The Catholic in me (1)

A month has now passed since the CatholicBlogs.com search window first appeared at the foot of these pages.
Weeks earlier, after pondering on the significance or otherwise of my increasing urge to state that the Catholic Church is my spiritual home, I had intended posting something relating to this, but -as has occurred so frequently- whenever I sat down to write, something other than my original intention provided the subject for my thoughts.
These accidental delays have provided an admittedly minute but nonetheless interesting contribution to my suspicions that, even in the barely visible and scarcely known corners of individual lives, thoughts, and values, subjects which can arouse strong feelings and reactions of a more obvious nature in the world at large, are alive and well. The embers of inbuilt discontent, distrust, distaste, and even of disgust: of disdain, discord and disunity, are aglow beneath a merely superficial covering of ash.
The greyness of the ash has no intended link with the monochrome horizons of my previous post, but rather represents the essential barrier of ignorance and misunderstanding without which the embers cannot be successfully smoored against the long and empty hours of darkness. In some people the hidden glow of their disaffection must never be allowed to diminish: it is an undeniable part of their whole way of thinking and of being; indoctrination and bigotry have spawned a mindset that is savoured with pride and a confidence in the sole possession of the truth. The long dark hours linger for life: in too many of us, they will last for as long as the life that clings to them.
Access to the truth has been disowned. ‘Christianity’ has become a banner-slogan waved by different groups as they face each other, manning and strengthening the barricades that keep them apart. The very word that proclaims truth and community in the following of Christ is wielded as a weapon of war in the very hearts of those whose hallucinations include exclusivity rights to that which Jesus gave for all mankind, and a factional solidarity that hides behind an ashen mask disguised as unity.

We have all experienced those brief moments when something happens, or is said, that suddenly changes our way of seeing a person forever. This can involve any facet of life and our interactions with each other, so it is no surprise that our spiritual leanings and awareness are not exempt from such jarring. My own such moments have taken years to build into my present saddened consciousness of the way the whole concept of unity has been disowned by so many who profess to be Christians. This perpetuates one of the most basic and destructive failures of the followers of Christ, for which none of us can entirely exclude ourselves from blame.
The one moment that perhaps lodged in my memory more than any other, occurred when I visited the home of a delightful middle-aged couple in a well-to-do area of Kent. I was delivering an item they had purchased from me, and, having never met them before, was at once put at ease by their welcome and by the obvious pleasure they derived from seeing their new acquisition ‘in the flesh’.
Shared interests discovered over cups of tea led to the beginnings of what could have become real friendship, and having already stayed far longer than intended, we progressed to their family and the proudly displayed photographs. At a point in this happy gathering when the lady had gone upstairs to find something she wished to show me, she suddenly called loudly down to her husband, “Quick! Look out of the window! She’s sitting on the wall.” The husband quickly rose and crossed to the window; his facial expression became a combination of disbelief and suppressed anger as he turned and hurried out to the hallway on his way to the front door. Before he reached it his wife called down again, “She’s gone! ... Dear God!”
Amid the “Did you see that”s, and the “I don’t believe it”s, she came down the stairs to rejoin the two of us in the hallway. My uncertainty regarding the urgency of what was happening had led me there in case I could be of any help, and as their anger subsided they became aware that I would have had no idea what was going on. It was soon explained, and clearly the presumption was that I would feel the appropriate indignation on their behalf. One of their neighbours, who apparently made a habit of doing such unforgivable things, had been seen sitting on the low boundary wall which ran along the pavement outside their hedge. I found it difficult to find any logical reason for such likeable people becoming so incensed by such an incident, but then, after a short pause, and spoken with considerable venom, came the words that would make everything clear.
They did make it clear – but not, I think, in the way intended.
“... and she’s CATHOLIC !”
Such an unexpected utterance left me shocked for a moment, and it must have shown. After a few seconds silence I said quietly, that whatever their neighbour had done to offend them was down to her as an individual, and certainly had nothing to do with whether or not she was a Catholic. Another silence as we returned to the lounge, and then, disbelievingly and rather sheepishly, the wife asked, “You’re not a Catholic are you ?” A few awkward minutes more and I was on my way home.

