Homemakers

“And we shall come to him and make a home in him.”
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Ending my previous post with those words from John’s gospel (14:23) has given rise to a gradual reawakening; something to which I am becoming accustomed as I more fully accept my slowness of thought and my inability to see and understand what is frequently right in front of me. The smallest of shifts in perception can sometimes bring food for thought or insight beyond all possible expectation, and such a shift can numb our day-to-day awareness while we linger in the need to ask and seek answers to questions that are very real but remain for the most part unformulated.

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Over the last few days my consciousness of a long-running uncertainty has increased. An intimation regarding my apparent ability to stand motionless in the middle of nowhere while believing I am on the right path and “pressing on” to the end, has brought old doubts to mind once more. Aspects of my tendency to hold back, to linger in the background, to wait and see, have surfaced again, but any discomfort resulting from lack of achievement and what feels like the wasting of valuable time, has been balanced by an undiminished reassurance derived from the still persisting belief that my waiting is in obedience to my Lord’s specific will for me. It is a conviction that has fed and sustained me for years, but the doubts wandering through my accustomed stability at times such as this, spread unease through previously unruffled regions of thought. The mind thus stirred rouses emotion in the heart, and such emotion bares the soul to whispers, both healing and destructive.

This is not a predisposition, and it is neither desire nor vague inclination (whether temptation or mere curiosity). Its beginnings were buried in the unsuspected development of friendship during the only time I have ever fully acknowledged and admitted a need for support from others. That support was provided in ways that seemed effortless and made available without any conscious decision from the providers. It simply came, as it were, as part of the package God had prepared for me, and it lasted only as long as He willed. My own feelings at the time included what I experienced as a great need for its continuance but the support was withdrawn at the very time I felt most in need of it. Once gone, the active friendship and fellowship also slipped away until, with my return to a more solitary existence, contact was almost completely lost.

“And we shall come to him and make a home in him.”
What a wonderful statement that is. What a phenomenal idea, and what an awesome possibility.
Why would I have wished for a continuation of that newly discovered form of human friendship when the unquenchable companionship of Jesus, the undeniable guidance of the Spirit of God, and the unfathomable creative and parental love of God were already mine, and residing within me? The answer to that question is quite simply because I could only become aware of the living presence within me through the attraction felt for Christ dwelling within those with whom I came into meaningful contact. The process began with God’s provision of the right persons in the right places at the right times, and the person most needed to be present at the right time and place was myself. It seems that He had every eventuality covered, and looking back to the sequence of events over the early stages of my experience, it is impossible for me to accept that I would have remained in place without my guided responses to His direction and the prearranged provision that awaited me.
Without those persons and the particular words spoken at crucial times, I would not be writing here today; no doubt I would still love solitude and quiet, but perhaps I would never have become aware of the truth in those words, “And we shall come to him and make a home in him.”

It is awareness of that truth which feeds the longing and the wonder that hold me at the very edge of things: at the edge of my faith, the edge of my understanding, and at the extreme limits of my meagre capabilities, confidence, and courage. It is that same awareness which constantly tells me not to yearn for the closeness of friendship found when my faith was first brought to life, but to look beyond those who still attract my attention, partly through the memory of past experiences with them and partly through the lingering sense that those same people still have an important part to play in my spiritual journey. I have been blessed with all that I need: God’s grace is indeed enough for me in any situation, and I am called to leave all such attachments behind, focussing instead on the fringes of my comfort zone; to search the distant horizon.

Christ’s Church is not confined within any man-made or visible boundaries; it reaches to the farthest point at which there is someone daring to whisper, “God ... are you there?”
The Father constantly searches the horizon, not only for the returning son – 'While he was still a long way off, his father saw him ...’ (Luke 15:20) – but for every man, woman and child with the faintest glimmer of light and hope in their heart. That glimmer is the undying ember of the ‘first light’ with which we were all born: the spiritual homing-device which links us with our Creator and our ultimate destiny, even when we give Him barely a passing thought.
Our focussing on the possibility, and then on the reality of God’s existence and His presence in our lives, is more than an awakening; it is our coming home to Him as adopted sons and daughters. It enables Him to come home to us, and His coming – His dwelling within us – brings us into the fullness of life as human beings; set apart from the rest of creation, though part of it, and born of the processes that will lead inexorably to the completion of God’s plan for mankind.
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To dwell within

“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
(Matthew 10:40)

There is always something new waiting for us a little further along the path we follow: some new angle on an old story; a new understanding of something of which we thought we already had a full grasp; a reminder of something we should never have forgotten; a renewed awareness of what our conscience has been telling us all the time. It may be some totally new and amazing revelation, or an unanticipated change of direction, but more often than not it is something which goes deeper rather than further: something which illuminates the multilayered nature of our spiritual life rather than the distance travelled during our living of it. It causes our spiritual knowledge and belief to be more clearly seen as being based upon truths viewed from only one viewpoint; what is already there is more fully revealed, and our inner response includes a salutary realization that we should have been able to recognize earlier the very thing of which we have now been made aware.
But believing that we should have grasped it earlier may be another part of our misplaced confidence in our own abilities. We are not as bright as we had thought; we are not as advanced in our understanding as we had believed. We are not only being given a new viewpoint, the particular newness of knowledge about something, but are being reminded of an underlying constant that always restricts our ability to see the more complete picture. It is not only carelessness, complacency and compromise that prevent our seeing more clearly; the brighter light shines within humility: it is our pride that blinds us. Couple our pride with our busyness, and with our failure to live in a minute-to-minute realization of the relevance of the spiritual to every moment of our lives, and we have our own individual reasons for stopping and waiting and praying somewhere close to the edge of our seemingly reliable and complete spiritual life. We have our own comprehension of why Jesus spoke so often in parables: multilayered stories in which everyone can find an understanding in keeping with their own lives, and with their own spiritual and intellectual capacities.

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Whenever such a moment arises it can bring about a quiet adjustment to our thinking and to our sense of direction, and a deeper appreciation both of where we are in relation to others, and of what we are doing or failing to do in those relationships. It is an unobtrusive prompting: a gentle nudge that may steer us to an awareness we need but which we are in danger of missing.
I found myself in one of those moments recently; a trio of feelings blended into one grace-filled reality: it was humbling, it was an awakening, and it elicited praise and thanksgiving for having been awakened. With my usual slowness, I saw the potential in the situation that had arisen only several minutes after the event, though I now believe that delayed recognition to have been an important part of what happened.

The moment occurred at the end of a conversation with two Jehovah’s Witnesses who had called at my home. One of them has been here twice before, and we had talked for quite a while on those occasions. When there are no pressing matters to prevent it, I am happy to talk with anyone who has God on their mind, and I believe we all enjoyed our discussions. I was happy to see her return again, this time with someone who had not been here before.
The conversation became discussion; the discussion became persuasion, and the persuasion gradually became more forceful. I was interested in their way of talking to me, and it seemed increasingly likely that the lady who was new to me had been brought along to ratchet up the approach: to apply a greater pressure which became a clear message that I was not on the right path.

“Why do you continue to be part of an organization (the Catholic Church) which so clearly is not teaching you the truth?”
I had suggested in previous conversations that perhaps they should be spending time with those who have no awareness of God rather than with me, and I repeated this again. The response was a definite no, and it seemed that my willingness to give time to them and listen to them had been taken as a sign of potential willingness to join them. I am well aware that every such visit, to my home or that of anyone else, is the first stage of a definite and preset agenda. My willingness to talk with them is a natural expression of my belief that people can never begin to understand each other if they are not willing to hear each other’s spiritual stories first-hand. This is how we can reach the point where we may really begin to talk to each other, whoever we are.
I found a disturbing rigidity to the Witnesses’ approach once the initial niceties have been dealt with, and especially when repeated meetings and the passage of time have created a degree of friendly relationship. It seems that progress can only be made in one predetermined direction, that being the one for which they seem to have been programmed and “sent forth”. The ladies I have been talking with are cheerful and pleasant, but when they felt the need to focus on what they had come for they showed signs of being under considerable pressure, both from without and within: pressure from others in the organisation to get out there and spread their carefully confined beliefs, and pressure from themselves to conform to those requirements, perhaps in order to maintain their standing within their own local and wider organisation. These pressures were manifested as a form of pressure on me, the person being visited, and are no doubt at least part of the reason why some people are not particularly welcoming towards them. There is little scope in this approach for hearing the stories of those they visit.

