Ready to begin

We have become conscious of a broader canvas than the one upon which we all live our day-to-day lives.
Where has our awakening placed us?
What does our awareness now encompass?

We have become aware of something “other”: - a presence.
We are aware that this awareness is undeniable, and that it is fed by our own acceptance of it, as well as by God’s own presence within it.
We have become conscious of our own belief, and have learned that to proceed without maintaining this new level of awareness may lead us into danger. This in itself is not a source of fear, as we also suspect it to be well-nigh impossible to retreat from where we now find ourselves.
It may also have occurred to us that we cannot imagine this awareness coming to an end: - intimations of timeless possibilities.
We are becoming aware of gifts we have already received, and of just how great some of these gifts may be.
The realization that everything is a gift is dawning within us.

We sense we may have something to give: something that, one day, may enable us to awaken and raise this same awareness in others.
We are ready to notice the needs of others, and are starting to recognize our own need for support and fellowship. Some such support may already be sensed in our new awareness of not being alone on our journey, though we know that much of it will be experienced as being alone.
There are others feeling all that we feel. There are other solitary minds close by.

Awareness is the ground without which we can never even dream of a harvest.
It awaits the plough and the harrow; much needs to be done before it is ready for the sower, but we have found the right ground. We stand on fertile soil.

We have journeyed to a point where we are ready to begin a journey; we are awake, alert, and aware of our existence in ways we had never previously imagined.
We have walked away from edges, found ourselves close to edges, and arrived unawares at edges during our apparently aimless wandering, but now, in the comparative clarity of a spiritual dawn, we know there is a journey to be made.
Apprehension remains, yet the certainty of the presence drawing us into the unknown outweighs all thoughts and ability to return to the safety of our previous denial.
We are called endlessly to approach the very edge of our understanding; to follow our awareness wherever it may lead.

If any of this is meant to be part of your journey, I trust that your awareness has been awakened, and your faith is kindled within you.
I feel that the initial and essential awareness has now been dealt with.
We have a long but astounding walk ahead of us; I look forward to it, and I hope we will keep company with each other as we place our trust in the call we each hear: the call that will bring us to the ultimate realization, understanding and peace we each long for.

Lent is about to begin.
I have need of the quiet reflection, self examination and repentance that are encouraged during this time.
Where this may lead I do not know.
I hope to continue posting during this time, but I am determined not to commit to anything.
The directions in which I (in which any of us) may be led during Lent cannot be anticipated: they are unknown, and from my previous experience can be unexpected and deeply life changing.
Whatever may be in store for us, be assured that it will have meaning.
It will be a part of God’s preparation and purification of us: an essential stage of our growth towards our true selves.

Hold tight to your faith, and linger in your new-found ability to pray.
Remain in touch with Him: Share your life with Him: communicate – speak to Him: pray to Him.

“… 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)
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Requited Love

Our awakening has demanded a response from our new-found inner child: our faith.

We have begun to realize what faith is, and we glimpse the meaning and the demands of trust for the first time.
In some small way we have begun to have faith in our faith, and something has stirred within us.
We stand where we have not stood before.
We are where we may never have imagined we would be.

We are in a position to repossess our belief with meaning; I believe: I do believe.
With faith we are able to say, I do believe in God: one God: the only God.
We are a single step away from the personal consequence of our belief: the whispered, uttered, cried, blurted or shouted expression of this belief having become meaningful in our lives.
Hesitantly or confidently: nervously, fearfully or joyfully, we acknowledge an awareness of having thought two simple words: two words we may never have believed we could have put together: - “My God.”
We teeter at the very edge of a whole new life.
All that is needed is for us to change the focus from ourselves: to lift our eyes, our hearts, our minds to Him.
Having done so, our very next thought – “You …”– is prayer.

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“You …

You are!

You are God.

You are my God.

You are my God.”

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The edge has gone: we have moved beyond it.

The mists of Mystery seem to have lifted, though from here on they will never leave us, returning and dispersing repeatedly as we enter deeper into the presence of God.

We are once more on safe and solid ground, but there is a subtle difference; everything is somehow more safe and more solid than ever it was before.

We wonder if anything in our life prior to this had ever been truly safe, secure and built on firm foundations.

A new solidity is born within us.

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Awareness now shadows our every move, our every thought; from now on the vague intimation of fear hints that we will not advance far, we will not begin to blossom and eventually bear fruit, without our own willing involvement.

But we have now found the lifeblood of that necessary involvement.

Our awareness has placed us and awoken us at the very edge, and there, in our solitude, we have dared to step into the mist.

We found our waiting child, Faith, and within the child the life-giving pulse of God’s love: the unstoppable flow of self-giving that gifts each one of us with life.

He has found us, and through those first words of prayer, He knows we have now found Him.

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Let us rest here awhile.

Let us quietly place ourselves in His presence.

Let us become aware that we are in His presence, shedding all pains and worries for a while – however great these may be, and however difficult to push aside.

When they do return to mind, bring them into the open and place them before Him; do not struggle for words.

If words come easily let them; if they do not, do not search for them: allow yourself to feel the emotions locked within you while remaining always in His presence. Place all of it into His hands …

If only for a few moments, simply be with Him; acknowledge Him, and know Him for who He is.

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

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Having done so, know also that you are now one of The Found.

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The brink of prayer

Once awakened, awareness will not sleep.
Having made us conscious of both our littleness and our potential in the presence of God, it places us at the very edge of eternity.

Strangely perhaps, we may not realize we are at an edge at all.
We have approached at least one during our advance, but, without any real crisis, all that seems behind us.
We walk now in a tension between desire for something sensed but undefined, and apprehension at the absolute quality of its invisibility: the emptiness of its unknown face. We wander, unstressed, in a mist of mystery.
We follow the line of what we take to be a low bank, beside an unseen stream; the solid, safe and friendly ground stretching away unseen in all directions.
The mist about us is the product of unanswerable questions, but is found to be quietly comforting.

