Glorious

‘He veils the sky with clouds,
and provides the earth with rain,
makes grass grow on the hills ...’
(Psalms 147:8)

Without doubt each one of us has been gifted with a wider range of talents and abilities than we are likely to be given credit for.
That is how it should be, as the credit is not ours to receive: not for the abilities we use openly, nor for those of which we are aware but which we keep hidden, and, in the eyes and mind of no man should we ever be credited for those of which we ourselves remain unaware. For any ability or particular attribute received, credit is due to the source of the gift; the Giver is the genius, the worker of wonders, and the power that awakens the gift within us as we respond to His call in our encounters with sorrow, fear, injustice and despair in the lives of others. I believe it was Aristotle who said, 'Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.' Even in the most unbelieving hearts and minds, our talents are of little use on the wider expanses of this life and in the grand scheme of things, if they are used only for our own ease and pleasure, accumulation and ultimately futile advancement.
But it is not only the wonderful ‘above nature’ gifts God has given us that we can so easily neglect or hide, or even deny. The very fact that we have life is itself an awesome gift, and one we fail to recognize every day. Being alive involves countless processes, interconnections and inter-reliances that together maintain this temporary form that houses the creative miracle that is us. Our life as people upon this astonishing planet is utterly filled with the inherent gifts we overlook with every step and every breath we take.

The reasons that drove me towards the articulation of thoughts, and the subsequent writing that has conjured these pages from the mists that swirl around and within me, were, and still are, centred on our need to become the people we were made to be. My own increasing awareness that my journey to date has been of far greater importance than I could ever previously have realized, has brought with it a heightened sense of urgency with regard to the need for others to persevere with their journeys toward becoming the fully realized men and women God created them to be, and the need for those not yet walking their paths to find that indefinable spark, that moment’s pause, that strange inner glance, whatever the particular trigger may be for each of them to begin to discern that distant kaleidoscope of hope, love and light on their presently monochrome horizons.
And there, in that un-colourful word, is a reminder of what we regard as the everyday things of this life either obscuring what lies beyond, or hiding the beauty of their own truth within their too familiar sights and sounds, and scents and feelings. I could easily have refrained from describing other people’s horizons as being monochrome; In earlier years I would have anticipated voices with their ‘How dare you ...’ , and ‘What gives you the right ...’ , but from the reserves of excuses lying within our hearts, we can all conjure reasons to not do almost anything.

The word would not have been in my mind if it were not for the sort of day it has been, with occasional brightness, but clouds, heavy showers and mists making it a predominantly monochrome one.
The greening of the countryside with its Cowslip yellow, and the simple glory and natural purity of white and green that is the damp woodland carpets of flowering Ramsons, can never be made monochrome, but yesterday evening, having gone from the former to the even deeper peace of such Wild-Garlic scented woods gracing the western slopes of the Malvern Hills, I left their cleansing and healing power behind as I rose onto the bare hilltops above the Gullet Quarry.
My progress was purposeful – as it almost always is when I come here – but while always drawn to give silent praise to God by the natural wonders through which I pass, I rarely stop unless for physical reasons: the need to catch my breath, or in response to urgent pleadings from legs when climbing steeply to this point. But this time I had to stop, not out of physical necessity, but in obedience to God’s gentle unspoken word.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10) With the display that awaited me, I could not have done otherwise.

“Stand! Be still! Acknowledge me, recognize me, know me for who I am.

All that is in the world is mine. Look! Open your eyes and see: I lay my glance and my touch on all before you.

Behold! My glory fills all heaven and earth.

You have brought yourself to me, and I reveal the glory in which I would have you bathe.

You have seen me in the ablutions of thundery rain, of dripping boughs, of trickled streams and soaking pools; you have prepared yourself as did my people of old. Their following of my Law, their preparations, their focus on my Presence in the Temple was tied to my covenant of preparation, my laying of foundations for my gift to all mankind: my Son, the world’s Saviour, your Redeemer.

My Temple now is where it has always been; it is time for mankind to see: it is time to grasp the fullness of all that has been revealed; it is above and beneath you, it is all around you: it is within you, and your coming to me is your part in the building of my dream: my Kingdom: my Will in all that I have made.

Behold! I reveal myself to you in cloud and rain, in swirling mist and caressing air, in swallowed horizon and obscured valley, in grumbling skies, in passing brilliance of sunlight shafts, in atmosphere laden with the water of life, in drenched rock, in sodden turf, and in wallowing mud.

Be still, and know that I am God.”

The magical scene spread before me was colourless, utterly monochrome, with every greyness – brooding and bright – from charcoal depths right through to bespangled and shimmering silver. With all woodland pattering of drips and drops left behind, and the last whispers of rain now ceased after the downpours: with the air held still, mists poised in suspense and no longer riding the billows of treetop and hillside, the only sound reached softly down from the vastness above me. The immensity, and the incomprehensible beauty of simplicity, spoke in creation’s muffled and slowly receding basso profundo, “Behold !” ........ “Behold !”................ ”Behold !”

‘... then the Temple was filled with the cloud of the glory of God.' (2 Chronicles 5:13)

Lord, lead every person to the time, the word, the touch, the spark, the gift, the loss, the joy or the pain, that will cause them to pause for that first moment, that first wondering, that first questioning.
Draw them into an awareness of Your Presence; lead all who already seek your face, to walk beside them on their journey into the wonders hid within seemingly colourless lives.

‘Acclaim The Lord, all the earth,
serve The Lord with gladness,
come into His presence with songs of joy!’
(Psalms 100:1,2)

... or free ?

Around the base of the tree – then only a few centimetres in diameter - there had always been a tump of grass, and with that part of the garden only being worked when it was cleared of growth at the end of summer, when the wild flowers had all set their seed, that was almost unseen. Until the year when I randomly chose to remove the tump I had not been aware that most of the bulk was not grass but an ants nest. It had built up the soil around the tree to some twenty centimetres above normal ground level, creating conditions that tended towards those resulting from planting too deep. Being an ants nest the soil would have been kept aerated by tunnels and passages, never forming into a completely solid mound of earth, and I assume it was this that prevented the death of the tree. It may not have died, but year after year the effects were well nigh insurmountable.
Having removed everything down to level ground I had wondered whether it would make any difference and hoped the tree might gradually pick up over the next few years. It did not take that long. The following spring the leaves arrived as usual, but then it transformed itself; it grew rapidly, flourishing, blossoming and bearing abundant fruit by the time I next took my sickle to clear the ground around it. It has since gone from strength to strength, and though it was always hoping to be, longing to be, and striving to be a pear tree, it was only when the intended fruit were finally produced that it could proclaim itself to be so.

These thoughts have been brought to mind by the picture of a tree on a book cover: a line drawing or engraving that shows a mature tree with a correspondingly full canopy and substantial root system. But it also shows the ground level as being half way up the length of the trunk; this completely contradicts one of the general rules that enable a tree to reach the level of maturity shown, and it was this that brought me out into the garden to view this year’s first blossoms opening, a proof of life in all its fullness without which this pear tree could never have borne fruit.

We cannot avoid the world in which we live. For as long as we live upon it we are of this place, but we are not made to wallow in it.
The seed of something far beyond our physical being is sown into our very existence, and the innocent awareness of that otherness glows in every infant and young child. We are called to recognize and follow that ‘first light’: to nurture it when retained, to search for it and rekindle it when lost, for it will never go out. It is always there to lead us back to where we are meant to be.
If, for whatever reason, we are buried too deeply in the world, we will not flourish.
If, in whatever way, our minds are too deeply engrossed with the world or any aspect of it, we cannot turn our spirit to matters beyond our day to day life, and without that ability we cannot increase our willingness to look in that direction.
Without looking we shall never see, and without a willingness to do so how shall we begin our search ?
Without reason to search we will fail to hunger and thirst, and without such needs how shall we pull ourselves out from the mire ?
How shall we feel the yearning and generate the longing that leads us to find our place in the world ? – with our feet firmly upon it, our charity laid out for all mankind, but with our hearts and minds rising above it ?

