To each her own

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Job 22:28-29)

Bringing it home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but something active and genuine.”

(1 John 3:18)