The truth of our situation is far beyond the limits of our comprehension. We have nothing in our experience to hint of where we are, or where we are going.
Our awareness of having been given much, and our low-key fears of something being asked of us, are enveloped in the tensions already drifting in the mist; they do not trouble us unduly.
We are touched by an all-pervading consolation as we unwittingly follow the hem of the Ultimate Mystery: the Mystery that beckons from within, calls us to enter, and longs to cradle us in the love that is the source of that consoling touch.

We could not walk this path without the mist.
Nor could others who have already passed this way, and who may have found answers to questions of which we have not yet even thought.
They are still journeying onwards through their newfound fears, joys, insights and understandings: they shall not walk this path again.
If they did, they could still not begin to cope with the vastness of the reality obscured by the mist.
Regardless of where we are in our approach to God; regardless of how advanced we believe ourselves to be in our understanding, knowledge, experience, or giftedness, we are all utterly unable to grasp the Truths of the Mystery of the Presence of the Eternity of God.
Those who have gone further along the way have the ability to help those who follow behind: no more and no less; just as we all have the potential for lifting and supporting those who travel beside us.
For most of us this is what makes the difference.
The presence of the Mystery in our fellow disciples makes all mountains climbable, and every desert crossable.

The stream has led us here – as was intended – and has now gone into the mist where, ultimately, all such streams go.
Our path does not follow a low bank; beyond the mist there is no ground.
The hem of this Mystery lightly brushes the lip of an unfathomable precipice; we are at the very edge.
We stand on the brink of eternity.

The height, the depth and the breadth of this profound and significant emptiness is infinitely beyond us, yet the entirety of the Presence within it shadows our lives from beginning to end.
It awaits us; it is available to us, and we avail ourselves of it through faith and through communication:

- the communication that is prayer.

All is gift

This talk of fear, and of God having work for us to do, may sound intimidating.
If I want others to respond to His desire that they should come closer to Him, and take possession of all that He offers to them, why do I raise such things?
Why do I not avoid all mention of them, or at least play down these aspects of God’s calling until people have reached a point on their journey where they encounter them for themselves?

Quite simply because it was this combination of unease and an expectation that something may be asked of me, that first made me aware of the reality of God in my life.
I had believed in God, and believed in His presence, without ever having really stopped to consider what believing entailed.
I became truly aware, for the first time, that if I believed in the existence of God (which I did) then I believed Him to be real.
If I believed Him to be real, and believed in the presence of God (which I did), then I believed Him to be truly present.
It was this realization that, without any conscious effort, opened me to His influence in my life, and the prompting to speak of it has been the real reason for my writing of it here.

This fear is not frightening; it is, as already stated, an uneasiness that lingers throughout our days, raising thoughts and feelings of expectation, allocation, requirement, recruitment: - the idea that God may ask something of us in return for all the blessings we have already received.
And here is the heart of it; we are aware – at last - of having been given so much.
This is the awareness towards which all previous awareness has been leading.

The memory of when I first spoke of this awareness in my own life has stayed with me for two reasons; firstly, because it was so unlike me to speak of any such thing to anybody, and secondly, because the person to whom I spoke – a near stranger then – was to become an important part of my growth in the years that followed.
I remember saying, “I have been given more than I ever knew I wanted, and I have a feeling God is going to ask me for something in return.”
That single minute of conversation – for that was all it was – told me important things about myself, though I heard none of them at the time.

Having been given much more than I had ever thought to want, was no longer something of which I was only vaguely conscious.
Hearing myself speak those words aloud transformed my embryonic awareness into a full understanding of all this as fact; not only that I had so much more than I deserved or had any right to expect, but that all this had been granted, given and received, wholly unmerited and - until then - unappreciated for what it was: total gift.

My feeling of apprehension: my expectation of being asked for something in return, was not merely the product of my own imagination. It was my naïve and inaccurate interpretation of deeper feelings awakened within me: feelings drawn to the surface to await my acknowledgement – my giving voice to them – when, through God’s provision, and at the right time, the right person crossed my path.

I had always kept myself away from other people as much as possible, wanting to remain aloof and unknown. I was being manoeuvred towards a crumbling of my protective walls; being asked to open myself up: to allow others in, and to allow them to see part of what really went on within me. This also meant that when fear grew: when I would need support and a safe haven, I would not find myself travelling alone.

My fear that He was going to take something from me in return, showed just how little I understood my God.
Taking something from me was sensed as losing something precious to me. The first things to enter my mind whenever I imagined losing something were my children, and their health. Perhaps God would …
I began to utter these thoughts to the person standing before me, but was gently interrupted with a smile, and a quiet assurance that “He does not work that way.”

In a similar way to the Jews listening to St Paul in Rome, I heard the words but not the message.

‘How aptly the Holy Spirit spoke when He told your ancestors through the prophet Isaiah:
Go and say to this people:
Listen and listen but never understand!
Look and look but never perceive!
This people’s heart is torpid,
their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes tight,
to avoid using their eyes to see, their ears to hear,
using their heart to understand,
changing their ways and being healed by me.' (Acts 28:25-27)

Hearing more than the words: understanding and receiving the message, was also God’s free gift.

A persistent unease

Our lives would be so simple if we could remain blissfully unaware.
Not necessarily more comfortable, easier or more straightforward; not imbuing us with more confidence or certainty, but allowing us a simplicity in our day-to-day affairs and an uncluttered wider picture.