How ? By tapping into the life giving streams that will feed us and bring us to the place God made us to fill.
The sap is rising, not only in the trees around us but within ourselves; we know it all too well. It is part of our physical makeup, welling up within us as lust, anger, greed, gluttony, all those surges of feeling that have the power to swamp our inner convictions and our rationality.
We cannot rise above such things alone; in this life our feet will be forever anchored to the world: we cannot be completely done with such feelings while we still live. What enables us to conquer all that would rise within us, is the spiritual equivalent of the finely-falling and life-giving rain in which I stood while contemplating the pear tree: God’s grace; and the equivalent of the birch-sap surging into every extremity of its tree as shown by the drip, drip - as though of tears: God’s overflowing provision for each one of us.
God’s grace is freely given: it is there for you, for me, for everyone. Dear Lord, wherever would I be without it ?
And we are beckoned to the source of life, to the wellspring of spiritual sap that has the power to calm the flow of all that rises naturally within us. If we do our best to disconnect our taproot from the attractions and distractions of the world, gaining nourishment instead by grafting ourselves onto the ever-blossoming, ever-fruitful, ever-living vine that is our Saviour, our Shepherd and our Guide, we shall find ourselves within reach of our full potential, blossoming and bearing the fruit for which we were made.

“As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself,
unless it remains part of the vine,
neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine,
you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me, with me in him,
bears fruit in plenty ...”
(John 15:4-5)

Slave ...?

Standing on moss soaked by rain, with barely more than a heavy mist still falling upon me, I am surrounded by nature’s unstoppable surge into hope and fulfilment.
Everything in the garden and surrounding countryside has begun the wonderful process of bursting forth into new growth, into bud and into green, into blossom and into eventual fruitfulness. This gentle fall of moisture is matched by the unseen upward flow in every plant around me, and nothing brings that home more than the constant dripping from the cut ends of small branches trimmed late from a still bare looking Birch tree. The sap is rising: awakening, rousing, moving, growing, yearning and praising: bursting forth into exuberance and a maximized potential of nature’s inbuilt compliance with God’s will. Life itself is rising from the earth, lifting itself from the solidity of the ground that spawned it to find unimagined expression in becoming what it was planned to be.

There are many general rules we all follow without thought and without question. Our health and happiness, our general wellbeing, and even life itself depends upon this automatic adherence to what we may regard as being common sense.
We need to breathe fresh air, and remaining in a sealed space will eventually deprive us of essential oxygen. Understanding this gives us the knowledge that, for example, children should not place plastic bags over their heads. We do not step off a kerb and walk across a busy road without first looking and listening; we do not leave pans of boiling water unattended on the hob, and we do not turn on gas appliances without igniting the gas.
There are general rules in everything, and whenever we use our initiative and resourcefulness to bend or steer natural processes to suit our own inclinations or appetites, we can easily fail to recognize or ignore some of them. This is not an inbuilt part of us as human beings, but it is an inherent part of the arrogance that afflicts so much of humankind.
Some rules may not be so obvious, and even when recognized are not always accepted as meaningful. They are seen more as widely repeated coincidences that have become the norm, and are thus dismissed as having no particular value in the web of interactions that have combined to make our world the way it is. Rising sea levels, deforestation, drought, overcrowding, poverty, famine, pollution, - the list goes on and on. All such things are consequences of our unthinking attitude to the world in which we live, and, even more ashamedly, our selfish disregard for our fellow human beings.

The rapidly greening trees and bushes around me are the product of some of these general rules having been left undisturbed and undisputed, but the particular tree I have been drawn outside to look at is worth the look only because I changed the circumstances in which it had been struggling to live.
Several years passed without my noticing anything particular about it, and several more during which I wondered why it did not seem to be growing much. Every year it came into leaf, looked healthy enough throughout the summer, shed its leaves in autumn and ended up looking almost the same as the previous year. It was clearly alive but was not really growing. It was going nowhere and achieving nothing. It was born of the ground upon which it stood, but all possibility of maturity and bearing fruit was in some way still buried deep in that ground. I am reminded once more that, until more recently, I have never thought of myself as a gardener; those years would not have left the tree untended had I truly been one.

I have always known that when planting or transplanting trees, they should be placed no deeper into the soil than they were when in their original position. It is one of those general but important rules. The Royal Horticultural Society advice includes the following:
‘It is often assumed that the most vulnerable part of a tree is the canopy or rootball but the stem collar is highly susceptible to damage such as physical impact damage from garden machinery and the slower, less obvious, but often terminal, effects of planting at the wrong depth.’
The tree before me had not been planted or transplanted by anything other than nature’s own progress. It grew where it had begun its life, and I suppose I had the automatic assumption that it would therefore sort things out correctly for itself.
I have also read elsewhere that, ‘If the stem collar is submerged in soil the bark is liable to rot resulting in the gradual death of the tree.’ This makes no mention, nor even hints of a person being involved in the process, and, if I had previously read and absorbed these words, perhaps I would have appreciated the situation years earlier.
I love trees. They have already come into my thoughts here more than once, including their need for help when in the stranglehold of Ivy, but here again is an example of my failure to recognize a need.

How easily we are caught up in living our own lives, and how readily our preoccupations make us blind to the needs of others, even those closest to us and whom we dearly love.
And could the world as a whole be further removed from the way our consciences tell us that it should be ?
Are we not disregarding one of this life’s general, basic but essential rules ?
How unlike the early Christian community ...

‘None of their members was ever in want ...’ (Acts 4:34)

A hillside seat

No other person has ever been able to provide for the needs of everyone, and nor shall such a one be found in the future unless it be Jesus Himself.
With loaves and fishes the superficial need for food was satisfied, and this added to the fascination of the crowd that followed Him. That need was superficial in that it was not urgent: nobody was starving. We are told that the people were hungry, but their hunger was not yet so great that they would return to their homes; they still hungered more for the experience of being part of the crowd in the presence of this man they had heard about and talked about, listened to, and had themselves seen doing amazing things. The physical hunger was overridden by their hunger for the experience: their enthusiasm for the charismatic presence of Jesus and their anticipation of further remarkable happenings. They had not followed Him into the countryside just to leave Him when they got hungry, and later to learn that they had missed the highlight of the day. Something similar may have already happened to some of them and they would not want to hear their friends repeating the same excited words, “Oh, you should have stayed ! You’ll never believe what happened !”

That same enthusiasm and apparent need for the feeling, the sensation, the experience, influences us today.
We can be so engrossed in something that we lose track of time, suddenly realizing that hours have passed unnoticed. We are ‘awakened’ by the phone ringing, by someone arriving home, by a sudden realization that it is getting dark, or that dawn is breaking. Though there are aspects of this which may be annoying and frustrating, as well as others which raise the possibility of unwelcome consequences, the blanketing effect is not only over the exterior and physical awareness – such as the passage of time and hunger – but also over any consciousness of what our deepest needs really are. Our hunger for the experience swamps us completely, leaving us not only without a sense of ongoing purpose and lacking a realization that we have come to a halt on our spiritual journey, but with a contrary belief that we have suddenly been lifted and carried forward along our path. We feel we have arrived somewhere; we are in Our Lord’s presence, and we think all we have to do is remain where we are, basking in expectation and enthusiasm, watching and waiting for what happens next. Surely He will provide for us; He will not let us go hungry.
We have, as it were, seated ourselves beside other spectators on a dusty hillside. We have set up camp among the five thousand hungry followers of Jesus. Having heard about Him, and having found ourselves drawn to Him, we have gone through the psychological turnstile and eagerly await the performance. We wonder what He will do next.