It is not only the experience itself that has lodged within me, but the lingering knowledge that I had been at a complete loss as to what I should have done or said. Perhaps, in that particular place at that particular time, all that was needed of me was done, but what if they had asked further questions? What if they had begun to direct their inappropriate fire at my own admitted allegiance? Or had verbally attacked Catholics or Catholicism in general? And what if, somewhere deep beneath the layers of ash that kept their embers so hot, there also burnt a hidden will to answer Our Lord’s call to unity? I was in no position to stand up for myself, my fellow Catholics, or the Catholic Church.
Standing up to be counted, yes; being present to others as a Catholic, yes; but to discuss, to have the answers to questions, to know the facts ... no: I was not competent: I was not able: I was a Catholic in name, by nature, and through experience, but ...

It is only over the last two years that my thoughts on this have been resurrected. Surely I should be able to defend my beliefs and those of others around me; and is this not something we are all required to do? Perhaps my continuing uncertainty is born of a corresponding lack of decisiveness in interpreting my own faith: my understanding of my God, and His will for me and for all mankind.
It all comes down to two simple but enormous questions: - exactly what is it that I really believe? - and in which (if any) of the diverse denominations and sub-divisions under the broad heading of the Christian Church, do my beliefs find their conception, their baptism, their growth, and their confirmation in loving and forgiving community with Christ’s followers?

The small contribution to my suspicions that arose from the unobtrusive insertion of the Catholic Blogs search on this site, was the change in the general area of numerical placing of the blog in ‘Blog Topsites’ which is also at the foot of the page.
The numbers visiting are small, but most days there is someone somewhere reading these pages, and that confirms to me that I must continue with my soliloquy, but in the past, whenever I have posted something new, the Topsites number has decreased noticeably, showing that the presence of readers has, as it were, sent the blog further up the charts. Since the implied Catholicism appeared, this has been less apparent, and the assumption must be that even without my confirmation that the writer is a Catholic, some regular readers have abandoned ship rather than continue receiving whatever nourishment it was that they found here.
Seeing those first eight letters of CatholicBlogs.com must have been one of those brief moments for them, when suddenly, in phobic fashion, the flavour became completely unacceptable.
Heaven forbid that they should hear the views or appreciate the thoughts of a Catholic!

‘Blow on a spark and up it flares,
spit on it and out it goes;
both are the effects of your mouth.’
(Ecclesiasticus 28:12)

Glorious

‘He veils the sky with clouds,
and provides the earth with rain,
makes grass grow on the hills ...’
(Psalms 147:8)

Without doubt each one of us has been gifted with a wider range of talents and abilities than we are likely to be given credit for.
That is how it should be, as the credit is not ours to receive: not for the abilities we use openly, nor for those of which we are aware but which we keep hidden, and, in the eyes and mind of no man should we ever be credited for those of which we ourselves remain unaware. For any ability or particular attribute received, credit is due to the source of the gift; the Giver is the genius, the worker of wonders, and the power that awakens the gift within us as we respond to His call in our encounters with sorrow, fear, injustice and despair in the lives of others. I believe it was Aristotle who said, 'Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.' Even in the most unbelieving hearts and minds, our talents are of little use on the wider expanses of this life and in the grand scheme of things, if they are used only for our own ease and pleasure, accumulation and ultimately futile advancement.
But it is not only the wonderful ‘above nature’ gifts God has given us that we can so easily neglect or hide, or even deny. The very fact that we have life is itself an awesome gift, and one we fail to recognize every day. Being alive involves countless processes, interconnections and inter-reliances that together maintain this temporary form that houses the creative miracle that is us. Our life as people upon this astonishing planet is utterly filled with the inherent gifts we overlook with every step and every breath we take.