This most recent visit lasted for one and a half hours – standing in the garden all the while once we had walked around it – and while I believe they had been sent forth, as it were, not by God the Father: Yahweh: Jehovah; not by Jesus Christ, nor by the Holy Spirit, but by men within their organisation who maintain the rigidity of their unalterable agenda, I had been enabled simply to be there to listen and talk with them. Towards the end of their visit one of them mentioned St Paul’s experience on the Damascus road; an unexpected move away from most of what had gone before. I responded by saying that my own small experience was enough for me, and briefly described my being emptied and gradually refilled, the effect this had on me, and the following experience of walking with Jesus who became my constant companion. I explained that it was my ongoing relationship with Him and my awareness of the Holy Spirit in my life that had made me who I am today; that had filled me to overflowing and placed me somewhere in the stream of God’s eternal presence.
I had said this simply because it seemed right at the time, and it was only afterwards that I realized I had been speaking of something which – if I understand correctly – is not part of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ experience. It was the only time there seemed no real pressure to interrupt, to override, to correct or counter what I was saying.
Having said that I would know what to do by the prompting I received, by the recognition of things that were more than mere coincidences, and, if I was going wrong, by my conscience, I was asked, “Have you considered that this may be such a moment? That our being here may be more than a coincidence?” That was a good thought with which to leave me: one that fitted well with my way of thinking; and my attention being focussed on that possibility resulted in my giving no answer.

Having asked me to say a prayer for them, they left with the intention of returning later in the summer.

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I am now sure they had meant me to pray for God to reveal to me His purpose in sending them here, but I had not heard their request in that way. I told them I would of course pray for them, and would have done so anyway after they had gone. Having been asked (as I thought) I almost prayed for them there and then.
But that is for when the time is right: for when they return. It will be part of what God wants me to give them: part of the reason for their visits: part of God’s purpose in sending them to me. He wants them to have a living relationship with the risen Jesus, the Son, and to be guided by His Spirit; through that relationship they will have a previously unimagined relationship with the Father, the very same Jehovah for whom they are so eager and willing to witness. In short, they will have life in all its fullness.

I had not recognized the potential in the situation until after they had gone, and that was how God willed it. Without that delay I may have moved on, I may have prayed for them with them, and they may not have returned. The time was not right. I was held back, and the situation has been given time to mature. Instead of simply not being displeased to see them when they return, I am now eagerly awaiting that day.

May something new be here for them when they return, and may our next meeting become one of those moments for them: something deeper, something brighter, something more complete: a new awareness and understanding.

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“...and we shall come to him and make a home in him.”
(John 14:23)

Small beginnings

"I have great faith in a seed ...
Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
(The Succession of Forest Trees. Henry David Thoreau)

The requirement to position ourselves between God and the people of the world as a means of access, reaching both towards God and towards all who will turn their lives in His direction, arises in many different forms. However it presents itself, it calls on those who have been blessed with the relevant gifts, to enliven the beckoning and the pointing out of the way; to make real the prospect of experiencing God’s touch in previously unapproachable areas of life. These areas are frequently regarded as inaccessible through being outside the limits or structures we have built around our faith, or through past determination to resist all those gentle but persistent inner calls to surrender to the beginnings of faith. They may have resulted from deprivation, abuse, grief, anger, fear or shame: from anything, long-running or centred on a single moment, that caused us to shut ourselves off from some part of the world around us, and in doing so, from part of ourselves. All such ‘no go’ areas share the same essential prison cell: they are caused by, they perpetuate, and they reinforce broken relationships. But, even when, or if, all other persons involved in the root cause of any such boarded-up area are discounted, it still remains as the pain and the separation of more than one relationship. One’s relationship with God is not yet restored, and every day is a continuation of a broken relationship with oneself.

That is what the whole process is about; that is why Jesus came. That is why our ongoing separations (political, economic, and ethnic, as well as religious and individual) are the greatest barrier to the coming of God’s Kingdom. We are not in Eden, and nor are we meant to be. We are meant to be back in a full and living relationship with God and with each other, complete with all the qualities the coming of the Kingdom of God demands, in this world as it exists and as we have made it today. It is our world, and it is our home.
In correct relationship with our inner selves, with each other, and with God through the Holy Spirit, that Kingdom can be brought into everyone’s sight. Eden was where we began, and it is behind us; but we are the ones who can bring about the changes needed to transform this world into another garden worthy of that name.
We have within us the beginnings of all that is needed: the gift of faith which, coupled with the work of the Holy Spirit, enables us to realize our vast potential. At the very least we carry the seed un-germinated, waiting to be awoken by others who have already taken their place as stepping stones for us. It is the mustard seed of which Jesus spoke.

........................................................................................ .‘................................... ...........................'The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches.’ (Matthew 13:31-32)

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In Old Testament times God was securely in His Temple, set apart from ordinary people like ourselves, but part of the work Jesus accomplished in making all things new was enabling us to carry God within ourselves. I have always found it an unhelpful description, but I use it here nevertheless as it is literally the right expression: it expresses the truth: it expresses the reality of each person’s importance and worth in the eyes of God: the ‘special’ status, not of a few isolated and exceptional individuals, but of every person on the face of the earth.
Through baptism, we are able to become Temples of the Holy Spirit. God is no longer inaccessible, shut away in His Temple; and He is not shut securely in today’s church buildings for when we deign to visit; we have Him locked safe within ourselves. It is His life within us that wells up, fills to the brim and overflows into the world around us. His intention is that every one of us should become filled with the Holy Spirit, aware of our gifts, and empowered as part of a continuing journey towards becoming the daughters and sons the Father made us to be.

In hope

Life can be quite unnerving at times. I well remember that it was not always like that, but then, I had no real inkling of the things which now focus and occupy my attention.
Somewhere, sometime, somehow, something happened. I am sure it was not something I am now supposed to dwell upon, and I hear echoing in my mind the words of someone who, years ago, was essential to my journey in faith, telling me that my continued writing about and dwelling upon some of my experiences was only perpetuating the unrest I appeared to be enduring at that time.
In that respect, things do not appear to have changed much. I still write. I still ponder. I still use this process as a means to unravel the tangles within my mind, and now of course, I have even become used to doing it in a less private way through writing here at ‘the very edge’: a place to which, in one way or another, I have always been and to which I am likely always to return.
That I should ever have begun to broaden the reach of my soliloquizing in this way rather than keeping my thoughts very much to myself still surprises me, but it also makes me smile, as I have always been in need of something that would drag me out of myself: something to draw me from a solitude deeper than could be known when only looked on from a point well back from the edge.

In this case, the edge is that fine line separating the ordinary, normal, natural and every-day interaction between people, from the rare and intimate, inter-natural, spiritual, and almost entirely un-shareable opening of one person to another. We should hope to achieve and maintain this as part of our relationship with Jesus, but, other than in the form of a deep longing, this relationship with another living person, however close the friendship, remains almost untouchable.
This fine line is somewhat similar to the memory of the long-removed veil in the Temple; torn apart, all separation destroyed, yet in our minds still the closest we can get. We dare not approach that which had always been deemed unapproachable, and we find no reason to even consider trying to move into a place always deemed inaccessible. We have trouble enough with coming closer to God, but even when this hurdle has been placed behind us, we are still unable to step beyond a similar line with other people who have done likewise. Our fear of a real opening up, and of becoming truly and fully known by another is almost insurmountable.

It is part of what we lost in Eden. It is an aspect of our inability to return to that garden where there were no edges, no fine lines, no veils, no forms of demarcation whatever (except for that one tree); a place where man, and woman, and God, all shared and walked the same intimate paths of truth and trust.

It is the knowing that we are deeply unknowable, even to our friends, that makes time spent at the edge inseparable from solitude. In the company of others, and even in the company of a single particularly close spiritual other, we are kept back from the very edge by our fear of what lies immediately beyond the lip. We know that breath blows constantly over it, and breath gives power to speech. We fear that any utterance may not be only from The Holy Spirit, but a subsequent breaking of our own silence: our own breath moving over our lips suddenly giving rise to words spoken to another. It does not happen because we are unable to take ourselves that close to the edge when in the company of anyone other than God.
At times it may feel that we can return to Eden in our solitude. We can walk with God in the cool of the day, but we can be drawn into remaining there too long, becoming more isolated from others and thus further from where we are meant to be. Yes, we are each called to be in a close relationship with God, but we are not meant to remain in isolation. However it may feel, it is this isolation that should tell us we are not in Eden. In Eden we would be both in the presence of God and in the company of others.

