Soliloquy at

Ripple effect

2012-02-13T01:47:00.000Z

I attended a total immersion (submersion) baptism a while ago.

Having been invited by the person being baptised, I found myself in the second row of seats, just behind her, and with a clear and close view of the baptismal pool uncovered before her.

Until the baptism itself, when she and those who would immerse her and bring her safely back again stepped down into the pool, the surface of the water was like glass: as though it had rested there undiscovered for an age, as in a previously undiscovered cavern beyond the imagination of mankind. There was something absolute about that stillness. I was drawn to it, though not distracted from the goings on around me as the service got under way.

When the time came she was duly baptised, not as an unknowing infant, nor in response to any authoritative wish of another from within her family or her church, but as a personal commitment: an expression and fulfilment of a mature person’s desire to follow, to receive and to bring into the lives of others the object of that desire. As the service continued, though listening to all that was being said and sung, I could not take my eyes from the pool until all discernable movement had ceased; and even then I found myself looking back to it frequently to be sure that it remained undisturbed. As if it had taken on a life of its own, I watched it throughout, and would not have been startled if the surface had begun to bend its reflections once more as the body of water beneath stirred and slowly turned in its sleep.

It took ten minutes or more to settle completely, but within the first minute a part of me was already far away – perhaps at ‘a pool called Bethesda in Hebrew ... (where there) were crowds of sick people, blind, lame, paralysed, ...’ (John 5:2-3).

I could only watch what was happening, having been put in mind of the words following on from the above.

Some searches, (e.g. at biblestudytools.com) come up with “No results found” in response to John 5:4 being entered; even the same translation can be found quoted in different ways. My printed copy of The New Jerusalem Bible excludes both the end of verse 3 and verse 4, but shows them in a footnote. An online version (at catholic.org) shows verse 4 but not the missing part of verse 3.

It was these sometimes absent lines that had set my eyes and mind on the movement of the water. They tell us that the gathered people were –

‘... waiting for the water to move; for at intervals the angel of the Lord came down into the pool, and the water was disturbed, and the first person to enter the water after this disturbance was cured of any ailment he suffered from. (John 5:3-4)

At the end of the service the pool was safely covered over, and the room was as though the water had never been seen; almost.

Darker patches on the carpet spoke of some recent occurrence, and of someone having passed that way. Something had happened there; someone had been changed by the presence of something unseen: touched by something more than water; something unrecognized had come to witness a person’s response to an ongoing beckoning which had filled and blessed, and left her changed in ways that will be revealed in stages through the coming years.

Her personal commitment had caused ripples, not just in the water after being in the pool, but in her own life: in her presence among others, family, community, and strangers whose paths she will cross as her journey continues. Such ripples will last much, much longer; they may never be entirely stilled.

Disturbances within myself had been mirrored in the silent rise and fall, the slow wave and warp of distorted reflections on the surface of the water as it obediently returned to its former self: flat calm and motionless; though below the surface, for a long time after, invisible eddies continued to settle into stillness. This process can only be set in motion by something being plunged into or passed through the water.

So it is for each of us as we follow our paths. Something stirs us; something reaches into our deepest depths, and in surfacing again draws our most basic need up into our consciousness. Our first experience of it might be barely noticeable or overwhelming; at whatever level, it might be as the heights of joy, or love, or peace, or the profoundest sorrow, grief, remorse or fear; it might feel as though it would break us completely, or be sensed as that which will be the making of us.

It is our response to that inner disturbance: our “Yes”, that causes ripples to penetrate through to every corner of our existence.

And those ripples spread out to gently lap at the shores of other people’s lives, even far beyond our knowing. In their turn they become the barely noticed prompts that lead others toward their own meetings with a desire that already lives within them.

At the pool called Bethesda, was it, perhaps, an intermittent inflow of water disturbing health-giving sediment that caused the crowds to gather in search of healing? Or did an angel of the Lord come down into the pool?

Was the disturbance in the waters of the pool I had watched so intently anything more than that made by people entering and leaving; or perhaps something deeper: the lingering but confined ripples from the full immersion of the baptism itself? Or was it a manifestation of that which is truly deep yet ruffles the surface of all things: that which can stir life even within the spiritually dead, and overflow from those already living within its embrace?

Lay it all within the compass of my own wandering imagination if you will, but the Holy Spirit was present, and the newly baptized lady had emerged from the water into a new form of life: one from which that spiritual presence, guidance and strength will never depart.

Was an angel of the Lord present?

If we loosen our interpretation of the word, perhaps many!

If such angels are God’s Messengers, may not some here on earth who are called to be His messengers be regarded, at least potentially, as angels? What else are we to others in need when we respond to God’s call to become His answer to their prayers, and to bring His healing touch into their lives?

Emerging from the baptismal pool, had come 0ne blessed with that potential.

May the on-going ripples from her commitment always reach to the inner shores of those who live and work around her; and for those to whose aid she may one day be called, may she be the angel who comes in their time of need.

Deacon? (17) A final twist

2012-02-07T17:49:00.000Z

My conscious decision to wait on approaches from others where my future direction was concerned, and to respond willingly to their suggestions or invitations, led me into a confrontation with some of my own doubts and with my reluctance to admit to them, when asked about becoming an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion* (10.01.11 An ongoing call).
I had found myself being presented with what I thought was the one thing I would have to decline; as though having stepped into a trap of my own making, or being taught to be more careful with how I opened myself up to new ideas and directions.
( * I have been wrongly referring to this as Eucharistic Minister: a mistake derived not only from the widespread habitual but inaccurate use of the term, but also from its being the expression used at the time by the person by whom I had been approached. )
The thought has only now occurred to me that the same situation arose when being asked about the diaconate. Other than as part of the reason for my surprise at being asked, I have remained unaware of it. Yet having already explained my reasons for being unable to assist with the distribution of Holy Communion had not prevented the same person approaching me about becoming a deacon.

Again I have failed to respond to an approach from others in the way I had consciously set for myself.

For a while, I have not been sure where that leaves me in my determination of the direction in which I am meant to be travelling, but I now find confirmation and further strengthening in it as I recognize my folly in having placed an unquestioning reliance on the leadings of others. I had, in effect, extended an open (though unvoiced) invitation to all, and had passively opened myself to possibilities from almost any source. That had not been my intention, but I now see that this is what I had brought about.

Perhaps the two declined invitations, coming as they did from a safe and trustworthy source, were extended in response to prompts whose true intention had been, not to create a deacon, but to block other misguided possibilities that, through my foolhardiness, may have beckoned me, occupied me, and drawn me away in an entirely wrong direction. Certainly my time has been spent in focussed thought on something worthwhile, and I have arrived at convictions which otherwise would have remained assumptions and hazy half-beliefs, or even completely unexamined.

I now find myself being filled with the sobering thought that the past few months may have been no more than a continuation of my being taught, at a still deeper level, that I must continue to wait, to be ready, and to trust. Following that direction of possibility puts my conviction of not being called to become a deacon in a whole new light: not just in terms of whether I am being called to that end or not, or even, as felt, whether I am actually being called to remain firmly planted among the laity. Instead, such questions are becoming increasingly irrelevant, even as I write.

All that matters perhaps: what I am in fact being called to, is what underlies both possibilities, towers above them, and is at the very heart of every call to a deeper commitment to Christ. It is the call that has been running through much of what I have been pondering and writing about in this lengthy series of posts, though I have failed to fully grasp it – even while thinking and writing. It now seems that there has been only one call echoing through my entire experience of the question and all that has followed on from it; a call that has finally become audible and visible in the space created by my sense of relief at having finished with my thoughts on the diaconate.

It is the call “to radical availability”.

The message, the gift, the desire, the requirement, the obligation: the ALL for each of us, whether ordained or not, is the call to devote oneself to Christ “by means of complete availability”.

It is to this that the deacon is ordained, but in spite of a conscious awareness that it as not specific to the diaconate, my knowledge of that fact has continued to blind me to the fullness of an essential reality: that this too is not for the deacon alone. It is the ALL to which I am being called; to which we are all being called.

‘Going deeply and honestly into our personal doubts and certainties ... will teach each one of us that our spiritual path leads into an “all or nothing” situation. And this is precisely the lesson we all need to learn. It is our ALL that is being asked of us.’

Those are my own words, written here just a few days ago.

How is it that as soon as I believe I have finished with this subject, they speak back to me so clearly of what this has all been about.

There are other lessons written here for me; placed somewhere between the lines of my own thinking, and perhaps, even now, my thoughts on them are not finished.

I received an email today from a Benedictine friend who has read all that is contained in these ‘Deacon ?’ posts. It included a sentence that at once helped me to see how things really are, and which fits well with how I feel about this whole diaconate question in relation to myself.

‘You certainly know your own mind on the deacon question, but it sounds as if you were pleased to be asked, if only that it gave you a diving board for plunging into your own depths.’

Perhaps I had needed a reason and the means to dive that deep in order to learn that I cannot exclude myself: that I too am being called to give Him my all.

Perhaps too, I am being told more clearly that I must continue with my delving deep into uncertainty; that I must reach the point where I am ready to rely on my own judgment and discernment. And that must include my choice of the few in whom I should place my trust, disregarding the distractions that will always come from others.

‘Do not model your behaviour on the contemporary world,

but let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves

what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and mature.’

(Romans 12:2)

Deacon? (16) Marriage & celibacy

2012-02-06T01:21:00.001Z

Marriage & celibacy

- Those who have received the order of deacon, even those who are older, may not, in accordance with traditional Church discipline, enter into marriage.

If married, should his wife predecease him, he should be willing ... to remain celibate for the rest of his life

- Should the deacon’s wife predecease him, the widowed deacon must be helped to discern and accept his new personal

circumstances, which in normal circumstances precludes remarriage in accordance with the constant discipline of the Church in the East and West.

- “Those who have received the order of deacon may not enter into marriage”. The same principle applies to deacons who have been widowed. They are called to give proof of human and spiritual soundness in their state of life.

- His vocation to marriage comes, at least chronologically, prior to his call to the diaconate.

This area raises no difficulties within me, but as someone not called to follow this course I can imagine other voices saying “Well, he would say that wouldn’t he!” But even without a vocation to the diaconate, why, as a widower, should not I and any other man be able to follow a similar course – remaining unmarried and celibate for the remainder of our life – simply (and this in no way in a comparatively unimportant or un-influential sense, but in the way of being overridingly authoritative in its simplicity): simply as the result of having loved, having been married to and having made our life with the right person; an irreplaceable and unrepeatable blessing?

One can never know how one will feel in such situations until they become a personal reality, but saying that “the widowed deacon must be helped to discern and accept his new personal circumstances” hints at the underlying meaning being “You are ours completely now; you are not going anywhere.” He will surely need help but not in the way described; he will know only too well what his “new personal circumstances” are, and accepting them will be dependent on a great deal more than any well-meant but mostly restrictive guidance received from within the hierarchy.

Likewise, why are widowed deacons “called to give proof of human and spiritual soundness in their state of life”? – and why is entering into a new marriage not compatible with giving such proof?

If remarrying is not “acceptable” for a permanent deacon, then, by implication, the suitability of all married candidates for the permanent deaconate, in the eyes of the hierarchy, must be, at root, highly questionable. It could never even be whispered of as a necessary “evil”, but is there not at least a suggestion of its acceptance being a reluctant compromise? One that is seeping round the edges of the other half of the equation: a hierarchical requirement for increased numbers of orthodox, ordained and obedient members of the clergy? Increased numbers, not in real terms, but at least making some small contribution to the stemming of the tide: the phenomenal losses in numbers coming forward with a willingness to follow their calling and a desire to cross the threshold.

I say again – I firmly believe that those who are so called will grow into that willingness and that desire. It is the calling itself: the vocation, in the shape and form that is still expected to be as it used to be, that is missing. Do we or do we not believe that people, in numbers, are still being called into the Church? If they are, where are they, and how are they being called? Some of them are married permanent deacons, but is that the extent of the calling for all of them? Some of them would make wonderful priests.

There are women who would make valuable deacons; and what exactly are the grounds we would use to deny the fact that some of them too might make equally effective and inspirational priests? I do not exclude those among them who feel themselves to be called in that direction from that possibility; but I am sure they are not among those who, like myself, are plainly called to remain with both feet planted firmly among the laity; to what end is not likely to become clear without our obedience to that seemingly negative and superficial calling.

I can hear sounds of “Shhhh!” ... “Think it, maybe, but don’t say it out loud.” ... “Not where others might hear.” ... “One day perhaps, but not in our lifetimes.” But tomorrow will become today, just as today will slide into yesterday without any help from us; and the status quo, regardless of any protest or determination to maintain or change it, will ultimately be governed by callings and directives from beyond all worldly authority and outside our merely human control. That which is truly right will continue to be; that which is wrong will be made right. We are powerless against it, though its influence seems far from apparent and a long time coming.

The Ordinariate is the most recent proof of the fact that the Catholic Church can never again say that she has no married priests. They are among us, and have been ordained as Catholic priests while already married men.

What happened to any women priests, married or not, who might have applied to join us as part of the Ordinariate?

Whatever adjective others might use to describe that question, it is a question nonetheless, however obvious the answer, and however plain that the main reason for ordained Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church at this time is a profound distaste for the acknowledgement and advancement of women to the level of equality in the denomination they have now left.

“Shhhhhhhh ! ...”

I had not intended to ask such questions here, as they steer me away from the intended purpose of these pages. That I have done so points to the fact that I have other subjects on which I need to dwell and ponder if I am to find out my deepest and real attitudes toward them. Doing such things has become very much part of me; not essential to life, but important to me: in some way relevant to my being here. It is how I find out what I really do think and feel about things, as opposed to what I merely think I think, and feel that I feel. From such time spent comes part of my ability to remain content whatever my real thoughts and beliefs turn out to be. The greater part of my contentment, however, comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life and my world, and my awareness that Jesus walks with me still, un-sensed but no less believed in for that.

I wrote earlier, that I would return to a particular point in this section: namely that, ‘the deacon is ordained to radical availability’ … ‘to devote himself to the Church by means of complete availability’.

‘Diakonia’ cannot exist without availability, and the indispensability of it as the framework on which all other facets of a deacon’s life of service are unfolded is undeniable. The fact that the spouses of married deacons will have been required to confirm, in writing, that they were fully supportive of the intended ordination, makes clear that this is more than being there for one’s neighbour if and when required. This is, as stated above, a ‘radical’ – a ‘complete’ availability; and not only to those who live next door, but to the Church itself, which means to everybody.

The actual limits and results of this availability will be governed and directed by the bishop and the priests to whom the deacon is responsible, but the truth at the heart of availability and the spousal support that makes it possible is that this is as close as one can get to a real “job-share”.

The promise of obedience is entwined with this, and family and home are thus regarded as secondary attachments and less important calls on the deacon’s time, affections and loyalty. From the Church’s viewpoint, in the eyes of the hierarchy, and in their perception of reality, this is not simply how the situation is seen to be, but is, in fact, how it is and how it is expected to remain.

Once again, my reactions are those of one who is not called to the diaconate, but I can envisage no genuine call of God that would allow me, let alone expect me, to turn away from my family with a conscious expression of my acceptance and belief in the rightness of their no longer being my first priority in life.

If members of the hierarchy regard marriage as a vocation and a sacrament – and written evidence declares that they do – how are they able to dilute its importance and validity, as far as they are able, when seeking candidates for the permanent diaconate?

The one part of this section which I would have turned into a real difficulty, had I been looking for one, would have been the last of the listed gleanings from my reading: that the deacon’s “vocation to marriage comes, at least chronologically, prior to his call to the diaconate.”

“At least chronologically” ?

There is much that concerns me concealed behind the inclusion of those three words.

Words of men!

Not of God.

Deacon? (15) The Eucharist (3)

2012-02-04T23:50:00.001Z

There is much in the following lines from among those I have gathered and noted, that leaves me disappointed that I cannot share more readily in what others around me believe. I am left sighing, and slowly shaking my head at the lack of any real emotion when reading them, but only until I switch back to the other face, the real face (for me) of my belief and appreciation of my faith.

Therein lies a greater disappointment for me: that I am unable to give to others what I have myself received.

We each have to make our journeys alone; not without support, encouragement, teaching, company, empathy, whatever may be needed from time to time in the external taking of steps and in the passage of what may run into many years, but in our minds and hearts. The transference of our central source of commitment, strength, trust and hope from the former, external supply to the latter is a subtle but defining change; one that can be influenced by others but brought about only by our own deep and very personal answering “Yes” to an invitation to step off the edge and into what may at first appear to be a limitless void. It is a moment of commitment to vulnerability and “to radical availability”, not, through ordination, to the Church as superficially perceived, nor to the hierarchy, but to Christ Himself. That this may later manifest itself as a form of commitment to His Church is a secondary form of “radical availability” which for some will become the required and fundamental presence of themselves at the core of their response to of a vocation to the diaconate.

- ‘The basis and motivation of this formation “is the dynamism of the order itself”, while its nourishment is the Holy Eucharist, compendium of the entire Christian ministry and endless source of every spiritual energy.’

- ‘The centre of his spiritual itinerary must be the Holy Eucharist since it is

the touchstone of the deacon's life and activity,

the indispensable means of perseverance,

the criterion of authentic renewal and of a balanced synthesis of life.’

- ‘The interior of the Church, the life of the Church within, centres on two things: the Word of God and on the Eucharist. These are the two aspects of the inner life of the Church from which all her other vision, all her activity flows.’ (Cardinal Hume)

Both my reasoning and my instincts find a welcome reminder of my too frequently buried understanding of the importance of the Eucharist to the Church in the following paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

They also provide a summary of the reasons for what could be taken as an unnecessary cause of my confusion between the Church’s teaching and my own certainties, which, at root, are fundamentally one and the same thing. At the centre of both is the all-pervading presence of Christ himself.

Finding Him and allowing Him access to our lives is the personal alpha and omega that opens up a whole new world and reveals His presence in all things.

CCC 1324 The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."

"The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."

CCC 1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."

Hearing or reading, as an isolated phrase, that the Eucharist contains “the whole spiritual good of the Church” is experienced as being in conflict with “the whole spiritual good” which I sense as being at the heart of my conviction, but in the time it takes to read just three more words, “namely Christ himself,” all is made well and all rifts are healed.

He is found, experienced and followed in different ways, and just as the variety of our sins and sinful tendencies does not alter the fact that we are all sinners and equals in our sinfulness, thus equally acceptable and welcomed in the Church, so our sharing in the same centrality of Jesus Christ in outwardly contradictory ways does not separate us from each other as equally faithful members of His Church.

‘To each his own’ sums up not only our weakness, but our individual needs and ways of accessing and receiving Truth, as well as the Spirit’s ability to satisfy those needs in ways that lead us to follow the individual paths laid out before us.

Deacon? (14) The Eucharist (2)

2012-02-03T13:32:00.001Z

Realizing that we are asked to give our all, does not necessarily bring confirmation of any need to believe all that we are told to believe.

In my own case, at least, it has become another source of confirmation that I should not replace or dilute my own certainties with obedience to, or belief in, laid down definitions and rules which are declared, with apparent certainty, to be the reality and the truth which I am trying to follow. Indeed, it helps to make clear that which should already have been clear enough: that real belief in something has little to do with what we have been told.

We can have real faith in something without genuine belief, just as where we have real belief we have no need of faith; and whatever we do have is not real faith. However clear it might seem to others, we alone can decide where lies certainty, where belief, and where faith within the confusions, doubts, hopes and longings which are ever restless within us.

I have never been able to make an honest declaration as to my own genuine belief in this area.

On the one hand has been my inability to say that I believe everything I have been taught, because that has never been true, and I would never have declared otherwise; hence a lifetime of silence on the subject.

On the other hand, and contributing to that same silence, had been my fear that others might learn of my unbelief. That fear no longer exists; though perhaps a shadow of it still lingers. I am a Catholic, after all.

It left me when, after so many years of only half believing, and being a great deal less than half willing to admit to my doubt, I finally made the decision to recognize on which side of the increasingly unstable fence I had already fallen.

To say that I have difficulty with what the Church expects me to believe is barely true today; my concern and sense of guilt and failure for not believing has faded to almost nothing with the passage of time and with my unconscious choice of life without such drains on my equilibrium and spiritual peace. I do feel somewhat out of place at times, but I am comfortable with my unspoken refusal to feel uncomfortable any longer. I have no way of altering what is deeply felt, and can therefore say nothing that hides the fact that my belief here is not as the Church would wish.

I have already made clear that my conscience will not allow me to become a Eucharistic Minister (10.01.11 An ongoing call), as I believe strongly that anyone receiving communion in the Catholic Church has a right to assume that the person from whom they receive either the host or the chalice has the same level of belief in the transformed nature and qualities of the bread and wine as themselves: a belief that complies fully with and conveys the teaching of the Church. In uttering the words “The body of Christ” or “The blood of Christ, the speaker should have a conviction that at least parallels, if not exceeds, the degree of belief with which the hearer receives and takes what is offered.

