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)