The Lord God said, “It is not right that man should be alone...” (Genesis 2:18)

This is where we are today in the world as we now know it; not in Eden but as close as we can get to it. We were made to be in the company of others, and the only veil that remains un-torn is the one that keeps us out of Eden: the one that keeps us fundamentally apart.

There is only one faint glimmer on the horizon; for the few who can see it, it represents a seemingly insurmountable problem, but the fact that they see it at all is a beginning: a distant hope for all mankind. Our increasing environmental awareness is one superficial aspect of this hope, despite its being born of necessity and being one of today’s acceptable forms of global selfishness. The deeper consciousness of hope is in the minds of those few who may be able to begin the laborious process of one-by-one transformation through going beyond the very lip of their fear in the spiritual light of another’s gaze.

‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.’
(Alexander Pope. Essay on Man.)

Life can be quite unnerving at times.
It is meant to be. It is our natures’ way of telling us, not that we have got something wrong, but that we are on the verge of getting something right: that we have approached a little closer to that place where we sense the possibility of our breath giving rise to utterance. Something will break if that happens; it may well be us, but on the other side all fears will fall away. Christ in the one will become One with Christ in the other.
Those same words of John Henry Newman need quoting again:
........................................................................................................... ‘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)

Inseparable

In leading us toward all that is good, prayer tends us toward a receptiveness of what is already available.
However infrequent I might feel my praying to be, in knowing that I have, in one way or another, repeated that one word from the heart, “Yes”, a few times in each day, I know that I have not failed to pray.
It is so simple and so effortless, but so utterly complete: - ‘Yes Lord. Your will be done’; and it is in following Him that the underlying joy is raised to consciousness where it soothes through even the worst of days. It runs through us, blending with God’s love, to quietly flow into the world around us.

‘Any joy that does not overflow from our souls and help other men to rejoice in God does not come to us from God.’

(Ruth Burrows. Guidelines for Mystical Prayer.)

I have been brought back once more to the question of fullness: being filled to the brim.
When I began writing here my sense of fullness and overflowing was so powerful that I was sure it was something peculiar to me; something particular given to me for a particular purpose and for a particular season. I had no thought of it coming to an end, but while feeling that it would remain for a long time, I could not be sure of its permanence. It was that strength of feeling that set me in motion on these pages. If I was not already doing this, I would not have any thought of starting it today.

But this is not a gift particular to me.
It had felt that way only because the sensation and accompanying level of understanding seemed so far beyond any previous experience. Growing accustomed to the ongoing wakefulness has enabled me to see that although the light within is indeed brighter than before, the dimmer switch, as it were, has only been turned up by the smallest of touches. The repetition of such adjustments as this – adjustments from excitement and a misplaced sense of awe, to actual truth and a more sober acceptance of reality – in response to small steps taken throughout life, gradually brings an awareness of our absolute incapacity to comprehend God, to see Him in the blinding radiance of His Glory, and to even begin to approach Him other than through the guidance, the teaching and the direction of His Holy Spirit.
My sense of fullness and overflowing readies me, enables me, empowers me to do whatever God may have me do, but it is not a precursor to some great calling or action. It is an awakening brought about by having been called and touched by God, and its realization is the inevitable consequence of knowing that I have been woken, and have dared to answer “Yes”.

Many things in our spiritual lives last only for a certain length of time: for a season; they fulfil a need and are gone. Whether experienced as positive or negative, they move us as God wills and then leave us. But other touches become permanent parts of us. They are part of our Lord’s will for us to tear down every veil that people still try to hang between themselves and God’s presence.

‘... he has destroyed the veil which used to veil all peoples, the pall enveloping all nations’ (Isaiah 25:7)

‘Jesus ... breathed his last. And the veil of the Sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. (Mark 15:37-38)

These life-bringing gifts are available to us all, meant for us all, and necessary to the binding together of all of us into one body. They are gifts freely given to all who knowingly stand in God’s sight. They are blessings that fall on all who position themselves beneath God’s hand. They are cloaks of security and strength placed around the shoulders of all who breathe in the Spirit of God, and who allow His Spirit to breathe in them. They do not denote a particular significance of purpose; they are not individual signposts for those who lack direction; still less are they grounds for any sense of achievement, congratulation, self-satisfaction, or elevated self-worth.
What they are is awesome in its simplicity. They are the material from which all our tents should be woven if we are ever to know unity and security in the deserts of the world: in those places where we are called to position ourselves where the veil of the Temple in Jerusalem once hung: positioned between God and the people, not as a separation, but as a means of access, reaching out in both directions, towards God and towards all who turn their face towards Him. Jesus has made us inseparable.

That is where the fullness and the overflowing truly find their purpose. Each of us becomes a channel for God’s love; we are in that eternal stream and we stand ready to point the way, to reassure and encourage, to support the weary, and to help the fallen to regain their foothold. We become stepping-stones for those who fear to enter the water.
But essentially we are there for each other, and so long as we maintain that strength of commitment and availability within our own encampment, we shall be there for every stranger who seeks the way. And strangers there will be. Some will come from the unlikeliest of quarters and we must be ready for them. The Holy Spirit is at work, not only within the recognizable boundaries of Christ’s Church, but throughout all the peoples of the world. It is the work of the Spirit abroad coupled with the work we allow Him to do through ourselves that will transform the whole of mankind; and along that road lies the redemption of the whole world.
Can we even begin to imagine what would follow if the People of the Old Covenant became fully aware that their Messiah had already come, and, en masse, they began to respond to His call to follow Him? It is not a fool’s suggestion, unless that fool be a fool for Christ. Who else, throughout their history, has been aware of and guided by (sometimes) the Spirit of God? Whose scriptures, scribed before the birth of Christ and proclaiming His future coming, do we revere as being the word of God? And what links the millions of Christians, Jews and Muslims of today’s world if it is not Abraham, the man we all think of as our father in faith? Be assured, however far away it may appear to be at times, the day will come. The day will come!
That is why we are called to take our place, not just anywhere, but wherever we are called to be. For most of us it will be where we already are; for some it will be in the remotest corners of our world; but for all of us, wherever we are in geographical terms, it is to be as an invitation, a welcome, a reassurance, and as a friend and follower of Christ to all who are yet to overflow with love for Him.

My fullness is not for a season; it is now a part of me. It is God’s freely given awareness of the potential of His touch and His power working in and through His people. It holds me in the gift of a knowledge that I am in the endless stream of His love. It is that stream which fills me to overflowing. Once fully in that stream, we become a part of the flow, and the stream broadens and deepens as we carry God’s word and His touch into the world around us.

All that is in me now recognizes that God wants me filled to overflowing, not for a season, but for the whole of my life. It is my life.

It is where He wants us all to be, not as a particular gift, but as a normal and natural consequence of our faith and of our obedience to Him.

God’s gift to me is not so much that He has made me brim full, and still less that I have the feelings of peace and calm that accompany it; it is that He has enabled me to understand that such fullness and overflowing is what awaits all of us. It is merely the essential start-point for the next stage of our obedience to His will.

Jesus is looking straight at us, and He continues to say those same words, “Come, follow me.”
It is a rare occurrence for me, but I have need of company, of guidance and support.
Come,
let us walk together.

Breath of life

What is this Holy Spirit we hear about? Do we really know?

If we already regard ourselves as Christians, we surely carry an awareness with us all the time; we may speak of the Spirit among ourselves but do we, at any meaningful level, know the reality of which we speak? Do we have anything more than the often heard, the learned, the comfortable and assumed to be true hand-me-down stories of our childhood and those immensely influential years? They will undoubtedly have left us with memorable and cosy images of Jesus, but the Holy Spirit?

I am sure I am not alone in having spent forty years without any real sense of spiritual guidance, or comfort, or wonder, or gift in all that I heard or experienced; and that is with my life being built on a continuous and ever-present Christian upbringing and background. There was always a sense of receiving a gift in the bewilderingly beautiful and peace-bringing glory that was the natural world around me. In one way or another it has been my unquenchable source of excitement and joy throughout my life; but the Holy Spirit remained a lifeless part of what I sat through and heard about year after year.

Somewhere along the way, between the point at which I recognized a major change in my whole Spiritual life and a less discernible point somewhere in my more recent past, The Holy Spirit seemed to leap into life. Of course, it was my own awareness that had changed: it was me that leapt into life, and when I landed it was in a place without my accustomed barriers, and where the Spirit was given access to my heart and my mind, and more. Something deep within me was both consumed and impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Something which, if it could only express its feelings of interminable longing, and love, and peace, and joy, would also be enabled to kindle the flames of spiritual desire in others and thus burst into the realms of fulfilment. I can find no other word for it: it is my soul.
Soul: another word whose meaning sometimes seems to get lost among Christianity’s fluctuating and debilitating uncertainties. Such uncertainty should not exist, but however firmly we think we believe, we remain unsure about something. We are ‘believers’, but we doubt. We have faith, but not all the time. We know, but we question. What we lack is certainty; what we long for is certainty, but certainty is the one thing we cannot have. We can come closer to it than we may imagine possible through the realized and appreciated presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but the reality of that presence is as indefinable as the reality of that core of feeling, emotion and life –other life– that I speak of as my soul.

