Into the light

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willing and able

Most of us, if expecting or hoping to be called at all, may be anticipating something easily recognized and readily incorporated into our lives with little or no rearrangement of our routines. But any one of us can be called in ways that may not be easily accepted, either by ourselves or by others. In such cases a vocation will define itself by insistence, by its breaking down of resistance, and our eventual recognition and acceptance of its challenge. A calling cannot become a genuine vocation without its being recognized and accepted, and without its following having become a desire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

... and waiting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Circling ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An ongoing call

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

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

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

 
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Poor as I am

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What can I give Him, poor as I am?”

Simple truth

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

The Nativity story is a tale of beautiful simplicity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lighting up time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timelessness

Since its inception, my Benedictine friendship has included long periods without any contact. That is true in general terms – with my lifelong connection with Stanbrook Abbey and the later influence of time spent at Douai – as well as with the particular friend on whom my thoughts are presently focussed. Whenever such periods come to an end I am always surprised, usually concerned, and frequently disturbed by the sudden realization of how long they have been. As months passed, receiving a note, a card or a short email would prick my conscience, though even without one of those prompts a discomfort would arise, and I would begin a series of gradually more persistent ‘reminders to self’ to arrange to meet with her. And still more time would slip away, until I finally got round to doing the simplest and easiest of things: picking up the telephone. We would speak briefly, and fix a date and time for meeting. When that time came our meeting and talking would feel as though we had seen each other only a few days earlier, and even that we were picking up the same conversation where we had left off. Afterwards I would always be left with a feeling of having been spiritually recharged or topped up in some way.

For too many years these meetings have been almost my only meaningful spiritual contact with anybody, and that has made the long absences both more remarkable and more troubling. And in writing of it I feel that I am either contradicting myself or denying some relevant but unrecognized truth. ‘Troubling’ is the word which has become my perplexity for today.
I am as puzzled as ever as to how these long gaps occur. It would be easy to add that I am also as puzzled as to why, but for the most part, my conscience has always experienced the how and the why as being pretty much the same thing: slightly different responses to my semi-automatic and recurring feelings of guilt and shame. The mild confusion over what is going on is prolonged and made more demanding of further thought by the fact that those feelings, while being real, immediate and more or less continuous, are themselves never more than mild. It is as though something grips me by the shoulder asking, “Why the guilt?” ... “For what do you feel ashamed?” ... “Do you not understand better than that by now?” At which point I inwardly cringe at being reminded of how long it is since first beginning to wonder what I am called to do ... and that is it; nothing more. I look around, and wherever I happen to be, I find myself standing as in the middle of nowhere, wondering why I am talking to myself. And the guilt subsides. The title, ‘Soliloquy at the Very Edge’, continues to suit much more than just the feel of writing here.

My lack of contact seems contrary to everything I feel and experience as wanting and needing, and yet, with the repetition of both the long absences and my declared amazement at their length, it is gradually becoming clearer that it is only one half of me that truly wants such friendships to involve more frequent contact. I can trace a trail of that apparent character-trait running through my life from almost as far back as I can remember, though it is only now that I am starting to fully take note of it. These days, I sense it as being connected with my apparently endless inability to discern what I am meant to be doing as part of God’s work in this world.
As has always been the case, once my mind is focussed on this particular friend it feels that I have never been away; though it is no longer a question of arranging a time to meet, as her community's relocation has now placed us many miles apart.
It has often struck me as strange that the lengthy gaps in our contact have always been an apparently contradictory source of peace for me. It must have much to do with the fact that our friendship is genuine; that we do not forget each other when we are not in contact, and that we know we share something of infinite importance. The timelessness of that ‘something’ has spread its peace into our friendship in such a way that whether present or absent to each other, that peace remains unchanged and unbreakable. And that is the overriding quality of the gift we have been given. Clearly it is not of this world.
Absence, it seems, does not so much make the heart grow fonder, as make no difference whatsoever to friendships built upon truths beyond merely human contact and trust and shared interests. Any insecurity or hesitation in an otherwise apparently perfect friendship, will almost certainly be caused by some impurity in the relationship. Not necessarily – as frequently coming to mind at once for many of us – impure as in forms of attraction that have distinct and unbefitting sexual overtones, or, perhaps more dangerously, indistinct and unadmitted undercurrents of a similar and equally inappropriate nature, but lacking the purity of purpose and shared desire to journey together towards the one goal that has meaning beyond the sensed confines of our lives.