With this being such an essential part of the deacon’s core beliefs and function, it is surely impossible that I could fit the required profile.

I do not qualify for any of the following tasks.

The deacon is called

to be custodian and dispenser of the Eucharist.

to conserve and distribute the Blessed Eucharist.

to distribute the Body of Christ to the faithful during the celebration of the Mass.

to assist in the distribution of Holy Communion and administer the chalice if communion is given under both kinds.

to participate at the celebration of Holy Mass as a “minister of the Blood”.

to sanctify when he administers the Sacrament of Baptism, the Holy Eucharist and the sacramentals.

to administer Viaticum to the sick.

to bring Viaticum to the dying,

to be an ordinary minister of exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament and of eucharistic benediction.

to give formation to extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion

to take communion to homes, care homes and hospitals.

But my disqualification goes deeper than the particular tasks involved.

The Eucharist is regarded as the source of almost all that is available to us in our journeys toward, and our relationships with God: the Powerhouse for the abilities and willingness needed in the successful performance of our Christian duties, whatever they may be.

It is here too that my certainties appear to block my way to the expected conformity. It sounds so contradictory, but I find it impossible to be led by teachings, arguments and expectations which do not blend with the underlying strengths contained in my certainties. They are based on experiences that have changed me utterly over the intervening years, and which can never be set to one side. Even as the ability to immerse myself in the remembered feel of experience has gradually slipped away, the memory itself has not; and today I still have the living awareness of the fact that I did experience that of which my memories are made.

Quite simply, that inexplicable experience and undeniable memory was of the presence of Jesus walking beside me. He was my constant companion. (I shall not write of it again.) This is the heart of my certainties: that Jesus is real; that He is alive; that He is risen. He is present to us, in and with the Holy Spirit, and I can never again believe otherwise. My difficulty with the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist is simply that I find it to be superfluous in my life. (Do I really dare to admit that?) I already know that He is with me: I can never say otherwise. I am unable to understand how it can give me what I know I already have. He has blessed me with His presence, and I cannot undo that fact.

I receive communion with reverence and with an acknowledged need to do so: I even long to do so, but I do it, as He asked, in memory of Him. Not only in memory of the fact that He lived among us two thousand years ago, but also in memory of His presence: His company. This carries within it a constant reminder that He is with us still, that He has changed my life, and that I am still waiting: waiting for Him to make known that which will satisfy my constant consciousness that He still requires something of me. Perhaps that something is simply to always remember that He is still with me, as my companion and friend, and to always be ready … for whatever may come.

What more can I say?

Deacon? (13) The Eucharist (1)

2012-02-02T00:34:00.000Z

The Eucharist

The candidate must or should

have Eucharistic devotion.

be dedicated to our Lord in the Eucharist.

be “nourished by prayer and above all by love of the Eucharist.”

The deacon

Is called to adore the Lord, present in the Sacrament: the Blessed Eucharist, source and summit of all evangelization, in which “the whole spiritual good of the Church is contained”.

Should visit the Blessed Sacrament out of devotion.

Making sense of all that a deacon is required to do concerning the Eucharist is achievable only when the above points are already understood.

A member of the Catholic Church for whom transubstantiation is an undoubted reality, will instinctively accept and expect not only the need for these beliefs and affections but their pre-existing presence in he who has been, or who is about to be ordained.

Many others will have their doubts, to lesser or greater degrees, but will successfully hold them at bay; some by making a point of not dwelling on such potentially troubling ideas, while others will remain aware of them and pray frequently for help with their recognized levels of unbelief. Some may never stop to consider what they actually believe, returning to the communion queue week and month and year after year, with little genuine awareness other than that they are maintaining the routine that became their norm years before.

I do not make these assumptions with any sense of disapproval, disappointment or despair, but merely as part of what I take to be the real world; the world in which there are people like myself, who declare – without any shadow of doubt – that they are Catholics, and yet find it impossible to deceive themselves where such belief is concerned.

We sit, kneel and pray with others, each with his or her own degree of acceptance or otherwise of something in which we all share. We are not separated by these unrevealed differences; we are even, perhaps, bound together more closely by our silences on the subject, in much the same way as we are bound by our sharing of the knowledge that each one of us is a sinner. We know (if we do not, then we shall one day learn) that we do not all share the same weaknesses; what is regarded as being nothing at all by my neighbour may be a seemingly undefeatable temptation to me, while his or her lifelong struggle or barely noticed natural but sinful trait, may leave me puzzled as to how anyone could possibly live that way. All these differences and the potential disruption and fragmentation that is prevented by our not telling all to everyone around us are part of the reality in which we live, and until we are ready to be completely honest with each other – not with everyone, but with the smaller number of people we regard as our closer spiritual friends – it is best that we remain, for the most part, silent.

Venturing only part-way into our personal truths invites misunderstanding, and shared misunderstandings are always fuel for distancing, non-cooperation and separation; enemies of fellowship, ecumenism and of Christ’s Church itself. Going deeply and honestly into our personal doubts and certainties may be a frightening prospect, but its practice will teach each one of us that our spiritual path leads into an “all or nothing” situation.

And this is precisely the lesson we all need to learn. It is our all that is being asked of us.

Learning it, believing it, and longing to give it, has the power to change us utterly.

Again I find myself referring to those same words of Cardinal Newman; while not applicable only to this subject, in the present context they express that going beyond a merely partial honesty with each other is one of the risks we are called to take.

‘Perhaps the reason why the standard of holiness among us is so low, why our attainments are so poor, our view of the truth so dim, our belief so unreal, our general notions so artificial and external is this, that we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. We do not probe the wounds of our nature thoroughly; we do not lay the foundation of our religious profession in the ground of our inner man; we make clean the outside of things; we are amiable and friendly to each other in words and deeds, but our love is not enlarged, our bowels of affection are straitened, and we fear to let the intercourse begin at the root; and, in consequence, our religion, viewed as a social system is hollow. The presence of Christ is not in it.’ (‘Christian Sympathy’.)

Deacon? (12) Obedience & Marian devotion

2012-02-01T00:47:00.000Z

Obedience

The candidate must or should

have a capacity for obedience.

be willing to promise obedience to the Archbishop and his successors.

be willing to take the Oath of Fidelity and make a profession of faith according to the

approved formula.

be willing to put himself in the hands of the bishop and those the bishop has chosen to

carry out the discernment and formation process.

have a natural inclination for service to the sacred hierarchy.

The deacon is ordained

to serve ... in hierarchical communion with the bishop and priests.

A genuine education in obedience, instead of stifling the gifts received with the grace of ordination, will ensure ecclesial authenticity in the apostolate.

However great or small my capacity for obedience may be would depend on who and what required or demanded my obedience. I have no doubt that if I felt that I was being called to ordination I would have no trouble with accepting the need to promise obedience to superiors in the hierarchy. Without that calling, it is no surprise to me that I could not promise such obedience; nor, in my present circumstances, can I imagine my conscience allowing me to take an Oath of Fidelity.

I may have some ‘natural inclination for service’ but it would be directed towards those in need of whatever I was capable of providing, not to the hierarchy.

Marian devotion

He must or should

have Marian devotion.

show a deep love and veneration for the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

link profoundly, love for Christ and for His Church with love of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Mother and selfless helper of her divine Son's diaconia).

express love of the Mother of God in daily recitation of the Rosary, imitation of her virtues

and trust in her.

Let Mary, handmaid of the Lord, be present on this journey and be invoked as mother and

auxiliatrix in the daily recitation of the Rosary.

I have had a long-running struggle with the tension that exists between the Catholic devotion to Mary and the perceived idolatrous worship of her as proclaimed by other Christian denominations when viewing Catholicism from outside. Based on my own experience of devout Catholics living in near poverty, and, through their trust in God, and their simple rural outlook on life, remaining for the most part unaware of that fact, I can understand the underlying reasons for their turning to Mary for most of the comfort they derive from their faith. But when watching such people it is easy to see why others believe that we worship her when we should be worshipping our Lord.

I appreciate Mary’s place in the Church, and I would in no way wish to be without her; indeed she is inseparable from it, and the Church would not exist without her; but always, always, I see her only pointing the way to Jesus: the way we should all be going.

I have never had any sense of her wanting me to stop before her as I follow her direction, and have no particular devotion to her because it is so clear that she does not want to become the object of my attention.

Once again the specified requirements for the deaconate rule me out.

Deacon? (11) Inclination

2012-01-31T14:18:00.006Z

Most of the points in this final group fall readily under the headings: - Inclination, Obedience, Marian devotion, and The Eucharist.

There are also a few sentences centred on marriage and celibacy in connection with the diaconate which I will include at the end. They do not belong with the above headings as I have no difficulty in this area; I simply know unflinchingly what I believe and value most and I know that my priorities will always be as they have been thus far.

First, however, in the interests of being as thorough and as honest as possible, I include the following few items. They raise doubts in me, but no feeling great enough to warrant my extending the length of this response by spending time on them, other than to say that being ‘orthodox both in belief and practice’ and being ‘watchful of doctrine’ are bound to be included here when one considers the headings that follow, and that being ordained ‘to radical or complete availability’ will necessarily be included with my thoughts on the weighing of marriage with ordination.

The candidate must be

orthodox both in belief and practice.

educated to a sense of belonging to the body of ordained ministers ...

The deacon is called

to celebrate the Principal Hours, namely, Morning and Evening Prayer.

to recite as much of the Prayer of the Church as he can. (insofar as his circumstances allow)

to strive to assist daily at Mass. (where possible)

to be watchful of doctrine.

The deacon is ordained

to radical availability.

to devote himself to the Church by means of complete availability.

Inclination

The candidate must or should

be inclined toward the ministry.

have won the respect of the clergy and faithful by having lived a truly Christian life for a long time

and by showing that his nature and disposition are inclined towards the ministry.

be accepting of the call of the Church.

be willing to make a life-long commitment to serve the Church.

To my mind, an inclination to the ministry could be taken in any one of three ways.

1.) As a legitimate pointer towards a vocation.

2.) As indication of a wish to become part of the hierarchy for reasons other than a true vocation.

3.) Where the inclination is to ministry rather than ‘the ministry’, it would suggest a real will to offer time and help where it may be needed. The precise form of the help would depend on the individual experience, talents, gifts and character of the person so inclined, and their involvement, if to be closely linked with members of a Church community rather than the broader community, would need the approval and at least partial involvement of the relevant ordained priest or deacon.

While not applicable to me, it should of course be hoped that among those with such an inclination there may be people whose willingness might be transformed into a vocation.

Being ‘willing to make a life-long commitment to serve the Church’ goes a long way beyond any simple inclination to ministry within its visible boundaries. It also comes close to involving a requirement of obedience.

Deacon? (10) Self exclusion

2012-01-30T15:31:00.001Z

The final group of points contains those which, even before my searching and reading began, were known to be reasons for my not becoming a deacon. They automatically exclude me, and, because I have never wanted to become a deacon, and have never had any hint of the possibility of God wanting me to do so, that sense of exclusion in no way troubles me. It is part of my awareness of not having been, and not now being so called. Once again it is my certainties that have made a straight and level road of what might otherwise have been a prolonged, disturbing and tortuous route along the wrong path.

That too confirms to me that the path on which I am travelling is the right one for me, though after twenty years of following it I still do not know what it is to which I am being led.

I would be more worried about this but for there having been times when it has seemed essential that I protest and work to defend myself against wrongs and false accusations, but have somehow managed to do nothing, in response to being guided to do precisely that: to wait, trusting God, and doing and saying nothing in my own defence. In due time everything that had been heaped against me evaporated as though it had never been, and my professional reputation – in the minds and places where I felt it to be of real consequence – remained intact.

That mattered a great deal to me; and allowing everything to happen around me without raising a word in my own defence was the greatest test of trust I have as yet endured. The “all will be well” implication accompanying the instruction to be still, to wait, to do nothing, proved to be the truth.

I also believe its source to have been The Truth. That too built further on my certainties.

There are still times when I get caught up in the fact that I still don’t know where I am going or what it is that I should be doing; evidence of this has been posted more than once among these pages; but as soon as the stress begins to build I know that I am again being told to wait; I hear once more those quiet words: “Be still ...” “Be still ...”

And I am content; I am at peace once more. For what else could I possibly ask?

Whatever lies ahead: whatever it is to which I am called, I have long believed that I shall know it when it comes. I pray that I am right. Yet I still ask myself, at times, whether I might already have arrived but have failed to recognize the fact. It feels as though my confidence in Him and my need to leave it all in the hands of my Lord is still being tested; perhaps I have yet to be taken even further into the depths and the meaning of placing all my trust in Him.

Without some of my past experiences, I would be unable to admit to some of the difficulties which have confronted me while compiling my lengthy list of qualities and expectations associated with the diaconate. Almost every difficulty has arisen because the points in this group (as shown below) relate to every Catholic, not just to deacons. Unlike my hard to accept call to remain silent, outlined above, saying nothing would be the easy way through life where these points are concerned. Admitting to difficulties arising from some of the Church’s core beliefs is not what most people would willingly want to hear from me, but if the truth is not to be told, then I should not even hint that I have anything to say. I should allow people to gain the impression that I have given no real thought to this matter since being asked the question that started it all. The truth, however, is that many hours of thought have gone into my response.

The short answer remains the same as that which I gave when the question arose; I have known that answer for a long time. But, as stated from the beginning, I needed to understand clearly for myself why I had been, and still was, so sure that the answer is that the diaconate is not for me.

The quotation from the Archdiocese of Westminster Handbook (at the end of Diaconate (3)) speaks of the sowing of seeds, and as I heard them, that is what the words of the question were. Believing that, I could not allow the questioner to assume they had fallen on stony ground or among thorns; they had not. It was rather that, in my eyes at least, the soil and the seed did not appear to match; neither of them was wrong, unproductive, or sterile, but they had to be given time: to await the unseen work of the Holy Spirit, not to generate a vocation where there was not meant to be one, but perhaps to produce unimagined fruit from the combined responses of both questioner and he to whom the question had been directed.

Who can know where the White Dove, having taken a seed in its bill, might go? ...what it might do with it? ...how? ...when? ...and why? Ours is not to know such answers; only to trust that something, somewhere, sometime, apparently unconnected maybe, will come of it.

Perhaps my response could have been taken as evidence of workings contrary to everything I had written, and of which I remained blissfully unaware. I write that with a smile, as I am being careful not to contradict what I have already written about not knowing what will come to pass. And as well as that, echoes of other noted lines will not quite be silenced:

‘Alongside God's call and the response of individuals, there is another element constitutive to a vocation, particularly a ministerial vocation: the public call of the Church. (This) should not be understood in a predominantly juridical sense, as if it were the authority that calls which determines the vocation, but in a sacramental sense, that considers the authority that calls as the sign and instrument for the personal intervention of God, which is realised with the laying on of hands.

In this perspective, every proper election expresses an inspiration and represents a choice of God. The Church's discernment is therefore decisive for the choice of a vocation; how much more so, due to its ecclesial significance, is this true for the choice of a vocation to the ordained ministry.’ (Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons. 29)

It is not that those words have been written; nor is it that I have read them and been mildly discomforted by them; the reason for hearing their message, and believing that there is more to arriving at one’s destination than one had at first supposed, is that we must accept that we can never know anything with certainty. Even my own certainties, inevitably reshaped in unknown ways within me, must not be completely relied upon if I am to be truly open to the prompting and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I can have absolutely no preconceived and impenetrable ideas.

I am duly cautioned by that thought.

Deacon? (9) A blurred line

2012-01-29T00:56:00.001Z

We should all

‘be mindful that the lay members of the faithful, in virtue of their own specific mission, are “particularly called to make the Church present and fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the salt of the earth”. (Lumen Gentium, 33.)

These words remain as true as ever, but the drastic alteration in the nature of the threshold has, I believe, led to a corresponding expansion of the territory in which they can become that salt.

The diminishing numbers of vocations – as the Church has become used to seeing them – coupled with the general public’s declining respect for the clergy, due, in part at least, to the adverse publicity of recent years (founded on truths, however small the minority on which those truths are based) may have made the responses of lay men and women to their callings the crucial next stage in the necessary rebuilding of confidence and fellowship within the Church.

There are clearly defined priestly functions directly related to the Eucharist and to the Church’s gathering around the altar for mass.

The “diaconia at the altar, since founded on the Sacrament of Orders, differs in essence from any liturgical ministry entrusted to the lay faithful. The liturgical ministry of the deacon is also distinct from that of the ordained priestly ministry.”

Beyond these functions, however, I suggest that there are very few areas from which members of the laity should be absolutely excluded on the grounds of their not being members of the defined hierarchy. Beyond the demands of charity and justice, it is not with answering the call of, or being obedient to men that we should be concerned; we must consciously dwell within earshot and within reach of both the Spirit’s leading and of each other if we are to discern our individual and collective callings and intended direction.

Reading that,

‘if married, (a deacon) is at the interface between the secular and sacred and so is a primary agent of evangelisation and mission, configured to Christ the Servant in the midst of contemporary culture’

has reminded me to state clearly that nothing I write here, and none of the thoughts giving rise to my writing, is intended to give the impression that I do not believe in the value and the relevance of the permanent diaconate today. I do believe in its importance but, in the context of individuals as opposed to the local community or wider Church, only for those who truly have that particular vocation.

I have had experiences (fleeting only) of deacons who have left me with doubts as to whether or not God would truly have called them to ordination, but, in spite of being unable to completely shed the memory, I do, of course, admit that I am in no position to judge whom God may call to what, and why. Simply knowing that He wants me, of all people, not to simply believe in His existence but to be in a real relationship with Him, as a friend, is more than enough to silence my doubt; other than in such a context as this, where my honesty is not only relevant but essential.

I have also had the best of experience of deacons: one being the husband of the lady with whom I had been talking when first asked whether I had thought of becoming one, and the other being Louis Kelly, recently deceased, of St Joseph’s parish in Malvern. It is impossible to doubt that such people as these are much needed in the Church and that they have responded to very real vocations.

They are also examples of the sort of Christians much needed to be formed and to remain among the laity, where they too will be influential ‘at the interface between the secular and sacred and so … a primary agent of evangelisation and mission, configured to Christ the Servant in the midst of contemporary culture’.

The widening of the threshold into a broad expanse was always nothing more than a personal and unexpected way of seeing one aspect of the Church today. It also proved to be a purely temporary phenomenon which contracted back to its former narrow dividing line; but not before it had drawn my attention and stirred my thoughts in ways which would not otherwise have come to expression here.

Those thoughts were beckoned into the empty central field where I was given the space in which to wander and found myself walking far closer to the ‘maximum’ line, the crossing of which cannot be avoided by those who are ordained. It would not have been possible to walk there without the threshold having been expanded to that far larger scale. Persons attempting to, or actually doing so, could be in danger of finding themselves falling onto the wrong side of it, whether through desire for some share in the power, authority, perceived superiority, or other misguided or imagined attribute conferred by ordination; or through arrogance, or simply having no real idea of what they were doing. They would be on the wrong side because of arriving there for any reason other than the only right one: a vocation.

I had to remind myself that this was not just another slow stroll in the countryside, alone with my thoughts. This was the ground we are all being asked to step onto: the place where we are called to meet – meaningfully, in peace, in fellowship, and in His name.

But where was everybody? I returned from my wanderings dwelling on the disconcerting fact that I had been there completely alone.

Looking at the threshold now yields only the fine dividing line; but it appears blurred. The space in which we should be gathering is still there, but is clearly not the spacious ‘third field’ in which I had walked. That, I am sure is how it is meant to be. The division of the Church into two parts, with the imbalances that history has incorporated into them, is how it is and how it long has been. But any actual division into three would probably be the beginning of the end; certainly it might be seen as such by many women in the Church, who would suspect its potential for being another false hope in their journey towards acknowledgement and full acceptance, genuine appreciation and equality: another manmade corral on their own journeys towards becoming the persons God wills them to be.

Deacon? (8) The Threshold (3)

2012-01-28T01:28:00.000Z

The second definition of ‘Threshold’ was as follows: –

‘Minimum or maximum value (established for an attribute, characteristic, or parameter) which serves as a benchmark for comparison or guidance and any breach of which may call for a complete review of the situation or the redesign of a system.’

If what has appeared to me to be a seemingly sudden change in the threshold, conveys to others any suggestion of truth or indication of a real situation, it is likely that its widening has not been a rapid and unplanned mutation, or merely, and more likely, a temporary but noteworthy shift in my imagination, but a more gradual, real and therefore significant form of evolution in response to prevailing conditions.

In becoming a region rather than merely a dividing line, it has itself taken on qualities of breadth and depth which could be said to equate to the ‘minimum or maximum value ... which serves as a benchmark’ – the minimum being at the point of departure from the laity’s sheepfold, and the maximum being at ordination. In the space between these two is a journey we are all called to make: a journey towards becoming the persons God wills us to be.

This definition continues: – ‘any breach may call for a complete review of the situation or the redesign of a system.’

Consciously stepping out from the fold at the initial stage of becoming a candidate for the diaconate corresponds to breaching the ‘minimum value’, and ordination can be taken as the corresponding breach of the ‘maximum value’.