‘In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person. But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man. (Catechism of the Catholic Church. 363)

It is this personal inability to define the external power that would twin with our own equally indescribable centre of being that prevents any likelihood of certainty. We may experience a sense of something we call certainty, and it may seem long-lasting, but it will eventually waver and slip away. In the same way that there is only one truth, regardless of what we may believe to be the truth, certainty is not what it seems unless it is unshakeably certain. The only ‘truth’ which is true is The Truth. The only ‘certainty’ of which we can be certain is Certainty, and that is not granted to us. Faith would not be required if we were able to achieve and maintain absolute certainty, and it is faith that we are called to have. It is faith that will move mountains, and it is faith that enables prayers to be answered.

‘In truth I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt at all, ... even if you say to this mountain, “Be pulled up and thrown into the sea,” it will be done. And if you have faith, everything you ask for in prayer, you will receive.’ (Matthew 21:21-22).

How many of us can imagine having a faith equivalent to what we call certainty? A faith resulting in mountains actually moving as a result of our undoubted expectation that it will happen? And we are so sure that if this happened we would have our proof, and then we would have real faith! The reality is that it will never happen for us because we find that level of faith impossible; and faith must precede realization, just as realization always precedes proof. It is only a God given proof acquired through faith that will transcend the faith demanded of us.

‘Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of realities that are unseen.’ (Hebrews 11:1).

My own near-certainty is perpetuated by my experience of being out in the elements; among mountains, yes, but also on far smaller hilltops; deep in forests, yes, but also in small patches of woodland; in the vastness of a treeless landscape, and in the seclusion of shadows beneath ancient trees. But I have been blessed with a faith that has leeched its way back from the drenching of this deeper solitude, to the simple quiet of a field of wheat, a cider orchard, a tumbled barn, the wheeling Buzzard, a country lane, skylarks, swifts, and the Barn Owl that ghosts above my smiling face as I watch it hunt with the setting sun two minutes from my home. And home itself, with its own life-giving qualities, is now impregnated with that same smile of growing conviction that God knows of my presence in this world, and that we are within reach of each other.
The warmth of the sunshine, the sound and the feel of the rain, the silence of snow, the crescendo of breathless wonder that is the thunderstorm; the bluest blue skies and the artistry of the ever changing clouds; all these I love, but what brings me to life, what links my childhood, my youth, my manhood and my gradually emerging spiritual maturity, is the movement of the air around me. It is not so much the touch as the broader awareness of its presence, highlighted for me by the sound of the wind, in the trees especially, but also across the grass or heather coated hills, and by the movement created by its passing. It lifts me to realms I find it impossible to access in any other way. I am transported – as recently stated – ‘with my breath and the wind sighing as one’.

What is this Holy Spirit we hear about? Do we really know?
It is the breath of God.
Whenever and wherever I hear the wind, I know that I am within His grasp and am being blown where God wills. But my nearest approach to certainty is that He is blowing right through me. He is the Spirit of Truth, and Truth is the only explanation I can offer for the production of so many joyful tears.

Open yourself to God’s universal gift: The Holy Spirit: the Spirit of Truth: the Breath of God.
Let it drive you forward to your destination; let it fill your sail and blow you to where your hidden gifts are to blossom and bear fruit. Let it guide you to the very edge of your faith, and beyond to the realization of God’s dream within you.
It is there, waiting for you.

.
If you can hear the voice of Jesus ... “Come, follow me”,
your soul already knows what your answer needs to be;
just one word from the heart ...

“Yes”
.

Pentecost

“Come, Holy Spirit, in your power and might to renew the face of the earth.”
(Pope John XXIII)

Today we recall the Holy Spirit falling upon and filling the disciples of Jesus. This was the event for which He had told the apostles to wait in Jerusalem: the coming of ‘the Spirit of truth’ as foretold during our Lord’s final meal with them, and about which we read in chapter 16 of John’s gospel.
Every day brings us an opportunity to invite the Holy Spirit into our own lives, to open ourselves to His leading, His teaching, and the transforming effect of His dwelling within us, but today, with the focus of all Christians being on this momentous event, we could ask for no better backdrop to our own longing and commitment than the awareness and prayer of today’s disciples who already live with the breath of the Spirit blowing through their lives. It was the Holy Spirit that enabled the apostles to stand up, speak out, and draw others to an appreciation of who Jesus was; that day was the birth of the Christian church, and the church is perpetuated through the continuing presence and power of that same Spirit among us. That Christ’s church has not faded away before now is living proof of His presence: He is longed for, sought, invited and welcomed into the hearts of committed believers in Jesus Christ, and it is through such Spirit filled and Spirit led people that the Church continues today.
Let us make being filled with the Holy Spirit what today is all about, not just in church liturgies, Bible readings, sermon subjects, and in wondering what it must have been like in that room, on that day two thousand years ago. Listening, reading and wondering will not bring us to where we long to be. There is only one way to really know anything about having the Spirit of God in our lives, and that is for it to happen; prayer and a genuine desire will lead us there. We cannot begin to grasp the significance from outside the experience, and outside is not where we are meant to be.

‘When Pentecost day came round, they had all met together, when suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a violent wind which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and there appeared to them tongues as of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit ...’ (Acts 2:1-4)

I have been waiting eagerly for today; waiting in anticipation, with a prayer and a longing for everyone hesitating near the edge of their fear, their freedom or their faith. If I could gather them with me in that far away forest cathedral with the Spirit swirling above, desiring, longing and waiting for their heartfelt response to His presence ... But that I cannot do. What I can do, and what I shall do after gathering with others for a Pentecost service, is rest awhile alone – in even the lightest breeze – beneath trees on a local hillside. My prayer will be the same; that many shall open their hearts to Him, become filled with Him, and be transformed by Him. And, dare I say that of the two my solitary focussed prayer will probably be the more important part of my day.

Organized traditional religion so often lacks the burning fire, the Teacher, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth promised by our Lord and which is at the heart of what today is all about, with the result that far too many of us – who call ourselves Christians – lack the essential life-force of faith and of the Church. All that we read about in Acts after the coming of the Spirit on the gathered disciples, would not have happened without the transforming effect of His empowering and infilling. In that respect, nothing has changed; we can do little of real worth without Him, and without Him as our guide and our power source we shall never achieve our aim of becoming the persons God made us to be.

God wants every one of us filled to the brim, and it is the Holy Spirit that will fill us. ‘The Filled’ is a collective title which should include every one of us. Until now it may have been an appropriate label for only one or two of our fellow travellers, but let that be changed today. Through the power of the Holy Spirit may ‘fellow traveller’ and ‘filled’ become synonymous.

‘Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in us the Fire of Your love.’
To whatever degree may be necessary to each one of us,
tear us apart in the winds of Your presence.
Breathe upon us, open us wide,
and then, in the stillness,
in our need and desire,
in our vulnerability,
in our emptiness,
burn within us.
Consume us.
And fill us.
Be in us.
Amen

On looking up

“ Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”
(Luke 11:9)

We have had some very breezy days recently, and at times gusts have swept through the trees with an abandonment and expressive freedom that roused memories of wild winds along the western edge of things rather than the purely here and now enjoyment of their atmospheric laughter and chatter-filled combing of branches and boughs. Everything is relative of course; one person’s steady breeze is another’s violent wind, and vice versa.
Leaves and twigs lie scattered everywhere, with tender young shoots wrenched into the limp beginnings of gradual decay and disintegration. Only when the wind has died away completely have I been able to fully bring my mind back to the present, to my own garden, and to the familiar trees within and beyond it. When they have been stirring more gently, memories of the excited but exquisite stillness and peace found within gales and storms on the Mayo coast have slipped out of mind, but the reminders of those far off Canadian forests have not ceased.
I have found myself watching the movement of branches and the fascinating flexing and bending of the tree trunks themselves; something I had seen but barely thought about before. Once fully seen, and watched and dwelt upon, the amount of movement is quite remarkable at times, and in the midst of the violent sounding passage of air through their full leafed canopies it is strangely comforting. It is all part of the trees’ survival technique; in fact it is very much part of being a tree. Without it most of them would have been uprooted, split or shattered long before reaching the splendour of maturity. But in my watching I have been searching for something I want to see again. It is something that captivated me and registered at a very deep level within me. It is an essential part of what Canada has sent home with me, and is also one of the subtle ways in which those mountains and forests beckon me to return.
Whenever the wind blows, wherever I see tall trees, and every night as I drift toward sleep and find myself standing amid those silent giants, looking heavenward once more, I am caressed and blessed with the memory of a fascination which I would have missed had I not already been looking long and deep into the distant treetops above me. I have failed to find it since returning home quite simply because it is not here. It is only as memory that I have the experience running through me every day.