The reasons that drove me towards the articulation of thoughts, and the subsequent writing that has conjured these pages from the mists that swirl around and within me, were, and still are, centred on our need to become the people we were made to be. My own increasing awareness that my journey to date has been of far greater importance than I could ever previously have realized, has brought with it a heightened sense of urgency with regard to the need for others to persevere with their journeys toward becoming the fully realized men and women God created them to be, and the need for those not yet walking their paths to find that indefinable spark, that moment’s pause, that strange inner glance, whatever the particular trigger may be for each of them to begin to discern that distant kaleidoscope of hope, love and light on their presently monochrome horizons.
And there, in that un-colourful word, is a reminder of what we regard as the everyday things of this life either obscuring what lies beyond, or hiding the beauty of their own truth within their too familiar sights and sounds, and scents and feelings. I could easily have refrained from describing other people’s horizons as being monochrome; In earlier years I would have anticipated voices with their ‘How dare you ...’ , and ‘What gives you the right ...’ , but from the reserves of excuses lying within our hearts, we can all conjure reasons to not do almost anything.

The word would not have been in my mind if it were not for the sort of day it has been, with occasional brightness, but clouds, heavy showers and mists making it a predominantly monochrome one.
The greening of the countryside with its Cowslip yellow, and the simple glory and natural purity of white and green that is the damp woodland carpets of flowering Ramsons, can never be made monochrome, but yesterday evening, having gone from the former to the even deeper peace of such Wild-Garlic scented woods gracing the western slopes of the Malvern Hills, I left their cleansing and healing power behind as I rose onto the bare hilltops above the Gullet Quarry.
My progress was purposeful – as it almost always is when I come here – but while always drawn to give silent praise to God by the natural wonders through which I pass, I rarely stop unless for physical reasons: the need to catch my breath, or in response to urgent pleadings from legs when climbing steeply to this point. But this time I had to stop, not out of physical necessity, but in obedience to God’s gentle unspoken word.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10) With the display that awaited me, I could not have done otherwise.

“Stand! Be still! Acknowledge me, recognize me, know me for who I am.

All that is in the world is mine. Look! Open your eyes and see: I lay my glance and my touch on all before you.

Behold! My glory fills all heaven and earth.

You have brought yourself to me, and I reveal the glory in which I would have you bathe.

You have seen me in the ablutions of thundery rain, of dripping boughs, of trickled streams and soaking pools; you have prepared yourself as did my people of old. Their following of my Law, their preparations, their focus on my Presence in the Temple was tied to my covenant of preparation, my laying of foundations for my gift to all mankind: my Son, the world’s Saviour, your Redeemer.

My Temple now is where it has always been; it is time for mankind to see: it is time to grasp the fullness of all that has been revealed; it is above and beneath you, it is all around you: it is within you, and your coming to me is your part in the building of my dream: my Kingdom: my Will in all that I have made.

Behold! I reveal myself to you in cloud and rain, in swirling mist and caressing air, in swallowed horizon and obscured valley, in grumbling skies, in passing brilliance of sunlight shafts, in atmosphere laden with the water of life, in drenched rock, in sodden turf, and in wallowing mud.

Be still, and know that I am God.”

The magical scene spread before me was colourless, utterly monochrome, with every greyness – brooding and bright – from charcoal depths right through to bespangled and shimmering silver. With all woodland pattering of drips and drops left behind, and the last whispers of rain now ceased after the downpours: with the air held still, mists poised in suspense and no longer riding the billows of treetop and hillside, the only sound reached softly down from the vastness above me. The immensity, and the incomprehensible beauty of simplicity, spoke in creation’s muffled and slowly receding basso profundo, “Behold !” ........ “Behold !”................ ”Behold !”

‘... then the Temple was filled with the cloud of the glory of God.' (2 Chronicles 5:13)

Lord, lead every person to the time, the word, the touch, the spark, the gift, the loss, the joy or the pain, that will cause them to pause for that first moment, that first wondering, that first questioning.
Draw them into an awareness of Your Presence; lead all who already seek your face, to walk beside them on their journey into the wonders hid within seemingly colourless lives.

‘Acclaim The Lord, all the earth,
serve The Lord with gladness,
come into His presence with songs of joy!’
(Psalms 100:1,2)

... or free ?