In a sense, both of these breaches ‘call for a review of the situation’, but what makes the intervening territory so spacious is its need to accommodate, not only candidates for the diaconate and the priesthood, but as many lay men and women as can be brought to a recognition of their call to journey further into their faith, and as can be accompanied and supported by those already comfortable and confident in their position at some point ahead of them. The territory is thus populated from among the laity without individuals ever being seen to desert their previously occupied places among the pews and parishioners; and with priests and deacons being prepared to view the increasing potential of this central population as the fertile ground which it should be, and moving any predetermined boundaries back to incorporate advancing Church members into their regular field of view, they too become part of that same middle ground which is at one and the same time the fertile field, the personal desert, the start point and continuation of the individual’s journey toward a deeper relationship with God.

What had once been seen as nothing more than a line of separation can become a common ground on which fellowship, unity and ecumenism can flourish.

This is the ground on which ‘The New Evangelization’ can become a living reality in every parish, with priests, deacons and laity working together to discern and bring to fruition the various latent gifts within the community. It is here that the reality of Church can be rediscovered and, where necessary, redefined.

‘The redesign of a system’, if or when shown to be necessary, must wait for the discernment of others, though not without input from ourselves. The fruitful middle field where the Holy Spirit both creates the space for us to meet and merge once more in Christ’s name, and guides us into a new level of mutual reliance, love and respect, must be neither forgotten nor taken for granted; nor must it be dismissed as being of no consequence. Without it such gatherings as next October’s Synod in Rome will fail to realize their potential.

We are all ‘The Church’, and almost invisible behind the clearly proclaimed and plainly visible product of men having followed their vocations through to ordination, each one of us has some part to play in the on-going story and welfare of the whole. Christ’s all-inclusive and worldwide peace can develop and thrive throughout mankind only when all callings are discerned, accepted and acted upon within our own local communities.

Just as those who are truly called to be ordained must be ordained, so too those who are not must not. I believe there are many of us who are, paradoxically, being called not to be ordained: to remain very much anchored among the laity; not necessarily to function in the same way as deacons, though – other than as a minister of the altar – that will no doubt become the calling of some, but to play whatever part is theirs in building the faith of those around them.

Once again I hear echoes of truth in Aristotle’s words:

'Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.'

Deacon? (7) The Threshold (2)

2012-01-28T00:40:00.000Z

There were two welcomed definitions of the word ‘Threshold’.

The first: – ‘Boundary beyond which a radically different state of affairs exists.’

This well defines the thin line as I had always seen it, and as I had still been seeing it when I began to read through documents and articles relevant to the permanent diaconate in preparation for my written response.

That retrospective usefulness, however, in no way becomes a reason for discarding it when viewing my altered landscape. There is still “a radically different state of affairs” awaiting a person who travels from the laity, across the whole broad expanse of the central field to take up residence as an ordained member of the Church’s hierarchy. There are ways in which that is how it should always be; it is, after all, a major decision, a major move and a major commitment; but with the essential proviso that the difference should not seem so great for the one who has made the journey.

The first uncertain steps should only be made in response to a belief (a similar but relevant and persistent “feeling” perhaps?) in the possibility that they are made in response to a calling, and the lengthy traverse of this potentially unnerving but divinely fruitful space can only be completed by those whose vocation is strengthened and confirmed with every step. For those who are not responding to a genuine vocation to the diaconate or the priesthood (and, rightly, whether or not they are is not discerned by the individual alone) the journey should never reach its completion, whereas for those truly called, partial emptiness (the receptacle for that which is sought but not yet attained) becomes fullness, internal growth becomes an external overflowing, hesitancy and doubt become certainty by the end of the journey. The radical difference is softened into the feel of a well-fitting cloak shouldered as a natural (and spiritual) consequence of following the right path.

It is among the majority of those who never approach the threshold that the ‘radically different state of affairs’ is seen to exist, either – as in past times – as some superior and holy state, or as an outdated and irrelevant anachronism to which they may themselves still cling while being unable to admit to having lost much of their own faith in it. Today, in the minds of many both within and outside the Church, the clergy is no longer seen as a group of people set apart in the way previously seen through the eyes and minds of their grandparents. They are now frequently seen as having been removed too far from the ordinary people and the world in which they live; this in the sense that they have left the common man too far behind in crossing the threshold into their own esoteric world.

It must, however, be accepted that much damage has also been done by the heightened awareness of clerical abuse resulting from the publicity of recent years. It is not the publicity itself which is the root cause, nor is it the investigations; it is correctly attributed to the fact that abusive and potentially abusive men have trained for and been accepted for ordination, and to the subsequent unjust and immoral failure of other ordained men in positions of influence and authority to deal adequately and rapidly with revealed facts and suspicions when they came to light. It is this last shameful reality which has done most harm to the image of the hierarchy, and, by instant automatic association, however unwarranted, to the image of its individual members and of the Church itself.

I believe the need to overcome the damage done to the Church by these atrocities is one of a series of reasons for the widening of the threshold between clergy and laity. Not, as would presently appear to be the result, to distance them from each other, but to make it possible for them to approach each other once again in ways more in keeping with Christ’s will for His Church, and in closer harmony with The Spirit’s ongoing leading and specific promptings.

The widening of the central plain is neither a drastic and permanent separation of two apparently divorced camps, nor the clearing and preparation of a future battlefield. I believe it is the creation of level ground onto which both clergy and laity must move and mingle in a joint effort to arrive at the fellowship on which the wounds of our diverging recent past and strained present can be healed. It is here that our collective future can regain a secure foothold on the bedrock that lies beneath the Church.

Without an ability to trust each other and work side by side toward the same ends, we have little hope of steadying the Ship in which we all sail, and no chance of discerning the only right course towards our intended future.

Deacon? (6) The Threshold (1)

2012-01-27T01:57:00.002Z

I know what I mean when using the word “threshold”, and yet, in the present context at least, I find a distinct lack of satisfaction in the usual dictionary definitions of the word. Knowing what I mean is almost entirely an internal feeling with few, if any, substantial anchor points linking it with my own observable reality. As such I have to regard any reliance I am tempted to place in it as highly suspect.

But I did find precisely the definitions I sought by shifting the point from which I had been trying to view the threshold itself. Indeed, in conjunction with my frequently used means of finding out precisely what it is that I think and believe through untangling thoughts on paper, or keyboard and screen, it had been focussing on this threshold that clarified my reasons for “knowing” (that same inner feeling of knowing without any certainty of why) that I am not one who is being called to train for the diaconate.

The definitions were found on BusinessDictionary.com – a name that turned my train of thought from matters previously kept too separate from the underlying values and driving forces of today’s material world, and forced the two sides to confront each other. The threshold between the two was transformed from being an almost imperceptibly thin line to an expanse broad enough to be seen as a territory in its own right.

Though the line had been so fine, it had always been distinct and recognized as an undeniable reality. It demonstrated the profound implications and importance of the one decision that could and would carry a person from the one side to the other: from laity to the ordained membership of a hierarchical structure claiming all authority, and expecting conformity and obedience as part of its control of the institution calling itself “The Church”.

The broader expanse did nothing to reduce the clarity or the relevance of the decision, but it did suggest that there was a great deal of room for further thought about the nature and the relevance of the threshold today; there was no longer a knife edge on which it was impossible to balance, and the crossing of which could be easily accomplished by making the necessary decision; where one was either on one side or the other.

Instead, the broadness invited lateral thinking: a reassessment reaching into whichever spheres of life might be necessary to find answers enough to fill the previously undiscovered space; but the required thoughts did not come simply because the need for them had been recognized. The only way I found myself able to profitably view the apparently altered landscape was to forget that the threshold was there at all: to regard the laity, the ordained hierarchy and this newfound expanse between the two as three equal, individually definable but inseparably interrelated fields: parts of one indivisible whole.

As soon as this picture formed it became clear that I should see the image as one of the Church as an expression of the Blessed Trinity – something I had not been able to see before.

What had been absorbed gradually throughout my life, becoming my instinctive, unquestioned, and undoubted way of seeing the Church: Christ’s Church, with the Spirit of God forever falling, drifting and blowing into and through every single corner of it, had given rise to the fine line separating the two parts, ordained and laity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were both present throughout, with the threshold not only delineating the separation resulting from ordination, but also being the manifestation of a tension created by the underlying tug-of-war going on as a result of the Church having been split down the middle. The numerical minority, reserving all the authority and power on the one side; the majority – the sheep – who are clearly in need of someone to lead them, and who can be so easily and unquestioningly led along wrong paths, on the other.

This almost entirely automatic way of seeing the Church had been replaced by a different understanding based on the (once again) questionable reliability of “feelings”; an inner recognition of something which seemed to lack any clear supportive evidence.

Deacon? (5) Calling

2012-01-27T01:28:00.001Z

Among the Diaconate related documents and pages read during these weeks, are further sentences clearly stating that much of what is necessary in a person suitable for training as a deacon is in fact required of every mature Christian.

- ‘Through baptism each one is united with Christ and so shares in the mission given to Christ by the

Father, the mission of proclamation, prayer and charity.’

- ‘The work of prayer, witness and service is properly that of every baptised person.’

- ‘The exercise of these responsibilities is the key characteristic of the Christian way of life: letting the

Gospel be known by what is said and done; praising God in prayer and liturgy; serving those in

need (diakonia).’

- ‘These activities are proper to every baptised person.’

- ‘The functions assigned to the deacon can in no way diminish the role of lay people called and

willing to co-operate in the apostolate with the hierarchy.’

This last leads us straight into the reminder that it is the Spirit who calls, not the priest, the bishop or the wider Church.

- ‘In the Church's care for her children, the first figure is the Spirit of Christ. It is He who calls them,

accompanies them and moulds their hearts so that they can recognise his grace and respond

generously to it.’

- ‘A natural inclination for service should not be understood “in the sense of a simple spontaneity of

natural disposition ... it is rather an inclination of nature inspired by grace, with a spirit of service

that conforms human behaviour to Christ's. The sacrament of the diaconate develops this

inclination: it makes the subject to share more closely in Christ's spirit of service and imbues the

will with a special grace so that in all his actions he will be motivated by a new inclination to serve

his brothers and sisters”.

Can ordination, with its essential entry into the confines and restrictions of the church’s hierarchy, really be the only way God intends men to receive the grace that will bring an intensification of such an inclination? And, what exactly are we to understand from this where women who have an ‘inclination for service’ are concerned? That it is not possible for their ‘natural inclination’ to have been ‘inspired by grace’? That grace is available to men and directed to men alone, and that women are forever beyond its reach?

Dear Lord, let there be not a single person in your Church today who even half believes in such an impossibility.

- ‘The bishop alone imposes hands on the candidate and invokes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on

him.’

Yet each of us is gifted in some way. Why is it that the bishop does not lay hands on committed members of the laity, men and women, invoking the Holy Spirit’s outpouring on them before searching among them for potential deacons? – for the ones upon whom he will again lay hands at their ordination?

- ‘It is a particular task of the spiritual director to assist the candidate to place himself in an attitude

of ongoing conversion’

- ‘The deacon, mindful that the diaconia of Christ surpasses all natural capacities, should

continually commit himself in conscience and in freedom to His invitation: “Remain in me and I in

you. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it remain in the vine, so also with you unless you

remain in me”

John’s recorded words of Jesus (15:4) apply not only to deacons but to everyone, ordained or not.

- All priests and deacons ‘should be mindful that the lay members of the faithful, in virtue of their

own specific mission, are “particularly called to make the Church present and fruitful in those

places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the salt of the earth”

This is true enough, but the restrictions lodged in such a focus can become a hindrance through allowing and accepting a reduced access and availability of both ordained ministers and eager members of the laity in what I think of as the ‘narthex’ areas of the Church: the areas between the place of focus, of prayer and of liturgy, and the scramble of the outside world. It is the place which represents the line between laity and ordained but at the same time hints at something more. It lies between, and acts as a threshold when moving through it in either direction: going in or going out; ordained or not; regular visitor or stranger; rich or poor; at peace or distressed; in sickness or in health. It is where I have often metaphorically turned my head in search of the source of something that, just for a moment, I had thought I heard ... and it gives rise to the question: - Are there, in fact, any places and circumstances from which the laity are excluded in their ability to respond to their call? – other than those from which they are separated by declared requirements for obedience to rules made by other men?

It would be a mistake to think of these narthex areas as being only the spaces that first come to mind: those through which we may pass on our way into and out of the church building we often think of as ‘the Church’. When attending any church service we pass through not only the physical space but the transitional spaces within our own hearts and minds, just as we do in our meeting and leaving of spiritual friends, in our beginning and ending of private prayer, of reading scripture, of becoming engrossed or enthralled when finding God’s presence in the world around us, whether in the harmony of nature’s kaleidoscope, in the phenomenal wonders of the sciences, or in the profound beauties of the arts.

Those inner recesses are places in which to rest; to be still and know that He is God. We should linger there whenever possible, rather than hurrying away to get on with our “real” lives.

This is where we should meet Him, and each other, far more than we do. How do we take our knowledge of Him out into the world if we have found no way to hold onto His presence as we make our way back into it?

- ‘The scope of human formation is that of moulding the personality of the sacred ministers in such a

way that they become “a bridge and not an obstacle for others in their meeting with Jesus Christ

the Redeemer of man”.

Here again, every one of us should be hoping to become “a bridge and not an obstacle for others.”

- ‘Contemporary society requires a new evangelization which demands a greater and more

generous effort on the part of ordained ministers.’

Of at least equal importance, is the need for “a greater and more generous effort on the part of” members of the lay faithful. Deacons, priests and bishops need such men and women if their own efforts are to bear real fruit in today’s culture. They are already too far distanced from most ordinary men and women of both the Church and the wider world; not through what they profess to believe nor through the commitment of their lives to an expression of their faith, but through having crossed the seamless threshold that runs between members of the Church hierarchy and all other members of Christ’s Church. The line that runs through the narthex seems almost non-existent when that is where we are standing, but when right inside the Church one can feel aspects of the separation: it is what we have entered it for, whether as a passing parishioner calling in briefly for prayer or simply for a few moments of quiet; as a potential ordination candidate following and trying to fully grasp his calling; or as an ordained deacon or priest seeking an ongoing confirmation of his vocation and necessarily longer periods of quiet and peace.

However unnoticed when passing through, and however blurred when focussed upon, that defining line is there. It is nothing new, of course, but the way it is perceived and felt may benefit from a change.

Deacon? (4) Discernment

2012-01-26T02:14:00.002Z

Those who are truly called to the Diaconate will emerge, for the most part, from among these Christians who find themselves persistently and undeniably distracted and whispered to in all aspects of their lives. They are out there somewhere, as testified to by the numbers ordained over the last forty years, but I firmly believe there is more than the strengthening and numerical building up of the order of deacons at stake here.

Few would make the mistake of regarding most Christians at this stage of their faith journey as being future deacons, but the almost automatic acceptance of what is in fact the other half of that same wrong assumption is, I believe, a far greater, very real and far more frequently made mistake. It is that many, if not the majority of those who are not so called will allow any diffuse or intermittent sense of enthusiasm and potential involvement to slip away to nothing as though it had never been. A belief that they will “allow” this to happen is likely to carry an automatic implication that it is entirely their own decision; their own lack of commitment; their own wishful thinking; their own wish to appear willing without having to actually get involved. If any thought of blame came into it, it would be seen as entirely their fault.

But where is the real appreciation of three facts that are too frequently overlooked by nearly all of us? – that each of us has a gift of some kind that is not only of use but is needed within Christ’s Church; that most of us have yet to realize what our own gifts are; and that many people, however gifted, will appear to “allow” their potential to fade from sight when they feel wanted or needed only in areas with no connection with their own gifts.

I believe there is more going on within the Church, in its local communities, and within individual hearts and minds than we are prepared to recognize, let alone seriously consider; and any degree of collective agreement and acceptance leading to tentative steps toward compliance with the guidance and promptings of the Holy Spirit will be impossible without an appreciation of those pre-existing facts. Recognition and subsequent serious consideration are worthwhile only when the truth has been at least partly captured from amid the myriad distractions and fears, and rescued from our frequently all-but insurmountable resistance to change.

Discernment is such a frighteningly powerful word.

Without the reality behind its meaning we cannot move a single step in the certain knowledge of its being in the right direction. In the mouths of all it is proclaimed as essential, and rightly so. In the mouths of some it is declared as having been used and acted upon, but such mouths are frequently those of individuals self-proclaiming their own giftedness (real or not) in this area, and frequently also in the fields of prophecy and healing.

In spite of my own constant feeling that discernment by large groups of holy, gifted and knowledgeable people within the Church is hampered by their own awareness of the enormity of what they represent – not just Christ’s Church in the present, but the whole of its past, and its entire future as seen from today’s viewpoint – I do have faith in the process and in their ability to discern where the Spirit of Christ is trying to lead the Church and all who are bound within it.

I long for The Synod on The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, set for October this year, to shed the weight of its felt responsibility, and thus to dwell entirely within the reality of its only true and actual responsibility: the discernment, the recognition, the serious consideration and acceptance of – and ultimately compliance with – today’s leading of the Holy Spirit for the world as it is today.

Is not each of these apparent stages in the process merely a necessity born of our human limitations? Surely, for those who truly do have this gift and who are in a living relationship with God, these stages should not be regarded as absolute necessities for discernment, which should be straightforward, and readily and fruitfully exercised through an immersion in its divine simplicity? – an immersion that involves being able to listen and hear in ways unpolluted by either external or internal influences of a purely ‘human’ nature.

Deacon? (3) Essential to all

2012-01-26T00:43:00.000Z

Dealing first with the retained ‘essential to all’ items, some of them can be taken as basics for any amicable, just and lovable person, and should therefore be part of any true Christian.

The deacon (and each of us) must or should

be hospitable

be sincere in his words and heart

be generous and ready to serve

be quick to understand, forgive and console

be vigilant about his language

That the deacon, and we, ‘should be humbly open to recognising his (and our) own limitations and gifts’, is perhaps one of the initial signs of progress beyond those basic and commonly shared attributes. With encouragement, this progress can lead to where every Christian should hope and strive to be: walking with Jesus, and conscious of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

A focus on the poor and other disadvantaged or needy persons, and an ecumenical attitude, are two examples of the fruit of such a way of living.

He (and we) should

be filled with the Spirit

be a man of faith and prayer

be helped to acquire a humble and helpful love, especially for the poorest, the suffering and most needy

cultivate his capacity to dialogue, so as to acquire a truly ecumenical attitude

The ordained deacon’s primary and most fundamental relationship must be with Christ.

A true charity should prevail which recognises in every ministry a gift of the Spirit destined to build up the Body of Christ.

He is ordained to follow Jesus with an attitude of humble service which finds expression not only in works of charity but also in

imbuing and forming thoughts and actions.

He is called to “collaborate in building up the unity of Christians.

The above attributes can be taken as being essential parts of what could be thought of as the ‘default setting’ for all devoted and active Christians. We should all hope to find ourselves described here, at this stage of our separate journeys, with our faith and awareness awakened and living in our daily lives. It is from here that will come those who sense a calling to, in some way, become more involved in the spreading of Christ’s teaching and in the building up of His Church.

But by taking a few steps beyond that point of genuine Christian awareness, we venture into a different territory, where the focus becomes more ”Church” and community than “one to one”.

He should

have a humble and strong sense of the Church

have love for the Church and her mission

He is called to a ministry of service in the diaconate of charity to the people of God.

It may well be a sound start-point to regard some of those willing to become more involved in the parish community as potential deacons within the Church. The sowing of seeds by parish priests and others, through such means as the well-considered and gentle asking of a question (such as the “Have you ever thought of ...” one asked of me) may be all that is needed to stir a pre-existing, vague and thinly spread awareness into the realization of an undeniable vocation.

‘All priests must look to the future and be alert for good men of faith in our parishes who would be able and generous enough to respond to a diaconal vocation. We need to pray for such vocations and then actively seek out potential candidates.

... Sowing the seeds of a vocation is important, for when work and family commitments have diminished, the seed sown some years back may begin to flourish. Often the best candidates are those who first considered the possibility of a diaconal vocation because the priest or some other member of the parish community suggested it to them.’

(The Permanent Diaconate in the Archdiocese of Westminster: A Handbook. p.23.)

Deacon? (2) The gathering

2012-01-25T12:44:00.002Z

I gathered and read relevant documents until I felt I had a summary of all the relevant points: not far short of four hundred phrases and sentences describing the calling, the position, the role, the service, the expectations, and the required qualities and characteristics of the deacon.

Three quarters of these were easily accepted and therefore discarded as being of no help in the process of discovering the reality behind my feelings, beliefs and non-intentions with regard to training for the diaconate. Many of these were applicable to Christians in general and therefore, of necessity, required of potential deacons. The remaining quarter became two distinct groups.

The one, again comprised of points applicable to all Christians, but in ways that registered with me as demonstrating how important are some of the basic qualities of any considerate, helpful and just human being, and hence of any genuine and sincere Christian.