It is the reason for my more concentrated watching: it is the swaying back and forth of trees in the wind.

So ordinary? So obvious? So unremarkable? No.
It could so easily have remained unnoticed because it was not what I had expected. Hindsight has reduced the surprise and provided the logical explanation, but it was only through looking up for long enough that their rhythm was seen at all. Everything in me expected a certain speed of movement if the wind was having any such effect, or no apparent movement if the trees were somehow sheltered by each other, but they were moving, and the amount of sway was considerable. My sense of wonder resulted from the seemingly out of step speed with which they moved from side to side. It was so beautifully relaxed and slow, with a noticeable delay at the end of each flexing of the trunk. Knowing that these trees were more than double the height of any I was used to seeing had not prepared me for the spellbound feeling that their movement conjured within me. Here was nature’s own poetry being pencilled against the sky, and it was not long before Thoreau’s famous words began to blend into the experience:
‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.’ (Walden. Henry David Thoreau).

I fell further into unison with the unheard beat to which they matched their praise, and gradually got left further behind – in all things. My feelings of being filled to the brim were regenerated; I was recharged and reawakened: life flowed around me and through me, and the flame within my heart burned a little more brightly. I could have lingered there for a long, long time.

In wind and rain, and in the stillness, may I always find time to stand in awe with You, my God.
You have stilled me and calmed me. I am full to the brim Lord.

In that one experience of the simplicity which is the pulse within all things, I revisited many of the markers placed beside my path. I did not consciously turn to look back; I had no wish, nor any need, to recall or give thought to the places, the people, or the events that had played a part in bringing me to this day, to this point in my journey and my life. But I was swiftly carried, as it were, past them all; the strangers who had arrived in my life at the very moments they were needed: God’s provision: disciples who had responded to whatever prompting they may have received; and the places to which I had been drawn ... and back to that empty Irish beach, in lashing winds and in silence and stillness. The separateness of these things is becoming less clear. It is being replaced by a new awareness of all such touches, words, moments, prayers and emotions being strands woven inseparably into the same tapestry. And the tapestry, in all its apparent complexity, is at once an expression of the simplicity of God’s communication with us, and a pointer to the tangles we create by holding on to the separate strands as we move through this life. Perplexity is born of complexity. We make simplicity complicated; we turn harmony into discord; we shred truth into unrecognizable fragments – more separate strands – and remain unconcerned when they are blown away like chaff on the breeze.
All our asking is for one single gift. All our searching is but one single quest. All our knocking is on one single door. Our whole journey is but one single step. Our whole life is a call for one single response.
Serenity is born of simplicity. It is as that slow rhythmical movement of towering trees in the wind. It is a mutual awareness: God’s awareness of us and our awareness of God’s Presence - ‘The man and his wife heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day …’ (Genesis 3:8)
He is there, but we so often have no eyes with which to see. He calls us but we lack the ears to hear. But then, when something heightens our receptivity, like Mary Magdalene, our grief, our loneliness, our searching and our longing bring us closer to Him, and we hear Him: He calls us by name. In that moment we know Him for who He is. “Mary!” ... “Master!” (John 20:16)
It was that call and response that drifted in time with the treetops high above me. In the one pause His utterance of my name, and then the slow swing to the opposite extreme where, in that motionless calm, He waits for a response ... and then, with my breath and the wind sighing as one, “Master!” ... “ My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)

The one gift, the one quest, the single step and our total response, are all wrapped in the folds of that intimate recognition of each other. They too are etched in the skies by trees moving between the touch of God’s two hands: – everything, but everything, is contained within and between those two points.

“Follow me.”
... and a single word from the heart: ...
“Yes!”

Moving on

The Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook Abbey leave for their new home in Yorkshire today.
It is the culmination of years of deliberation, preparation, apprehension and anticipation, and the reality of their departure will be difficult to grasp for those who have known them and who have benefited from their presence within the landscape of Worcestershire. We have always known them to be there, and whether we had contact with them or not, the simple fact of their presence has been a source of peace and strength for all who have lived within reach of the Abbey. It was there, as a child, that my own Christian roots were planted, and it was from there that I set out on my journey.
We shall all regret their leaving, particularly those who have made close friends there, but beyond this expected reaction to the human separation involved, some – including those who have never set foot inside the gate – may feel the change as a withdrawal of an important part of the structure upon which they have habitually hung their religious routines and their experience of prayer and faith. The contemplative quiet which has always formed a partial backdrop to their lives will now become an emptiness; the beauty of silence will give way to the hollow lack of all that made it beautiful. The buildings will remain; outwardly everything will look the same, but these people’s homes and hearts will no longer be blessed every day by the unchanging consolation of the community’s presence.
But this is a selfish and superficial way of thinking. We need to pause for a moment; to shake ourselves a little in an attempt to see the situation as it is, not as we feel it to be, and to appreciate how the departure may feel to those who really are involved: the individual members of the community.

All that we fear to lose – other than the physical closeness of friends – cannot be lost.
If our relationship with Stanbrook has only ever been on a basis of personal relationships or as a convenient place to hear mass, without having (either already present or acquired through contact with Stanbrook) any life within ourselves that has felt truly at home there, our feared loss is a merely imaginary loss. The feelings will dissolve in the cares and activities of everyday life and will be gone within a week.
If such life does dwell within us, then the feeling of being home when at Stanbrook has never really differed from the feeling that accompanies us wherever we may be. Friendships, and the collective consciousness and prayer of the community have, of course, focussed our awareness of it whenever we have visited, but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives that makes us feel at peace and at home. So long as we walk with our Lord, having Him and knowing Him as our friend, we are always close to home. It was Christ in us meeting Christ in our friends at Stanbrook that heightened our awareness so much. It is this that we really fear to lose. But, again, this should not be lost. If it is, it is through our own fault.
This is why our meeting with others is so important. We are alive, and we carry the Spirit of God within us; in this way we are self-sustaining, but when we meet in any meaningful way we become more than the sum of our individual parts.

‘For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20)

The community is its own living and breathing home, but we all need a place of rest; a haven in which to undo the sandal straps from the tired feet of our friends; a place in which to confidently unburden ourselves and where others can safely share their burdens with us; somewhere to gather in hope and expectation.
For Stanbrook that place is now in Yorkshire. Our Lady of Consolation awaits them there.

Let us wish our friends and the community not only God’s speed, but God’s peace, God’s direction and God’s empowerment in the new place to which they have been called; and let us open ourselves to whatever He wills for us in their absence.
Today is the feast of the Ascension; the commemoration of Christ’s ascension to Heaven. This was the last time He was seen by the apostles: His final departure. His last recorded words to them were, “And now I am sending upon you what the Father has promised. Stay in the city, then, until you are clothed with the power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)
When Jesus had left them, they ‘went back to Jerusalem full of joy’ (24:52), and ten day’s later, on the feast of Pentecost, the disciples received the Holy Spirit while gathered together in ‘the upper room’. The Christian Church was born.

We too must be joyful in the departure of our friends, and hopeful in the promise of God’s Spirit among us and within us.
In ten days time, all of us, wherever we may be, should aim to gather in our equivalent of the upper room. It will be Pentecost.

May the Stanbrook community be truly blessed with a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will ignite what God has prepared for them, and may we also be enlightened and empowered to take our places in the building of God’s Kingdom.

Stepping through

I have been home again for some time but focusing on writing here has not been among my thoughts until now. Indeed, the passage of time has not influenced my will to focus in that way, and I am sure that any attempt to do so before now would have resulted in failure. It was not meant to be: the time was not right.
I happily take that as being a healthy sign of unconfused priorities; that I write here at all must not be taken as an essential part of my life. However important it may feel to me at times, and however much it assists me in the discovery and clarification of my own thoughts when writing what I hope may be of help to someone else, it must never become an end in itself. I am frequently being reminded by the world around me as well as by the ever present awareness of the Spirit within me, that there is always something else, as yet unsuspected and unseen, beyond our present vantage point. Whatever I have been through, and am going through now, is teaching me and preparing me for something in my future. It may be something I am called upon to do tomorrow, or I may have to wait until the day before I die – not forgetting the possibility of those two being one and the same – but however much I still feel that I am meant to be writing here, I am increasingly aware that this is not the final answer to my long-running question, “What is it that You require of me?”