Whatever the realm in which we lead our lives, bliss is one of our ultimate aims.
In a largely temporal existence this can only be approached by remaining unaware – blissfully unaware – of all that lies beyond the scope of sight, hearing, touch, scent and taste: the senses we live by, in common with the cat on our lap, the dog at our side, the birds on the feeder outside the kitchen window, and the livestock in the fields.
True bliss lies far beyond the first touches or intimations of the spiritual: beyond those early states and emotions which are brought to life within us as we become more aware, and which will probably send us in the opposite direction before giving any hint of the peace which perseverance will bring.
Any sense of calm or comfort may feel unattainable in the persistent presence of an apprehension: a discomfort we are unable to locate or identify, but which seemingly infects us with – as it were – a perpetual mental frown.
Unknowingly, we have begun our long series of battles with something we are told always to stand against: – being afraid.

Fear now becomes entangled in our minds and hearts.
Its beginnings are so subtle and gentle, but it is likely that it will shadow us for a long time.
We may barely be conscious of it as fear, being aware only of that constant unease whose growth is almost imperceptible, but whose identity is revealed as soon as we attempt to name it.
Perhaps we are drawn to speak, briefly and in the vaguest possible way, of what is going on within our heart, but in searching for a way to describe our unease, we cannot keep ourselves from using the only word that seems to fit: - fear.

We fear the unknown.
To think about the unknown - any unknown - is to approach an edge.
To direct our attention towards the vast expanse of the spiritual unknown and its place in our lives is to approach the very edge.
It is an approach that involves going beyond all fears to discover, not just where God belongs in our lives, but who we are, and where our lives belong in God’s plan.

Awareness will not allow us to retreat to wherever we came from, and we begin to realize that saying “Yes” to this Presence has resulted in our relinquishing some of our own control.
Something moves, and we are powerless to stop it.
For the first time we fear that something may be asked of us.
We fear we may be called to go further than we wanted to go.

Comfort

Are you comfortable?

I have become aware that my apprehension and doubt, my unease and discomfort at beginning to give voice to my thoughts has subsided. I have so easily and quickly become accustomed to writing here. I am comfortable with it.

No sooner had I realized my comfort, than I became aware that I should not be so comfortable.
This very comfort is generating its own lack of ease. I feel the beginnings of a pressure to produce: to ensure that not too many days pass before posting something new here; the start of what could become a growing preoccupation with updating, and with a semi-forced production of thoughts and words: - a precarious position again. (16th January post)
Hints of self-satisfaction have also made themselves known, and they too are bringing with them a whole new set of doubts and discomforts.

All this reminds me of something I know well enough, but of which I shall always need constant reminders: that there will always, always, always be struggles and trials, temptations and distractions trying to divert us from the paths we are meant to tread.
Once we are no longer content to sit quietly with whatever faith or belief we may have: once we wake up, stand up, and speak up, we are confronted by a power that would have us forever subdued and silenced.
If it cannot prevent us from waking up in the first place, it will keep us firmly in our place.
If it cannot keep us from standing up, it will keep our mouths firmly shut.
If it cannot keep us from speaking up, it will confront us with our weaknesses – those we thought we had under control - seeking to drag us down and thus to silence us through our shame, or to devalue all we say and do in the minds of others whom it will lead to judge, reject and condemn us.
If it also fails in this, it will continually distract us; it will lead us to speak or act on the wrong things, in the wrong ways, or for the wrong reasons.
Vanity and pride will rise to envelop and sterilize our attempts to bring others to the Truth.

A certain comfort in what we do is of benefit to that which is done.
If we are blessed, and we use our blessings as God would wish, that comfort is itself a further blessing: an awareness of His presence and love in all that we do, which arms us with the confidence to persevere regardless of perceived difficulties.
As soon as it begins to feel like a ‘sit back and smile’ comfort, we are in danger of holding the blessings off with an unrecognized darkness that would have us defy and deny God.

Are you comfortable?
Wake up! Arise!
Allow disquiet to heighten your awareness: awareness of those around you who are in great need of the comfort you have within you to give. Seek to bring that comfort to others, and through such comfort, an awareness, an awakening, a sense of God’s presence.
In moving towards the edge on your own journey, you will encounter needs you are able to satisfy: people in need of what you already have to give.
God will litter your path with opportunity; will you know it?
Will you recognize the need? Will you recognize and accept your ability to be God’s servant in such situations? – even though you thought you had barely come to believe at all?
We are tested every step of the way: gently and quietly at first, but steadily building the faith, the conviction, and the power within us.

Do you seek comfort in being a follower of Jesus?
Do you long for His friendship and His love?
I have already suggested who you may be as such a follower: who you may become if you have not yet set out in His footsteps.
Do you find it impossible to identify with any of these?

The Named, The Touched, The Grasped, The Held, The Embraced, The Lifted, The Carried, The Moulded, The Filled, The Empowered, The Directed, The Sent? - The Forgiven, The Sheltered, The Comforted, The Emptied?

If you do not regard yourself as a follower – for whatever reason – and yet, having read what has gone before, still find yourself reading this, then you truly are already one of His followers.
You may be carefully making sure He never sees you, and hanging well back from His friends.
You may even be unknown to those on the fringes of the gathering around Him: unseen by everyone remotely associated with Him.
But you are following nonetheless; and He knows you are there.
He longs for your approach.
Stepping towards the outer fringes of the crowd may seem to involve an enormous effort: an act of faith which you do not have, but that step towards Him, once started, will be as easy as is your next breath.
He will look up to see you coming as soon as you move.
He knows you are there.