The emphasis here was found to be that we should all possess and utilize these qualities in our everyday living as well as at specific times of Christian awareness and as part of any form of support being given to or by others. In no way were they specific requirements for the ordained deacon or priest.

The other, larger group, contained those requisites found to be in any way challenging; from a level of mild discomfort and uncertainty as to whether or not I could accept the particular requirement, to those which instantly registered as being impossible for me: requirements that immediately and completely disqualified me as a potential candidate as, in my own mind at least, my beliefs and devotions, or rather, my undeniable lack of them, meant that I could never become a deacon.

None of this became any source of trouble for me; no regrets; no guilt; no feelings of hypocrisy; no fears that I may have been degenerating into, or may always have been a “pick and mix” Christian; and no sense of horror, or perverse and secret sense of pride entangling me in the thought that, if “found out”, I may be regarded as losing myself in my own particular form of heresy.

The journey is long, and I thank God for that. It is only through the slow and gentle maturing of my certainties that I have reached the point of being untroubled by any of my doubts or even by my lack of belief.

Or was this, rather, what should be regarded as a lesser charge: an acknowledged and admitted non-acceptance of what other men have declared to be qualifying prerequisites for membership of Christ’s Church?

There is only one man in whom I believe unconditionally and to whom I could ever pledge my absolute obedience.

“Christ is risen”, and His presence is one of my certainties. Ultimately, Jesus is the all-inclusive single certainty who contains all others, and who cloaks all potential fear and distress in the contentment that underlies every day of my life. That in which I believe without doubt can never be taken from me; and that fact, at times, has registered with me as what could become, for others, a worryingly dangerous thought – precisely because it is so deeply embedded within me. For that too, I thank God.

The most basic requirement of Christianity (not Catholicism only); the one quality we each share with all others whether we openly admit it or not; the fact of which our admission becomes our proof that we can be members of the Church, and that we are at least already standing in the outer fringes of it. – This is my overriding claim to membership of it; and proof that I possess this quality is found in the fact that I owe my complete obedience to our Lord and yet continue to break my pledge to Him.

Unlike my “No, it’s not for me” where the diaconate is concerned, I can joyfully proclaim that Christ’s Church is for me for the simple reason that I am able to admit to being a sinner.

Another worthwhile step, and another recognition of progress!

Deacon? (1) The question

2012-01-25T00:15:00.000Z

I have been preoccupied with wondering why some men (and within the Catholic Church it is only men who are so allowed, encouraged and enabled) after years of living as part of the laity, perhaps married and with families, change their lives considerably by being ordained as deacons. Why is it that this becomes their aim, and subsequently – apparently – not only the fulfilment of their calling, but, in the eyes of the Church at least, the high point of their lives?

My preoccupation resulted from being asked whether I had ever considered studying for the Permanent Diaconate.

What amounted to the same question had been asked of me once before, and I had been able to answer with a prompt, “No, it’s not for me.” I had given little thought to the matter simply because I had no reason to. Being asked, however, did make me focus on the matter more than previously, though not for long; my thoughts only confirmed what I already knew.

The second, more recent question, however, while still being easily answerable with the same sure knowledge that I was not being called to the diaconate, did give rise to a great deal of thought.

It had taken me by surprise, and that in itself was enough to keep it in mind for several days; but it generated a need to clarify and confirm my reasons for being so sure that I had no such vocation: a need that took several weeks of work to satisfy.

Having not considered my standpoint in that way before, I set about the clarification of my apparent certainties. Being asked about becoming a deacon had reminded me that I could enjoy the studying and would welcome the discussions and fellowship with those who were training for eventual acceptance and ordination, but I had no reason to think I might enjoy such involvement other than with an interest in the mindsets and the spiritual journeying of men who believed they had such vocations. Why does their path lead them to ordination as opposed to a similar degree of involvement and usefulness (in all but the specifically ordained deacons’ functions) while remaining firmly anchored in the midst of the lay members of the Church?

There is only the one essential and definitive answer: that single word – vocation.

Ordination into the Diaconate, as with every step beyond, is strictly by invitation only; and that issues not merely from the lips, the minds or the hearts of men.

Answering my own question in that way generated a sense of unease, because I was unable to make that seemingly obvious and logical answer one of my certainties without altering my long-held understanding of what a vocation is, and how it is discerned. That understanding is certainly simple, though without any dismissal of the potential for wonderful and infinitely variable complications being embedded in one’s calling; but is it also simplistic?

Complexities, where they exist, are in the individual journeys, not in the discernment which will necessarily ebb and flow, dim and brighten, confuse and clarify with the intricacies of the personal path as they are confronted, negotiated, accepted and learned from. The oversimplification which could lead to my understanding being seen as simplistic would be the overlooking or ignoring of complexities relating to the journey itself, not to the discernment of one’s vocation.

Discernment itself is simple (that is not to say easy, but uncomplicated). Neither its imperatives nor object is confusing, but both are easily lost sight of; and too easily what is taken to be its fruit, plucked and proclaimed accordingly, is later recognizable as nothing more than the shrivelled remains of early blossom: the un-admitted victory of the combined wills of men, and hence the failure of their attempts at discernment. The spiritual journey is frequently complicated: neither simple nor easy. Neither the journey itself (entire or in part), nor its intended end (anticipated or not) necessarily form any part of what is in need of discernment. Discernment – in its central and overridingly essential place of influence, enables and allows us to know what we are being asked to do when we arrive at the place where we are meant to be.

My own problem – though, as with most paradoxes in my spiritual life, I find only a beautiful perplexity in the fact that I found it in no way problematic – was that, despite knowing that where I am today is where I am meant to be, I was unable to discern clearly how I was meant to respond to my recent reading and pondering on the questions raised.

It appeared that this could have meant one of four things:

1) I was either not yet meant to, or not yet ready to respond.

2) I should not even have been thinking about a response.

3) I did not have the ability (the gift) to discern God’s will for me on my own.

4) I was not, in fact, where I was meant to be.

I was also fully aware that regardless of, and perhaps more importantly, because of my feeling sure that it was not the case, I also had to include a fifth possibility: that somewhere within me was an awareness, or at least a suspicion, that I did in fact have such a vocation; and that I had completely buried it from my own sight beneath my certainties and my ready denials.

The clarifying of my own certainties (in the present context) reached its conclusion with the writing of a lengthy response, primarily for my own benefit, but in the form of a letter for passing to the person who had asked the question. Throughout the whole process there had been a constant and unchanging awareness of one insurmountable barrier that would lie between me and ordination if I had indeed been seeking or striving for that end. I could simply have referred to whatever I felt disqualified me, discussed it if necessary, and left it at that, having added weight to my already spoken, “No, it’s not for me.” But my uncertainty about my response was, it seems, not as vague as I had believed; by coming that far I had turned the quick way out into a definite non-possibility.

I took that to be an indication that I was making progress.

A cautionary tale

2012-01-24T00:45:00.005Z

Usually the day passes uneventfully. 17th January: the feast of Saint Antony of the Desert. But it is a date which never slips by without stirring memories and without placing me in a form of anticipation which suspends my usual day-to-day way of being. A date which cannot be forgotten; it has produced, in ways that, for me, are well beyond mere coincidence, events which are irreversibly embedded in the deep inner story of my life. The possibility that any relevance these events (however few) might have could be in my imagination alone is repeatedly swept away by the fact that they have occurred on that same date.

The result has been that every year, the same thought arises – What might this day bring?

This year, as the day drew towards its close, with anticipation having dwindled away and the date almost forgotten, I was given a piece of news about someone I have admired greatly since first meeting him, and whose departure from my home area some years ago stirred in me an unexpectedly deep sense of loss. In fact, he was the last in a sequence of three whose leaving had disturbed me to a surprising extent.

Strangely, but of no particular relevance, it has only been since hearing the item of news that I have learned – more than twenty years after his leaving – that the first of these three was born on 17th January.

Receiving that particular piece of information sent me through a sequence of thoughts and feelings which came and went with remarkable rapidity, leaving me still numb, much sorrowed, and somehow hollow: emptied; but with just the one continuing and persistent train of thought: an unanticipated and inexplicable concern for his wellbeing. A sense that there is far too much at stake here to allow myself to sweep all the good that has gone before into some far corner, as close to oblivion as I can manage.

And yet ... How can this be? Not the news only, but also my seemingly contradictory reactions to it?

With no graspable threads of explanation or mitigation, or suggestions of misunderstanding, or merest hint of mistaken identity or false accusation – all such have apparently been annihilated by his own admission – how can my present underlying feeling be one of concern for him?

However impossible it can sometimes seem, we are called never to withhold our forgiveness, just as we would hope never to find ourselves utterly unforgivable, whatever we may have done. I have no deep wish to forgive where others never can, but I do have a longing that I might become able to forgive, and in time able to truly exercise that ability.

My concern, however, is not dependent upon my being able to forgive, nor on any feeling of forgiveness.

I am so far removed from the person in question, and from every aspect of the news I received, that my sense of forgiveness or otherwise has no bearing on the situation other than in my own mind.

What does have a bearing on all of this, for me, is that soon after life-changing events that occurred on and around 17th January twenty years ago, I first found myself wondering what it might be that I was being called to do. I still have my scribbled notes made at the time, clearly showing that my thoughts have been remembered correctly. Two possibilities in particular were highlighted, for reasons that were more obvious to me then than they are now. The one was working with Travellers, almost certainly in Ireland.

The other was working in some way to help struggling priests: to assist in the provision of support for those in need but for whom, for themselves, there may appear to be no such prospect.

Suddenly, those same possibilities had been placed before me again; each of those whose leaving had troubled me so much was either a Traveller or a priest. And all three have always had and still have so much to offer.

Wherever he may now be, I pray that the one about whom I received word last Tuesday has a reliably safe haven in which to dwell. I doubt that taking to the road again will suit his declining years; and he has too much that is good within him for it to be allowed to fade away in isolation.

But I am incapacitated. I can do nothing but place him, and all who have been in any way involved or otherwise disturbed by what they have heard, into God’s own hands. There is no other place where judgment, justice, forgiveness, truth and peace can be adequately weighed and distributed, retained or forgotten.

My own confusion has already been laid out at His feet. I must make no move to take it up again.

‘Then he betook himself into the vast deserts ...’

(The life of Saint Antony - ascribed to Athanasius. Breviary: 17th January)

God is present

2012-01-23T14:21:00.003Z

‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains;

where is my help to come from?’

(Psalm 121:1)

Those words have long been entwined in my thoughts and experiences of hills and mountains; entwined in such a way that the answer runs through me even before the words of the question surface into consciousness. They always speak, not of some far off vantage point, whether remembered or merely imagined, but of the particular place in which I find myself at that moment. Both question and answer surround me and settle as an omnipresent cloak spreading over every piece of un-peopled high ground I have ever seen. At each such moment, those words could have been written for the heights to which my eyes have been raised, or upon which I stand.

So it was for the beautifully forested Pyrenean mountainsides among which I spent time as summer gave way to autumn. As soon as I first set foot on the steep path leading up through the wooded shadows behind the house in which I stayed, all views of the mountains disappeared and I was enveloped in one of those frequent and impossible to brush aside invitations that call me to acknowledge the presence of something far greater than mere coincidence; something beckoning me away from the superficial, the momentary and the false, to an absorption into the profound, the enduring and the true.

I had packed one unnecessary item before leaving home. I brought it to enable my expected answer to be an honest one when asked if I had packed a book among the other so-called “essentials”. In any such place, the woods, the streams and the hills are the only ‘book’ I need. They are filled not only with pages, but many lines to every page, and with every word pointing to truths written between those lines.

Words and meanings, and awareness of truths beyond all words, calling ever deeper and ever higher along the paths and gullies and ridges, while echoes of the well known words which greet me on stepping through my own door run through me – “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.”

I did, however, read the first page of the preface of the book, and it provided me with words to lean against my awareness of God’s unbidden presence; they stood as book-ends between which I later gathered my own experiences while staying there.

‘Every sound (is) a voice, every scrape or blunder (is) a meeting – with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. ... Direct sensuous reality, in all its more-than-human mystery, remains the sole solid touchstone for an experiential world now inundated with electronically-generated vistas and engineered pleasures ...’ (The Spell of the Sensuous. David Abram.)

I, and those with me, were blessed in remarkable ways during our forest and mountain walks, but one hour in particular left us almost speechless. It was a previously unimaginable experience conjured from the natural world around us, manifested for us, and carrying a message to us – to one of us in particular, I believe. I gave no details of it in the visitors’ book where we stayed; it did not belong there, just as it does not belong here; but what I did feel compelled to leave was an expression of my hope that others will search beyond the superficial attractions around them; that they will go deep. The truth awaits anyone visiting those peaks and forests, and it longs to provide visitors with their own intimate experiences of relationship within it.

In being drawn to raise their own eyes to those hills about them, may they also find the answer to that same question; and may their time there be spent – as mine had been – in wonder, and in peace.

And may anyone reading this be led to listen for the voice which whispers to each one of us.

Be still; be quiet; be content and at peace; partake of the banquet of words to be read and heard in the streams, the trees, the mosses, the trails of mist and cloud, all tumbling down as music, rolling across and caressing the hillsides with overflowing truth.

‘My help comes from The Lord who made heaven and earth.’

(Psalm 121:2)

To each her own

2011-06-23T01:25:00.004+01:00

Having had my interest stirred by the article in which I found Micah’s words repeated so soon after they had spoken to me – stirred more deeply, perhaps, than might otherwise have been the case – I allowed myself to wander along the paths that led away from reading through it. Each path meandered in and out of secluded areas and back into a central, bright and open space; much like walking round my own garden. Though each path’s train of thought was different, they were connected, and the whole experience was self-contained and complete: another of the small, slow-turning, recallable circles held within the gently rising spirals of my walk through this life.

One sequence of thoughts became the previous post. Looking back to it now, I realize the obvious: that those thoughts were entirely my own, and may be far from whatever the actual experience was for the writer of the article. But my thoughts had the writer – a person known to me – as their background, and memories of previous occasions when we have been involved in something together, as well as the many Sunday Mass encounters over the years, returned to mingle with the thoughts that had come from her words: ‘As I walked home ... I felt inspired by the young people and remembered ...’

This path led me to more focussed thinking about her than at any previous time, though never fully occupying my train of thought as her presence in my mind was as a form of reflector; I cannot call it a mirror, as it enabled me to see more clearly that in one essential way she and I are completely different. This is no surprise to me. I have often thought it to be so.

For years, she has been doing essential work within the parish: work she would not be able to do well if she was not the person she is.
I, on the other hand, have always been aware that I could not do what she does. I could put on a convincing front for a time (though only if I really could not get out of it), but if I had no alternative but to maintain it beyond a certain point, I am sure I would fall apart: I would disintegrate in one way or another. She is at the centre of parish life, and must not only be able to cope with it, but must revel in it if she is to remain as the readily available, helpful and happy face people expect to find when meeting her.

I am at the edge of most things, and that is where I seem to be most comfortable. I am not out of things altogether, though it does feel like that at times. Such feelings are countered, however, by the opposite and more discomforting feelings that accompany my involvement in those tasks which do occasionally bring me close to the centre of things.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses; we each have our place in the overall scheme of things. It does me a great deal of good to see so clearly that someone so much more gregarious than myself is in precisely the place where we all need her to be. But it is more than just the type of person; it is the individual. The right person called to a particular time and place, and responding positively to that call.

I thank God for calling her; and I thank her for having said “Yes”.

Another path allowed me to catch glimpses of a particular area of interest that had figured large in my earlier life but which had begun to slip away with the arrival of adult responsibilities: family, mortgage, and the need to maintain continuous employment. The interest had never died away completely, until I met someone whose expertise was centred on that same part of the world; albeit applied in an entirely different field. Our paths were meant to cross, but, contrary to my expectations, a revival of my dormant interest was not what God had in store for me. Whether all subsequent avoidance of my attraction to joining a parish group with a loose connection with that interest was also meant to be, or due to other ongoing uncertainties, is still unknown. What I now regard as certain, however, is that I shall never visit the one part of the world to which I had always longed to go. The idea of doing so no longer figures in any part of my thinking, nor in my dreams.

And yet another path leads off, again, from Micah’s words: “to act justly, to love tenderly”.

As I see the world from that path, I am aware that to be capable of following those two requirements fully, and at all times, would be to approach human perfection. Walking humbly with God would be a natural and inevitable consequence of acting justly and loving tenderly: of acting and loving as Jesus acted and loved; of acting and loving only as the Father willed Jesus to act and love, and as He would have us do likewise, guided and directed by The Holy Spirit. The Trinity is revolving around and within my thinking as the path brings me back to the light in the open space at the centre of the garden, though I cannot quite define what I mean by those words; nor shall I try to grasp their meaning, as it is simply there, and here, and not in any need of definition.

To think and feel and pray as Jesus did, would make it impossible to act and love in any way contrary to the Father’s will; and it would make humility so complete, so natural, and so normal that it would exist only as an unnecessary word: an unwritten, unspoken, unheard, and un-thought-of synonym for ‘being’.

Humility, as a concept, exists only because of our pride and arrogance. Hubris annihilates every chance of approaching perfection.

‘Whatever you undertake will go well, and light will shine on your path;

for he casts down the pride of the arrogant, but he saves those of downcast eyes.’

(Job 22:28-29)

Bringing it home

2011-06-22T13:42:00.001+01:00

Recently, Micah 6:8 presented itself to me again; on the first page that opened when I picked up my local parish magazine. The full sentence reads: ‘As I walked home that evening I felt inspired by the young people and remembered the line from Micah: “This is what God asks of you, only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God”.’

The writer had been reminded of a bible verse, and perhaps its words were made more meaningful, more relevant, more real, by the evening’s experiences. The thoughts and words, actions and reactions: the underlying attitudes of the young people with whom she, and others, had spent the evening, had struck a chord in her, and had fed her in a way that brought her back to God’s word. Such moments are very much part of the ‘The word of God’ being ‘something alive and active’.

God’s Word has to be heard or read before it can make any impression on us; and our deeper immersion in it, and our savouring of it, embeds it in our ways of thinking and being as well as in our memory. But even after a merely superficial reading, and even long after, it can return to us in a striking way when something of which it speaks either triggers our memory, thus enabling a new and powerful link to be made, or it makes the link for us first, allowing us to draw the Word from our memory and to bring it to life in the context of our own lives. In such ways, an event, such as that evening, does not remain as a moment in time, or a period with a clear start and finish, but forms a recurring loop: a small circle which can be returned to and rejoined at any point, with immediate access to the whole circle of moments, words, connections, inspirations, and memories which are nourishing each other with an interconnected life of their own. Something is brought home to us in a way that goes beyond the product of our meditations; it is poured into us as though as a form of contemplative awareness, without the futility of contrived attempts at contemplation in any of its imitated, strived for, or managed forms.

Within that single written sentence; within that circle, completed when the evening brought the writer home to scriptural words enfolding the experience into a meaningful whole, I find three other circles of meaning: three pirouettes, as it were, experienced during the longer sweep of the whole evening’s loop, which itself may now be a stage in the spiral of her ongoing spiritual journey.

‘As I walked ...’ She walked, but it was not a simple one way walk to her home; it was the completion of her evening’s journey. She had set out from home on a form of pilgrimage, possibly remaining unaware of the potential until almost back at her own door. She had set out, experienced and been touched by something at the place to which her steps had taken her, and had completed the circle by bringing the experience home with her: ‘As I walked home ...’

No pilgrimage is over when the apparent destination has been reached; the true end-point is the place from which we set out. We have to return home; and for the pilgrimage to have been worthwhile, we must bring home whatever we have gained, learned, or had revealed to us. But it does not stop there.

‘As I walked home that evening I felt inspired ...’ The inspiration would have been building throughout the evening, but the moment by moment experiencing of it had left it unrecognized until a peaceful reflection during the quiet walk home completed the circle.

‘As I walked home that evening I felt inspired by the young people ...’ Inspiration is frequently felt deeply when it is brought about through the words, actions, and commitment of young Christians. They are the future of the Church: the future of Christianity, whether in the institutional structures with which greying congregations are so familiar, or in the far looser potential of whatever it is toward which The Holy Spirit is leading them. They are the future of our own faith, and it is good to see it alive and playing a part in the lives of those who will carry it after we have gone.

The sequence is finally rounded off by their inspiration drawing God’s Word up from the well of memory, and allowing its living water to flow freely once more. ‘As I walked home that evening I felt inspired by the young people and remembered ...’

(These thoughts have stirred my own memory of another open page. See 24.05.08 ‘Moments’. )

Laurie Lee entitled part of his autobiography, ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’. He was setting out on a journey, unaware of what might lie ahead. The writer of the parish magazine article had come full circle, and had found food for thought; food, perhaps, for the next steps on her lifelong journey. For her, it was not the setting out that had touched her; she had moved into a place where both those with whom she had spent the evening, and the Word, had spoken into her heart. That place: that peace: that Presence, had come to her as she stepped her own way into it – ‘As She Walked Home One Winter Evening’.