Around the base of the tree – then only a few centimetres in diameter - there had always been a tump of grass, and with that part of the garden only being worked when it was cleared of growth at the end of summer, when the wild flowers had all set their seed, that was almost unseen. Until the year when I randomly chose to remove the tump I had not been aware that most of the bulk was not grass but an ants nest. It had built up the soil around the tree to some twenty centimetres above normal ground level, creating conditions that tended towards those resulting from planting too deep. Being an ants nest the soil would have been kept aerated by tunnels and passages, never forming into a completely solid mound of earth, and I assume it was this that prevented the death of the tree. It may not have died, but year after year the effects were well nigh insurmountable.
Having removed everything down to level ground I had wondered whether it would make any difference and hoped the tree might gradually pick up over the next few years. It did not take that long. The following spring the leaves arrived as usual, but then it transformed itself; it grew rapidly, flourishing, blossoming and bearing abundant fruit by the time I next took my sickle to clear the ground around it. It has since gone from strength to strength, and though it was always hoping to be, longing to be, and striving to be a pear tree, it was only when the intended fruit were finally produced that it could proclaim itself to be so.

These thoughts have been brought to mind by the picture of a tree on a book cover: a line drawing or engraving that shows a mature tree with a correspondingly full canopy and substantial root system. But it also shows the ground level as being half way up the length of the trunk; this completely contradicts one of the general rules that enable a tree to reach the level of maturity shown, and it was this that brought me out into the garden to view this year’s first blossoms opening, a proof of life in all its fullness without which this pear tree could never have borne fruit.

We cannot avoid the world in which we live. For as long as we live upon it we are of this place, but we are not made to wallow in it.
The seed of something far beyond our physical being is sown into our very existence, and the innocent awareness of that otherness glows in every infant and young child. We are called to recognize and follow that ‘first light’: to nurture it when retained, to search for it and rekindle it when lost, for it will never go out. It is always there to lead us back to where we are meant to be.
If, for whatever reason, we are buried too deeply in the world, we will not flourish.
If, in whatever way, our minds are too deeply engrossed with the world or any aspect of it, we cannot turn our spirit to matters beyond our day to day life, and without that ability we cannot increase our willingness to look in that direction.
Without looking we shall never see, and without a willingness to do so how shall we begin our search ?
Without reason to search we will fail to hunger and thirst, and without such needs how shall we pull ourselves out from the mire ?
How shall we feel the yearning and generate the longing that leads us to find our place in the world ? – with our feet firmly upon it, our charity laid out for all mankind, but with our hearts and minds rising above it ?

How ? By tapping into the life giving streams that will feed us and bring us to the place God made us to fill.
The sap is rising, not only in the trees around us but within ourselves; we know it all too well. It is part of our physical makeup, welling up within us as lust, anger, greed, gluttony, all those surges of feeling that have the power to swamp our inner convictions and our rationality.
We cannot rise above such things alone; in this life our feet will be forever anchored to the world: we cannot be completely done with such feelings while we still live. What enables us to conquer all that would rise within us, is the spiritual equivalent of the finely-falling and life-giving rain in which I stood while contemplating the pear tree: God’s grace; and the equivalent of the birch-sap surging into every extremity of its tree as shown by the drip, drip - as though of tears: God’s overflowing provision for each one of us.
God’s grace is freely given: it is there for you, for me, for everyone. Dear Lord, wherever would I be without it ?
And we are beckoned to the source of life, to the wellspring of spiritual sap that has the power to calm the flow of all that rises naturally within us. If we do our best to disconnect our taproot from the attractions and distractions of the world, gaining nourishment instead by grafting ourselves onto the ever-blossoming, ever-fruitful, ever-living vine that is our Saviour, our Shepherd and our Guide, we shall find ourselves within reach of our full potential, blossoming and bearing the fruit for which we were made.

“As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself,
unless it remains part of the vine,
neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine,
you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me, with me in him,
bears fruit in plenty ...”
(John 15:4-5)

Slave ...?

Standing on moss soaked by rain, with barely more than a heavy mist still falling upon me, I am surrounded by nature’s unstoppable surge into hope and fulfilment.
Everything in the garden and surrounding countryside has begun the wonderful process of bursting forth into new growth, into bud and into green, into blossom and into eventual fruitfulness. This gentle fall of moisture is matched by the unseen upward flow in every plant around me, and nothing brings that home more than the constant dripping from the cut ends of small branches trimmed late from a still bare looking Birch tree. The sap is rising: awakening, rousing, moving, growing, yearning and praising: bursting forth into exuberance and a maximized potential of nature’s inbuilt compliance with God’s will. Life itself is rising from the earth, lifting itself from the solidity of the ground that spawned it to find unimagined expression in becoming what it was planned to be.