Let Him transform you from your present state, whoever or whatever you believe yourself to be: -

The Confused, The Depressed, The Unappreciated, The Ignored, The Overlooked, The Rejected, The Discarded, The Alienated, The Deprived, The Denied, The Deserted, The Forgotten, The Unwelcome, The Lonely, The Lost, The Stranger, The Weak, The Frail, The Humiliated, The Belittled, The Mocked, The Scorned, The Slandered, The Hated, The Threatened, The Bullied, The Silenced, The Burdened, The Hardened, The Blunted, The Sorrowful, The Grief stricken, The Angry, The Fearful, The Terrified, The Addicted, The Cursed, The Possessed, The Tortured, The Trapped, The Caged, The Imprisoned, The Trampled, The Crumpled, The Crumbled, The Crushed, The Abused, The Beaten, The Broken, The Mutilated, The Crippled, …

Each of us has at some time been at least half of these; and more … and wherever we may now be on our journeys, we can be confident that we have always had – and always shall have - one thing in common: we are all sinners.
I am a sinner.
He searched for me as a sinner, and accepted me as a sinner.
He filled me to the brim as a sinner, and while acknowledging always that I am a sinner, I am joyful in the knowledge that He has found me and given me rest.
I have become what He longs for you to become; what your inner self longs to become - one of The Found.

Step towards Him.
”Seek and you shall find,” - and in your seeking He will find you.

In His presence is the comfort you seek.

Presence

Awareness; - I have used the word more than a few times already, but being “aware” of its continued drifting in my mind as I begin to write, I feel I am, once more, being drawn to dwell on it further.
I am experiencing rather than simply hearing it as a word; I feel it as successfully conveying its own meaning to my whole person rather than merely suggesting it to my mind. It is making me fully aware of my awareness. In a self-fulfilling way, it invites and raises a full realization of meaning through an overlay of sound which cloaks its complete recognition.

All prayers are more than words; if they are not, we must question what they are doing in our lives.
Are they a form of security blanket which really provides no security at all? Words alone remain just that: - words alone.
Prayer does not need words to be prayer.
Prayer may be comprised of prayers, with few or many words, but the words themselves do not make prayer.
Prayer is communication: it is conveying one’s heart and its emotions to the security and love of an Eternity we may only suspect to be reality: the reality behind the presence of that “Other” we are unable to shake off.
It is our honesty in the presence of Truth; our need in the presence of Gift.
It is our brokenness in the presence of Wholeness; our shame and our hope in the presence of Knowledge.
It is our trust in the presence of Eternal Power.
Prayer is the laying open of our true selves at the feet of that Awesome Presence which is itself the ultimate Awareness.

The very feel of that word within me this evening, is as the gentlest movement of air upon my hand as I write: the faintest stirring from the hem of His cloak as my unseen Guardian glances (as it were) over my shoulder and passes me by.

It is only by approaching the edges of our belief, the edge of our awareness, that we can place ourselves in a position to receive that which is held out to us: the inexpressible love of God.

“Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.”

This short prayer is more than words. Like any other, it can be read or said by anyone, believing or unbelieving, aware or unaware, but it expresses something that could never arise from simply believing that there is a God, or believing in God.
Those few words arise from an awareness of God: from an awareness of the presence of a power, a force, an authority: an awareness of the presence of a Presence.
We need only the tiniest touch of that Presence to make us aware.
We need only the smallest hint of awareness to transform what we have been calling belief, into what we may now experience as faith.
We cannot be ‘nearly’ or ‘almost’ aware of that presence.

We speak of being close to death, and of dying as though it is a process. We all know what we mean in that context. As our bodies fail, as we age, we know there will come a time when everything has ceased working: the life of the body is over: the body is dead.
We can recognize the passage of time towards this point, and we use these expressions in universally accepted ways; but, at any single moment we are either alive or we are dead.
We cannot be dead until we are no longer alive.
We remain the one, and cannot be the other, right up to our dying breath.

Similarly, at the beginning of our lives, we are either alive or we are not.
Nobody today would say that a child has to be born to be alive; that a pregnant mother does not carry life within her womb; - but the arguments continue about the stages of our development in the womb.
When does a foetus become a viable human being? Should that be accepted as a valid question at all, in any situation other than a miscarriage or a premature birth?
It only makes any sense when thinking of the foetus outside the womb: - where it is not meant to be.
An ability to survive outside the womb is not the measure of the beginning of human life. Life is there long before.
All the way back - adult, youth, child, infant, newborn, foetus, embryo, blastocyst, zygote, - there is human life.
The fertilized egg is the beginning of a human life. It is where I began; it is where you began.
The ovum and the spermatozoon both have lives of their own, but it is only when they are combined that we as individual persons are created. As with death, we are either one or the other: at conception we either do not exist, or we exist: at one moment we are nothing, at the next we are everything, and we have life.

Now, well into our journey through this life, with a well developed awareness of ourselves and of the world in which we live, with our moment’s start behind us, and our physical end ahead of us, we either do or we do not become aware of God’s existence.
The merest suggestion of a breath, a touch, a fleeting half-thought, a something indefinable and ungraspable - however faint, in some vague way undeniable - this is all it takes.
That very beginning of an awareness, is awareness itself.
Awareness is itself a sense of the presence of God.

Come Holy Spirit, fill me; kindle your fire within me.
Fill the hearts of all who sense your presence, and kindle in them the fire of your love.

A precarious position

As soon as I begin to think too hard, everything goes wrong!
For the most part, what I have written here to date has flowed easily from my mind and heart, but today I have found myself struggling.
I have an idea of where I am heading, but it is a battle to find words that even approach the thoughts I wish to convey.
Experience tells me I am no longer allowing myself to be guided in the ways that led me to begin this stream of words. I am trying to drag some sort of sense from the sterile themes that rise entirely from my own mind, instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to guide me, to use me, to raise awareness through me.

Do I not also question the actuality and the truth of this supposed guidance?
Frequently! But years of faith confined have nurtured this faith set free.
At last I feel able to discern between the prompting of the Power that loves, and longs to save us, and that which would subdue me, and destroy my every good intention before I can utter a word.
I am further convinced that I am rambling in a meaningless way, by the realization that I have been rushing to produce something for posting on a particular date, the 17th January: a date on which memorable things have happened during my own spiritual journey.
A date I am trying to mark and commemorate for nothing other than personal reasons.
I am wandering from the path laid out for me, and I thank God for enabling me to journey far enough to become aware of my own wrong directions.
This is not where I am supposed to be, and this was not where I was supposed to be taking you.
Becoming increasingly verbose without appreciably drawing closer to the point, is a sure sign of trying to promote my own thoughts rather than those inspired by the Spirit: the Spirit who yearns for our acceptance and trust.