“Children, our love must be not just words or mere talk,

but something active and genuine.”

(1 John 3:18)

Feeling the Word

2011-05-26T01:59:00.001+01:00

Even today, and especially today, throughout the multiplicity of separated groups within the broad reach of the Christian Church, we have our own ongoing and self-perpetuating derivative of Babel. We have all played a part in the process that has spawned the fragmentation and dilution of our understanding of the Word of God.

Any admission, even secret and unspoken, of anything even vaguely resembling those thoughts can discomfort us in a way that threatens to hurt if we dwell on it. It stirs something very deep within us: something that brings distraction, and an indefinable awareness that, however rarely we may open a Bible, or give any thought to scripture other than hearing the readings at Sunday mass, we really do value whatever is written between the covers of that solid body of a book.

The confusion lies with the many translations available, though many of us will be untroubled by this availability as it does not translate into a consciousness of there being a choice involved. If we have a Bible of our own, we can truthfully declare that we possess a copy of the Bible; and what more is needed? – Whether we open it or not. But if the Bible contains the Word of God, and if, as everyone hears so often, many Christians believe every word written there, then in every verse where translations differ, which particular words are the correct translation? Which words accurately convey the Word of God? Which words are God’s words? What, and where, is God’s Word?

I do not usually give much thought to these questions, as I am aware that time spent with them would be better spent elsewhere: – reading my own Bible perhaps? The one I am used to; the same one that others around me use; the one that I have come to regard quite simply as “The Bible”: The New Jerusalem Bible. Other Christians, from other denominations and churches, will think along the same lines, but their solid book will not contain the same translation as the one I use. Any attempted discussion would probably carry us towards a defence of our own particular volumes, and that, in its turn, will only lead us into the blind alleys of fruitless disagreement and fractious discontent – the thorny ground in which many translations have already been seeded and germinated.

Someone gave me their email address a few days ago; writing it on a card which had a scripture verse printed large on one side of it. I looked at the photograph on the other side but, unlike the words of that verse, it carried no message for me. I read it as though it spoke directly to me as an individual, and found myself wondering if that card just happened to be the first suitable thing that came to hand when looking for something to write on, or whether it had been recognized earlier as having some relevance for me, and therefore carried for the sole purpose of passing it to me. Almost certainly it was the former.

I looked up the verse in my own Bible later, as that is the one I use on these pages; but having done so I had to reject it in favour of the words I had read on the card. I believe they were taken from the New King James Version; they were the ones that spoke to me.

‘He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?’

(Micah 6:8)

For me, on that day, the Word of God was recognized in the above wording: in that translation rather than the one I always use for myself. The last few words are the same in both, for which I was thankful, as they tell me to continue with my solitary walk, my waiting, and my watching with my Lord, without any thought of needing to do anything more specific. But the ‘O man’ was received as being aimed directly at me as I read: a twist that would not have been possible with my own Bible’s version.

Intimations of Babel echoing through the ages came with my finding that in my own Bible, ‘To love mercy’ – which I love – was rendered as ‘to love loyalty’.

Am I alone in having difficulty in accepting that they are one and the same? – that they both convey the same meaning? Which do I take as being the better, and hopefully correct translation? Which is the Word of God?

Objectively, I am in no position to know the answer, and to pretend that I do, based on my habitual preference for the Bible I have used for years, is not helpful. Subjectively, however, I know what I am meant to know; that on that day, with my thoughts and feelings at the time, and with the person and the means chosen to bring those words to me, God’s Word for me came in the particular words printed on that card.

That is the reality of The Word; it is not a lifeless book of words, phrases and sentences; dead verses, chapters, stories and letters. It speaks to us collectively as the Church, but it is forever speaking to us individually and personally: – subjectively.

Reading it is not enough; we must learn to feel it. God has ever longed for us to understand that it is so.

‘The word of God is something alive and active:

it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword:

it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow;

it can pass judgement on secret emotions and thoughts.’

(Hebrews 4:12)

Food and drink

2011-05-25T14:31:00.004+01:00

However determined we may be when we close our doors, when we make conscious decisions to shut ourselves in or to shut everyone and everything else out, we rarely manage to isolate ourselves completely for long. For some it may be a matter of hours only, for others a few days; some of us may manage it for a few weeks at a time, but even that is not long when seen from an external viewpoint.

Our presence in our local community seeps out almost unnoticed through modern communications and our continuing needs for at least some of the essentials for normal everyday living. The one overriding need for each one of us is an absolute necessity for life: the need for food and drink.

Whether our closed door is the physical reality of a garden gate, the door to our house or flat, or, if we are living at home with our parents or in somebody else’s home, the door to our own room; or whether it is a purely internal barrier: a mental closing of curtains, bringing down of a blind, securing of shutters, or closing and locking of a door on whatever psychological or emotional disturbance we are trying to deny, bury, counter, or overcome, the barrier we use to separate us from the undeniable reality of the rest of the world can never be completely sealed. Just as our presence will leak out through an occasional use of today’s means of communication and through the essential answering of some of our physical needs, so also, that which we are trying to avoid will find a way of seeping in.

The process could be regarded as a form of osmosis: an equalizing of all that was created equal, and an underlying tendency to reposition every part of creation where it was meant to be. We are part of the world, and have not been created to live outside it; either in an attempt to survive beyond its influence, or shut away in a sealed cell, even in the midst of it.

This is equally true, if not more so, of our spiritual lives. We are part of God’s creation, and as such we do not have an external view of what goes on in the world, of human nature and of its susceptibility to being influenced by both good and evil, health and sickness, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and hate, life and death. We are part of it; and everything within it: both sides of every conceivable coin, is, or is potentially, part of us. Just as our physical life is unalterably tied in with all other life on the planet, and will strive to stay in balance with it: equalizing the pressures on both sides of our doors in a lifelong attempt to maintain today’s take on the evolutionary and ever refining status quo, so too are we created to become aware of our spiritual nature, and to be drawn towards the spiritual realities that permeate the whole of the world around us. Whatever we believe, feel and think, it is not possible for any of us to shut God out, or to hide ourselves from Him.

‘For I am certain of this:

neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,

nothing already in existence and nothing still to come,

nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths,

nor any created thing whatever,

will be able to come between us and the love of God,

known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

(Romans 8:38-39)

From our own point of view, a door may serve only one of those purposes: either to shut ourselves in or to shut everything else out; but the net result is the same in either case: the degree of separation is the same, and so too, inevitably, is the degree of consequent isolation. Whatever our thinking and reasoning, we are either afraid to venture out into all that the world has to offer, good and bad, or we fear being invaded and overwhelmed by it if we allow it into our lives. We cannot benefit from all the goodness, inspiration and strength made available to us if we shelter (hide?) or protect (barricade?) ourselves behind a closed door. “There is so much blessing and beauty near us which is destined for us, and yet it cannot enter our lives, because we are not ready to receive it. The handle is on the inside of the door; only we can open it.” (John O’Donohue. Anam Cara.)

But the Spirit of God reaches in to us, however deeply buried we may be, and in calling us, and touching us, He brings us to a point at which we may allow ourselves to be grasped, and gently drawn out into the hands of the Living God.

The gently glowing, barely recognized fire which had been lit within us could not have been started if we had never stepped beyond the boundaries within which we now attempt to confine ourselves. The kindling has been dried out during our remote and anonymous waiting, but we had to have gone beyond our present limits at some time in the past to gather those small pieces of fuel. Like Ruth in Boaz’s fields, we had to venture out to glean what we could, and in so doing we placed ourselves where we could be led by stages into a greater abundance of the very things for which we are still searching: food, and drink, and life itself.

‘So she set out and went to glean in the fields behind the reapers. ... Boaz said to Ruth, ‘... You must not go gleaning in any other field. You must not go away from here. Stay close to my work-women. Keep your eyes on whatever part of the field they are reaping and follow behind. ... And if you are thirsty, go to the pitchers and drink what the servants have drawn.'... Boaz gave orders to his work-people, 'Let her glean among the sheaves themselves. ... And be sure you pull a few ears of corn out of the bundles and drop them. Let her glean them ...' He also said, "Stay with my work-people until they have finished my whole harvest." ' (Ruth 2:3, 8-9, 15-16, 21.)

We fetch and carry the kindling to store within ourselves, but we do not carry the flame to light it until we welcome it into our lives; and the lit fire will begin to flicker and flame only when fanned by the breath of the Spirit carried to us in the presence of others: persons guided into our path by that same Spirit, but with whom we can have no meaningful contact without either stepping out into the world, or allowing them to approach us more closely than may at first feel possible.

We have neither the time nor the energy to maintain the attempted separations we contrive for ourselves. There are other doors on which our attention should be focussed; doors which we alone do not have the power to open and close. We need our fellow travellers: the two or three, or more, who will meet in His name and bring us into the abundance of His blessings, ready and waiting in the world beyond our fears.

One way or another, if we have responded to God’s call, He will reveal Himself in the presence of others and at the very core of our being.

‘It is God who, for his own generous purpose, gives you the intention and the powers to act.’

(Philippians 2:13)

Liminal fortitude? 8

2011-05-17T02:26:00.025+01:00

‘We must free ourselves absolutely of this anxious desire to be at one with other souls, however virtuous or wise they may be; just as we must never expect them to see things through our eyes. We must follow our own light as though we were alone in the world, save as regards charity to others. In purely private matters, we must never be deflected from our own path.’
(Abbé de Tourville. Letters of Direction.)

I know I have not reached the end of my unravelling process, but the various strands are now lying in loose bundles with no tight knots to be seen. I have returned to a more relaxed and receptive state of peace, if not what I would recognize as tranquillity. But I must tread warily. Nothing has changed apart from the way I feel, and that, alone, must not be taken as counting for much. I find myself perched giddily, but not necessarily precariously, right at the very edge of things again. My options have been brought more clearly into focus, and yet they are essentially exactly the same as a few weeks ago. I either decide to follow the leading with which I have been struggling, or I do not. Taking a final decision will change things; that is inevitable. But changes brought about by making the decision will have no worthwhile outcome unless the decision is followed through; and in that fact lies the potential for a continuation of the turmoil that is preventing me from getting off the road and safely away from that which may eventually flatten me. Like the rabbit, I am still in the wrong place, and sometime soon the traffic lights at the edge of town are going to change to green again.

If I decide not to follow: not to risk losing the hope of that for which I hope, all I have to do is dismiss all these thoughts, delete all these words, and not print and send, or post any of this in my usual place at The Very Edge, or anywhere else. Easy! – until I come to act on the decision. I can destroy all that I have written, but does that move me on if I am unable to shed all that remains within me? – all that led to the writing in the first place? Such questions take me right back to a time when Prudence told me she could not help thinking that my writing, about whatever was going on within me at the time, was not helping: that it was aggravating and perpetuating the problem I was trying to resolve. If she knew what I was doing now, I know what her advice would be; and I know she would be right. In fact, that thought itself has immediately helped me. (Your past provision still retains power in me. Thank you Lord.)

If I imagine that she was fully aware of my feelings and leadings, my hopes and fears, and all that is written here, and that I was talking about it with her now, I know that I would follow her advice. She would tell me that the written words still do not matter (and that I should not have started on them). What I should have done at the beginning, and what I should still do, as soon as the opportunity arises, is open my mouth and say to the people involved, whatever it is that I need to say. The trouble is (how do I dare still think those words?), that having imagined that powerfully helpful conversation, I also hear her saying, “What are you afraid of? You know Wisdom and Hope; how can you fear anything from them?”, and then, as she asks, “What’s troubling you?”, I am back at the start, having been reminded that I just don’t know!

Unless, as was in my mind when I included verses from Ephesians 6 somewhere in these posts, - unless I am being restrained by something which really does want to nail my feet to the ground: something which will do whatever it can to prevent me walking along whatever path I am meant to follow: something which has already succeeded, not least by tying me in knots, and keeping me occupied by trying to write myself out of my bindings.

Perhaps those thoughts alone are enough to tell me that while I should follow the course Prudence would have set for me, I should also go ahead with posting all of this now that it is written – not only for what it might speak back to me at some time in the future, but as a form of armour against the silencing that could otherwise claim another small victory if I did not give some sort of voice to these thoughts and feelings.

If I am involved in a battle of some sort, other than with myself, then this too must point to the correctness of any honest approach I make towards the door that Hope appears to have opened for me.

All my past thoughts on companionship, fellowship, being part of something, and needing each other, together with my awareness that I have not always followed my own advice, are placed here, along with a readiness, and a fortitude which is ready to break away from its self-doubting, and from its liminal flat-lining in a confrontation with whatever spiritual enemy dares to challenge me. They are placed here, between two quotes from the Abbé de Tourville’s ‘ Letters of Direction’, which may seem, to some, as diluting the value and the necessity of any call to fellowship and community, but which, for me, are significant reminders both of where I have been for many years, and of where I am also meant to be.

I am well schooled in standing alone, and perhaps because of it, I can find it difficult to step into the very welcome that I hope for. But the two are not meant to be exclusive; we are called to be at home in both, with each giving us elements of our spiritual life which cannot be gleaned from the other. We bring from each to enrich our understanding and effectiveness when in the other. If we fail to do so, then we shall inevitably remain ‘profoundly incomplete’.

When next I find myself writing here, I hope I shall have moved on in some way: in whatever way God wills. I shall post all that I have written, and, however briefly and sketchily, I shall do my best to speak directly to Hope or Wisdom. My start-point will have to be a more complete answer to the probing question from weeks ago. But this whole experience has raised one other concern which also involves my speaking openly. They do not know about my writing here, and will therefore not know that these words exist. I know of only two local people who know both me and my ‘blogging self’, and they are not members of our parish. I have always said that if people find me here by chance and tell others, then so be it; but I have always wanted to remain unknown and of no consequence for the reasons given in my profile. I now find my original intentions under threat, and I am already finding it difficult to justify keeping to myself these written words which are irreversibly associated with Hope and Wisdom. I have let others know when I have referred to them here, and I know that I should now tell them. Avoiding that decision altogether by not posting this, is to turn down the chance of donning some of the armour provided, and would place me right back into the hands of the same restraining powers.

I suppose I could sheepishly revert to my original intention, which had been to write to them, using all this as a less personal form of the letter I failed to complete and never sent. Perhaps I shall hurdle more than one of my barriers by simply giving them a link to these pages, hopefully with a little more that a passing, “I don’t know if you might be interested, but ...”
I am uncomfortable with not knowing where that might that lead me.

Why did I suggest hurdling? At my age any such attempt would undoubtedly result in me falling flat on my face; but then, in the company of the right people (as Prudence taught me) that need not be a fearful thought.

‘We must never allow ourselves to believe that our soul is linked to any other soul in such a way that we rely solely on that external influence, on a direction external to ourselves. God wants to teach us to stand alone, without having to lean too heavily even on the instruments He provides. ... He teaches us by a series of intermediaries all of whom are transitory and all of whom, when considered separately, are profoundly incomplete.’ (Abbé de Tourville. Letters of Direction.)

Liminal fortitude? 7

2011-05-17T02:18:00.011+01:00

Our waiting, our staying awake, and our watching, are not to be confined to whatever limited space and time we may allocate to it. Maundy Thursday highlighted that fact for me. A clearly defined period in which to “watch” with Jesus, in a church, is a thoughtful as well as comfortable way to approach the edges of the reality behind our commemoration of that day, but the urgency of my wish to be part of it slips further away with each year. Particularly on a warm and still night like the one we then passed through, it takes little more than a moment to enter into the emptiness and the pain, as well as the beauty of Gethsemane. All it takes is a decision to allow one’s inner awareness to surface through all the usual boundaries while out in the quiet solitude of the fresh night air. It is not necessary to be up on the hills, though that is where I would have liked to have been; just out, among trees, or even close to a single tree, in one’s own garden.

All that happened on that original Thursday night, cannot be separated from the fact that the root of Christian fellowship began its journey towards potential oblivion in a form of Eden: in a quiet seclusion, outside, between earth and open sky; in a place where all doors to God’s presence were open, but where those who could have spent time with Him failed to stay awake. They experienced the apparent non-existence of a mere moment in sleep, when they could have been consciously waiting and watching, bathing in eternity’s shallows (the gift we receive, and are asked to give back, as time), and gradually being drawn into the eternal miracle of a timeless and total immersion in His Presence: of being with Him.

The “when” of things has been a barely discernible part of my experience during the last twenty years. I have not been aware of anything resulting from my own sense of timing during that period, for I have not been conscious of having any such sense; at least that is how my waiting has seemed. I have spent much of that time feeling as though I was that startled and confused rabbit: motionless, in danger, not knowing which way to run, and unable to make a decision for fear of getting it wrong. Perhaps what has brought me this far, is that in having no real timing of my own, I have been prevented from seriously mistiming whatever I may have done. I have spent all those years waiting, and what has often disturbed me greatly has been my continuing lack of knowledge as to what it is that I am waiting for; what I am meant to be doing; where I am meant to be going. But whenever I have started to formulate ideas, they have occupied me for a while and then faded to nothing, leaving me with a feeling that they had been mere distractions from the path I was being asked to follow. Yet that path seemed to lead endlessly on, taking me nowhere; and with nothing new to grasp along the way, I found past experiences, people and places becoming even more firmly embedded in my limited catalogue of meaningful and trusted friends.

I have not been aware of passing through any particular doors along the way, and the only doors of which I have been conscious have always seemed closed to me. This has troubled me in waves that subside whenever I attempt to convince myself that they have been conjured from my imagination. They were doors I had wanted to find open to me, while suspecting that such doorways did not in fact exist. But now, in the last few weeks, I have found my unspoken longing being met by rays of hope that I may not have been as misguided as I had thought. I am now more inclined to believe that my continued waiting may have been the correct response to being asked to do just that: that I have in fact had an unrecognized ability to sense that I have not been called upon to do anything other than to wait, to stay awake, and to watch with my unseen companion, not on Maundy Thursday night only, but every night and day, and with every step that I take.

As my thoughts slowly turned themselves into a form of words, I came to recognize what may have been obvious to anyone able to view the situation from beyond its apparent boundaries. If I had remained at the very edge of it I would have been able to see it for myself long ago, but the whole nature and structure of the situation has caught me up into thinking far too much about myself, instead of doing what I have so often told myself to do: to wait, and to carry on waiting until such time as I am told to do something else.

What I have finally come to realize is that Hope and Wisdom feel that a door has closed in front of them, just as I have long thought one closed in front of me.

Might not that door be the same one? And leading on from that thought, if it is the same door, where are we in relation to each other? Are we standing together in front of it? If we are, are we being called to join forces for some reason? – to open the door together, or to search for another door which will lead us to where we are needed to be? This is the very possibility on which I have dwelt so many times. Or, are we standing on opposite sides of the same door? It would again appear that this door could be opened by our joint efforts, but from different directions. This image feels far more powerful to me, as though acknowledging that while we are travelling different paths and being called to different tasks, we are required to combine some aspects of our spiritual natures for the good of all. After so much time, could our closer fellowship, after all, be the answer to my long-running wordless prayer? – the opening of my closed door? And could their own closed door be opened as a result of my joining with them?

We need to have the eyes to see. Have mine been closed to what has been in front of me all the time? Could it really be that the door to that which I seek has been wide open for a long time? Could it even have been open to me all the time? Have I really been that blind? Or has the whole self-conscious delay been the product of my fear?

Yet again, I am brought back to those same few lines from John Henry Newman; but this time they really do ring through my heart as an accusation rather than as a less troubling pricking of my conscience.

‘Perhaps the reason why the standard of holiness among us is so low, why our attainments are so poor, our view of the truth so dim, our belief so unreal, our general notions so artificial and external is this, that we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. We do not probe the wounds of our nature thoroughly; we do not lay the foundation of our religious profession in the ground of our inner man; we make clean the outside of things; we are amiable and friendly to each other in words and deeds, but our love is not enlarged, our bowels of affection are straitened, and we fear to let the intercourse begin at the root; and, in consequence, our religion, viewed as a social system is hollow. The presence of Christ is not in it.’ (Christian Sympathy. Parochial and Plain Sermons).

Yet still I do not speak out, other than in half-truths. My longing is hidden: kept concealed, or at least disguised so as not to risk the door which I long to find truly open to me, being firmly closed. It has felt as though a door has blown off in an aircraft at altitude, with a sensation of being irresistibly drawn towards the opening, and, if I allowed myself to be so drawn, being taken straight through it to freefall to a landing place which cannot be anticipated or pre-selected.

I still have not dared to take the risk; and yet I know that my one and only opportunity may be short-lived. I may hesitate too long, even while fearing that the door may close before me. But I also hear another voice ...

‘You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you.

What is of God will last.’

(Henri Nouwen. The Inner Voice of Love.)

Liminal fortitude? 6

2011-05-17T02:04:00.008+01:00

Whenever I think of Wisdom, the first image that has always come to mind is an open door. I am sure that most people would agree that this is an appropriate image for her anyway, but mine is deeply embedded for other reasons.