There are many general rules we all follow without thought and without question. Our health and happiness, our general wellbeing, and even life itself depends upon this automatic adherence to what we may regard as being common sense.
We need to breathe fresh air, and remaining in a sealed space will eventually deprive us of essential oxygen. Understanding this gives us the knowledge that, for example, children should not place plastic bags over their heads. We do not step off a kerb and walk across a busy road without first looking and listening; we do not leave pans of boiling water unattended on the hob, and we do not turn on gas appliances without igniting the gas.
There are general rules in everything, and whenever we use our initiative and resourcefulness to bend or steer natural processes to suit our own inclinations or appetites, we can easily fail to recognize or ignore some of them. This is not an inbuilt part of us as human beings, but it is an inherent part of the arrogance that afflicts so much of humankind.
Some rules may not be so obvious, and even when recognized are not always accepted as meaningful. They are seen more as widely repeated coincidences that have become the norm, and are thus dismissed as having no particular value in the web of interactions that have combined to make our world the way it is. Rising sea levels, deforestation, drought, overcrowding, poverty, famine, pollution, - the list goes on and on. All such things are consequences of our unthinking attitude to the world in which we live, and, even more ashamedly, our selfish disregard for our fellow human beings.

The rapidly greening trees and bushes around me are the product of some of these general rules having been left undisturbed and undisputed, but the particular tree I have been drawn outside to look at is worth the look only because I changed the circumstances in which it had been struggling to live.
Several years passed without my noticing anything particular about it, and several more during which I wondered why it did not seem to be growing much. Every year it came into leaf, looked healthy enough throughout the summer, shed its leaves in autumn and ended up looking almost the same as the previous year. It was clearly alive but was not really growing. It was going nowhere and achieving nothing. It was born of the ground upon which it stood, but all possibility of maturity and bearing fruit was in some way still buried deep in that ground. I am reminded once more that, until more recently, I have never thought of myself as a gardener; those years would not have left the tree untended had I truly been one.

I have always known that when planting or transplanting trees, they should be placed no deeper into the soil than they were when in their original position. It is one of those general but important rules. The Royal Horticultural Society advice includes the following:
‘It is often assumed that the most vulnerable part of a tree is the canopy or rootball but the stem collar is highly susceptible to damage such as physical impact damage from garden machinery and the slower, less obvious, but often terminal, effects of planting at the wrong depth.’
The tree before me had not been planted or transplanted by anything other than nature’s own progress. It grew where it had begun its life, and I suppose I had the automatic assumption that it would therefore sort things out correctly for itself.
I have also read elsewhere that, ‘If the stem collar is submerged in soil the bark is liable to rot resulting in the gradual death of the tree.’ This makes no mention, nor even hints of a person being involved in the process, and, if I had previously read and absorbed these words, perhaps I would have appreciated the situation years earlier.
I love trees. They have already come into my thoughts here more than once, including their need for help when in the stranglehold of Ivy, but here again is an example of my failure to recognize a need.

How easily we are caught up in living our own lives, and how readily our preoccupations make us blind to the needs of others, even those closest to us and whom we dearly love.
And could the world as a whole be further removed from the way our consciences tell us that it should be ?
Are we not disregarding one of this life’s general, basic but essential rules ?
How unlike the early Christian community ...

‘None of their members was ever in want ...’ (Acts 4:34)

A hillside seat

No other person has ever been able to provide for the needs of everyone, and nor shall such a one be found in the future unless it be Jesus Himself.
With loaves and fishes the superficial need for food was satisfied, and this added to the fascination of the crowd that followed Him. That need was superficial in that it was not urgent: nobody was starving. We are told that the people were hungry, but their hunger was not yet so great that they would return to their homes; they still hungered more for the experience of being part of the crowd in the presence of this man they had heard about and talked about, listened to, and had themselves seen doing amazing things. The physical hunger was overridden by their hunger for the experience: their enthusiasm for the charismatic presence of Jesus and their anticipation of further remarkable happenings. They had not followed Him into the countryside just to leave Him when they got hungry, and later to learn that they had missed the highlight of the day. Something similar may have already happened to some of them and they would not want to hear their friends repeating the same excited words, “Oh, you should have stayed ! You’ll never believe what happened !”