I am posting here the words I struggled with immediately before writing the above.
Should you care to read them, and by chance follow where I was going, then I am glad.
Otherwise, may they serve to demonstrate how easy it is to wander from the narrow way, especially when forgetting that the powers striving for the negation of all that is good in the world, only have to distract to undermine or subtly neuter the truth.
How apt my opening words turned out to be: - “Lacking awareness, we live precariously.”


Lacking awareness, we live precariously.
When becoming aware, we awaken a consciousness of our position but not necessarily of the dangers; we remain in a precarious position.
With the growth of awareness, we see more clearly the surface detail around us; we tend towards confidence in our assessment of our own lives, our judgment of others, and our place in the world, and, as we increasingly recognize the existence of something “other” - the presence of that something we may still not call God, and which we have, as yet, no idea nor thought of acknowledging - we hold it, as it were, at arm’s length.
We do this without thinking.

Effortlessly, we make and consistently maintain a new boundary: a new angle to our inbuilt sense of personal space.
If God’s presence rises a little in our consciousness, we gently ease it back: we simply return it to the other side of this line.
Everywhere we go, and in everything we do, this boundary goes with us. It does not get in our way, and it does not interfere; it soon becomes a normal and everyday part of our life.
As we move through the world, it traces a parallel path, a little to one side of us, but tracking us every inch of the way.

In defining a boundary we created a barrier.
Of our own devising it may be, but likely we have failed to comprehend the reasons behind our need for its construction.
Some boundaries have clearly become barriers; witness those between Mexico and the U. S. A., and between North and South Korea.
Some barriers are defiant and obvious. The Berlin Wall was. Israel’s Separation Wall in Palestine is.
The one we have conjured from within ourselves is far more subtle; we try to keep it out of sight and out of mind, and very much to ourselves, but -
One day, something happens, and the barrier begins to crumble.
However we struggle, we are unable to keep this all-pervading Presence out of our lives any longer.
As the wall disintegrates beside us, we find ourselves being knocked and buffeted by falling stones.
Viewed through another’s eyes and emotions, the obvious solution would be to turn completely away from it: to put distance between us and the source of our discomfort, but we are unable to do so. That apparently straightforward and easy option may not even occur to us.

Instead, we jump up onto the rubble, away from the rolling debris at its sides.
The boundary line we had been holding at arm’s length now runs right through us.
We try to deny it, but it is undeniable.
It has become unavoidable, and, though for some it may be instantly beautiful, for many of us it will be increasingly uncomfortable.

Perhaps for the first time, we know ourselves to be right on the edge of something; as though on the verge of a discovery.
It may seem inevitable; a certainty that will come to pass leaving us forever on the other side of the line, but this is not such an edge.
This is not like the approach of midnight on New Year’s Eve; this is not that kind of unavoidable edge. (see 1st January post)
This is the product of a boundary we marked out for ourselves: a boundary upon which we constructed a now collapsed barrier.
We stand atop the ruins, finding ourselves frighteningly perched upon the crest of a ridge.
On either side the ground slopes away from us in a mass of loose rock and scree.
The only safe ground appears so far away, beyond the ever narrowing ridge that stretches before us, higher, sharper, and more debilitating with each step and with each thought.
A precarious place to be.

“May God grant me to speak as He would wish
and conceive thoughts worthy of the gifts I have received …”
(Wisdom 7:15)

An essential solitude

The earliest stages of my own journey are hazily buried somewhere in my childhood, though there are memories of people and places clearly linking those early years with the present day.
One such is Stanbrook Abbey, a Benedictine convent in Worcestershire.
My parents were well known to the community there, and today I know my Christian roots to have been firmly planted in the rich soil of Stanbrook.
It was from there that I set out on my journey, though it would be forty years before I became aware of it: forty years of scarcely being aware of my journey at all: forty years in a state of almost total obliviousness to the presence and the calling of God.
I was not in the wilderness as I understand it, but I had certainly spent those years without ever being truly aware of God’s presence: a reality that now accompanies me at all times.

When my journey first became real to me, the power that drove me to continue what seemed the wandering of someone lost, simultaneously drew me towards itself.
This power was first manifested for me in the fellowship I found during that stage of my journey.
As I learned to trust it and be guided by it, this companionship became the basis of both my support and my perseverance, not just for that time, but for the years that followed.

Somewhere along the way, the physical presence of meaningful companions was withdrawn from me.
One person in particular, upon whom I had relied heavily: someone who had without doubt been God’s provision for me for a time, receded towards the horizon and eventually went out of my life.
This happened precisely when I felt least able to manage on my own. I clung to that presence and friendship all the more, and my dependence seemed heightened by any thought of absence.
The reality was that my feelings were merely the result of a misaligned dependence: a reliance that had taken me far too close to an edge I did not recognize until long after the contact had ended, and one which prevented my approaching the one God had prepared for me.
Bidden, they will come to us, almost as Angels in our hour of need: Spirit filled people who better understand the journey. They arrive as answers to our unspoken prayers, having responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and stepped into our lives to steady us, and to bring meaning to the trials we may be going through.
They may arrive, minister to us, and be gone within the hour, possibly never to be seen again.
They may remain with us for days, weeks or months, and they may become lifelong friends, but …
If we become more centred on the person than the presence of God within them, the true gift in their companionship is lost behind the human attraction. The potential blessings are obscured, and God will soon lead them away to wherever He has need of them.
Leave they must, and an avowed inability to stand alone will only make it more difficult for them to extricate themselves from the relationship.
Bidden they come, and, if bidden, so shall they leave.