That for which He searches our hearts and minds, the deeper and greater need we each have buried within us, is obscured by our sensational and emotional excitement. Jesus is Jesus. He did things we could never dream of doing, but in confirming this truth within ourselves, we tend to blind ourselves with regard to those things of which we are in fact capable. We negate all hope of discovering and activating the gifts with which we have been endowed: the abilities we have been called to use for the benefit of our neighbours near and far, and for the furtherance of God’s will for all mankind.
In any self-assessment – unlikely to have resulted from a conscious decision – we will, in all probability, limit the scope of any perceived possibilities to a mere shadow of our true potential. Some will chase off to the opposite extreme, and they may be even less likely to find where they are meant to be. Hurrying in any direction is likely to be evidence of completely missing, or at least misinterpreting our guidance and spiritual instruction. Our sense of direction is confused and we are swamped again. We think we are ready to risk walking on water, but we are still on dry land: we did not even board the boat.

In His provision of food for the crowd Jesus showed how easily people in general can be satisfied by the availability of superficial satisfaction, the comfort of a physical need fulfilled quelling all conscious dissatisfaction with the barren wasteland that is their inner life. If some were conscious of anything beyond the free meal itself, the stunning reality for many would have been the provision of the food, whereas the truly miraculous was not this sign but the presence among them of the man who wrought it in their midst. The human body does not live long without being fed and watered, but the real food on offer that day was the word of God: the life-bringing words of Jesus. Ultimate truth pronounced by the Word of God Himself, incarnate and seated among them on a previously empty hillside. Eventually most will have wandered away without noticing or acknowledging this truth, content with having been there and with having had the experience.

In his ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’ (II:VII), St John of The Cross writes of spiritual persons who ‘... think that it suffices to deny themselves worldly things without annihilating and purifying themselves of spiritual attachment.’ Our longing for the feelings, and our wallowing in emotions associated with spiritual experience are seductive examples of that attachment. Even more than the physical food, this distracts us from our journey and keeps us from hungering to do as Christ would have us do. As St John goes on to say, we ‘... seek only sweetness and delectable communion with God. This is not self-denial, and detachment of spirit, but spiritual gluttony.’
.

With meaning

How careful we have to be in choosing our words if we are to successfully convey our intended meaning.
Whatever the particular words may be, they have their own specific meaning or range of meaning and this is unchanging. The words themselves convey their own truth, and, if we are to leave the hearer or the reader with the intended understanding, any choice of interpretation has to be narrowed right down by the context in which those words are being used as well as by our considered use of supplementary words and careful use of grammar. And still we can get it wrong through the simple fact that we have spoken aloud or shared our written words with others. We are no more able to transfer the fullness of our thoughts and feelings to the minds of others than we can fully share that which fills our hearts. Even when the words have flowed from what fills the heart and their production has been heartfelt, they carry no guarantee of being received in the same way. The best we can hope for is to get close to their doing so for at least some of those who give attention to what we say.

Clearly there are vast areas in which the numbers of potential hearers has no bearing whatever on the audibility of the message -“those who have ears to hear” again - but even among those who may show interest, or who are searching hard for something to touch their own spirit, the words, and the way of writing or speaking must suit their own inner world if they are to receive what we are striving to offer.
What the actual situation is for any of us remains unknown, but it is obvious that a well known name in a person’s particular field of interest will have a far greater reach and influence than a random unknown voice such as my own. However, anyone using words on any subject, in any way other than in idle chatter, must assume that someone somewhere is listening; without that assumption their efforts are pointless and will remain forever sterile, and that is not what words are about.

I have my own way of thinking about this in relation to my own words.
As a start-point I have my reasons for beginning this ‘Soliloquy at The Very Edge’, as already spoken of in various earlier posts. My sense of having been filled to overflowing remains, and though it seems to ebb and flow in different directions the underlying feeling is still of brimming over: of having no control over something that quietly wells up within and flows ceaselessly into the world around me. The sense of indestructible peace this has generated in my life is undeniable but unexplainable. Though I may try to explain it at times I am aware that it is in fact beyond words; it is beyond whatever fills my heart. It is beyond my ability to explain because it is beyond my ability to fully comprehend; and the reason for that is simply because it is not from within me: it has been poured into me from without. It is sometimes tear-jerkingly, and always awe-inspiringly from beyond.
This peace is not a prompting as such for me to do anything, but is so significant in my life, and so much something I wish everyone could share in, that it has the same effect: it is part of my reason for being here, and without it I am sure I would not be filled to the brim and would not be continually drawn to the edge. It is a peace born of having had burdens lifted and of having been lifted from the dust; another step along the way (see 06.01.07 post). ‘You have raised me up. You have healed me Lord.’

The product of this is my belief that I have something to say. I still do not know what it is, but I am still here in the hope that some of it will leak out among the words that I pray do not overly confuse, distract or detract from my own journey or from anyone else’s.
If any of us feels we have something to say we should firmly believe that someone somewhere wants to hear it. I believe that in my own case and would urge you to that same belief in relation to your own thoughts and words. A God given confidence has to start somewhere, and this could be the starting point for you. How can we begin to move towards His will for us, towards becoming the people we are meant to be, without a confidence that He is calling us to follow, not from some far off place but from right beside us and from within us ?
I tell myself that one in every ten people who come to and view these pages just might linger long enough to wonder whether ... ? ... and of these perhaps half may find something that makes them stay a little longer (one in twenty).

Our interests may be many and varied, they overlap, they wax and they wane, and it takes time for interest, questioning and wondering to develop into the recognizable beginnings of a journey. I count on only one in five of these to stay the course long enough to become one of my unknown companions.
I am now down to one in a hundred, and this is where I tell myself I may be needed – but for three out of every four of these it will be for a brief period only. For them, I am perhaps part of God’s provision for them during a short stage of their journey; they may walk with me for a while until they are helped further along the way through their own encounters with truth. For one it will be the love and the touch of God the Father, for another the presence of The Risen Lord: the reality of Jesus in their life. For the third it will be the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit that lifts them into a whole new life. They will meet further down the road when the ungraspable truths of the Holy Trinity become an intangible reality for them.
And what of the fourth ? The one person in every four hundred who stumble upon my words ?
This is the man or woman who, though hopefully finding their rebirth with the other three, also has need of a more tangible and fallible fellow traveller: a fellow sinner who continues to struggle along the way but who is resolved never to give up the search.

This fellow sinner is me.
And that one person in four hundred is the one for whom I most need to continue speaking from the heart.

All this is simply a way I have of trying to rationalize something which cannot be assessed and calculated in that way.

It is meaningless other than as a reminder that if my words are helpful to anyone – to only one – my efforts are worthwhile. It helps to anchor my belief that everything I feel compelled to do is of some importance: that it is filled with meaning. And if there were ever to be a group of twelve of us, separate, unknown, yet still companions for the journey, that number would be the remnant of four thousand eight hundred people who had found this spot. The fact that there are billions of us is not relevant; we are each called to do our bit, wherever we are, and I have found a way of attempting to help in the feeding of five thousand.