That same enthusiasm and apparent need for the feeling, the sensation, the experience, influences us today.
We can be so engrossed in something that we lose track of time, suddenly realizing that hours have passed unnoticed. We are ‘awakened’ by the phone ringing, by someone arriving home, by a sudden realization that it is getting dark, or that dawn is breaking. Though there are aspects of this which may be annoying and frustrating, as well as others which raise the possibility of unwelcome consequences, the blanketing effect is not only over the exterior and physical awareness – such as the passage of time and hunger – but also over any consciousness of what our deepest needs really are. Our hunger for the experience swamps us completely, leaving us not only without a sense of ongoing purpose and lacking a realization that we have come to a halt on our spiritual journey, but with a contrary belief that we have suddenly been lifted and carried forward along our path. We feel we have arrived somewhere; we are in Our Lord’s presence, and we think all we have to do is remain where we are, basking in expectation and enthusiasm, watching and waiting for what happens next. Surely He will provide for us; He will not let us go hungry.
We have, as it were, seated ourselves beside other spectators on a dusty hillside. We have set up camp among the five thousand hungry followers of Jesus. Having heard about Him, and having found ourselves drawn to Him, we have gone through the psychological turnstile and eagerly await the performance. We wonder what He will do next.

That for which He searches our hearts and minds, the deeper and greater need we each have buried within us, is obscured by our sensational and emotional excitement. Jesus is Jesus. He did things we could never dream of doing, but in confirming this truth within ourselves, we tend to blind ourselves with regard to those things of which we are in fact capable. We negate all hope of discovering and activating the gifts with which we have been endowed: the abilities we have been called to use for the benefit of our neighbours near and far, and for the furtherance of God’s will for all mankind.
In any self-assessment – unlikely to have resulted from a conscious decision – we will, in all probability, limit the scope of any perceived possibilities to a mere shadow of our true potential. Some will chase off to the opposite extreme, and they may be even less likely to find where they are meant to be. Hurrying in any direction is likely to be evidence of completely missing, or at least misinterpreting our guidance and spiritual instruction. Our sense of direction is confused and we are swamped again. We think we are ready to risk walking on water, but we are still on dry land: we did not even board the boat.

In His provision of food for the crowd Jesus showed how easily people in general can be satisfied by the availability of superficial satisfaction, the comfort of a physical need fulfilled quelling all conscious dissatisfaction with the barren wasteland that is their inner life. If some were conscious of anything beyond the free meal itself, the stunning reality for many would have been the provision of the food, whereas the truly miraculous was not this sign but the presence among them of the man who wrought it in their midst. The human body does not live long without being fed and watered, but the real food on offer that day was the word of God: the life-bringing words of Jesus. Ultimate truth pronounced by the Word of God Himself, incarnate and seated among them on a previously empty hillside. Eventually most will have wandered away without noticing or acknowledging this truth, content with having been there and with having had the experience.

In his ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ (II:VII), St John of The Cross writes of spiritual persons who ‘... think that it suffices to deny themselves worldly things without annihilating and purifying themselves of spiritual attachment.’ Our longing for the feelings, and our wallowing in emotions associated with spiritual experience are seductive examples of that attachment. Even more than the physical food, this distracts us from our journey and keeps us from hungering to do as Christ would have us do. As St John goes on to say, we ‘... seek only sweetness and delectable communion with God. This is not self-denial, and detachment of spirit, but spiritual gluttony.’
.

With meaning

How careful we have to be in choosing our words if we are to successfully convey our intended meaning.
Whatever the particular words may be, they have their own specific meaning or range of meaning and this is unchanging. The words themselves convey their own truth, and, if we are to leave the hearer or the reader with the intended understanding, any choice of interpretation has to be narrowed right down by the context in which those words are being used as well as by our considered use of supplementary words and careful use of grammar. And still we can get it wrong through the simple fact that we have spoken aloud or shared our written words with others. We are no more able to transfer the fullness of our thoughts and feelings to the minds of others than we can fully share that which fills our hearts. Even when the words have flowed from what fills the heart and their production has been heartfelt, they carry no guarantee of being received in the same way. The best we can hope for is to get close to their doing so for at least some of those who give attention to what we say.