This is what happened to me.
I had been unable to separate the person from the spiritual gifts with which God had endowed them.
I had experienced a large part of the blessings brought to me as coming from the person; but everything - everything including the arrival of that person in my life - had been provided by God.
Only through being returned to solitude was I brought to understand this.
Not just to understand, and believe, but gradually to delight in it: to revel in it, and to sing and dance within myself as the light of every new dawn seemed to heighten my awareness of His presence.
The physical solitude was much the same as that which I had been made to give up when grasped, shaken and emptied by the Holy Spirit, but the emotional and spiritual solitude was agonizingly beyond anything I had previously experienced.

This was the essential solitude.
This was the space in which I was slowly but relentlessly rebuilt after being emptied completely of all that I knew as myself.
Now I was truly in the wilderness, and nobody - however willing - could have come to my aid.
This was where I walked the edge utterly alone, with all possibilities entirely dependent upon my own strengths and weaknesses.
This was where I met the Presence that had been shadowing me for so long.
This was where anguish became joy; where Jesus became truly present to me, and where He finally moved in: where He went from an ungraspable Presence, to the Friend beside me, and then – not without pain and confusion - to the Power dwelling within me.

Writing this has reminded me of why I have been rather vague in my profile.
It really does not matter who I am.
If I have anything worthwhile to give or to say: if I bring anything good to any person’s spiritual journey, it is not me who gives it to you, it is the Spirit within me: the presence of Jesus in my life, that pours blessings upon you.
He longs to fill your life in the same way.
He needs you to become the person God planned you to be.
He awaits your invitation: your acceptance of His own invitation to dwell with Him; and He has work for you to do.
He has need of you, and will not rest till you have dismantled all your barriers, and welcomed Him into your heart.

Come Lord Jesus, come.

... for the journey

I have received different blessings at different times, according to my need and as provision for that which may later be asked of me.
At this time I am - as already declared – brim full; I am one of the 'Filled'.
Whoever and whatever we are, we may have been placed in each others’ paths: we each carry the potential for helping the other in our search for, and in our journey towards God.
We may find in each other the reality of God’s provision, and receive strength in accompanying each other as we approach the edge.

For anyone in need of support – perhaps as yet without such friendship and fellowship in a tangible form – why not allow your presence here to bring the encouragement you need.
We may have been brought here for that very reason.

Search for your greatest need, and name it; admit it to yourself, and then name it before God.
Give voice to that need, and place it before Him with a simple and honest cry for help.
Approach the edge of your awareness and belief; dare to offer Him your unbelief.

Let your hesitation be over; join me, as it were, as one of His followers and as one of His friends.
As one of the twelve suggested below, or, if gripped by an awareness of being something other than one of these: - The Forgiven perhaps, or The Sheltered, The Comforted, or The Emptied (as I once was) – whoever you know yourself to be.

The Named.
You have called me by my name. I hear you Lord.
The Touched.
You reached out and touched me . You have redeemed me Lord.
The Grasped.
You have drawn me to you. I know your acceptance of me Lord.
The Held.
You have held me fast. You have claimed me as your own Lord.
The Embraced.
You have enfolded me in safety. You have cleansed me Lord.
The Lifted.
You have raised me up. You have healed me Lord.
The Carried.
You have shouldered my weakness. Guide me always Lord.
The Moulded.
You have shaped me to your will. Steady me always Lord.
The Filled.
You have stilled me and calmed me. I am full to the brim Lord.
The Empowered.
You have wakened me from my sleep. You have enabled me Lord.
The Directed.
You have strengthened me and shown me the way. I shall obey you Lord.
The Sent.
You have commanded and sent me. Do with me what you will Lord.


The Magi – the three wise men – travelled together to the infant Christ.
How unlikely the whole thing must have seemed to human thought: how improbable the outcome of such a seemingly inconsequential birth.
Yet they made their journey from the East, following, not only a star, but an undeniable awareness, and bearing gifts for the Presence that had been born into the world.

Today we celebrate the Epiphany, the showing to the world: the arrival of these travellers at their destination.
They travelled together, towards the very edge of their understanding: towards the very lip of something eternally profound;
- the journey of each an “Amen” to the others.

You are the only one who knows where you are in your relationship with Him.
Your ongoing journey leads to the reality of the person He intends you to be: -
not a type of person, and not an anonymous member of a descriptive group as here contrived …
but you: - the utterly unique and irreplaceable you.

May He reveal Himself to you.
May He reveal Himself to each of us - as, in our turn, we approach the very edge …

Companionship ...

Even those of us who are well able to cope with most things alone, will enter places and times which are passed through more easily in the presence of a spiritual friend.
When we have begun our walk with Jesus as our true companion, the presence of others is no longer essential, though always remaining a welcome blessing. Until that time we may have to lean heavily on another.
God will have provided for us, but it is for us to recognize that provision.
When He places people in our path, shall we know them? Will we be able to accept the help or guidance offered? Shall we allow ourselves to be honest with them?

The most important question perhaps, is whether they will be able to recognize us as those in need of their support? Will they know us as having been placed before them? Will they respond to their prompting? Will they believe that, at that moment, they are God’s provision for us?
One day we may have those same questions asked of us.

We are all called to travel in the same direction: by our own separate routes, but all heading towards the same goal.
Jesus had his followers - at times thousands of them – but he had a group of close friends: the twelve apostles, Mary Magdalene, and others such as Martha, Mary and Lazarus, whose home provided him with a safe haven. These companions were led and taught through their closeness to Jesus; they were chosen; they had a developing faith; and they were always present to each other, supporting one another through the confusions, the doubts, and the astonishing experience of living with Jesus.
This is what we all need.
It is what I need to continue my journey, and it is what you will need in the future if you do not have need of it now.