‘May the words of my mouth always find favour,
and the whispering of my heart,
in your presence, Lord,
my rock, my redeemer.’
(Psalms 19:14)

Beyond compromise

'Words flow out of what fills the heart.’
A heart that is full cannot fail to find some way of bringing its fullness to expression, whether that be through a naturally generated and unthinking attitude to life and the world, or through a leaking out of emotion, the increasing pressure of which refuses to be contained within anything corresponding to the self. Both give expression to the underlying mindset and the moral, social, ethical and spiritual values of the individual, but whereas the former will, in some way and to a greater or lesser extent, colour not only words but thoughts and actions in all circumstances, the latter may produce a similar reaction and outcome but infrequently, unexpectedly and seeming randomly in even the smallest of situations. The one makes it impossible to hide whatever truly rules one’s life in spite of occasional strong feelings that seem to witness in an opposite direction; the other makes it impossible to contain an expanding compulsion to say or to do something, even when this may be contrary to all the ingrained and accustomed traits of the person’s character.
Examples of the former would be people who are truly humble, and those who are blindly arrogant. Those whose lives are based on a notable degree of goodness or of badness are unable to disguise their true colours other than fleetingly. Unless we live in the impossibly narrow ‘no-man’s land’ that is a perfect balance between the two – and such a compromise can never be regarded as good – we should be aware of our inclusion in this group, but, to the degree that is appropriate to each of us, most of us are also examples of the latter. It is our fundamental goodness or badness that, however well we have managed to keep it under wraps, will at some point become un-containable: it will burst free from the confines of our heart.

A perfect balance between good and evil could be mistakenly sensed and experienced as a state of calm, of quiet and of peace. In its withstanding of the pressures, temptations and inclinations to allow a natural drift towards an unquestioned response to our animal tendencies, it could be proclaimed as a victory of spirit over nature, of true humanity - as shown to us in its perfect form by Jesus Himself - over mere animality, a conquest of good over evil. This is one of many self-deceptions into which we may be led by our reliance upon our senses and our interpretations of experience.
Such a balance, if it exists at all, is fleeting: it is impossible to maintain. If we find ourselves in such a state the calm is unreal; the quiet and the apparent peace offer no contentment and no safety from darkness and fear. The balance is maintained only by a tension that constantly strains its tethers to the limit, stretching them so taut that the stillness in which we find ourselves agonizes on the verge of tearing itself asunder; the impossibility of sustaining the tension destroys all peace even while we believe it to exist. We cannot occupy such a place; it is truly a ‘no-man’s land’: a place where no person belongs, where there is no place for either side, where even life and death cannot be as they are meant to be.
To briefly find oneself in such a place is not to be at the edge in any meaningful and potentially edifying way; it is to perch dangerously on the knife edge of a ridge with no possibility of prolonged survival without falling to one side or the other. As soon as a tendency in one direction or the other makes itself known, we are gone. Compassion, anger, frustration, grief, joy, longing, desire, fear, hatred, love ... something triggers an undeniable inner response and we speak, or we act: we are unable to resist an honest response to our compulsion.

The perfection of human life shown to us by Jesus is not a compromise that results in evil being immobilized and merely held at bay; it is a blossoming of goodness that bears fruit in the complete neutering and disarming of badness. It is a conquest of all that tries to undermine the goodness that lies within each of us: it does not destroy evil but rises above it in a way that enables us to stride easily and confidently over what had once appeared to be insurmountable barriers.

The balance then is not what we seek: it is not our aim.

We are called to be ourselves, and in following that call we are led towards becoming the persons we were made to be.
We are called to goodness and into the light, to stand as beacons above the entanglements of our shadowy world.

We are called to respond to the fullness of our hearts: to speak out and act in accordance with whatever guidance we may receive.

We will know that prompting when it comes. It will be impossible to deny.

“For I am full of words
and forced to speak by a spirit within me;
within me, it feels like new wine seeking a vent,
bursting out of new wine-skins.
To gain relief, I must speak,
I must open my lips and reply.”
(Job 32:18-20)

Speaking out

One of the recurring themes of my spiritual journey has been that it occasionally seems to come to a stop. Not a full stop, and never giving any sense of completion nor of failure to achieve the aims of the journey, but rather as though I have stepped upon a ‘pause button’ during my walk. The urge to continue is heightened by my apparent inability to do so, and that inability is locked in with an inner struggle which, whatever the particular details at the time, is invariably born of the same underlying choice: - to speak out or to remain silent.

Within the last twelve months this has happened four times, each with its own distinct subject matter, and, as well as having learned that there are times when remaining silent seems absurd, but during which that silence is required as part of a compliance with Our Lord’s instruction to trust Him, there are other occasions when failing to speak out and generally shunning any form of publicity contradicts our longing and our professed intention to follow Him.

When I first sat down to begin thinking about posting to this blog, I was battling with that same choice; do I actually go ahead with it, or do I give in to my nervous confusion over making my thoughts known? Do I venture forth, taking what felt like an enormous step into the unknown, or do I rapidly retreat into being the quiet, reserved and for the most part hidden person that I more naturally am? That I took the step is now clear for all to see, but is particularly clear to myself. It was meant to be, and I am sometimes astonished by the cumulative effect of the words I have written. The soliloquy has been going on for years, and much of it has been at the very edge, but in having brought some of it to the written page I have begun to make more real and meaningful that which had tended to have a nebulous dreamlike quality.

I have recently been in a similar do-I-don’t-I situation over making myself more known. In fact I do not mean that at all; what I have said in my profile still stands. It is the blog itself, and the thoughts contained therein that I wish to make more known. Experience has taught me that sitting in silence waiting for others to come with the very things we most need leads to a long lonely vigil. There is a place for such things in life, and there will be times when that may be asked of us, but in the busy marketplace with stallholders calling and chattering all around, we can not expect to make ourselves known, let alone sell our wares to those who may be looking for them, by sitting silently in the background. We must at least give ourselves the chance of being found by those who may enjoy and benefit from what we offer. The need for the promotion of all that is good in the marketplace must never be forgotten, for the presence of all that is bad (and the myriad forms of compromise) continues undiminished.

'For words flow out of what fills the heart. Good people draw good things from their store of goodness; bad people draw bad things from their store of badness'(Matthew 12:34-35)

Hence my recent decision to add this ongoing stream of words to more lists of what is available.
Having made the decision not to remain too silent, I can rest in the knowledge that others are now, as it were, speaking out for me.
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With us still

We all love good stories, but the satisfaction we derive from them, whether intellectual, emotional, or moral, tends to bring all enjoyable and meaningful tales within the bounds of the same mental storehouse. This does not involve any drastic adjustments, bending or pruning, as there is always plenty of room in which to file new stories, or new versions of old ones, and for almost every story we can imagine this means we retain it in all its detail and complexity. Any part or facet we fail to recall must be attributed either to inadequacies of our memory or to inattention when the story was being told.

With the passage of time, however, I have become increasingly aware that there is one story I have never quite been able to file away in its entirety. I have heard it over and over again and have thought myself familiar with it, not with every word perhaps, but with its overall shape and direction and with its most important details.
It is the story of Jesus, and, more than anything else, what this Easter has left me with is the knowledge that however often I hear the story, I still fail to know it: however familiar I am with it, I still fail to really understand it. I have failed to grasp the awesome truth of what God has done for mankind as a whole and for each and every one of us as individuals. Even when my faith is at its peak: when I most feel that I really do believe that God ‘gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16), I know that I have missed the point again, and must hear the story told once more; I must listen, and read, and pray, and reach out for the fullness of comprehension that evades me still.

My inadequacy is not just the obvious consequence of trying to take in the whole story in one go - I know that to be impossible - it is my inner response to the smallest of chapters, sometimes to a single verse. The first and last parts of the tale are told and retold, and few people have not heard them, but my understanding of them is so vague and superficial. The Christmas and Easter stories stand like solid bookends in our minds and we have filed them away as stories with all the others. That is our mistake; they are not just stories, they are truth. They are not just true stories, they are way beyond the compass of the word ‘story’.
Both have to do with God being present with us: God with us – Emmanuel.