All that has been roused within me during my time away is underscored with the same searching, longing, deeply internal Presence and sense of fellowship, peace and wonder that has accompanied me for so long. It is the same Presence that walked that other western shore with me: the empty strand in Ireland. Now, as then, I am able to shout from a mountain top, “Christ is risen!” as His Holy Spirit continues trying to get through to me. I have been reminded once more that He is leading me on to something else.

I trust that I shall know it, and shall know what is asked of me when I arrive.

I have seen and experienced so little of what British Columbia offers, and yet, in spite of having been necessarily based on the edge of a city (Vancouver) where my reason for going was to be found, the brief ventures made into forests and mountains have stirred me in ways I had to some extent anticipated, but which have brought home yet again the immense gulf between learning about something - imagining it, thinking about it, believing we understand and appreciate it - and having first-hand knowledge of it: actually experiencing it.
The degree to which I have been shaken, rather than merely stirred, stripped me even further of my limited ability to communicate my feelings. If what I found and felt had been simply a place, a landscape, a space, a people, another part of the world that could provide a worthwhile destination for visits in the future, then I could have written something about it soon after returning home. No doubt I would have done so had my writing here been primarily to do with such things. But my time away was always unlikely to focus on such aspects of time and place. And the pleasure derived from my meeting with others gathered there was beyond anything I would attempt to write about here, though that pleasure was wrapped in the ever felt presence of God, and therefore became an undeniable part of my ongoing soliloquy.

I was one of seven people who had arranged to meet there. Seven is a beautiful number with its inbuilt pointers to creation itself and the day of rest, to the extent to which our forgiveness should extend, and particularly as a symbol of perfection and wholeness. But the beauty of seven – the wholeness of our group – blossomed while we were there and became a fruitful wonder through the addition of another person: someone of whom I had heard but had never met. Parting from much loved friends always has its difficulties but saying goodbye to this eighth member of our group, only a few days after first meeting, was unexpectedly painful. There was no anticipation of the emotions that were to rise within me, but it was barely possible to hide the sudden filling up that overtook me when we were all saying our goodbyes. Thank you Lord for making me aware once more that there are such people in this world, and thank you for awakening me through the reality of their presence in my own life and in the lives of all members of our group.
The experience has beautifully confirmed my reasons for always wanting to keep an empty chair at any small group meeting, however select, or formal, or otherwise; whatever the reason for the meeting and however ‘confidential’ the intended agenda may be. None of us must ever close ourselves off so completely that we believe our present circles of friendship, fellowship and trust to be unassailably complete. We sometimes long to be protected from the unexpected, the unscheduled, the apparently badly timed interruption, particularly from strangers whose needs cannot be anticipated, and who may distract us from whatever else seems important to us at that moment. Every one of us has a ministry within God’s plan, and we must never believe that people interrupt it or intrude upon it. Whatever our particular calling or gift may be, the underlying and universal truth is that ‘people are our ministry’. When we hear those words we must not assume that they are being spoken to others and not to ourselves: to priests and pastors but not to the laity: to him or to her, but not to me.

I made it to Heathrow; I boarded the plane, stepping through the open door; and in doing so my last written words became a form of personal prophecy.
The stirrings I heard and felt were of other breezes, in other trees, and they stirred me deeply. The waves from that other previously unseen ocean gently lapping upon my shore, placed me at the very edge once more – though somehow differently.

I was far from home but I knew that I was home. My home – so long as I have my Lord walking with me – is wherever I may be.
The stirrings and guidance already within my heart were given a deeper and broader meaning by the extension of a longing I have always had for the western edge of things; the western edge of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and the western edge of Ireland. I am still trying to unravel what the Lord has given to me, and asked of me, in my experience of the western edge of another continent. He has spoken to me once more; I have no doubt of that.

Bear with me Jesus, while my meagre capacity for understanding catches up and tries to grasp your message to me. You have been so patient with me for so very long; I yearn for clarity and certainty, but until You decide the time is right for my stepping to wherever you would have me be, grant me the knowledge that my quiet waiting is according to your will.

I sped away on the wings of the dawn, and dwelt awhile beyond the ocean,
but even there your hand guided me, your right hand held me fast.

Dear Lord,
never loosen your grip on my life.

The open door (3)

The question (looking ahead) of whether or not to turn up for a talk, or (looking back) whether or not I should have turned up for it, has become an example of the moments of which I have been writing. It has become a mental notch on my stick: a proverbial knot on the cord which is my belt. It has the makings of becoming a definite marker beside my footprints in the sand, and, if I follow it through, and if it bears fruit, it may become a clearly visible milestone among the more durable imprints of my passing.

Since my failure to attend the talk at the Malvern Evangelical Church, I have found their website, and have been listening to some of the past sermons available there. This has drawn me still further towards a conviction that I should at least visit them for one of their services. The recorded sermons have provided me with something for which I have been longing for a long time, but which I have been unable to access easily; namely preaching and teaching that blesses me with both affirmation and inspiration, and is not bound by liturgical constraints, traditional forms, and hierarchical aspects of dominance and non-equality. They have conveyed an unspoken but inherent welcome to my place in their midst, and in the fellowship of other Christians of all denominations. It is a fellowship born of discipleship and community: two of the gifts conceived in the Word of God, and made available through the essential lack of any Godless hype and hysteria, and dubious financial aspects of so much tele-evangelism style preaching.

I happily place here a link to their website http://www.mecmalvern.org.uk

Nothing big, nothing flash, nothing false, nothing proud. Something simple, straightforward, honest and true. Something which offers what we all want and need: the power, and the quiet; the relevance and the intimacy of the Word of God touching our own lives and hearts. Though I have yet to set foot inside the building, I also suggest that if you live anywhere near Malvern, and are searching for somewhere where you may safely and fruitfully dare to admit to your persistent longing to learn about Jesus and all that He offers to us, this may be the place you are looking for.
Certainly I do not mean to deter anyone from approaching any other churches, least of all Roman Catholic ones. I am a Catholic, and nothing will ever alter that fact, but I am very conscious of the gulf that appears to exist between so many ‘traditional’ style churches – of whatever denomination – and the everyday twenty-first century lives of the majority of people in our Western World. My longing is for you to develop a living relationship with the reality of Jesus in your life: for you to become a Christian in more than name, and to discover for yourself the life-changing effects of that relationship. When your life has been transformed; that is the time (if there is to be such a time) to give thought to the differences and the relative truths of the many denominations. Hopefully it will also become a time when you are aware of the long-running agony and shame which is our lack of Christian unity.

My instincts, and my limited experience, suggest that the jewels are more likely to be found in a form that can be clenched tightly in the unyielding grasp of a faith-filled hand, than as something glaring, and too large to enable friends to be recognized within the same room. Here, almost on my doorstep, having been there all the time but having now been brought to my attention for reasons unknown, is what may well be one of those jewels. I pray that it may be so for anyone who finds themselves led there for the first time. Perhaps we shall meet there.

I may already have delayed for too long to give or receive whatever was available on that particular day. There may have been something specific for me; a touch, a word, a meeting, a realization, a revelation. Or there may have been something similar which I was to bring as God’s provision for somebody else. But the moment has come and gone. I hesitated and I delayed; I feared and I failed.
But the door has not closed. The cold draughts of doubt and shunned responsibility have blown it towards closing a couple of times, but Jesus has placed himself in the doorway, holding it open; waiting.
He will do the same for you, but in this instance He waits for me. He holds it open for me. He will remain there for as long as it takes, for me.
Oh, my dear Friend: my Love: my Lord; You know me so very well !

I am going to be away from here again for a while; physically this time.
In a few days I shall be doing something very unusual for me; I hope to be boarding a plane to the west coast of Canada.

But nobody will hold the door open for me while I think about it. Nobody will wait for me. I shall either respond to the moment without delay, and be transported to an unknown place, unknown people, and forms of beauty and truth which are new to me, or I shall find myself left behind, wondering what might have been. If I step through that door, the stirrings I shall hear and feel will be of other breezes, in other trees; the waves, which may gently lap or wildly crash upon my shore, will be from another ocean: one I had never previously thought to see.
But the stirrings and guidance already within my heart can never be left behind. – I thank you, God, for that.