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

Wherever and whenever the right persons meet together, He is there. I find that utterly undeniable. When people are constantly aware of His presence in their lives they do not need to declare that they meet in His name; nor do they need to consciously focus on making that a reality; the reality is there: it is impossible for them to meet in any other way. Nothing can get in the way of such a three cornered relationship precisely because it has all three of us. No doubt such friendships come into being, and thrive, and last, for the awesomely powerful reason that each person brings Christ to the table with them. And apparent differences between such friends – which may give rise to incredulity in others who find their friendship unfathomable – can be obliterated within the relationship by other shared but intangible factors.

John Henry Newman, in his sermon on Christian Sympathy, gives us a clear pointer to one contributory reason for this compatibility and close fellowship between particular Christians.

‘ ...whereas their sense of the heinousness of sin rises with their own purity, those who are holiest will speak of themselves in the same terms as impure persons use about themselves; so that Christians, though they really differ much, yet as regards the power of sympathising with each other will be found to be on a level. The one is not too high or the other too low. They have common ground; ...’

 
Wherever we may be on our own personal journeys, we can be unified beyond all expectations by the very fact that we are committed to our journeying. The paths we follow, though for the most part very much our own, traverse that common ground as they lead us to the Holy Ground on which we all long to stand. There is no way around it: its seemingly vast expanse has to be crossed; and to hope or attempt to travel beyond it without walking beside others for at least part of the crossing is to turn away from one of the central reasons for the existence of the community we have come to know as the Church.

Having progressed this far: having reached the point where we know we are among those who have been sent, we should also know that we have not been sent out alone.
 

'Then he summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs, giving them authority over unclean spirits.' (Mark 6:7) ‘After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself would be visiting.’ (Luke 10:1)

 

Both in time and out of it; when called to be God's provision for others, and when in need of His provision for ourselves; when together and when apart; we have need of each other.

 
 

...Thus are their names confirmed

In the early hours of yesterday morning I sent a lengthy email to a spiritual friend with whom I have not been in touch for more than a year; and during the day I had been preparing to post something here about such long gaps between contacts in my important friendships. That will now become my next post, as I have been washed over by a wave of confirmation resulting from a reply received late last night. This will probably be meaningless to anyone else as it is being posted for the same reason as last night’s short entry under the heading, ‘Wisdom & Prudence’: more as a 'reminder to self’ than anything else.

The words quoted are the first of a sequence of ‘O Antiphons’ as they are called, which began yesterday, 17^th December. I have been vaguely aware of them in the past, but they have only now really come to my attention through being referred to in the email I received last night. I had given my already mentioned friend some of the details about what I have been doing over the last year, and those details included the names I have given to two other important persons in my spiritual life in a lengthy writing project on which I have been working. Those names are Wisdom and Prudence, and the reply email expressed delight not only at having heard from me after so long, but with those details and a further reference to what I had called “a wisp of Wisdom” being received on the day that the ‘O Wisdom’ antiphon was used. (Unlike me, she knows the liturgy intimately and follows it closely.)

The information delighted me, as such an apparent coincidence of timing is precisely the kind of thing that has occurred at various times through my own journey, and is therefore running through my present writings. All that I have been doing over the last twenty four hours seems to have returned to me as a confirmation that my choice of names for two friends is not only right, but given a strangely unexpected seal of approval. And I am once again reminded that I am that beggar with his ‘smile in the mind’: - the one who is the real writer of every word I have penned over the last twelve months.

My Benedictine messenger is also to be found in the same mass of words; and, as a final rounding up of all the real, living and essential characters in that part of my life, today is the 45^th anniversary of my first meeting with ‘Providence’, who is not only in there too, but became one of the main reasons that I have anything at all to write about.

How could I possibly fail to acknowledge and appreciate such things!

Wisdom & Prudence ...

'O Sapientia, quæ ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiæ.'

'O Wisdom that comest out of the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end to another, and orderest all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence!'

Distracted

“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10)

However rarely I may consciously wish to be drawn from the realities of the world around me, and from the undeniable awareness of something beyond that physically sensed reality, I am, at times, as easily distracted from them as anyone else. Television, radio, music, and the accumulation of past and present interests safely tucked away but readily available on a hard drive, are able to distract me as easily and completely as ever; though thankfully not for long periods, and not to the complete exclusion of everything else. It is never long before I am drawn back, in far more powerful ways, to the thoughts and feelings which really do seem to make me tick: the ways of seeing the world and the power behind its very existence, that give my heart a reason to keep beating.

Disconnecting the computer to move it to another room during a redecorating session, felt like a major wrench while it was being done, but once unplugged, it remained out of action for a while and I got used to its absence. The simple actions of switching off and unplugging it also disconnected me from some of my routines and I found a different form of space in which to think about whatever needed thought. I had not been unplugged from my own power supply, but felt as though I had been put onto ‘standby’. My time was soon taken up by something else which, once started, became difficult to put down. That is ongoing, but it has acted as a reminder that I am frighteningly susceptible to distractions of one kind or another.