However little I grasp and retain of what He and His followers tell us in His story, He is with us; that I do not doubt.
That is what I hold onto as though my life depended upon it.

Why? – Because it does.
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Resurrection Day

Emmanuel

Α

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The silent anonymity of conception
Self-abnegates, as life utters
Into harmony with flesh and bone:
Grown onto rootstock of creation's own
Irrepressible fountain of possibility.

Diversity pulsates to the beat
Of the eternal drum,
cascading truth and certainty.

God's dream becomes the waking womb;
"I am" is echoed in all things,
And, in the silence,
Being sings its throbbing song
And trembles into life.
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Silent improbability: resurrection;
But in a thought, true life flutters
Into harmony with flesh and bone:
Grown onto rootstock of creation's own
Inexpressible fount of impossibility.

Eternity pulsates to the beat
Of the Creator’s drum,
confirming truth and certainty.

God's dream becomes the waking tomb;
"I am" re-echoes in all things,
And, in the darkness,
Being sings its throbbing song

Assembled into light.

.Ω

© Paul Amphlett 2007

Good Friday

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Christ has died

Maundy Thursday

It is a quiet day, somehow saturated in a gentleness like whispering rain.
For me, it seems to hum with the underlying presence of eternal power that is the Spirit of Creation, in ways that reach out and almost touch the world around me. It is as the single droned note behind some of the heart-touching music of this life, without which that music would be superficially delightful but lacking all potential for drawing sobs of grief and joy from our hearts.
With Easter being so early this year, today is also the first day of Spring, and it is not easy to cast such things aside. It is of no real consequence and has no real meaning - the buds and shoots in gardens and countryside appear the same today as they did yesterday - but it generates its own feelings of expectation: something is in the air. Growth continues, imperceptible when viewed moment by moment, but taking today’s reality as the foundation for tomorrow’s hope in an unstoppable journey towards fulfilment and the bearing of fruit.

It is a quiet day: a day of comfort. It is a day of thanksgiving for what we have received, of appreciation for the support and the solace, for the strength and the consolation which is found in being a Christian. It is the day when we recall the foundation of Christ’s Church, and when our minds are carried back to a gathering of friends two thousand years ago.
The Eucharist was born this day. Our present priesthood was born this day.
Jesus had trained and taught his followers, grooming the twelve Apostles for their task when He would no longer be with them, and now, having prayed for them, He did something that (for me at least) gives rise to the droned note that underlies the whole day: He prayed for me.

“I pray not only for these
but also for those
who through their teaching will come to believe in me.”
(John 17:20)

I believe in Him through my own faith born of wondering and questioning, doubt and uncertainty, solitude and experience, but that has all been grounded in the teaching of parents, friends, teachers, religious and priests throughout my life. This whole process and network of faith, for all of us, is founded upon the work of the Apostles: we have come to believe in Him through their teaching.

That Jesus prayed for me and for you, for all our family and friends - living and dead - who have come to believe in Him, is a source of great strength when we fully grasp what that means, and having no less an impact are His next words when He prays “May they all be one ... so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” (17:21), and again in verse 23, “may they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize that it was you who sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me.”
How can we expect the world to come to believe in Him when the vast number of subdivided denominations of Christianity speak so loudly of disunity.

It is a quiet day: a day of prayer.
In thanksgiving, let us remember those priests who have played a part in our own spiritual journeys, and let us pray for all priests who today renew their vows.
Let us add our prayer to their own, that they may be renewed and sustained in their receptiveness to God’s grace and in the security and inner peace of an unquenchable faith; may they constantly manifest and express the gifts of humility and unity - the two qualities by which mankind shall most easily be drawn towards the truths they strive to convey and spread in the world around them.

May God grant each of us an awareness of our own responsibilities in sharing the gifts we have received. Just as we have come to believe through the example and teaching of others, so may our own lives draw others to believe.

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St Patrick's Day

‘... Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly ...’

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(W. B. Yeats. Easter 1916.)

Passing through

‘The stairs of a staircase have naught to do with the top of it and the abode to which it leads, yet are means to the reaching of both;’ (St John of The Cross. Ascent of Mount Carmel.)

We so readily immerse ourselves in the experience of sensation generated by spiritual and religious routines, habits and convictions, that we risk failing to recognize the part this plays in weakening, or even completely negating, our desire for union with God.

The damage is so easily done because our immersion - both emotional and intellectual - does not result from a conscious decision, but from an all-pervading failure to understand the extent to which we are apart from Him. St John was writing of ‘meditations, forms and ideas’ which must be utilized as steps or stages to be passed through and discarded on the road to contemplative prayer and ultimately to the unitive state, ‘since they have no resemblance and bear no proportion to the goal to which they lead, which is God.”
Our journey must not be allowed to become the object of our journeying, Our desire must not be for the continuance of desire but for its complete fulfilment. But how do we recognize such fulfilment?
There are no preset stages to be attained along the way: no equivalent to the gaining of credits toward the attainment of a degree or professional qualification: no measurable sequence of steps from start to finish – from the foot of the staircase to the top step, and to the destination which from the beginning has drawn us onward.
There is no shortage of guidance, advice and teaching available from writers and speakers who range from the most experienced and professional to the most unaware and amateur; and here nothing is clear-cut either, with professionalism having no reliable link with experience and awareness, and the absence of them not necessarily producing a perceived amateur status.
Even the most advanced and respected of mystics such as St John of The Cross and St Teresa of Avila have found it necessary in their attempts to describe the indescribable, to portray progress and advancement in a series of stages. In this way they have extended our understanding and awareness of our journey but nothing about it can be handed to another as a step by step guide, a road map or sequential check-list. We can be encouraged or discouraged by such things, depending on our own enthusiasm, desire, past experiences, hopes and fears, and ultimately on our own deeply buried level of faith in the validity of the journey, but to take these expressions of other people’s experience as a hard and fast rule, or as a ‘how to’ guide for our own advance, is to lose sight of where we are meant to be going. It is to lose sight of the unchanging fact that we cannot see our destination. It is also to make the erroneous assumption that we are actually where we imagine ourselves to be in our journey towards God. Wherever that may be is almost certainly where we are not; we are somewhere on the staircase and it matters not where so long as we are there, striving and longing to move forward.

Let us thank God for it, and, with every new day, ‘let us go forward from the point we have each attained.’ (Philippians 3:16)

No point along the way must be allowed to become other than a temporary dwelling place, and while we gain shelter, warmth, safety and encouragement from each place of rest, and from the help and guidance found there, we must inhabit it as we would a bothy when day is done, when cloud obscures the peaks and mists begin to fill the glens.

Just as foolhardy as striding out along a corrie-lip at such a time in a bid to reach a distant and unseen home, is venturing nearer to our spiritual and emotional edge when our journey is already swirling mists within us. The bothy is there for us; at the moment of our need it offers its open door and becomes our own haven. It is God’s provision for us. We light a fire with wood gathered by others, perhaps even needing that first spark of life from the dry matches carefully left for those in need. We make a meal from food left by others who have passed this way, and settling down for the night, we begin to read from among the books they have provided ... and perhaps we have been joined by another wanderer of the hills. Now is the time to read and to listen, to ponder and to wonder, to allow the mists within to become still and then to clear.
Morning brings safety to our steps, but in moving on we take nothing substantial with us; what we have heard and learned and gained will not fit neatly into whatever lies beyond the next ridge. We take the shape and the memory of the experience for blending into the inner soil that nurtures our tender shoots of wisdom, and we replace what we have used before we leave '... in the hope that there is some truth here worth the telling; or, if not that, tinder at least to catch the sparks of another man's fire.' (R. A. Knox. Enthusiasm.)