‘If I speed away on the wings of the dawn,
if I dwell beyond the ocean,
even there your hand will be guiding me,
your right hand holding me fast.’
(Psalms 139:9-10)

The open door (2)

It is not possible to speak or think of matters related to the initial opening of spiritual doors without returning to one’s own experiences. This may seem to result from the confusion or the emotional turmoil that we went through; or from the impact made by the person, the words, the place, or the incident that became the central point of our particular moment. It may be that our milestone was placed at a point where there was no sudden and all consuming moment, but rather, the recognition of our own awareness having been raised fully into our consciousness for the first time. Of all possible reasons for our own memories being stirred by these thoughts, this quiet raising of awareness is closer to the truth than most. It is not the feeling we associate with our experience that has the true meaning for us; it is the fact that our consciousness was raised to a new level: that we were, in some way, touched by the very presence we were seeking: that we recognized the opening of the door before us.

My own journey into a meaningful spiritual life began, in general terms, in the same way that it begins for each of us; by being in the right place at the right time, and by being with the right people at the right time. My memory always leads me to suggest that the latter was the important factor in my own life, but the passage of time – while not preventing or even reducing the strength of that initial reaction – has enabled me to know that the two aspects of the moment, and of the subsequent months, and even years, are in fact inseparable. In a way that was completely out of character, I responded to something that led me into the presence of the right people. Without them, I would not have arrived at the place in which I now find myself, and I am sure I would not have progressed so far in my journey towards becoming the person God wills me to be.
– (And this is the point at which I stopped writing when last sitting here unravelling my thoughts.)

I have been away from here for five weeks; not physically, but mentally, intellectually, and spiritually. It was not a planned absence, and did not arise out of boredom, or any feelings of staleness, lack of enthusiasm, or futility. Writing here has become fruitful and enjoyable, and the vital feeling that runs through me at times when putting words together is in no way diminished.
Today though, I am being drawn differently into the significance of what I am doing, and I find that I am in fact writing to myself.
I am astonished that so much time has passed since last posting anything here, but I am not concerned by that fact. In my first few weeks of hesitant and self-conscious writing, I did feel that I must keep posting no matter what; but I am no longer gripped by such unnecessary aims manifesting themselves as needs, generated as they are by a competitive aspect of the bloggers’ world which manages to infiltrate the thinking of many of its contributors.
However, having been absent for a while, I do feel the need to write and post something to confirm that I am still here, still brim full, and still quietly overflowing.
But something is different. I had to read through the end of my last post to find where I was when I left off, particularly as I had already started writing its continuation as ‘part 2’ of the same title. In doing so, I was confronted with my own words as partial answers to questions that have been troubling me for only the last forty eight hours. This at once raises the question of timing – in me at least – and leaves me wondering once more about coincidence. What is, and what is not significant? In this instance, is that all it is? Or am I being led to a better understanding of my confusion and my lack of confidence in my own sense of direction? The recently arisen questions have created within me what feels like a form of failure, born of what appears to be an unwarranted timidity.

Over the last few weeks – a period roughly corresponding to the time I have not given thought to writing here – I have had consistent but unobtrusive thoughts of visiting a local church to which I have never been before. The Malvern Evangelical Church (MEC) has been known to me for as long as I have had a real, living faith: for as long as I have been able to truly claim Jesus as my friend. Over the years I have driven past it every now and then, and when I have, it has always raised a flicker of interest: the hint of a question. There has always been a vague, “one day, maybe I shall pop in ...” response, but I have only been as far as the locked door when looking for notices: - once many years ago, and once only a week ago when looking for information on a talk due to be given there.
Having heard about a series of Lent talks arranged by Churches Together in Malvern, and hoping this week’s may offer something of more significance for me than ‘(Saint) Paul the Man’ at a church ten miles away, I sought and found a notice in the local Catholic church. Two of the four talks had already gone, but the third was in three days. The venue? The MEC.
This struck me immediately as being more than coincidence, and, as though having an inbuilt compensation for the possibility that I may not go if uninspired by the subject of the talk, the subject – ‘Bedside Manna’ – was indeed of real interest.

For the next three days I was in no doubt; I was going to the MEC for that talk. The mild apprehension at meeting new people, and at being on foreign soil, so to speak, was brushed aside. I was going; I was looking forward to it; I was quietly excited by the prospect.
I spent the day of the talk in the garden, rescuing more trees from thirty years of ivy growth, and in the visual grasp of the beautifully shaped tree I had given its freedom nearly two years ago. (4th & 5th July 2007. Talk of trees … and of a tree)
It was only as I started to keep an eye on the time, at the end of the afternoon, that I became gradually less sure about what I was going to do. My eagerness slowly ebbed away until, when the time came for me to go indoors to get ready, I was left with uncertainties and the knowledge that I would not be going. The admission itself is almost frightening, but what I felt was a low-key version of fear: a fear of being seen; of becoming known; of being drawn into something which I may want, and even need, but which I may not be able to follow through.
The feeling of failure shadows me because I now regret having not gone. I had sensed that I was being drawn there for a good reason; whether connected with the talk or the venue, or both, (or neither) matters not. But I failed to respond in the way that all my instincts told me I would. I still have those feelings. I am being drawn; I am being called to move forward; and I have horrified myself with my failure to respond in the way I thought I would find so utterly simple. It should be that simple.

Having read through those posts from July 2007, I find so much there that is now speaking back to me. Have I progressed at all since then?
And what of the open door? It was open then. It is still open now. Knowing that to be so confirms my failure.
Turning the last words of my previous post back on myself: - He understands me: He knows me through and through. He is still waiting for me. No matter what, He is always awaiting my return. No matter what, the door, once opened, always remains open.
How can I be so aware of these things, and yet suddenly find myself frozen in my tracks?

‘It is God who, for his own generous purpose, gives you the intention and the powers to act.’
(Philippians 2:13)

The open door (1)

‘Look, I have opened in front of you a door that no one will be able to close’
(Revelation 3:8)

Those words have returned to me more than once in recent days; quietly and comfortably, and with a gentle reinforcement of thoughts that had seemed somewhat scattered and unconnected, but which are now recognized as being part of the same underlying truth. Trains of thought, even those intermittent ones that progress slowly and steadily through the years, occasionally give me a flicker of light by which I recognize both their interconnectedness and the fact that I had, for a while, lost my awareness of an unforgettable fact; that the door once opened for me remains open. Always.
I quoted the same words at the end of an earlier post (08 Sept. 08 Door ajar) and find myself thinking back to the clearly marked time in my life when that door first seemed to be open before me.

It is almost always impossible to accurately identify a particular moment, or event, as the start-point of a meaningful spiritual journey.
The awakening of a living faith, and the birth of a previously inconceivable longing to dwell within that newfound wakefulness, becomes apparent only when we have, to some extent, already raised ourselves above the general and seemingly inescapable way of seeing, experiencing, and interpreting the life in which we have been living.
If we are conscious, however vaguely, of an interest that is more than merely superficial: a questioning, a wondering, a recurring wish to find out where a sense of there being something else touching our life may lead, we are already lifting our head above the worldly crowds around us. We have already moved beyond our start-point. Somewhere behind us, lost amid the numerous hints and touches that have been nurturing the tender growth within us, there will be someone or something that tipped our inner-self over the very edge of our initial self-discovery, bringing about the germination of the seed within. But even this unrecognizable point is not the real beginning of the journey we have already embarked upon. We set out first from a place somewhere between our initial realization of infantile joy at the ‘first light’ with which we began our life, and the time when our childhood development matured sufficiently for us to known, albeit unconsciously, that we had not entirely lost that light among the shades into which we had inevitably grown.
But all this vagueness is of little interest to us; and there is no conscious way in which any of it will ever matter to us , however real our early growth has been, and however much we may later realize how necessary to our realized potential every part of it has been. It is the moment we consciously experience as changing our way of seeing ourselves and the world around us that really matters; it is the moment we recognize as significant that does in fact become significant. It is the moment we experience deeply, and think back to constantly, that becomes our unmovable marker in space and time. However clearly we may later see that this is not our true start-point, we will never lose the sense of its having been the beginning of something important, something immense, and something previously unimaginable.