Long ago, she sent me a card with one, and with Revelation 3:8 quoted inside: “Look, I have opened in front of you a door that no one will be able to close”. That card is still a frequently seen reminder of the first time I met her: a meeting which became one of the permanent anchor points along my path. The door towards which she was the first to point me has never closed.

Until Holy Week, when these particular thoughts were coming to me, I had always thought that she had opened that door for me; that she had, so to speak, been the gatekeeper who had pointed the way and encouraged me to move towards the opened door. I did not know her, and we spoke only briefly, but her few words during those fleeting moments, were the subtle trigger that began a process which put all that had gone before into a context that soon became the bedrock of the only life I know.

As I was writing to her, and Hope, on Maundy Thursday (the unsent letter), it dawned on me that while she had indeed been a gatekeeper, positioned at the right time and place to meet me on my unsuspecting arrival, she had put me at ease as I drew closer to a door which had already been opened. It had been opened by the One who caused her to pause when I was passing; to greet me and enquire of me, that I too may pause instead of wandering straight past. I had thought she had opened the door because it seemed almost that it was her own door; she had been so comfortable beside it. And it seemed clear that she was equally at home beyond it as she was where she stood, talking to me; even that she belonged on the other side of it, and had merely come visiting for a while. Perhaps what lay beyond the door was her true home? That would explain why I had never even noticed another door: the one she really did open for me, and through which I had unknowingly stepped as soon as I responded to her greeting.

These thoughts took me straight to John 18: to the door into the high priest’s palace, where another woman was on duty as gatekeeper, and where Peter, who could have gone straight through with “the other disciple” chose to stay outside the door. Why he did not take the opportunity when it first arose is not relevant here (though his turmoil may have some relevance for me), but it did get me thinking about the existence of other doors: doors other than the one “that no one will be able to close”.
That those words were spoken and written now implies – no, it makes clear – for me, that all other doors can be closed. It is equally clear, however, that we cannot deduce from that, that all other doors can be opened.

Peter held back when the door before him was open, and missed that first opportunity. At the same time, he wanted to go through; why else would he have waited just outside the closed door?

The expression “to shut the door on” something can be used in many ways, broadly splitting into two groups. Someone else can shut the door on us; on our opportunities and our potential: on any aspect of our presence, our activity, or our influence. But there are just as many in the other group; those which involve our own decisions and our own shutting of a door. We shut out other people, and aspects of the world we wish to exclude from our lives and even from our consciousness; and from our conscience. Others can shut us out, but we are equally capable of shutting them out, along with whatever we do not wish to be part of, cannot face, or are too afraid or ashamed to confront.

We can be caught unawares if waiting close to doors over which we have no control, whether open or closed; and if we are right beside them, we can find ourselves in danger of falling through to where we do not want to be. We have only to think of the warnings on the London underground.

There are wide open doorways allowing free access to and from the lounges and dining areas at the home where Hope and I had our conversation, but, as Ella had demonstrated, we may not always find a doorway easy to locate, however wide the access may be. We need to have the eyes to see. We may be confident that we can see clearly and that we know where to look, but what chance do we really have of finding the way out, or the way in, when the doorway is not so wide? Finding it, as well as walking through it, can be like passing the sealed book around; I can’t read, and the person next to me can’t open it because it is sealed. And the majority of those in the room with us, whether they can open the book and read or not, will make no move until they are led by someone else who knows the way, or even by a blind person who encouragingly and confidently, but falsely, proclaims that they can find the way for us. And lying blanket-like over all other layers, is the fact that, in reality, we each have to find the way for ourselves. Finding ourselves in front of a door, closed or open, means we have already found our way to it. Anyone there to help us, gatekeeper or not, is able to make contact with us only if and when we have turned up; but would we be able to trust in their help if they told us we were approaching the wrong door?

“Try your hardest to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed” (Luke 13:24).

We fail through none other than our own fault; and not only through our lacking the eyes to see. “The narrow door” is easily missed, not only because without knowing what we are looking for and persevering in our search, its narrowness makes it hard to see, but because it cannot necessarily be taken to be the “door that no one will be able to close”. It may be one which seems to be permanently open, but which can close unexpectedly at any time; or it may suddenly be opened for us, only to close again soon afterwards (like the door into the high priest’s palace), giving us the opportunity to go through it, but withdrawing it if we spend too long holding ourselves back.

Our call to follow is not a call to abandon our individuality and to live passively as one of a flock of equally inactive and unthinking sheep. It is a call to follow Our Lord’s example: not only to do, but to see, to hear, to feel, to think, and to speak, that we may become able to do in the way that Jesus has shown us, and to accomplish all these things as the unique persons we have been born to become. Following that example involves learning, not only what to do and how to do it, but when to advance, when to stand one’s ground, and when to retreat; when to speak and when to remain silent; when to do and when not to do. Our attempts to duplicate Our Lord’s manner of living and of being become the following to which we are called, only when we have learned the importance of knowing the “when” of all things. He did only what His Father told Him to do, which means His example included doing all those right things at the appropriate time: at the right time.

There is a right time for each of us to walk through open doors (“I shall remain at Ephesus until Pentecost, for a very promising door is standing wide open to me…” (1 Cor. 16:8-9); “Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding hall and the door was closed” (Matthew 25: 10)); to wait beside closed doors (“Be like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks” (Luke 12:36); “Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person's side” (Rev 3:20).); and to knock on closed doors (“knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9-10).).

Trying our “hardest to enter by the narrow door” means not just searching for it in space, but knocking on it once it has been found, and waiting beside it until the time is right; and that means God’s time, not ours; waiting for the narrow door to reveal itself in the passage of time: the narrow window of time and opportunity that brings God’s blessing on the efforts of all mature followers of Christ. “I tell you,” that without the discernment of God’s timing “many will try to enter and will not succeed”; and they will include even those who have found the door, and who are prepared to remain close by it, but for only a limited period of time.

Liminal fortitude? 5

2011-05-17T01:50:00.008+01:00

Feelings of which I was well aware, but which, for a long time, had not fully risen to the surface, were unknowingly reached for and touched during a conversation at the home where Hope’s family member now lives. From my first visit there, I have been blessed by the opportunity to have this contact, and by the possibility of continued meaningful contact and conversation in the future.

During our conversation, a lady (Ella) came towards us and stood right in front of us, as though wanting to get past, into the small empty space in the corner behind us. I did not know that she cannot see well, and had thought she wanted to get to something in the corner of the room. Being aware of her poor sight, however, Hope knew she was not where she thought she was, nor where she wanted to be; she was not heading towards whatever she sought, nor to a place where she thought she might find it. Her compass was reset by explaining where she was, and by directing her into the main part of the room once more.

As a random moment in the day-to-day happenings of any place where people need ongoing support, it was merely one of many, and I would have had no reason to recall it. But I had much to occupy my mind as a result of some of the things said to me during our conversation, and I had to deal with particular thoughts and feelings into which Hope had probed with one of her questions.
Belief has its consequences, and my own belief that she had been guided to ask her question, led me to feel that it had been raised, in some way, for both of us; and the consequence of that is that I also have to believe that I have something to bring to her situation, just as she has something for mine. I am certain of the latter, but doubtful and vulnerable with regard to my own potential ability to contribute. I am not prepared to consider the only alternative I can think of: – that it was for my benefit alone. If that was the case, then it is far too close to an unforgettable provision God made for me once before; not that there was any part of that which I shall ever recall with anything other than thanksgiving and astonishingly life-changing memories, but the possibility of such provision being made for me again is frightening, because it could only mean that something is going to change: perhaps as drastically as it did before. That possibility is something that excites me, but, at the same time it terrifies me. There are too many reasons for me not to let myself go. That thought also worries me; I am sure it is what I thought before I disintegrated last time.

Though voiced (I believe) merely as a friendly enquiry, my experience of Hope’s question was as an accurate probing, and I had to move beyond the disturbance it stirred within me before I could focus fully on something else she had said: important words that my feelings were masking from further thought. She had spoken of a door being closed, or having been closed, in front of herself and Wisdom, with whom I had also spoken at that same meeting a year earlier.

I find something disconcerting in the very idea of both of them, not just individually, but in the close fellowship they share, feeling as though a door has closed before them. It troubles me. My immediate reaction was that nothing should feel like that for either of them, but by the time I was engrossed in writing to them, on Maundy Thursday (a letter which was not sent), I had begun to see things differently. I was no longer troubled, but remained concerned; and, through being unable to lay my concern aside, I felt, and continue to feel, involved.

Allowing myself to continue feeling that I was involved was presumptuous of me, though I also felt that Hope had mentioned the closed door for a reason; and I would certainly not allow something of some importance to her to simply be blown away as mere chaff. The fact that I have, nevertheless, given voice to that feeling of involvement, reinforces my belief that some of her words had begun to tug at the cords which keep me securely bound within my own comfortable anonymity; and I find myself wanting to suggest to them both, that they also may need to see things differently.

My altered viewpoint was prompted, in part at least, by thoughts of Ella getting lost right in front of us during our conversation.

Liminal fortitude? 4

2011-05-17T01:34:00.007+01:00

A year had passed since my brief but memorable meeting with Hope and Wisdom: two friends whose presence in my life is needed, but almost entirely un-admitted; longed for, but for the most part undeclared. I met Hope again one Sunday morning, when I learned that the health of the family member previously spoken of had deteriorated markedly. I repeated the offer made a year earlier, and left it for her to phone me if I was needed. Two weeks passed, but still without my having heard from her, and though I had made a conscious decision to wait – it had to be entirely her choice and her own wish for me to become in any way involved – I was finding it increasingly difficult not to contact her. I attended the Ash Wednesday service at our parish church, and I met her again when I walked in. I remained with her during the service, and found myself drawn into a deep awareness of the weight of the cross she has been carrying. I had no doubt that she had, and still has, contact with good friends who help to carry her burden, but with the added dimension of reliably stable ground having been taken from under her feet, I felt called to do what I could to make the ground feel solid again for her. The rock is always there, but experiencing its unwavering stability sometimes takes the steadying hand of a friend who is not among those closest to the emotional sharing of the burden.

‘Your unique presence in your community is the way God wants you to be present to others. Different people have different ways of being present. You have to know and claim your way. That is why discernment is so important. Once you have an inner knowledge of your true vocation, you have a point of orientation. That will help you decide what to do and what to let go of, what to say and what to remain silent about, when to go out and when to stay home, who to be with and who to avoid. ... Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. ... your community also needs your creative absence.’ (Henri Nouwen. The Inner Voice of Love.)

“We miss you.” The touch from those three words a year earlier was undeniable, and yet, other than giving voice to my immediate wish to help in whatever way may have been necessary or possible, I found myself hanging back. The possibility of having closer and more frequent contact with two of the very few people with whom I could feel both comfortable and safe, and with whom I had long wanted that contact, had suddenly presented itself, and I waited; and waited. I had some sort of expectation that if these friends missed me – for friends they are, in spite of our lack of contact and almost non-existent communications – there would be a follow-up to those three beautifully welcome words. And I found myself being inextricably bound by my own waiting, until the binding held me so tightly that I was once more motionless in the grip of my unrecognized fears; like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

I waited for the follow-up contact that did not come, making no move to respond myself because of my fear regarding where those words might lead me.

As I see it now, a door had been opened for me by their utterance, and I had waited, in the hope that someone would arrive at my side, take me by the hand, and lead me through the door without any deliberate action being required of me. I would have gone quietly, I am sure; I would have gone willingly, I think; I would like to go further, and should be able to say that I would have gone eagerly, but the fear is rising even as I write these words. Would I? Would I have gone at all? Would I even have allowed the possibility of a situation in which any follow up could have occurred? It is easy to tell myself that I am imagining myself into non-existent situations, but however true that may be of present thoughts about something that did not in fact occur more than a year ago, it does not alter the fearful truths existing in my present day-to-day paralysis.

When those words were spoken, I was aware that continued waiting would probably find me in the same position a year later. That is precisely what happened. When I wrote about it previously (24.12.10), I had not had any further contact with Hope, and even at the beginning of Lent this year, my lack of real contact had left me in an untroubled situation. While recently wading against the current of my own words, I came across these, written a few weeks ago: “... rather than the experience ending as I had feared – burying me still further within myself, and even cutting me off from any future contact with them, or with anybody else with the potential for bringing me further into the clear light of day – it simply left me unchanged: still uncertain, still afraid, still asleep, and still blind to the door that had been opened for me."

Those words confirm to me that, while having recognized the possibility of a door having been opened for me, even that recently, I had not begun to be troubled in the way that I now am. That only began when what could be described as the much delayed follow up to “We miss you” came about during one of our conversations.

‘That is why you must take up all God's armour,

or you will not be able to put up any resistance on the evil day,

or stand your ground even though you exert yourselves to the full.’

(Ephesians 6:13)

Liminal fortitude? 3

2011-05-17T01:28:00.017+01:00

‘Put on the full armour of God so as to be able to resist the devil's tactics.’ (Ephesians 6:11)

In becoming aware that we are not alone, we may realize that we had forgotten that we had at one time been travelling with others. Now we find ourselves with them again, and we suspect that, though we had no ongoing sense of their presence, they may never have been away.

I have never been able to forget that there was a time when I had been accompanied by others; I could not have made it through some parts of my journey at that time without them. That indeed was why they were there: their presence was no accident, or mere coincidence. It may also have been intended, and necessary, that I should spend a long time without such company: with Jesus as my sole companion. But now, with my own awareness of others having been made real through a recent merging of paths, and through closer contact with Hope, one of the few persons with whom I have always felt at ease, a potential change is hovering (with God’s Spirit perhaps) only just out of reach. It is only beyond reach at all if I remain fixed to the spot: making no move towards it. And there, in that invitation: that extended hand: that smile of welcome: that opened door; I see and feel other things which, other than in myself, may not exist at all: – I hesitate before what appears to be the answer to a long-lived wordless prayer, and find myself viewing the innocent and encouraging beauty of the possibility before me, through vague shadows of doubt.

Do I only imagine that there is an invitation? Taking the offered hand requires only the shortest of steps, but I have to take the step. Am I misinterpreting the smile? Is it merely an everyday friendly response to a normal moment of conversation, and not in any way related to anything hoped for that runs through my mind? And that door; is it really open? If so, am I meant to be there? – is it open for me? Or is the whole idea of the door a figment of my imagination?

What may be the simplest of steps becomes the smallest of challenges, but, however small, it is a challenge; and with hesitation, it grows. My wish not to risk anything which could, in the least way, spoil this much needed contact, prevents me from doing anything at all. And the difficulty mounts with the passing days. It becomes less likely that I shall say anything, and while nothing may show outwardly, I know that something within me will gradually fall to pieces. I do not allow myself to think about where that would lead me, but it is impossible to shake off the knowledge that it would be a place from which my return would be almost inconceivable; and that chimes frighteningly with the growing sensation of being where I find myself today.

I sense the predatory crouch of a truth in these thoughts. Perhaps I would be led nowhere, and perhaps that is precisely the point. Something is working to send me nowhere; and to succeed in that objective it need do nothing other than ensure that I remain exactly where I am; I am already there: I am nowhere. Being here keeps me out of the way; out of action. So long as I remain blind, deaf, lost, and asleep, and so long as when next I fall, I give up, and remain down, beyond the reach of those who would have me stand again: those who would walk beside me in a shared search for others in need of whatever gifts we can bring, then I shall be of no consequence; a non-combatant; disconnected from the power source which would bring me back to life.

Even when, for the most part, distanced from the immediate physical reality of my life – when writing here – I am running, as it were, on batteries that are always being recharged in my real world; they are never emptied of what actually makes my heart and soul tick. It is therefore no surprise to me that this coincides with having circled round to find myself aware of the contrived group of twelve followers again: The Named, The Touched, and through to The Sent; the unknown companions who share these pages with me (thank you again for being there). We have not been walking our paths alone; nor, in our watching and waiting, do we stand alone. We all need to hold on to that thought. We have been placed in each others’ paths for a reason; we have the potential for helping each other on our journeys, and, for much of the time, all it takes is our continued presence. In each other we find the reality of God’s provision: living proof of the Presence which will never desert us or cut us adrift.

It is in having come round to the point at which I hear my name being called again –both within the powerful reality of my renewed contact with Christ’s presence in human form (Hope), and within these written thoughts – that I have come to more fully recognize some aspects of what I believe to be my own predominant flaw: the weakness that most readily incapacitates me, and keeps me out of action while I continue to fade, falter, forget, and fall towards a time when the powers that keep me quiet will forget they ever had cause to keep half an eye on me.

My failure is that which, before anything else, is the main reason for Christians not speaking out to those who have no faith, and who have no awareness of God’s presence among us. In my own case, it has even become my main reason for not speaking up in the presence of others who do believe: even those who are further along their paths than I am along mine, and especially those with whom I long to communicate and with whom I yearn for fellowship.

How can that have come about? And how have I been held in that grip for so long? I am unable to break out of it for myself. If it were otherwise, I would have done it long ago.

I have been held back, imprisoned and tightly bound by my failure in one of the four things that, for me, echo more loudly than anything else through the pages of scripture. I love God; I do my best to love my neighbour; I strive to forgive all, even myself; but though I hear the words, over and over again, “Do not be afraid”, I fear. And the most frightening thing about it – that which, even in its mere admission, makes me want to delete all that I have written for these posts, and retreat from the thoughts that have plagued me for these weeks – is the incomprehensible awareness that the one thing of which I am most afraid, is that I might become afraid. It makes no sense, but the only fear of which I am conscious is that I might fear.

‘For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle,

but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world,

the spirits of evil in the heavens.’

(Ephesians 6:12)

Liminal fortitude? 2

2011-05-17T01:04:00.008+01:00

In connection with the foregoing post, I wrote the following two months ago, and while not having used it in a ‘stand alone’ form at the time, I include it here as part of my rather lengthy unravelling of the overlapping stages of a disquieting theme.

In drawing together the various strands of relevant experiences over recent weeks, in an attempt to make sense of the underlying shape and direction that is undoubtedly being waved in front of me, I am aware that the spiralling nature of my spiritual life has brought me once again to a point at which I am being called by my own name. I have come full circle, not to arrive at the same place, but at a new start point on a subtly different and slightly more elevated plane. I have walked alone for much of my circuitous route, but now find myself within sight of some of my fellow travellers again: the group of companions with whom I thought I might find myself sharing parts of my journey: the group suggested soon after I began thinking aloud on these pages, but also the possibility of known friends from earlier times.

In coming closer to others as our paths converge, I have realized that two travellers (Wisdom and Hope), both of whom are known to me, have come close enough for us to acknowledge each other. I begin to think they may have been beside me for the last twenty years of my journey, even when I thought I was completely alone. Alone, that is, apart from a constant Presence whose existence I can never deny. Perhaps our meeting will lead to a revived fellowship: a meeting of two or three in His name, which will bring His presence to life in more powerful ways for each of us; the beginnings of a gathering which, though answering longings of my own, would come about for as yet unknown and greater reasons.

My longing may have been my experience of an ongoing call to take my place as part of something new about to be done. My waiting too, may have been part of something greater; it may have been shared by others for whom, like me, nothing seemed to be happening; or even, as I have recently learnt through this renewed contact with friends, shared in by those for whom doors have failed to open, or have closed in front of them. Perhaps many small fires have been lit, but have been deliberately maintained as no more than a slowly spreading glow; in place, though not recognized as being so, and ready and waiting for the right time: God’s time. Perhaps that time is close, and we are being called to move closer to one another. In doing so we may disturb the air around us just enough to fan our waiting embers into flames. “Where two or three...” again. Our waiting has ensured that the kindling within us is bone dry, and what happens next can go only one way.

I cannot separate these thoughts from my awareness of where we are in the Church year. Could our lead up to Pentecost have any bearing on this? All we can do, and must do, is follow our leading, and wait; come together – at the very least, not remain out of touch with each other – and wait for the right time. We will know it when it comes.

Do I really need anything other than Jesus?

In reality, no; but in my continuing frailty and uncertainty - yes. I need His presence in others as company on my journey. I have need of them. We have need of each other. The truth underlying such feelings is that, in my weakness, my need for Him is not always, nor in all ways, satisfied by my knowledge of His unseen presence within me, and at my side. There are times when I need my awareness of Him to be heightened by His presence in other people with whom I can share that awareness.

We are called to allow ourselves to become vulnerable in His presence, and I have recently been brought within earshot of His call to vulnerability in the presence of those who have played a part in leading me to Him. I still fear making any approach; even after being blessed by the potential invitation contained in those three words: "We miss you." The amount of time passed since they were spoken is witness to that fact, but, despite all my foregoing thoughts, until I change something, the situation (for me at least) will probably stay the same. If I am missed by those with whom I long to have more contact, what can possibly hold me back? One thing only; that multi-faceted enemy of so much that is good: my own fear.

‘We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for “finding himself”. If he persists in shifting this responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within. ... Although in the end we alone are capable of experiencing who we are, we are instinctively gifted in watching how others experience themselves. ... we are too prone to welcome everybody else’s wrong solution to the problems of life. There is a natural laziness that moves us to accept the easiest solutions – the ones that have common currency among our friends.’ (Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island.)