Clearly there are vast areas in which the numbers of potential hearers has no bearing whatever on the audibility of the message -“those who have ears to hear” again - but even among those who may show interest, or who are searching hard for something to touch their own spirit, the words, and the way of writing or speaking must suit their own inner world if they are to receive what we are striving to offer.
What the actual situation is for any of us remains unknown, but it is obvious that a well known name in a person’s particular field of interest will have a far greater reach and influence than a random unknown voice such as my own. However, anyone using words on any subject, in any way other than in idle chatter, must assume that someone somewhere is listening; without that assumption their efforts are pointless and will remain forever sterile, and that is not what words are about.

I have my own way of thinking about this in relation to my own words.
As a start-point I have my reasons for beginning this ‘Soliloquy at The Very Edge’, as already spoken of in various earlier posts. My sense of having been filled to overflowing remains, and though it seems to ebb and flow in different directions the underlying feeling is still of brimming over: of having no control over something that quietly wells up within and flows ceaselessly into the world around me. The sense of indestructible peace this has generated in my life is undeniable but unexplainable. Though I may try to explain it at times I am aware that it is in fact beyond words; it is beyond whatever fills my heart. It is beyond my ability to explain because it is beyond my ability to fully comprehend; and the reason for that is simply because it is not from within me: it has been poured into me from without. It is sometimes tear-jerkingly, and always awe-inspiringly from beyond.
This peace is not a prompting as such for me to do anything, but is so significant in my life, and so much something I wish everyone could share in, that it has the same effect: it is part of my reason for being here, and without it I am sure I would not be filled to the brim and would not be continually drawn to the edge. It is a peace born of having had burdens lifted and of having been lifted from the dust; another step along the way (see 06.01.07 post). ‘You have raised me up. You have healed me Lord.’

The product of this is my belief that I have something to say. I still do not know what it is, but I am still here in the hope that some of it will leak out among the words that I pray do not overly confuse, distract or detract from my own journey or from anyone else’s.
If any of us feels we have something to say we should firmly believe that someone somewhere wants to hear it. I believe that in my own case and would urge you to that same belief in relation to your own thoughts and words. A God given confidence has to start somewhere, and this could be the starting point for you. How can we begin to move towards His will for us, towards becoming the people we are meant to be, without a confidence that He is calling us to follow, not from some far off place but from right beside us and from within us ?
I tell myself that one in every ten people who come to and view these pages just might linger long enough to wonder whether ... ? ... and of these perhaps half may find something that makes them stay a little longer (one in twenty).

Our interests may be many and varied, they overlap, they wax and they wane, and it takes time for interest, questioning and wondering to develop into the recognizable beginnings of a journey. I count on only one in five of these to stay the course long enough to become one of my unknown companions.
I am now down to one in a hundred, and this is where I tell myself I may be needed – but for three out of every four of these it will be for a brief period only. For them, I am perhaps part of God’s provision for them during a short stage of their journey; they may walk with me for a while until they are helped further along the way through their own encounters with truth. For one it will be the love and the touch of God the Father, for another the presence of The Risen Lord: the reality of Jesus in their life. For the third it will be the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit that lifts them into a whole new life. They will meet further down the road when the ungraspable truths of the Holy Trinity become an intangible reality for them.
And what of the fourth ? The one person in every four hundred who stumble upon my words ?
This is the man or woman who, though hopefully finding their rebirth with the other three, also has need of a more tangible and fallible fellow traveller: a fellow sinner who continues to struggle along the way but who is resolved never to give up the search.

This fellow sinner is me.
And that one person in four hundred is the one for whom I most need to continue speaking from the heart.

All this is simply a way I have of trying to rationalize something which cannot be assessed and calculated in that way.

It is meaningless other than as a reminder that if my words are helpful to anyone – to only one – my efforts are worthwhile. It helps to anchor my belief that everything I feel compelled to do is of some importance: that it is filled with meaning. And if there were ever to be a group of twelve of us, separate, unknown, yet still companions for the journey, that number would be the remnant of four thousand eight hundred people who had found this spot. The fact that there are billions of us is not relevant; we are each called to do our bit, wherever we are, and I have found a way of attempting to help in the feeding of five thousand.