One day another traveller will lean on what we have left, just as we have leant and rested on the forethought of one who went before.

‘... a message from the dawn,
That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.’
(Robert Frost. The Tuft of Flowers.)

Single track

‘Unity’ is a deceptively simple word for something repeatedly shown to be particularly difficult to achieve.
It encapsulates so much more than the product of our superficial understanding, and of our subsequent willingness to equate it with an apparent lack of disunity.
In one form or another, an awareness of the need for a fundamental form of togetherness awakens whenever I pause to appreciate something, to think on some question that demands further thinking, or whenever my mind succeeds in creating space within it.
I have become increasingly aware of the call to unity seemingly, and repeatedly, riding upon my trains of thought, and, though there seems no obvious limit to the variety of directions in which my thoughts carry me, they all appear to lead towards the same destination. It has become clear to me that the call to unity does not in fact ride upon my trains of thought, but, unlike the thoughts themselves, is an invariable part of my mind’s journey, almost as though it is the train itself.

This is the thinking that has brought clarity and simplicity to the previously unrecognized truth that unity is what underlies everything that is good. And yet it has not come through thinking; it has always been there, gently rising through the layers of my awareness to the surface of my understanding. The thinking has only become necessary as a much needed tool in my attempt to convey my understanding onto these pages. Without it I would be unable to begin, and even with it the process can sometimes feel like trying to haul something heavier than myself out of quicksand.
The call to unity is a pivotal aspect of God’s calling of each of us to Himself. It is His beckoning and drawing of us that carries everything else. The call to unity provides the focal point towards which our trains of thought should lead, and it is what holds it all in place, what gives us both the ability to keep on the straight and narrow, and the opportunity to return to it when we have loosened our grip and gone off the rails. The call to unity is the track upon which the train travels; without it, it is going nowhere fast, but with it, it moves towards the unseen destination planned for it. Whether hurtling or trundling, it is on track.

In this way we are each called to have a ‘one track mind’. That expression is usually used in the context of thoughts and attitudes which are regularly at the forefront of our minds, resulting in frequent and sometimes inappropriate displays of a mindset we are unable to suppress. Here we have the opposite; an essential way of thinking and feeling and doing and being, that would bring us all together in harmony: an inbuilt longing that we barely recognize, but which underlies our whole lives and is a central part of the destination for all humanity.

Unity is more than an absence of violence and obvious aggravation, more than the suppression of all discontent which could otherwise lead to some form of conflict, and more than acceptance of diversity, contradiction and difference. The reality of our calling is not to the nodding acquaintance of tolerance, nor to the smile of acceptance; it can not be satisfied by the loose-knit communities in which we live, and nor can it be achieved in the fostering and maintaining of our frequently sterile and stationary friendships. Indeed it is not an absence of anything, it cannot be achieved through the suppression of anything, and its lamp will never be seen to shine if its only generative power-source is mere acceptance.

In general terms, the day-to-day lives of peaceable people are lived in an atmosphere of semi-isolated dullness; by minding our own business and expecting others to mind theirs, we remain untroubled by glaring differences which, in other circumstances, would provide a constant cause of frustration and ill-feeling between us. Nearly all of us have friendships of some kind and it is these, grafted onto our familial ties that compensate for the dullness and make us believe that all is well with the world. These relationships also provide the counterbalance for the worse than average happenings around us: events that, through the support gained through these links, are prevented from dragging us down too far into discontent or unhappiness. We never doubt our own possession of the truth, and we think we know how everyone else should see the world and all that lies within its apparent confines if we are to relax into a feeling of safety and contentment in each other’s presence and in each other’s company: if we are to create, inhabit and enjoy what we imagine to be unity.

There is an undeniable unity in death – whatever our outlook and understanding of the word – though my writing of that basic fact has brought a feeling of unease through awareness of some of the news items heard about in recent weeks. It is a unity that will come to us all when it will, and not at a time of our own choosing. That is the one experience we shall all share and is the gateway to the ultimate unity that lies beyond, but it has similarities with the unity to which we are called during this life. It is simply a letting go of all that has divided us from one another, and seeing each person around us as a brother or sister, a mother or father, a son or daughter, in ways beyond the connections of our birth and family history: it is seeing every other human being absolutely as an equal.

If this could be easily accomplished it would have been done long ago.

Why do we find it so difficult? Why does it sometimes seem that it will never be achieved?
As with so many of our questions, finding the answers involves a search within. Unity cannot exist until we have brought to an end the conflicts and unrest that dwell in our own hearts and minds.

‘Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start?

Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves? (James 4:1)

We have to be at peace within ourselves before we can hope to be at peace with others. At all levels, from individual right through to International, we have to ride the train which rides the tracks of unity. We can only begin to do that when we have acknowledged that the underlying call to do so is an invitation to become what we are made to be – humankind: men and women of God. And that begins one person at a time, one day at a time.
How little we comprehend what that may mean, and yet how easy to begin to find out.
If our trains of thought do not already ride on that unifying call, let us not wander away from the narrow line that runs through each of our lives, but let us linger close by while searching our mental horizons.

Stand beside the track, poised at the very edge of something to which we are all quietly drawn.
The awareness will come: the thoughts will follow; the train will arrive.

When it does, we have no need to step aboard: we are already being carried along by it.

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The only way

Our sharing of a common destination should highlight for us the absurdity as well as the injustice and underlying evil of superficial differences that so often keep us apart. Any separation based on who or what we are, or on who we appear to be, is contrary to all that Our Lord has taught, and is in direct conflict with any proclaimed attempt to work towards unity.
As St Paul said, ‘There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female - for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians 3:28).
It is faith in Jesus that brings us together, it is our sharing of the journey that makes us companions, and it is our mutual following of His teaching and example that draws us towards life as brothers and sisters in His name. We are His, and it is in that belonging that we can find ourselves reborn.

Our external differences are frequently experienced as being of great importance in this life. Even those which lead to so much of the aggravation and conflict in the world, and which clearly engender in so many people thoughts and feelings we know to be unacceptable at the very least, can lodge, uncomfortably or otherwise, in our own awareness. We know that all men and women are equal in the eyes of God, and we like to think the same applies when the world is viewed through our eyes. But even when we do pause to consider our attitudes towards the world at large, the result is often that we do no more than bolster our belief that this is the case, and in so doing we unknowingly bury ourselves further into our failure to recognize that, one way or another, we are all part of the problem.
This does not mean that we all have clearly defined racist, sexist, ageist, and every-other-ist attitudes, but that each of us is to some extent the product of the world around us and that world is riddled with these mindsets. The effective changing of any strongly held belief, whether collective or individual, is only achieved through a combination of faith and the passage of time. The faith begins in small ways in each one of us, with our suspicion that an attitude is wrong. The time is needed because in most adults with these wrong convictions there will be no appreciable change in their lifetimes. The strength of feeling, whether of hatred, disgust, revenge, injustice or superiority, has to be allowed to die away. The death of individuals removes their influence from their families and communities, and those who follow on, though their attitudes have been coloured by such people, will - we hope - live with a less pronounced bigotry. (For those of us who remember him, without God bringing about such a change, could we imagine Alf Garnet ever really being anyone other than who he was ?) This process, continuing through the generations, will dissipate the once intense feelings upon which inhuman attitudes were constructed, though it seems there is always somewhere in the world where differences flare into brutality, leaving us wondering if any conflict ever truly comes to an end.