If we place ourselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually in a group of travellers, as though one of the twelve, we shall be carried as we are helping to carry others; we shall have support in the knowledge of the existence of others, without knowing who they may be, and without ever knowing how many they really are. Our fellow travellers should not be thought of as individual characters so much as bearers of the gifts they have already received; they bring these gifts to share with each of us, as we bring our own blessings to share with them.
To have reached this point of awareness or belief, we have each been blessed in some way.
Do not doubt it!
Ponder on it; allow faith to grow in its search for an awareness of what you have already received.

Awakening

Awareness is quietly growing within us.
It may be experienced as arriving suddenly and apparently from nowhere, but this experience is merely the point at which it is first noticed, recognized and acknowledged.
We have sensed it: we have realized it; and in our first moments of hesitation and anticipation, we have named it, though still being unable to give it a name; and we have claimed it, and clung to it as our own, while still remaining unable to even grasp it.

Awareness is fed by a presence.
It grows in and with that presence, and is only realized through its growth within us reaching the level of our consciousness: through its being momentarily felt as something external to our own existence; a fleeting recognition of something “other”, that is as quickly gone as come, leaving us no external focus, but an all-pervading newness from which we are unable to separate ourselves.
We have been awakened.

This new-found wakefulness holds us close to the edges of belief.
Our only means of retreat is to fall asleep once more, and that is found to be almost impossible.
If we already believed in the existence of God, or in the probable existence of something we were not prepared to call God, but which seemed worryingly similar, we were already there; we were already at or beyond the edge. It will have been our presence there that awakened us, and brought us to realization: to an awareness of our belief.
If we had no such belief, nor growing curiosity, its proximity will now have become a part of us. Awareness will have brought us, if not instantly then inexorably, to the very edges of belief.

Whatever our background, upbringing, religion (or none), culture, wealth or poverty, intelligence, age; whatever our mistakes, regrets, failures or fears; our triumphs, our hopes, our dreams, we are, one way or the other, all brought to these same beginnings.
We are all brought, in our own separate worlds, to the edge of a new life; a life of equality which never seems to materialize fully because, from here on, every decision we make will have the power to change us as individuals: to lead us on, hold us back, or undo much that has gone before.
Every thought upon which I dwell, and each step I take, will carry me towards one thing and away from another.
Your own thinking, believing and acting will likewise decide your own growth, stagnation or disintegration.

We are forever moving apart while being called to unity.
We are forever called to unity while moving apart.

The unavoidable

Yesterday, at one second before midnight, we were still in 2006.
Today we are in 2007. (A happy and peaceful new year to everyone.)
We were in 2007 as soon as midnight had come and gone.
The twenty four hour clock showed 00:00. The minute, the hour, the day, the week, the month, the whole year was changed in that instant; a whole new beginning.
We measure the passage of time by these finest of lines. These narrowest of divisions, are all that lie between any two seconds or minutes: between any two years, centuries or millennia.
As midnight approached, anyone involved in the New Year anticipations will have found themselves approaching something similar to the far more meaningful edge that awaits us in so many circumstances and situations in our lives.

There is no going back from such an edge. We can shut it from our minds, but arrive it will, and pass, leaving us in a new place from which there is no return. An awaited death; an expected birth; a forthcoming marriage, or an ordination; an election; a new employment; a redundancy; a confession or admission; an arrest, a trial or verdict; a prognosis. Such as these will come and go throughout our lives, and though we may not remain long at such points, we are (however briefly) forced to recognize that such specific points of arrival do exist.
There is much to be thought on at these times; and if not at these times, then about these times: both before and after.
We shall no doubt return here …

… but there is more to the edge than this.

The right time and place

I referred to my uncertainty about starting at this time ...
not to the fact that I was writing at such a late hour, or to its being Christmas eve, though that did strike me as unusual (for me).
It was the whole business of having a blog at all; of having found myself involved in something which, only a few weeks ago, was a whole new concept to me: something that was there, something very real, something very much alive, but which, though not entirely unheard of, existed without any bearing whatever on my own life.
That I should somehow have allowed myself to become caught – however slightly – in its web, had taken me a little by surprise; that this should have happened at this time of year, when people’s minds – my own included – are so full of other things, added to that surprise.
I had gone from being someone who had not even looked at a blog, (what is a blog?), to somebody with one of his own, and who still had not looked at another blog until after beginning to post!

This did, for a moment, place my surprise at the level of astonishment …
but as quickly as did my doubts arise, they were dispelled and replaced by a reassurance that this is one of the places where I am meant to be; and the reasons for being here were suddenly so clear and seemingly obvious.
As for starting at this time? – what better time for the start of anything, than during the season of the birth of Jesus? A time when we recall the small beginnings of what was to become so great a power within our world.

The reasons for being here are centred on the simple fact that the world of blogs is a reflection of the real world as it is today.
The internet is exactly that, and is partly filled with much of the goodness we can imagine, produce, or hope for. It also contains much that is on a par with the realities of everyday living: the functional, the helpful, the necessary, as well as the useless, the superfluous, the merely attractive and the superficially desirable. It makes available to all, the immense forests of today’s marketplace, where both the supply and the demand are manufactured; where the driving force, in itself, is not one of evil, but where our own susceptibility and weakness result in the outcomes not always being good for ourselves and others.
It also gives space and prominence to that which is entirely contrary to the goodness which resides in each one of us. The product of the blackest corners of our natures: corners which are also to be found in ourselves, and which can so easily be enticed to walk more freely in the broader expanses of our lives by those who give free rein to them.
Everything we can conjure from our imagination, and much we could never have imagined, will be found waiting for us in what is not a virtual world, but a facsimile, a copy, an alluring shadow of the actual world in which we live. We may have to actively look for the worst of it, rather than finding it thrust upon us, but it is there.
“Seek and you shall find,” is frighteningly true in this world-wide web of availability.