‘May the words of my mouth always find favour,
and the whispering of my heart,
in your presence, Lord,
my rock, my redeemer.’
(Psalms 19:14)

Beyond compromise

'Words flow out of what fills the heart.’
A heart that is full cannot fail to find some way of bringing its fullness to expression, whether that be through a naturally generated and unthinking attitude to life and the world, or through a leaking out of emotion, the increasing pressure of which refuses to be contained within anything corresponding to the self. Both give expression to the underlying mindset and the moral, social, ethical and spiritual values of the individual, but whereas the former will, in some way and to a greater or lesser extent, colour not only words but thoughts and actions in all circumstances, the latter may produce a similar reaction and outcome but infrequently, unexpectedly and seeming randomly in even the smallest of situations. The one makes it impossible to hide whatever truly rules one’s life in spite of occasional strong feelings that seem to witness in an opposite direction; the other makes it impossible to contain an expanding compulsion to say or to do something, even when this may be contrary to all the ingrained and accustomed traits of the person’s character.
Examples of the former would be people who are truly humble, and those who are blindly arrogant. Those whose lives are based on a notable degree of goodness or of badness are unable to disguise their true colours other than fleetingly. Unless we live in the impossibly narrow ‘no-man’s land’ that is a perfect balance between the two – and such a compromise can never be regarded as good – we should be aware of our inclusion in this group, but, to the degree that is appropriate to each of us, most of us are also examples of the latter. It is our fundamental goodness or badness that, however well we have managed to keep it under wraps, will at some point become un-containable: it will burst free from the confines of our heart.

A perfect balance between good and evil could be mistakenly sensed and experienced as a state of calm, of quiet and of peace. In its withstanding of the pressures, temptations and inclinations to allow a natural drift towards an unquestioned response to our animal tendencies, it could be proclaimed as a victory of spirit over nature, of true humanity - as shown to us in its perfect form by Jesus Himself - over mere animality, a conquest of good over evil. This is one of many self-deceptions into which we may be led by our reliance upon our senses and our interpretations of experience.
Such a balance, if it exists at all, is fleeting: it is impossible to maintain. If we find ourselves in such a state the calm is unreal; the quiet and the apparent peace offer no contentment and no safety from darkness and fear. The balance is maintained only by a tension that constantly strains its tethers to the limit, stretching them so taut that the stillness in which we find ourselves agonizes on the verge of tearing itself asunder; the impossibility of sustaining the tension destroys all peace even while we believe it to exist. We cannot occupy such a place; it is truly a ‘no-man’s land’: a place where no person belongs, where there is no place for either side, where even life and death cannot be as they are meant to be.
To briefly find oneself in such a place is not to be at the edge in any meaningful and potentially edifying way; it is to perch dangerously on the knife edge of a ridge with no possibility of prolonged survival without falling to one side or the other. As soon as a tendency in one direction or the other makes itself known, we are gone. Compassion, anger, frustration, grief, joy, longing, desire, fear, hatred, love ... something triggers an undeniable inner response and we speak, or we act: we are unable to resist an honest response to our compulsion.

The perfection of human life shown to us by Jesus is not a compromise that results in evil being immobilized and merely held at bay; it is a blossoming of goodness that bears fruit in the complete neutering and disarming of badness. It is a conquest of all that tries to undermine the goodness that lies within each of us: it does not destroy evil but rises above it in a way that enables us to stride easily and confidently over what had once appeared to be insurmountable barriers.

The balance then is not what we seek: it is not our aim.

We are called to be ourselves, and in following that call we are led towards becoming the persons we were made to be.
We are called to goodness and into the light, to stand as beacons above the entanglements of our shadowy world.

We are called to respond to the fullness of our hearts: to speak out and act in accordance with whatever guidance we may receive.

We will know that prompting when it comes. It will be impossible to deny.

“For I am full of words
and forced to speak by a spirit within me;
within me, it feels like new wine seeking a vent,
bursting out of new wine-skins.
To gain relief, I must speak,
I must open my lips and reply.”
(Job 32:18-20)