This is of course a simplistic view of the problem, and similarly simplistic suggestions or proposals with regard to solutions should rightly be discarded as being naїve. However, simplistic and simple should not be dismissed as being identical twins any more than naїveté should be understood as meaning the same as some of the words found as alternatives in a thesaurus: words such as innocence, immaturity and trustfulness.
These three words are worthy of a few moments thought: they are each relevant here.
Innocence is what we do not have but should long for; immaturity is what we have but should long to be without; trustfulness is the atmosphere in which we grow into a maturity, the roots of which, though firmly embedded in a lack of innocence, draw nourishment for our re-growth. Such roots are capable of separating the good from the bad, and supplying both our present and our future with the framework for God’s work within us. This allows us to turn our backs on all that has deprived us of innocence, and any concerns we may have about being simplistic, while recognizing the simplicity of the solution as conveyed through the gift of God’s Word in Jesus. It is through continuing our process of coming together as fellow travellers with Him, following Him, and learning to see others through His eyes, that we gain an opportunity to short-circuit the far too slow passage of time in the destruction of un-Christlike and separatist attitudes.

Another word to pause with for a moment: ‘Separatist’ has been used to describe various groups of people in the past as well as the present, including those who wanted Home Rule for Ireland at a time when England still imagined that Land to be hers.
The conflict over Ireland – and we need only think of the actions and words of both Nationalists and Loyalists over Northern Ireland in the last third of the twentieth century – created much that I would have included among attitudes that could have been expected to live on until a whole generation had died away, and even then to have remained at a lower level for a further fifty years or so.
Note that I say Nationalist and Loyalist, not Catholic and Protestant. The divisions were along clearly defined lines that corresponded with the perceived differences between these two bodies of Christians, but the whole destructive struggle was a political one brought to a head by social inequalities laid over centuries of history. Religious and denominational differences became a readily available means of labelling within the media and especially within the bigoted segregation and inequality of that fractured community.
But what happened ? If we know the details we can point to any number of things, and to particular people, but still, for anyone who had any idea of the depth of feeling, the question remains: - What happened ?
‘Simplistic’ is dead and buried, but the word ‘simple’, seeming so naїve in its everyday ordinariness, points to the pre-existing simplicity and truth that is manifested through our faith and the passage of time; not our slow passage of attitudes and lives into graves with individual names, but the unnoticed approach of dawn within the hearts and minds of those who long to live, and who place their lives and loves into the hands of God. There, our innocence, maturity and trust will grow, and shall prevail.

The smallest of things can begin a minor annoyance that could eventually cause major rifts. I have purposely written naїve and naїveté above instead of naive and naivety. If any reader thinks something along the lines of, ‘What on earth has he written it that way for?’, it has perhaps demonstrated that fact.


'(Without discounting) the help of other humans in helping us draw near to God, or minimising the importance of others as God's instruments in accomplishing his work in our lives, we must ... recognise that human knowledge, wisdom or teaching, even concerning the gospel, cannot replace our need to receive revelation from God himself. It is only this direct revelation of God to our spirits that can change us and bring us new life.' (The Word Among Us. October 1992)


'The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.' (Paula D'Arcy. Where The Wind Begins.)
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... but never alone

At first glance it is not surprising that we can be supported, encouraged to persevere, and enabled to accomplish things that would otherwise remain undone, or even un-attempted, by the mere knowledge that others are thinking and feeling in ways similar to our own experience. There is no element of surprise because we tend to have inbuilt assumptions that these people are close by, and that even if we do not really know them we know their names, and if not that we see them or hear them – at least occasionally. It is unexpected, however, to find that same sense of support and encouragement when our knowledge of such like-minded persons includes the fact that they are not only unknown, but unheard, unseen, and possibly living their lives in unknown and distant places. Such is the all-encompassing and instant reach of the internet; and such is its potential for anonymity.
It is, however, only a momentary surprise, because while it is our knowledge of the existence of these people that brings it in the first place, that same knowledge instantly dispels and banishes the surprise with its inherent comfort and feelings of shared experience. It brings something we long for, perhaps unconsciously, and it provides something we need. A satisfied longing or need invariably counters, and at the very least diminishes the feelings that preceded it, whether they be the longing itself or the immediate response to its satisfaction.
This points to fundamental differences between our physical, our emotional and our spiritual needs.

Where physical help is required, as in the provision of goods or services, we need to have people coming to us and working close to or alongside us; without this closeness, help can be neither given nor received. The victims of natural disasters, war, terrorism, ethnic and sectarian hatred, all need to have others bringing the food, water, clothing and shelter that they need. There are those who give and send but their generosity alone is not enough. Someone has to deliver what has been given: someone has to actually go to the people in need before they can realize that help is coming. In such situations there is of course a corresponding need for emotional support, and this can come through those who have brought the physical help.

When our need is solely for emotional support, in situations other than where much of that need stems from physical desperation or deprivation – through having no food or water for our children, for example – we do not have that same urgency of need for the physical presence of people; we may desire it, and we will always benefit more from having it than not, but, it is not absolutely essential. We need to talk to people, the right people, and if they are unable to be with us we are still able to benefit from their listening and their reassuring input via the telephone, especially in this age of mobiles, and through email, the ability to chat via our computers, video links and so on, and for those who are not part of this technological advance, the telephone land line is still as straightforward as it was, and letter writing remains as an effective and personal way of making thoughts and feelings known.

Clearly our spiritual needs will frequently overlap with our emotional ones, as do these, in turn, with our physical circumstances, but the need for the physical presence of others is related to our worldly weakness and our natural tendencies, not to our supernatural confusion and our spiritual doubts or emptiness. Unless we know who to talk to and who will be able to guide us, we have no more chance of finding what we need with a person known to us than with a complete stranger. That does not mean we can walk down the road sticking our thumb out and hoping someone will stop and take us to our destination. They will be going where they are going, and they have come from wherever they have been. They don’t know where you are on your journey; they don’t know where you have been, and they don’t know where you are going. They certainly don’t know where you are meant to be going.

It is the stranger who makes known aspects of his or her spiritual life that resonate with our own, who is no longer a stranger to us. Simply knowing of the existence of that person with their inner life so similar to our own, lays a foundation for our security in what had been only loneliness and doubt. To expand this awareness until we not only suspect, but believe in and sense the presence of many such people in the world around us, is to realize that we are not alone in our search. Though remaining for the most part unseen and unknown, the knowledge of their existence assures us that we are in good company. It is from the relative stability of this low-key sense of union of purpose and direction, that we are enabled to calm ourselves sufficiently in faith, in trust and in prayer, to sense the reality of our only real and ever-present companion.
He is the only real teacher and guide, who, though seeming to be a fellow traveller walking with us every step of the way, is in fact the one we strive to follow. We find ourselves in a place of safety, and it is in this gentle embrace that we hear His words; we come to know that He is speaking, not only to others, but to us.

‘And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’ (Matthew 28:20)

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Walking alone ...

Whoever we are, if we live without being able to share thoughts and feelings with at least one other person, we are living alone.
To allow someone else to get to know us, to understand what matters to us, what makes us joyful and sad, angry or embarrassed, what our strengths and weaknesses are, our hopes and fears, our ambitions, failures and regrets; this is to have a real friend.
Some people seem able to share most of these things with almost everyone they get to know, but part of that apparent ease of opening up may be their own building of a protective wall which, while appearing to do the opposite, successfully keeps something hidden from others: something unspoken and unsuspected. Such people are surrounded by friends but may still lack a real and complete friendship.
If we do have just one person in our lives with whom we share everything, it may be a husband or wife, or a ‘partner’ of similar importance or standing in our lives; it may be a parent or sibling, a close friend, or even someone we have come to trust through a professional relationship: a doctor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Whoever it may be, we benefit from their presence in our lives and from our ability to share ourselves with them.