It has also made me aware that what I think of as distractions are not necessarily things which steer my trains of thought away from the areas on which I believe they should be focussed: whatever may seem important to me at the time. They are the bulky areas of thought which press gently from just beyond my normal limits of awareness, and which, under that almost imperceptible pressure, flow silently in to fill any empty space as soon as it is created.

The inner void is well known to me, as is the danger inherent in the inevitable fact that it will be filled by something, whether wanted or unwanted, good or bad, blessing or curse. I have previously written about distraction (20^th September 08), and on the infilling of God’s own presence as a form of emptiness within the void created by grief; a transformation of awareness from a hollow form of death to a restful and healing peace that precedes our recognition of His presence within our desolation. That is indeed a blessing; but in every situation, not only those in which we may fully recognize and comprehend our vulnerability, we are nonetheless vulnerable.

My separation from the computer resulted in periods spent on something else which still occupies large chunks of my available time. I had not been longing to find a gap of some sort in which I could make a start on it; it had not been waiting for the opportunity; it had seemingly come from nowhere as a means of filling the gap which had not previously been there. And it was from that realization that my present thoughts have come. I have always longed for space, for peace, for quiet, for emptiness, for solitude; but is that longing, at least partially, a cover for my fear of those very same things? Rather than using the newfound space to appreciate and deepen the space itself, I maintained my level of busyness by transferring my mental energies to something new which kept me from the space for which I was supposedly always longing. I am always telling myself that I should lay things aside and give more time to simply being with God. Why do I not? I tell myself that, in reality, I spend almost no time in prayer, and should do all I can to change that; that I should receive any space, when it comes, as a blessing granted specifically for that purpose. Why do I not?

Knowing that my longing for quiet and solitude are inseparable from my longing to spend time in God’s presence, and knowing from experience that there is nothing more beneficial to my own peace, contentment and wellbeing than spending time in silence and prayer, what is there that could possibly keep me from it when the opportunity arises? And an immediate effect of asking myself that question is, as it were, the lifting aside of a veil that has been obscuring the truth: the opportunity is there – and always has been there – all the time, not only when I discover a newly created space in which all things may be possible.

St Paul’s words in Romans 7:14-25, have been prodding at me since I began to unravel my thinking at the keyboard; and though they are written with specific reference to the effects of our sinful nature, they are providing me with new food for thought around similarities between that nature and sin itself, and the distractions to which I am referring. They are not sinful distractions, but they do at times steer my awareness away from spiritual matters, and from my awareness of God’s presence. Is that not the beginning of all sin?

There are many ways of picking and choosing our way through scriptures: both good and bad; and there are just as many ways of refusing to do so which can be no less misguided and even abusive towards what God had intended. In the present context, I find it helpful to read St Paul’s words adjusted to fit my circumstances, and I write them here in the knowledge that some may not approve, but also in the knowledge that any disapproval is born of an inability to see and to hear, and thus to understand the fullness of what we have been given through the word of God. These verses are absolutely true where sin is concerned, and I have not altered that truth. I have not read the words and decided they are not relevant to me, but rather, have found a way to delve deeper into understanding my own sinfulness by using the truth they contain to speak into a personal situation which at first glance would have no connection with St Paul’s words. I am open to any scriptural words to speak meaningfully to me. And who would dare to say that I have not been guided to read these words in this way?

‘We are well aware that the Law is spiritual: but I am a creature of flesh and blood; I am easily distracted and misled. I do not understand my own behaviour; I do not act as I mean to. While I am acting as I do not want to, I still acknowledge the Law as good, so it is not myself acting, but a power which works to distance me from God’s law. For though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I rarely do; instead, I follow my distractions. But every time I do what I do not want to, then it is not myself acting, but that unrecognized power working against me and against all that is good. So I find this rule: that for me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side. In my inmost self I dearly love God's law, but I see that acting on my mind and body there is a different law which battles against the law I long to keep in my mind. Who will rescue me from this situation? God – thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord. So it is that I myself with my mind obey the law of God, but in my disordered nature I obey that which distracts me.’

Surely my distractions, though not in themselves sinful, are inseparable from my sinfulness and from that ‘different law which battles against’ God’s law. Without any doubt, at all times, ‘evil is close at my side’. My best way to remain aware of it, and to counter it, is to end as I began: to continue to maintain, to the best of my ability, an ongoing spiral of awareness of his presence in my life; and to strive continually to obey that simple, peaceful instruction: to –

“Be still, and know that I am God.”