Blogs? The same world: the same availability and accessibility: the same ranges of opinion, good and bad, loud and quiet: the same overall reflection of the real world. What gives blogs so much potential, is that they (to a greater extent) represent individuals: you, and you, and him, and her, and me …
“Seek and you shall find” ? The same is true, but its power is at once both weakened and strengthened by the reality of the one-to-one relationships that convey our thoughts to each other. It has the feel of walking through Galilee in a time without modern communications, not knowing whom we may meet, and relying upon the spoken word from a stranger to either attract or otherwise. Perhaps in this world of computer-screens and keyboards, we may chance upon the True Teacher: the Master who meets us at the well, in an empty and arid land.

An outwardly weakened power, as it is offered and conveyed by the apparent insignificance of a single person.
A strengthened power, as it may be conveyed and made available through the unassailable power of the Holy Spirit: a power beyond the confines of any voice that would restrain, deny or blaspheme against it.
The fragility of such voices is laid bare by their own strenuous but sterile efforts to undermine the faith of others, rather than to advance their own non-existent beliefs.
In the aggressive efforts of the actively ungodly, unbelief is portrayed as a flaccid state of mind wallowed in by the pathetic and the chronically hard-hearted. Unbelief in the mind of a thinking man is something to be approached, engaged, and (almost) admired: a state of mind which is in itself a form of longing, and one which, once engaged, can only serve to build upon the faith of both parties. The seeking unbeliever simply awaits a hand to lead him towards the edge which he or she senses, but from which he constantly veers away.

It is essential that when we are asked to speak out, we do not remain silent, or speak only where our voices are already known. Silence gives free access to indifference and evils that should never be given their freedom.
There are many who seek after truth, and all that is good; they also must be enabled to find that which they seek.

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Following

A few hours ago, I was not sure whether this was a good time to have started posting to a blog, or, as I am experiencing it, to have started pouring out that which wells up within me.
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.
It is as though my mind has been hijacked by a hacker: 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. It heads in the same direction, but carries me with it instead of allowing me to make my own way.
I know I am not encountering it because it happens to be going my way: it has always forged ahead in the same direction. I am only urged on and guided by it, through a series of decisions that have led me to set out, and to persevere in the direction it has intended for me.
I am, for the moment - and such I hope to remain - a follower: a disciple.
I am led by the Spirit. I am led towards the other shore - away from the crowds – but not without being compelled to hold out my hands to those who stumble along the way: to steady them in the ways I have been steadied in my own times of need.

I must follow where I am led, trusting that my use of words will not too often lead me off the path; trusting that this same Holy Spirit will keep a tight rein on my imagination, my vanity, my pride; trusting that whenever I am called onwards, my inability to walk on water shall not allow me to fear stepping into the unknown: an unknown where that fear is abolished by the waiting hand of an ever present friend.

The hand of He whose birth is the real reason for the celebrations of which we are now a part, is held out to you. It is always held out to you!
Tomorrow we celebrate the birth of Jesus. The same Jesus who has died, who is risen, who is waiting to become your closest friend, and who is present in the power of that same Holy Spirit who has set me in motion on these pages.

I would ask that you add your prayer to my own: - that I shall not lead anyone astray through my thoughts and words while soliloquizing at the edge I have found for myself.

A peaceful, holy and joyful Christmas to you, to your families, and to all on whom your smile may fall during this awesome season.
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The growth of awareness

How does one articulate an awareness that has grown from nothing, and has seemingly come from nowhere; an awareness that brings with it the beginnings of a knowledge that it has indeed come from somewhere: from an indefinable source that somehow beckons within us?

I heard of God during my childhood. My early years were enveloped in an undoubted and secure atmosphere of trust in a God I heard much about, knew little of, but whose existence and presence I never thought to doubt. The sun shone, the rain rained, the darkness came, and the dawn always – but always – came.
I heard of God, and, without knowing it, I heard from God.
It is only in this budding awareness that I am enabled to say that: only from my present vantage-point that I know He was always there, and that He continues to lead me whenever I am willing to be led, and, rather than leaving me to my own mistakes, He tracks me whenever I leave the path He has prepared for me.

It is through this process shadowing our lives that black and white first begins to blur into shades of grey. It is through the continuation of this same process that the shades of grey revert towards black and white once more; the dividing line between the two narrowing down to what is frequently experienced as a frighteningly thin screen: an almost non-existent separation between two opposites that vie for supremacy in every aspect of a sometimes anguished conscience.

This is where we can meet our truth; this is where the edge awaits our strength or our weakness, our success or our failure, our acceptance or our rejection. This is where we either turn and run, or shut our minds in a pretence that will never admit to having been there.
Or shall we strive to take our place among the few?
Will we stand, and battle to take our place within the power of the Spirit? - the power that holds and empowers God's people? - the power available to all who are willing to become as lights in the darkness of today's world?
Will we dare to approach and linger at the edge?

Wherever this may lead

Wherever this may lead, I hope it will lead both of us there: not just you, and not just me.
We may sojourn here awhile together, but it is in the nature of the very edge that we shall each travel our separate ways towards, or away from our goals. That we share a common destination is the only realization we can truly share, though our meeting, acknowledgement, and passing by, cannot help but feed us and bring that much needed hint of confirmation: - that quiet "Amen" to the sometimes doubted validity of our journey.

Inevitably we shall find ourselves alone at the very edge, but an awareness of other solitary minds close by, each with its own struggle, its own yearning, and its own longing for peace and truth, may enable us to remain close to the edge through every emotion, and in whatever situation or circumstance this day, or tomorrow, may bring.

Let us seek it, find it, and focus on it. Let us not hide from it, or run from it.
All things are dreamt and found at the very edge.