Whether this moment has already occurred, or whether you are still searching for the way of thinking, of believing, and of trusting that will lead you into a situation that becomes that moment for you, an awareness of the availability of whatever you seek awaits you, enlarging and deepening with the perseverance inspired in you by that moment. Is it truth you seek? Is it peace you crave? Is it faith you long for? Are you in desperate need of someone you can trust? Do you yearn for a safe haven? Do you weep for lack of love? Through grief? Through pain? Through lifelong suffering? Through loneliness? Are you numbed by lingering memories of loss, abuse, abandonment, remorse, or futility? Or are you energised, awakened, joyful? Even thrilled by a sense of growing closer to something undefined but holding out the promise of fulfilment and meaning?
Having lifted ourselves sufficiently by our pondering and wondering, something unexpected will either have occurred, or will occur when the time is right. Something which may grow warmly within us, catch us momentarily unawares, or takes us completely by surprise; a something which may later become fixed in our mind as the vital moment: the start-point of our journey. A thought, a person, a scene, spoken or written words, a sensation; whatever it may be, we come to regard this moment as a milestone in our life.
However unconsciously, and for however long we may have been stepping towards the experience of that moment, when it comes it is apparently unheralded, it is new, and it is life-changing. It is a point of departure for us: a flash of realization that gives no answers, but graces us with an awareness of the validity of our seeking and questioning. It leaves us knowing, not so much that we do not know the answers, but that every one of our questions has its answer waiting to become known to us. Having consciously placed a marker at that point in our life, it becomes that milestone; and having called it by that name, it becomes a significant and useful reference point from which to venture further into the new life that grows within us.

Any experience taken on board in this way truly is a milestone for us, but, in time, our increasing awareness, as well as opening the way and clearing the paths before us, will, as it were, seep slowly back into our memory of events and particular moments prior to that milestone. We begin to recall other events, people, places, words: moments which hindsight – in the light of our milestone experience – now shows to have been relevant. Previously unrecognized points begin to suggest the path that led us to our more conscious awakening, and this hazy but nonetheless real tracing of its course in the past, reinforces the significance of our milestone event. That reinforcement further strengthens our belief in the value of whatever may lie ahead. We no longer entertain thoughts about whether or not to continue; we are on our way, and however far we may wander from the path at times – and there will be such times – our faith journey will continue throughout our life. What we make of it, and to what extent we allow ourselves to respond to God’s presence in our life, is up to us. His longing for each one of us never ends, and his closeness will never diminish regardless of the ebb and flow of our enthusiasm.
Once we have acknowledged His presence by placing that milestone on our path, we can never lose the consequences of that moment: we can never lose Him. And, in the unlikely event that we should ever lose our trust in Him to the extent that we would even wish to try, we shall never be able to shake Him off. However far we may stray from the path of obedience, goodness, and love, we must never shrink into a hard shell of guilt, regret, or remorse, or feel that we can never be forgiven for something, however dreadful it may seem to have been.
He understands us: He knows us through and through. He is waiting for us.

No matter what, He is always awaiting our return.
ALWAYS.

No matter what, the door, once opened, always remains open.
ALWAYS.

Beyond words

Some words can be unhelpful to self-proclaimed and recognized Christians, as well as to those outside the Church who are searching for the underlying simplicity of faith obscured by such words. That a specific word may carry exactly the meaning being sought is, of course, potentially helpful. However, the precision of a specific meaning is frequently incomprehensible without some pre-existing awareness of the reality behind the meaning gained through one’s own experience. It sounds absurd, but the meaning is cloaked by the very existence of a word intended to convey it.
A living faith is what we all need. A living faith is what we should be longing to see in the lives of others around us, not for them alone but because this brings about the generation of meaningful community with its constant provision of support and encouragement. Every one of us is in need of this support in one form or another, but if there is nobody nearby with a faith that has come to life, how is that life to be even spoken of in ways that may begin to drag existing Christians out of their habitual lethargy, and inspire outsiders to come a little closer?

Words from the quotation used at the end of the previous post keep returning to me: ‘Concentrate on what has been assigned you’.
This is what each of us should be doing, and whether or not we think we know where we are going, what we are meant to be doing, and how we are meant to be doing it, it is far too easy to direct our energies in totally futile ways. We strive toward some ill-defined end which presents itself as needing our efforts and our focus, but which saps our strength and our enthusiasm, without achieving anything other than confusion, frustration and disillusionment. The experience leaves us dulled, and our faith begins to resemble a cardboard cut-out rather than the vibrant presence upon which we had been hoping to build. Joy drains away, and it becomes easier not to bother. We leave it all behind for a while as we seek to brighten our lives again through some unrelated, unhelpful, or even distinctly unholy activity or entertainment.
If we are somewhere out near the edge looking in, all this may have occurred through our tentative attempts to find out more, and through a willingness to move closer to the anticipated warmth in the hope that it was being generated by truth . Perversely, our attempts may have floundered, not through doubt, or feelings of being unworthy, out of place, or too conspicuous, but on the incomprehensibility of words.
However welcome we are made to feel on a human level, we may feel spiritually excluded by two assumptions, both of which are false. Firstly, that grasping the meaning of words we do not really understand is necessary to our belonging, and to our becoming a recognized and accepted part of Christ’s Church. Secondly, that the people who otherwise make us feel so welcome, do themselves fully understand these words.

The echoing of those words, ‘concentrate on what has been assigned you’, began after a few days of trying to put something together for this post. I found it almost impossible to focus my thoughts in a way that produced anything coherent; I was unable to concentrate despite my efforts to do so. The several disjointed directions in which I began writing all became dead-ends, until I began to read those words in the way I am now doing. Here is the full quotation again.

‘Do not try to understand things that are too difficult for you,
or try to discover what is beyond your powers.
Concentrate on what has been assigned you,
you have no need to worry over mysteries.’
(Ecclesiasticus 3:21-22)

I had been following my own thoughts and ideas to such an extent that I had left no room for any form of guidance. If I had been directed towards something I would probably have remained unaware, and I find that an appalling thought. What enables me to say that I may have failed to recognize any prompting, is that I woke up to the fact that I had failed to notice my loss of self-control. I had lost all awareness of my own limitations, and, although without any active contribution from or to my pride, I had lost whatever humility I may have had. I had been trying to understand things that were too difficult for me, and trying to discover what was beyond my powers. I had not restricted my concentration to what had been assigned me, and, instead, had wasted time and energy worrying over mysteries.
I had not been doing what I had managed to do over a long period with ‘Redemption’, that is, laying aside my meagre understanding without delving into the problems that seemed to arise from it; waiting while its gradual growth branched within my increasing maturity, and came into leaf with the combined experience of my human and spiritual life.

And those same lines will speak to each of us if we read them, not from wherever we would like to be, or from wherever we think we ought to be, but from the place where we really are. If we can lay our self-image aside in simple hope and trust, we can step beyond the many non-existent hurdles that appear to get in our way, hold us back, or push us from the path. It is another form of allowing ourselves to stand at the very edge so that we can go beyond it. It only ever becomes a place of fear when we shudder at the thought of it, and vow never to venture too near. The edge itself is of no real consequence; what we seek is always beyond. Difficult words are of no consequence for the same reason; what they attempt to convey, and what we seek, is always beyond.

A recent letter from a friend included the following: -
‘I now wonder how anyone, inside or outside the Church, can relate to such alien and esoteric language that so much of the church uses on a daily basis. I can’t for the most part detach my early first steps and beginning of faith within certain traditions, but at the same time I now have completely changed my opinion and wonder how anyone is supposed to find or even discuss God and His Church when it is wrapped up in language such as “supplication” and “repose of the soul” which I heard in a service only the other day.’

In reality there is no barrier in these things, and certainly not in the mere words, but so long as they contribute to feelings of exclusion and a form of what could be regarded as inverse heresy (confusion and distraction within the Church over matters well understood by anyone with a real relationship with Christ), they will not only continue to appear and feel like barriers, but may be the outer signs of a very real absence of spiritual life – real, living, and Spirit filled faith – within the Church. We must hope that any truth in this possibility is more likely to be applicable to particular local churches rather than Christ’s Church in general.
We must not allow these already problematic words to gain a form of power over us by our submission to whatever intimidation they seem to create within us.

If something seems to be beyond your understanding, let it go; do not allow it to divert you from the truths which have already been assigned to you. There is no barrier between you and those truths.
There is no barrier between you and Jesus. Follow Him, as did His first disciples. Trust Him. See where He leads.

‘Jesus turned round, saw them following and said, “What do you want?”
They answered, “Rabbi” – which means Teacher – “where do you live?”
He replied, “Come and see;”
so they went and saw where He lived, and stayed with Him that day.’
(John 1:38,39)

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