages of realization, we have to battle our way back to the beginnings of that essential awareness, and then, building on a hesitant faith in an unknown Presence, we find ourselves among The Found, we hear ourselves being called by name and we feel His touch; He grasps us and steadily draws us toward Himself; we know we have been claimed as His own, and we begin to feel the impregnable safety that is His embrace. All this leads to the fulfilment of our worldly life: we are fully transformed into the men and women He made us to be. We truly become ourselves, and we are able to put every facet of our being and our longing into the words, ‘Do with me what You will Lord.’
Mark 4:28 speaks of the growth that occurs in the transformation of a seed while unattended in the ground. This is how our spiritual growth should have been, but the reality is that we have to strip away all the veils and curtains that separate us from that growth before we can begin the process of recovery.
My garden once again provides me with physical reminders of the extra labour and support needed to achieve what nature would herself have accomplished without effort if growth had been allowed to continue undisturbed from seed to maturity.
The established root system of any plant is the source of life and the stability that enables it to take its place in the world, standing strong and fulfilling its purpose. This is particularly evident to us in the life and the strength of a tree.
Nearly every tree visible from my home, including those in my own garden, has grown where nature placed it,. They have simply done what they do, and they have done it well. But I have two Ash trees that were found growing from seed in the lawn, and having managed to see them and avoid them with the mower throughout what I took to be their first two years of growth, I eased them out of the ground and heeled them in again where they could be left in peace. That was more than twenty five years ago, and today they are real tree sized trees.
In their case the potentially disastrous upheaval had no lasting ill effects and their continued growth required no more than being placed back into their natural environment.
So it is with our spiritual awareness; early in life the potential is all there and feeding on what it is given, and seemingly drastic setbacks can be countered and overcome in the right environment and atmosphere. The childhood awareness of the light within is not easily quenched other than by the wrong example of those from whom a child takes its lead, and by the distractions of the man-made world into which we bring them.
As adults however, getting back to a position of safety, stability and fruitful growth into a meaningful maturity is far more difficult.
Whether moving towards faith for the first time, or trying to rebuild it after gradually falling away, or after some major event that has shaken all belief to the very roots, simply trying to connect to the support and nourishment we need, and hoping that this will ‘heel us in’ to the right environment will not suffice. It takes hard work, commitment and perseverance, advice and moral support from the right people, and a very real and rock solid means of steadying us through whatever may come; and that may be needed for a long time.
This does not deny the possibility of being suddenly brought to life and faith; this is an ever-present possibility for all of us and we should be praying for the Spirit of God to fill us in that way, but it does not bring everything at once, all the answers and all the understanding, all the trust and all the peace, and it does bring a need for a supportive and ongoing nourishment of a different kind.
Unlike the two Ash trees transplanted when in their infancy, I have recently planted another tree that portrays the more drastic needs of the mature when trying to establish or re-establish themselves in the ground of faith. It is a larger than usual tree for transplanting and needed a sizeable hole to receive it, preparation of the soil around it, the laying of perforated pipe around the roots to ensure that watering will get down to the right places, and three large stakes to hold it securely in place by means of strong strapping. Its support has already been severely tested by the recent strong winds and without it the root system would never be able to successfully grow and spread into the surrounding ground; the tree would have no chance of becoming firmly anchored in it’s maturity, and could not be expected to become the tree it was made to be. The stakes will remain in place for at least the next three years. When they are removed it will no longer need that support, just as it will no longer need watering and feeding by anything other than nature herself.
Growth and transformation will continue unseen, and I shall have made way for its freedom in the hands of God.
As adults however, getting back to a position of safety, stability and fruitful growth into a meaningful maturity is far more difficult.
Whether moving towards faith for the first time, or trying to rebuild it after gradually falling away, or after some major event that has shaken all belief to the very roots, simply trying to connect to the support and nourishment we need, and hoping that this will ‘heel us in’ to the right environment will not suffice. It takes hard work, commitment and perseverance, advice and moral support from the right people, and a very real and rock solid means of steadying us through whatever may come; and that may be needed for a long time.
This does not deny the possibility of being suddenly brought to life and faith; this is an ever-present possibility for all of us and we should be praying for the Spirit of God to fill us in that way, but it does not bring everything at once, all the answers and all the understanding, all the trust and all the peace, and it does bring a need for a supportive and ongoing nourishment of a different kind.
Unlike the two Ash trees transplanted when in their infancy, I have recently planted another tree that portrays the more drastic needs of the mature when trying to establish or re-establish themselves in the ground of faith. It is a larger than usual tree for transplanting and needed a sizeable hole to receive it, preparation of the soil around it, the laying of perforated pipe around the roots to ensure that watering will get down to the right places, and three large stakes to hold it securely in place by means of strong strapping. Its support has already been severely tested by the recent strong winds and without it the root system would never be able to successfully grow and spread into the surrounding ground; the tree would have no chance of becoming firmly anchored in it’s maturity, and could not be expected to become the tree it was made to be. The stakes will remain in place for at least the next three years. When they are removed it will no longer need that support, just as it will no longer need watering and feeding by anything other than nature herself.
Growth and transformation will continue unseen, and I shall have made way for its freedom in the hands of God.
‘And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.’
(Mark 4:29)
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