Liminal fortitude? 1

2011-05-17T00:46:00.018+01:00

‘... the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the words of the prophets and the assistance of grace are available, the journey must still be travelled alone. No teacher can carry you there. There are no preset formulas. Rituals are only learning aids, they are not the learning. Eating organic food, saying five Hail Marys before breakfast, praying facing east or west, or going to church on Sunday will not take you to your destination. No words can be said, no teaching can be taught that will relieve spiritual travellers from the necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their own lives toward the identification of their individual selves with God.’ (M. Scott Peck. The Road Less Travelled.)

Another unplanned and unexpectedly long break from these pages has been brought to an end by my continuing need to unravel thoughts through the, at times, laborious writing process. It is not, in fact, the writing with which I struggle, but the process of dragging my thoughts – more accurately perhaps, the emotions and depth of feeling in which they are frequently wrapped – into a form of submission, and then forcing them onto the page. Once there, however buried, hidden, fragmented, disguised or diaphanous they may still be, some poorly executed sketch of them is at least anchored before me. I have something which cannot escape me again; and though I still may not know what it is that is striving to be understood, I do at least have something. That matters.

I have made known that I have gained from these pages when reading them back months after writing them, but I have gradually, and more frequently, found himself becoming one of the audience: as though not always aware of that with which I have been filled until after its overflowing.

Perhaps it is time for me to lose any lack of responsibility which may have been hiding behind my wish to remain unseen among my fellow sheep, in spite of my awareness of having been searched for, and found. In shedding any sturdily erected pretence that I have not already learned that I must accept some form of responsibility, I may find myself able to bathe more fully in my knowledge that I have already returned home to find that I am a much loved son. From within that all enveloping warmth and gentle pressure: that brief recurrence of a return to the spiritual womb in which I had been formed, and from which I was brought into being, I may find the parallel, and presently absent, awareness and reality of my also being a brother: the long awaited and longed for opportunity to be part of something greater than my solitary dreams. To take my place, wherever that may be, as part of a quorum of two, or group of three; or more. A meaningful and productive meeting of hearts, minds and souls in His name, from which may come the blossom, and the fruit, of which, as yet, I can see no sign.

The frail, half understood something – the anchored word that is so important to me as a graspable start-point – seems increasingly difficult to find; and, as my most recent experience of hunting for it has shown, even finding it does not necessarily mean I am close to successfully pinning it out for dissection and subsequent understanding. I have been bogged down in a sea of words for several weeks: trying to wade among them as though moving through treacle. Whenever they have formed into a few sentences strung together, they have made sense to me, but the next fragment of truth or understanding, or feeling of direction, may have no apparent connection with whatever else I have just trapped. Clicking on ‘save’ after every small string of words feels like tripping the door on a cage: “Got it!” Every click ensures I will have something to feed on tomorrow, rather than having to go hunting again. That also matters.

Struggling to capture something substantial from among my thoughts can be enjoyable, but not when it occupies most of my waking hours today, and tomorrow, and the following day ... The hunt is only the beginning, and no beginning has meaning if it is never followed by the next step, however long or short the search may be. The hunter who never bags his prey will starve to death. The thinker who never nails down a thought will disintegrate without ever coming to an awareness of who he or she is. The praying person who remains trapped in cosy devotions, liturgical forms, habitual repetitions, superficial needs and uttered words, but never searches for a path along which he or she may truly share in the companionship of Christ, will fade unseen, and unmissed (in spiritual terms), from the face of the earth.

Those who, like myself, search for whatever it is they are called to do without ever seeming to find it, also (I believe) wander towards a fading light, and will themselves fade from sight; but we do not all fade away. Some will tire of their search and go home to settle into another less troubling mindset, and these could indeed be said to do so. Others, however, may be more lastingly affected by their experience, either tending towards crumbling within the debilitating sensations of their frustration and the apparent waste of potential in their lives, or, through perseverance, reaching a point at which they see the whole experience, however long-running it may have been, as a time of preparation and waiting in obedience to God’s will: a time of wakefulness and watching, during which, far from having failed to hear God’s call, they have resisted and rejected the many thoughts and ideas which have tempted them, but which have not come from Him. A lesson in discernment, and a testing perhaps, for more challenging decisions yet to be made?

My recent struggles to untangle and make sense of my own situation, have been part of a new dawning that has slowly brought light into my own separation from almost everything and everyone. Recent weeks have brought contact and conversation with someone (Hope) who has seemed to be holding a door open for me. Through the self-enforced process of seeking understanding of myself through the written word (my own written words, and now, finally, through placing some sort of result from that process here), I have come to acknowledge the possibility that I may have to include myself among those whose waiting has been a time of preparation.

As such, any sense of relief accompanying this broadening awareness is purely momentary, as it gives way to a greater determination, and to a conviction that we have not only the happy intention, but the ability to watch and wait for as long as may be necessary. It also brings an increasing acceptance of our heightened awareness that the nature of the call cannot necessarily be anticipated. But, by returning to, and resolutely remaining in our places: by standing our ground, we have already answered a call; we have been “called up”, and have responded in ways that have made us ready to put on the full armour of God. We are ready, willing and able to respond to whatever may be required of us. That in itself is a powerful response; one that is built on the hard rock of endurance.

But – and this is the thought that brought the initial glint of something brightening on my horizon – could it be that there are far more of us in that position today than we have ever imagined? Are we, after all, not the apparently isolated, fearful, shy and ineffective persons we had taken ourselves to be? – longing to be part of some greater happening, yet seemingly unable to gain access to whatever it is that we need to actually make it happen?We each see ourselves as deficient in some way; one believes himself to be blind; another that she is deaf; one is lost; another is asleep; some have fallen, but none of them have stayed down – those who have are not among us; and others who, when feeling unable to stand once more, found themselves lifted to their feet by others among whom they suddenly found themselves. We are all made aware that we have not been walking our paths alone; nor, in our watching and waiting, do we stand alone.

We are being called to ‘grow strong in the Lord, with the strength of his power’ (Ephesians 6:10)

‘So stand your ground,

with truth a belt round your waist, and uprightness a breastplate,

wearing for shoes on your feet the eagerness to spread the gospel of peace'

(Ephesians 6:14-15)

Into the light

2011-01-18T12:20:00.006Z

It is that time of year when, in the absence of snow and ice, and all things displaying and speaking of winter’s dormancy masquerading as death, and even as non-existence, the countryside is filled with a wonderful air of expectancy. The inhospitable grip in which it was clenched during December has relaxed and trickled away, to leave us dangerously close to believing that winter has gone. The mornings and evenings are lightening noticeably; and yesterday, with the sun shining, and the wind and rain having left the sodden, twig-strewn ground to sparkle and shine its fully washed – if not half-drowned – surface into the light of a brand new day, every tree and bush, every hidden bulb and root, seemed possessed of the same excited consciousness that filled the suddenly so exuberant birds.

The feel of the day had been just as clear when colours were barely discernable. I walked across the garden at dawn, and as soon as I had stepped from the house, the chorus captivated me. The dangerous hope that spring had come was being shared by the life all around me; so vulnerable if and when winter looks back at us from wherever it pretends to have gone, and decides to revisit us. Among the other choristers three Robins loudly proclaimed their territories, to East and West and North of me, and having distanced myself from them as I walked toward the South, a fourth built song from its drowned-out throat until it became the loudest of all, singing from a Hawthorn tree, mere feet away, as though it sang for me.

In one way or another, my thoughts are mostly in the countryside even when my body has to spend time in cities or wasting miles on motorways. When spirit and mind and body all find themselves walking together within its folds, I am immersed in something I know and love; I am where I am meant to be, and I am close to the reality of the person I was born to be. I am, at the same time, both at the very edge of something immense, wonderful, supremely natural yet not entirely comprehensible, and fully enclosed and immersed in it – hand and heart; mind and spirit; ear and eye; tooth and claw. It is part of the blossom which turns to fruit in solitude.

The morning reminded me of something I had read in John O’Donohue’s book, Anam Cara. A story about a monk named Phoenix, who stopped reading his breviary to listen to the song of a bird. He listened so purely that when he returned into the monastery he no longer recognized anyone there. The monks found mention of a monk named Phoenix in their annals who had mysteriously disappeared.

I find that potentially so real. Stories of time lost through encounters with fairies are the stuff of imagined enchantment and dreams, but here there is a tale that whispers of some indefinable possibility not too far removed from truth.

Being deeply immersed in something: having knowledge of it, understanding it at a level of awareness that can only come from a deep and continuing involvement born of a desire to be involved in it; that is where total immersion comes from. The willing plunge into its life-swallowing depths perpetuates and further deepens the desire for a continuation of this utter dedication to whatever has so completely grasped our attention.

A recent short but (as I found it) powerful sermon brought this form of transformation to life for me in a way that had not occurred before. The context of my deepened awareness was Baptism; and my thanks are due to the priest of St Joseph’s Parish, Upton upon Severn. His talk of a sword being plunged into water to harden it permanently as its maker had formed it to be, and of cloth being dyed by weavers: being totally immersed in water to take on the depth and intensity of the predetermined colour of the dye: the colour required for its part in the completion of the woven cloth. These, as well as his reference to mistakes made by a BBC commentator during England’s Ashes winning cricket match: mistakes which would have been impossible for someone truly immersed in their subject, really brought home for me what the total immersion of Baptism is all about. We do not use total immersion in the Catholic Church, but the deeper impression made on me by Fr Dominic’s words has made sense of my long-held but suppressed attraction to the idea of being buried in that way so as to be “born again by water and the Holy Spirit”.

I was baptized as an infant, and I was confirmed at much too young an age. One of my recurring patterns of thought has for a long time revolved around a belief that we need a mature ‘confirmation’ of our having been confirmed; an entirely voluntary, but fully understood event that makes our youthful statements of conviction and involvement a meaningful reality. Jesus had thirty hidden years of learning, preparation and discernment before he was ready to begin his work. It was only then that He rose from the waters of the Jordan to be greeted by the Spirit of God descending on Him. Whatever is it that makes us believe we and our children are ready to proclaim anything in our early or mid teens? My own thirtieth year has long gone, but if it had not, I have little doubt that I would be seeking a quiet and unhurried total immersion somewhere; not as any form of desertion or protest, and certainly not for some sort of amusement, talking point or memory. Even my wish to remain unnoticed would be overruled by my desire to give expression to my own matured longing to be one of God’s adopted sons; one of Christ’s disciples. I am a self-proclaimed sinner who needs the Holy Spirit in my life, and who will do whatever He may ask of me. It would be me, declaring to God, to those around me, and to myself, that I am irreversibly and longingly part of Christ’s Church; a proof of my knowing that He has called me by my name.

Rachel Denton ( www.stcuthbertshouse.co.uk ) writing in the Redemptorist Sunday Bulletin for 5^th December 2010, caught my attention with her words, ‘... one of the “fruits” of solitude is this much-heightened receptivity to experiences.’ She was not writing particularly of the many apparently insignificant little things, coincidences, paths crossed, fleeting glimpses and words, that seem to come my way at times, but those words did make me realize that there is a very real connection between those moments and my love of solitude. How much I would have missed if I had never learned to take my place within its caress. I shudder to think that I may not even have noticed a single note of birdsong accompanying yesterday’s dawn.

And it had been the 17^th of January, the feast of St Antony of the desert – at the very edge of which I had ‘heard the sound of God walking in the garden’ once again.

Willing and able

2011-01-14T22:20:00.009Z

Most of us, if expecting or hoping to be called at all, may be anticipating something easily recognized and readily incorporated into our lives with little or no rearrangement of our routines. But any one of us can be called in ways that may not be easily accepted, either by ourselves or by others. In such cases a true vocation will define itself by our ready acceptance of its challenge.

Most of the early friars were lay people, and I frequently have to remind myself that St. Francis of Assisi – so well know even to people beyond the reaches of the Church – was not a priest. Initially at least, the Church hierarchy of the day were not best pleased with him or his small band of brothers, and the underlying call in his particular vocation was to express a facet of Christ’s Church as it was meant to be, as opposed to the easy and inappropriate way of living which was the norm for priests and their superiors at the time. The Church owes a great deal to such freelance spirits in its history, and I have no doubt they will have important parts to play in its future.

An excellent piece by Bret Thoman, SFO, on St. Francis and the Church, goes into these aspects of his life. It can be found at: http://www.stfrancispilgrimages.com/images_2/Church.pdf

We use the word ‘vocation’ when speaking of some areas of work outside the recognizable limits of the Church. Not all doctors, nurses, and teachers (among others) have had a profound call into their spheres of work, but those who have, often become real blessings to their profession and to the people to whom they devote their lives. They are frequently the ones behind the benefits and improvements, as well as the cheerfully purposeful atmospheres which become apparent in their places of work, and just as frequently they go almost unnoticed by the world around them. They are responding to their calls, and have no wish to be doing anything else; they love their work, and they excel because they are where they are meant to be.

When this form of vocation in Christians is combined with a conviction that it is also a spiritual calling, there is no question in their minds about what they should be doing. They follow the Spirit’s lead and a small corner of the world becomes a better place because of it. They are sent out, and they go; Christ goes with them, and His church is strengthened and enlarged through their commitment.

Two friends come immediately to mind. One is a teacher: an exceptional and much loved teacher. She had never wanted to do anything other than teach, and only changed schools when she felt irresistibly called by God to do so. She has already worked well past normal retiring age, but this very day, she has finally made known to her school and its governors, that she will be finishing at the end of this school year. A difficult decision for her, but one that had to be made at some time. Precisely because it was, and is, her vocation, she will never truly feel that she should stop; but I suspect that she will soon be called upon to use her gifts in other ways: ways as yet not discernable. God never ceases to have need of such people.

The other person retired some years ago, but is still very much involved in the parish in which she worked and in which she became well known as an exceptional friend to many; always present, always listening, always hearing; always soothing, healing, helping and loving; always God’s Gift in so many lives and situations. When I last spoke with her, she told me that she is still where she is because that is where God has called her to be.

For both women, after years of following their call, how calming, how exciting, and how empowering it must feel to be sure of such a thing. They too have, in a sense, found themselves back at the beginning; a new beginning. They are conscious once again of being called by their name, as they were when they first answered “Yes”. And their answer now will be that same willingness to be used where God wills.

It is that level of readiness and willingness which Christ’s Church needs from each of us: from laity and clergy alike. We should be longing for the call that will enable us to hear ourselves responding with the words, “I hear you Lord”.

... and waiting

2011-01-13T18:50:00.006Z

If all else had followed the actual pattern of recent decades, but the number of ordinations to the priesthood had not decreased, then the Church, instead of worrying about the increasingly urgent concerns brought about by the very real shortage of priests, would have been gradually filling itself with men who should not have been ordained. A logical corollary of such a situation is that those men should not have been accepted for training. Thank God we are where we are rather than in that hard to imagine situation.

The lack of new names entering the seminaries is because men are not being called to give their lives in the way in which we have all become so accustomed. We hear concerns, and are ourselves concerned, about the lack of vocations when the cause of our worry is the lack of men stepping forward. These are two completely different sides to the same question. If men were still being called in numbers to the priesthood as we generally understand it, they would still be responding with the same ‘Yes’. There is no reason for genuine vocations to be refused by individuals more frequently today than ten, twenty or fifty years ago; and there are no grounds – other than essential reasons for both discernment and rigorous assessment in the selection process – for the Church to refuse entry to those stepping forward in response to genuine calls.

It may be easy for me, as a person who does not have a vocation to the priesthood, to imagine that I might be turned away from any thought of becoming a priest by my own take on the public perception of the priesthood today. If, in the wake of so many image-shattering scandals, I made the assumption that most people see any member of the clergy as a potential paedophile, I would find it well nigh impossible to place myself in such a position, and therefore am not surprised at the present situation. But I can never accurately assess what I have not experienced. I do not have a vocation to the priesthood, but my own experiences in the growth of my spiritual life tell me that I can gain nothing by using my imagination in the above way. I know that apparently minor and even insignificant things can have not only negative consequences, whether real or imagined, but profound and lasting effects on one’s outlook, confidence, and ability to rise above unfavourable attitudes and false accusations. I can only imagine how powerful a genuine vocation must be in the life of a priest, both before and after ordination, but the comparatively little I know tells me that persons called by God in that way will be able to follow their path regardless of any such widespread concerns. Their vocations are unstoppable. Their potential for good is immense, and much of their power is for the awakening of others to the experience of God’s presence; for disturbing them, and leading them to an encounter that will bring into the open their own calls to participate in a renewed consciousness that we are all essential parts of Christ’s Church. Every one of us is called, and each of us is graced and blessed with the gifts we need to achieve the intended fulfilment of our call. But answering the call will probably be discomforting; disquieting; challenging; but always inspiring.

‘All success we owe to the grace of God. We must not forget that the grace given us is the grace for struggle and not the grace for peace; that we are warriors, athletes, ascetics; that like St. Paul (2 Tim 4:7-8) we must fight on to the end if we would merit the crown.’ (Adolphe Tanquerey. The Spiritual Life (227))

Those words were written for priests and for those studying for the priesthood, but they apply to all of us. The greater involvement of the laity is as unstoppable as the vocations of priests. Recognizable vocations have so drastically reduced in number over the years, but the answer to most of the Church’s dilemmas lies in an inspired and fully awakened harmony between the ordained priesthood and a spiritually mature and committed laity.

The very first time I made a note of words which seemed of particular importance to me, was while reading an article, ‘What Parish Adult Education is all about’, in Priests and People magazine, Feb 1992. Writing about parish teachers and catechists, it said, ‘The most common reason for them starting in the first place was that they had had to fill a gap in the parish programme. This was often done reluctantly or only after considerable nagging by the vicar or parish priest. ... a gloomy recruitment picture ... a kind of crisis management ...’ . My pencilled note, added some time after copying out those words, reads ‘How can anything grow this way?’

It disappoints and worries me to be made aware, through my present thoughts, that in the intervening years so little seems to have changed for the better. We still await something: a change of some sort which feels overdue, and which will surely come. But it is a change that will not truly manifest itself until those who are being called are ready to be caught up in it; it will not allow them to be left behind. Indeed if they are truly being called it will be impossible for them not to take their place. We should be longing for it; praying for it; standing ready and ever awake for it. It will be born of our belonging, nurtured in fellowship, and stirred into a powerful reality by our daring to speak of the half-buried promptings and unshakeable attractions which are unsettling so many of us today. It is not for tomorrow, next week or next year; now is the time for turning to each other, and recognizing the truth of Cardinal Newman’s words, ‘...we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union.’

I have used those words more than once already among these pages, but they are never far from me. They have been circling around me since the day I first read them, after receiving them from a then barely known nun at Stanbrook Abbey. It was inevitable that they should return yet again in the present context, and that they should remind me of a potentially frightening willingness to give voice to my thoughts: a willingness which began to rise in me years ago but which took on a broader and more durable form when I began writing here.

Circling ...

2011-01-13T01:55:00.004Z

I occasionally include in my written thoughts, a quotation I have already used elsewhere. There is no reason to exclude it when it clearly speaks to whatever my thoughts are at the time; having used it does not disqualify it from further use. But, while always taking care to avoid any accidental or unnecessary repetition, I have found that the last quote in my previous post had also been the ending for one in January 2009 (Recognition 2).

My first reaction was one of mild annoyance and a decision not to draw attention to the fact, but, as is already made clear by my mentioning it, my thoughts very quickly moved on from there as a result of asking myself how I had missed it, and what reason there may have been for its repetition. I only had to read the post titles – ‘An ongoing call’ and ‘Recognition’ – for the few lines already written here to be discarded. I have lost track of the number of times I have had to alter direction when writing for these posts, even when seeming to know exactly what I am sitting down to write about. Indeed those unexpected course changes began almost as soon as I ventured, somewhat nervously, into this internet world. On Christmas Eve 2006 (Following ...) I wrote,

‘... Even that last sentence does not convey what I had set out to say, and yet, it lays the foundation for giving expression to an overflowing which I began to feel as soon as it was written. Things are certainly not going as I thought I had planned. ... my own conscious thoughts dispersed, to be lost in the wake of an overwhelming yet unseen vessel, powering past me as soon as I have set sail for a distant shore. ... I am, for the moment at least, a follower: a disciple. ... I must follow where I am led, trusting that my use of words will not too often lead me off the path;’

Four years later, and after an absence during which my following took me into unexpected and unknown areas, I am still experiencing the same sensations: what I might then have called confusion, but which I now more readily and comfortably accept and describe as direction. Having set off towards whatever had been in my mind when I began tapping the keyboard, I have been steered gently round in a circle – thus losing none of my momentum, and remaining unaware until after it had happened – to give further thought to what I had previously been writing.

That word, ‘previously’, is very much involved here. I have already referred to the quote from Alan Abernethy’s book, that clergy ‘only have a function within a local community that recognizes their ministry and gifts and is willing to share that ministry with them’ and that ‘the body of Christ gives to all who are members an identity, a calling and gifts to offer for the good of all.’ That calling is to every one of us: not just to the ordained, the eminent, the prominent, the recognized, and the clearly visible members of Christ’s Church. It is an ongoing call because it is a call from God; a call that has been echoing down the years since His Spirit’s direction first stirred chosen and influential persons in the Church. A recognizable point along the way was marked for most of us by the Second Vatican Council, though it would be a mistake for us to believe that was the start of this particular call; and an arrogant mistake for anyone involved in the Council or in its early after-effects. It is not every recognizable movement that can necessarily be interpreted as an approach; and no limited approach can be accepted as an arrival at a destination. Certainly there is movement going on almost everywhere, even if much of it is still remains little more than a restless uncertainty, or a discomforted writhing in both presbyteries and pews. But the Spirit of God is still at work, urging us toward that same end. Christ still wants His church back. The reality of that is that He wants us back: all of us. You and me; men and women; laity, deacons, priests, bishops; all of us. And not as individuals only, but as one body: His Church.

Looking for something closer to the time of changes brought about after Vatican II, I came across this among my gathered bits and pieces: from Carlo Carretto, in his book ‘The God Who Comes’.

‘In the minds and hearts of Christians yesterday, the Church was a rock of safety and stability. Now it has become an open arena for every kind of contest, profound or superficial. Clerics and bishops dispute openly ... and the average Christian grows frightened, lost among increasingly anonymous and strangely restless crowds. Many people take refuge in inaction and isolation. Many take up any kind of hobby just to pass the time. Others assume the role of prophet, even though they have nothing to prophesy. And many, finding no other solution, close themselves off in fond memories of the past, dreaming of Latin liturgies, fervent processions, and blind obedience. And, of course, everyone does his best to get just one drop of pleasure out of life ... contributing to a civilization of material prosperity, sex, drugs – the permissive society, a decadent civilization. It is as though a cyclone or an earthquake had just passed, not destroying the house completely, but leaving us insecure. We are discovering the cracks, and there is an undefined sadness in our hearts.’

And two items from the early 1990s: - ‘One of the signs of the times ... was the way he saw the priesthood today was being humbled, through the development of the laity and other not so encouraging things. This he felt was all part of God’s plan to prepare a new type of priest ... who would be more of a co-operator with his people, rather than a lord of the flock. He exhorted his fellow priests to be humble so that God could fill them with His power.’ (in Good News magazine, referring to Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal household, speaking at the National Charismatic Retreat for Priests: 1993)

‘It is surprising how many good Church people there are (clergy as well as laity) who are trying to serve God individually, but they are not rooted in parish community. What do we have to share if it is not our belonging?’ (Priests and People. April 1993. ’How do we renew our people?’)

And this from within the last few years: - ‘If people are to grasp and retain a genuine Christian faith within our pluralist and fast-changing society, they will need to be part of a community of believers, a group in which the full nature of that belief can be worked out.’ (Mike Booker & Mark Ireland. Evangelism – which way now?)

Most people today have neither need nor wish to join the Church for the ‘benefits’ of human authority encountered there; and as the number of pre-Vatican II members declines, the continued presence of younger existing churchgoers, expected to remain in the face of undue levels of masculine human dominance and authority, cannot be counted on. Let us thank God, once again, for having ensured that the majority of our priests are men of and for today: humble men filled with His power, and much loved co-operators with His people. They are the best possible focal points for setting the Church firmly and confidently back on its straight course: for bringing its hesitant circling to an end.

An ongoing call

2011-01-10T21:10:00.006Z

In my spiritual life, I am always waiting to be approached by others. This is largely a deliberate choice based on a belief that others will be better able than myself to judge my gifts, my potential, and my worth. But I have to acknowledge that it fits comfortably with my own underlying shyness and a sense, not so much of unworthiness as of inadequacy: an unwillingness born of an assumed – and possibly wholly imagined – disqualification which makes persistent attempts to manifest itself as a fear of finding myself out of my depth. I have no such fear or sense of inadequacy in any other area of my life, though the underlying shyness does reach into most corners.
But, having made a conscious decision to respond willingly if and when approached for some form of assistance or involvement, when somebody did ask me to do something, the request concerned what may have been the only task for which I felt completely unqualified and to which I felt unable to answer ‘Yes’. My immediate but unspoken response was the thought, “Dear Lord, are you doing this on purpose?” Of all the things I could have been asked, I had never anticipated the words, ‘Eucharistic Minister’.

I had to say that it was the one thing I really could not take on, explaining that I felt it to be essential that anyone receiving communion in a Catholic Church could correctly make the assumption that the person from whom they were receiving fully believed in the true presence of Christ in the bread or wine being offered. As that has always been something I have doubted and pondered (struggling with it ended long ago), I felt I was not the right person; and though the priest by whom I had been asked did not seem deterred, saying he frequently came across those doubts when talking to people about Catholicism, I had to insist that my conscience left no room for a change of mind. After a brief pause he asked, “What about reading?”

So, not only are there tugs that continue to draw me to people I know in one parish: people who already know me far better than anyone else, but I am also slowly but surely being drawn deeper into another community elsewhere. I have told myself for years that if and when I am asked to do something, I shall do it. But why did it have to restart with the one thing I would have to decline?

I have just searched my own blog for something completely unrelated to anything here, and was struck by the following words in one of the posts that came up (20.7.08 Loosely bound). ‘A sense of belonging is at the heart of the experience of being a Christian. The initial understanding of that fact – being part of a supportive group of similarly minded individuals, … down through parish and otherwise local communities, to small intimate groups of close spiritual friends – is valuable and valid, but the belonging goes further than that. … it ends where in fact it truly begins: within ourselves. When we find ourselves alone, without any form of human support from within that community, we still belong to it, and we must hope to become aware of the truth behind our collective sense of belonging: that each one of us belongs to Christ; He has claimed us as His own, not ‘en masse’ as what we see and feel as the Church, but individually: He has claimed you, and He has claimed me. We each belong to Him.’

I continue to enjoy the experience of finding my own words speaking back to me in this way, but though my first reaction was to feel the above would help me to resolve the choice which seemed to be formulating in my mind – even before I had become fully aware that a choice was involved – reading through those words again has dissolved not only the choice but even the thoughts and reasons behind my writing of this post. Looking back has distracted me from the train of thought which brought me here today, but in so doing I now feel that it has put me back on the right track. There is a choice which could be made; I could choose to be an exclusive and definite part of either one parish or the other, but perhaps that is not what I am being asked to do. Why should I not be equally seen and known in more than one place? Not through choosing to visit another church merely for a change of scene, or style, or preacher, or because of past connections, or convenient mass times when something clashes with one’s usual Sunday routine; not even through more persuasive effects such as some form of discontent or particular attraction; but through an awareness of belonging which is not restricted to the manmade and functional boundaries of parishes.

It is certainly not unusual to belong to, or to be involved in, more than one form of spiritual community today. As John Finney writes in his book ‘Emerging Evangelism’, this is an “important point which is likely to become more important with time. Many people are members of more than one community. It is possible to be a member of the Franciscan Third Order and also a member of the local church community. It is also already the case that many Christians look to their engagement with New Wine, Soul Survivor, a retreat centre or Walsingham as an important part of their spiritual life which goes alongside their membership of a local church.”

While not necessarily finding different facets of our spiritual (as well as social, psychological and emotional) needs catered for – as they may well be in combinations of involvement such as those mentioned above – through a lack of rigidity and exclusivity in our allegiance to a particular church or parish community, it does allow us to see ourselves more clearly as the essential individual building blocks of Christ’s Church. Nothing can alter or in any way dilute the fact that we are the Church. Those four words are some of the most important and relevant for every Christian today. ‘Church’ is the collective noun for a group of Christians: and for the worldwide body of all Christians. For as long as the varieties within Christianity remain expressions of fragmentation, divergence and disagreement, instead of the Spirit filled diversity which should be echoing the praise and worship of all man and womankind around the globe, Christian unity will continue to be a calling inseparable from our individual and collective calls to holiness. Quoting Archbishop Rowan Williams’ words, that church is “the community that happens when people meet the living Christ”, John Finney also points out that, ‘that should not be restricted to only one form of community, however hoary with history it may be.’

Recognizing ourselves as essential and equal parts of the body to which those calls are directed, is to know something powerful about ourselves. Each one of us is called to respond to that power from within: from within ourselves while within the Church. This is our calling; this is our place; this is our identity. We are not the docile, unquestioningly obedient and subservient space-fillers who are apparently essential to the Church’s continually increasing irrelevance in the eyes of so many of today’s people. We are essential as obedient, faithful and courageous members of the Church as it is meant to be: the Body of Christ. We follow, and are true to Christ. We should regard no other allegiance as being completely inflexible. We are God’s. We are not the priest’s, or the bishop’s, or the Pope’s. We are Christ’s. We are not the congregation’s, or the parish’s, or the diocese’s or the Church’s. We are a part of each of these tiers of community, no less and no more important than any other part. Without us these tiers, the community, and the Church itself does not exist.

Ultimately we are all there is. We are it. We are the Church. And that is not the terrifying thought that it may at first appear to be. We have only to see ourselves and the Church through the eyes and the mind of Christ. God’s Word is there for all to see, every day of our lives. And this is where we all need our priests to be the priests Christ is calling them to be. They are all included in that one all-encompassing ‘We’. They are not separated from it; they are not above it, or ahead of it. Nor are they at the centre of it by any appointment or form of recognition other than that received from God in their vocation; a calling confirmed and manifested through the respect, reverence, spiritual intimacy and true fellowship found in the needs of the people among whom they are called to minister.

‘Ministry is for all and those who are ordained have a special role and function. However, their ministry is validated and truly productive if they are affirmed and respected by those to whom and with whom they minister. Clergy, as I see this, only have a function within a local community that recognizes their ministry and gifts and is willing to share that ministry with them. ... Whether we have a high or low view of ordination, the body of Christ gives to all who are members an identity, a calling and gifts to offer for the good of all.’ (Alan Abernethy. Fulfilment and Frustration.)

We are back at the beginning, to know that place in ways that were previously impossible. We are conscious once again of being among The Named, as we were when I first wrote those words (06.01.07 … for the journey).

You have called me by my name. I hear you Lord.

Poor as I am

2011-01-03T00:13:00.003Z

Any degree of belief in God is the beginning of an awareness of His existence. Any awareness of God’s existence is an open door to an experience of His presence. Any experience of God’s presence will draw us closer to an encounter with Him. An encounter is something real, something undeniable, and something that challenges in some way. It deepens the impression made on us by the experience, and marks us indelibly in a way that may not become fully apparent until long after.

Christmas, for the most part, has always been a wonderful story for me: a story conveying the reality which is often all but buried beneath colour, wholly artificial light, extravagance, commercialism, and the excesses of celebrations which, while still being loosely associated, no longer feel as though they are truly connected with it. It has always been that story, but the process of belief becoming awareness, developing into experience, and transforming into encounter – a process with which I have become familiar in other parts of the story of Jesus – has never really begun for me in this, the quiet beginning of the whole Christian experience, available not only to true followers of Christ, or even to those in the far wider circle of people who call themselves Christians, but for all mankind.

But this year something was different. As in previous years, emotional involvement with the gospel narrative rose with my watching of any depiction of the story, but the BBC’s four part Nativity in the week before Christmas managed to deepen my involvement and to heighten my emotional response beyond the usual level. The final part left me disturbed to a degree that did not diminish until it was squeezed out by everything else going on around me; a diminishment I resisted but which completed its progress after four or five days of trying to find the mental space to engage with what had disturbed me. I longed for that engagement. In my own experience, such disturbance has always preceded a meaningful encounter, and running from the disturbing force, or even making no attempt to focus on it rather than striving to meet with it, would be denying much that the last twenty years has laid on me as the truth of my relationship with a living presence: the presence of He whose birth is the reality of the Christmas story.

My sense of involvement and disturbance was further heightened during the carol singing which preceded ‘midnight’ mass. As I had entered the church, my dipped finger had found “water like a stone” in the frozen font outside the door. Those words rang true when sung in the first verse of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, but it was words in the final verse that grasped me suddenly, firmly, and in a way that troubled me for those next few days. “What can I give Him, poor as I am?” The emotional involvement in the story increased further, and I was unable to shake the words from my mind. It happened to be my turn as Reader, and I kept the question at bay while at the lectern, but by the time I had to return there for the Bidding Prayers I could not deny the buildup of pressure within me; I knew I had to highlight those words for everyone else, not just for myself. I believe that all He wanted then, and still wants, is for us all to come to Him as ourselves: as who we really are; to shed all our masks, and pretences, and pride, and to approach Him as the persons we were made to be. Even as the newborn babe, He was, and is, longing for us to come to Him.

I had come to the church prepared for what I was expected to do, but perhaps I was a little too prepared. I had forgotten that we are not the ones who set the agenda; God’s agenda is the only one that matters. His presence as an infant had momentarily come as close to me as the companion who had walked with me years ago. It was a gentle encounter: a child to child encounter; it was a passing smile, as Joseph drew me closer to look on The Light in Mary’s arms rather than being content to hang back and simply believe that He was there. He had fleetingly enabled me to live the story through the eyes and the heart of the child who still lives in me.

Though sure I have been brought close to my answer, I continue to dwell on that question: –

“What can I give Him, poor as I am?”

Simple truth

2010-12-31T01:59:00.004Z

'... the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel.' (Isaiah 7:14)

The Nativity story is a tale of beautiful simplicity.

Its beauty comes from the simplicity of the people involved, their family life, their homes, and of course the simplicity of Christ's place of birth. The simplicity of the story is in God's presence at the moment of conception, and in the beautiful secret concealed within Mary's womb. Something – on the face of it – completely beyond our comprehension, but simultaneously an event of the utmost simplicity. It appears to be, and is accepted as being beyond our understanding because in making our appreciation of the usual, normal and therefore obvious cause of a pregnancy a fixed and unalterable reality beyond which we are incapable of seeing, our minds have no place to go once they have wandered through the variations of that one and only cause.

Today's possible variations are a long way from the natural limits of two thousand years ago. In vitro fertilization has made the possibility of pregnancy a reality for couples otherwise unable to have children of their own; but sperm and ovum donation, and surrogate mothers, have taken assistance in this area into realms beyond the limits of the nurturing environment into which every newborn child has a right to be born. There always have been children born to single and unsupported mothers, and that will not change, but to be one half of a natural process which results in pregnancy is one thing; what is possible, allowed, and in many quarters unchallenged today, is quite another. These scientific abilities have made the possibility of a virgin birth seem unsurprising, and have opened doors for the gradually increasing acceptance of single individuals and "couples" of the same gender having a child seemingly conjured for them without any physical, emotional or spiritual intimacy being involved in the process. The media coverage given over the Christmas period to a high profile homosexual couple should have thrust the contrast of such situations with the pregnancy of Mary and the birth of her son into every thinking Christian person's mind.

CBS News reported Dr. Masood Khatamee, a fertility specialist and clinical professor at New York University, as saying, "The technology of reproductive medicine has approached the state where anything is possible for those that can afford it."

When we look back to Mary's pregnancy, so long before any of these possibilities, we have only two ways to make sense of the story. We either believe that Mary became pregnant through natural means, or we believe in 'The Virgin Birth'. There is nowhere else to go. For many, of course, disbelief is never focused on: it merely lies asleep in the undisturbed corners of our routines and our comfort zones; and it would never consciously become an acknowledgement of belief in a natural explanation: certainly not a declared belief.

Our knowledge holds us in locked jaws; and so long as we remain in its unchallenged grip we relinquish the wonder, the awareness, the responsibility and the power that were ours as men and women created to control, tame and care for our world and all that is in it.

But that same knowledge can be used to see things differently. Breaking through our knowledge-reinforced preconceptions is one of the things we all find most difficult to do, and while my own easy acceptance of the virgin birth might seem to disqualify me from understanding that difficulty, I am well aware that I am unable to believe something else which may present no problem for those around me.

A few basic facts are all I need to reinforce my own preconception: my own naturally occurring and readily accepted grasp of the situation immediately before that previously unimaginable, phenomenal moment of conception.

The human body consists of trillions of cells, and within the adult male body well over 100 million sperm cells are produced every day; trillions during a lifetime. Couple that with the fact that a sperm cell is the smallest of all the cells in the human body (and much of its volume is taken up by its means of propulsion rather than what is needed to fertilize the ovum), and what do we have if not an impressive way of demonstrating just how insignificant a thing is a single sperm cell. Not in its potential value or importance at conception (just one of those millions fertilizes the egg), but when regarded in the light of all the countless miracles that have gone to make up the collective miracle that is the human body within which that one microscopic cell is produced, as well as the miracle that creates that particular cell within it. Our problem with miracles is that we look for the unexpected, the exceptional, the striking, the phenomenal. We miss the miracles of our lives, our very existence, and of the whole of creation. If we believe in a God as Creator and sustainer of all things, how can we fail to believe that He could provide the supernatural equivalent of the almost non-existent contents of a sperm cell?

Everything else was there, ready, waiting; prepared from the moment when God first conceived the idea, long before His word of it was revealed to Israel through His prophets. When the time was right, Christ was conceived by the merest flicker of a thought. The quietest and apparently most insignificant of beginnings for the quietest and apparently most insignificant of births.

Scientific knowledge cannot distance me from my faith: it has always confirmed it. Without any such knowledge I would surely doubt, but the little I have is more than enough to set me firmly where I stand.

If God has not done this thing, then Christianity is nothing more than a foolish deception.

If God is incapable of such a thing, then He does not exist.

But He spoke; the Word was made flesh; Christ was born. The undoubted and beautiful simplicity of Truth: - God is with us.

Lighting up time

2010-12-24T01:33:00.008Z

Three other people, regarded as friends for life, are equally essential to my spiritual stability as is the person to whom I have recently written. They have lived, and still do, within easy reach and within the same parish, though I no longer regularly attend the same church. One of them has always been the safest hands I know, but I have so far been unable to sum up the others in equally definite and all-encompassing ways. But – and it is a ‘but’ that has run through many years of my life – I have almost no contact whatsoever with any of them. That has always felt so wrong to me, but it has also seemed that it was meant to be, as there has never been any definite sign of my felt need for their company, support and reassurance being felt in the opposite direction.

Months ago I saw two of them at a talk on Cardinal Newman, where I spoke with one of them for a while, and was later greeted by the other. We too spoke, about a close family member who is no longer able to live at home. That news created an instant urge to be available if I should be needed at any time, and that has continued undiminished; but what struck me with even more force, and left me with forms of both joy and pain which also have stayed with me ever since, were her first three words on seeing me: - “We miss you.” In several ways those words enfolded me as the loveliest, and the most powerful thing anyone had said to me for a long time. But where, if anywhere, might they lead me? If I continue waiting for others to approach me with the questions I long for them to ask rather than making my thoughts known without invitation, I shall probably be standing in the same place this time next year. That would disappoint and even depress me; and I can already sense that the considerable concern arising from that situation would push me back deeper into the shell from which I have spent so long attempting to emerge.

The purity of purpose which constantly calls me back to them, is strangely sensed in a deepening awareness of the vulnerability into which Christ came as the newborn infant depicted in crib scenes in our homes and churches at this time of year. We are all being called to allow ourselves to become vulnerable in His presence, and through the untangling of my own words in the previous post as well as above, I have brought myself within earshot of His call to vulnerability in the presence of those who have led me to him. I am continually called to fellowship with Him through their own presence in my life: they have always clearly and consistently conveyed to me their bringing of Christ to any table around which we might meet. And yet, I still fear making any approach; even after being blessed by the potential invitation contained in those three words: "We miss you." If I am missed by those with whom I long to have more contact, what can possibly hold me back? I have searched through all that could have distanced them from me, and, while not knowing their thoughts and feelings, I am well aware of my own; there is nothing which would keep me from them. Nor should there be if all of us are the people I have taken us to be. I am therefore left with only the one possibility, and I am almost afraid to admit it even to myself. I am afraid of being rejected by them. I would sooner continue in the unsatisfactory state in which I find myself than discover, without doubt, that they do not wish me to approach them more closely and more frequently.

But now, on the eve of Christmas, the infant in the crib is before me again. Does He suggest that I should stay away from Him? That any of us should do anything other than approach even closer than we dare? Such questions should never need to be asked. He draws us ever closer to Himself, and purity of purpose will take us all the way to His side where we begin to share in the power of His innocence, and in the brilliance of His light as it pours forth into the world. Emmanuel: God with us. No less.

Do I really need anything more? In reality, no; but in my continuing frailty and uncertainty - yes. I need the support and discernment that I shall find only by moving in from the edge: by becoming a more visible and less isolated speck within His Church. I long for His presence in others as company on my journey, and I have taken a very long way round to the realization that in ending my previous post with, 'We have need of each other', I was striving - through the workings of His Spirit - to get that very message through to myself.

God is with us, and we bring His presence to life for each other in our coming together.

May Christmas be a time of peace and knowing, and of sharing in His light for each of us.