Often, however, when we are conscious of our lives being overlaid by something beyond the world’s reasoning, and when we find ourselves on some form of spiritual journey, we do not know quite how to tell someone else about it. The person or persons with whom we thought we could share almost anything are proved to be just that; we can share almost everything, but this is somehow different. How do we even bring up the subject ? We have never mentioned this sort of thing before, so how do we know that they will even understand what we are talking about? – especially as we scarcely know how to explain what we are thinking and feeling.
And might it even be something that will come between us and result in a weakening or even the loss of a valued friendship?
Perhaps we regard the risk as too great, and, being troubled by the inner conflict, we remain silent.
The relationship, while being outwardly unchanged, is suddenly not enough: it is recognized as being incomplete.

Even in friendships with people who are known to foster the spiritual dimension or their lives, the surface is easy enough to talk about: we can examine it together, polish it, bounce ideas off it, and enjoy the interaction as well as the benefits it brings, but wherever we are on our journey, and however great or small the number of persons with whom we meet and communicate, without a sharing of the reality of the yearning buried deep in our hearts, we travel alone.

'There is talk which can be a great spiritual help to us - I mean the earnest exchange of ideas about spiritual things;

especially when two souls, well matched in temper and disposition, find themselves drawn together in God.'

(The Imitation of Christ. Thomas a Kempis.)

Being a member of a community provides support and companionship, but of itself does little more, and without the freedom to share our spiritual needs and truths, being a member of a church or a congregation alone is meaningless.
The difficulty encountered in trying to do this accounts for the fact that for many of us it is the attentive stranger who offers the best means of opening up in this way. A priest or pastor who does not know us, a stranger who in some way just registers with us as the right person at that moment – a recognition of God’s provision perhaps? Or, again, a professional consultant of some sort.
M. Scott Peck, himself a psychiatrist, wrote in the Afterword to his book, “In the time since its initial publication, I have been fortunate enough to receive many letters from readers of ‘The Road Less Travelled’. They have been extraordinary letters. … (they) have enriched my life. It has become clear to me that there is a whole network - far more vast than I had dared to believe – of people across the country who have quietly been proceeding for long distances along the less travelled road of spiritual growth. They have thanked me for diminishing their sense of aloneness on the journey. I thank them for the same service.’
That sense of aloneness is unavoidable: it is part of the reality of the journey, but becoming aware that we are not in fact alone enables us to find peace and even joy in our experience of being alone.

This returns me to my very first words written on the web: the opening words of this soliloquy. I repeat them here: -

'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.’

Scott Peck acknowledged his own reassurance derived from receiving those letters, while recognizing that the letters had been written because he had provided a similar comfort for others through his written words. Knowing that someone else is there counters all debilitating aspects of isolation.
Similarly, I am encouraged by the knowledge that someone somewhere is reading what I write. I can only assume that whoever spends time reading these words is gaining a form of support or strength from some of what they find; (why else would you spend time here?) However limited that help may be, the result is that we are aware of each other’s existence in a form of spiritual friendship that aids us in our daily toil along the ‘less travelled road’. We are journeying together as members of a loosely knit band of followers, unseen and unknown to one another, but spiritually inseparable.

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The unshared secret

In a previous post (15.6.07 ‘Estrangement’) I quoted a passage from one of Cardinal Newman’s sermons. I have always found it memorable and have always been conscious of the truth it conveys, but it has recently returned to me as though of more immediate significance in my present heightened need for an answer to the question, ‘What is it that I should be doing?’

That question can and does take many forms. As written, it is a broad-sounding query without any apparent importance or urgency. It could suggest an awareness that I should be doing some other particular thing rather than that in which I am actually engaged, or that I should be doing something, or even anything, rather than idling my time away doing nothing, but it is a great deal more than that. It is important, and though unable to know whether or not it is in fact urgent, it is accompanied by a sense of urgency born of that lack of knowledge. What if it is urgent? What if I really should be doing some particular thing right now? - Something I am urgently required to be doing, but of which I have as yet no clear idea?
Instead of being a broad suggestion of what could be absentmindedness, indifference or neglect, ‘What is it that I should be doing?’ is etched unavoidably into the surface of my consciousness by the relentless gnawing of my conscience. Whatever the words uttered or heard within, they are felt as a repeated rousing of something vitally important; What am I being asked to do? What am I called to do? What do I need to do? What is my purpose? What is it that I need to accomplish if I am to bear the fruit for which I was created? I may think I know who I am, but who is the real me? Who is it that I am called to be? -That I was made to be? And how near or far am I from being that person?
In that same post I also wrote, ‘Even among our friends we are fundamentally separate ... through our lack of understanding of our place in the world.’ In other words, through not knowing the answer to those same questions.

Reading the Newman passage as though speaking to myself, those parts which seem almost to be a personal reproach combine to read as follows:
‘Perhaps the reason why my attainments are so poor is that I dare not trust others with the secret of my heart, and I fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. I make clean the outside of things; I am amiable and friendly to others in words and deeds, but my love is not enlarged. The presence of Christ is not in it.’
The passage has always made me uncomfortably aware that, other than in a superficial way, I do not share my thoughts and feelings with anyone else, but having personalised it in that way I find further weight being added to a leaning that has already become apparent to me. Though the answer is not appreciably nearer, the direction I should take to find guidance in my search for that answer is perhaps being made more clear.

We all have that same need to become the person we are made to be, and however far we have journeyed, and however vague or intense the questioning may be, there is a corresponding need to be alert, to be awake, to be on the lookout for the help that will always come our way. It is a matter of recognizing God’s provision for us.
This is something of which I thought I was already well aware, and yet, as soon as I found myself deeply embedded in something of importance which has me yearning for clarification, guidance, and a sure sense of direction, all such awareness seems to have drifted away. I have buried myself in a busyness that has apparently prevented me from using abilities I already have: the ability to see and to hear and to feel, in other words, the ability to recognize the availability of guidance in places to which I already have access. God has provided all that I need, but through the narrow-mindedness of my own searching I have walked straight past the doors that are already open to me. Introspection has blinded me, and self-consciousness has distanced me from those who may effortlessly steer me in the right direction. I had been given a key but had failed to see what it could unlock, and I had found the door without knowing that I had the means to walk straight through it.
I have recently written about being free in the hands of God, and have now experienced how easy it is to lose all sense of that freedom as a result of our own striving after that very thing. I already had the freedom, but it slipped away unnoticed as I tried hard to grasp something that could not be grasped. With the return of relaxation and trust, the freedom becomes apparent once more, and with it comes the clarity to see what was already there. It is easy to believe that we have faith, but without a perpetual and living awareness of its life within us the reality will be intermittent at best.

The experience of friendship is warm and it is safe, but the potential within it goes far beyond our normal expectations. Combined with a deeply shared faith it has almost frightening possibilities, and that is why we usually keep ourselves apart at the deepest levels. ‘The presence of Christ is not in it,’ said Newman, and yet we know Christ’s words well enough: ‘For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20)
Therein lies another aspect of my failure and my fault; I have failed to find a sense of direction towards the answer I seek, not only through the blindness resulting from my self-centred search, but through trying to find the answer for myself: through stubbornly going it alone. The answer will come from Christ Himself through the guidance of The Holy Spirit. He has said that He is ‘where two or three meet’ in His name, not to suggest that He is not with the solitary, but to convey the power and the wonder that is manifested more fully when people truly bring themselves together in His presence. Just as The Holy Spirit can be thought of as being the communication and the love between The Father and The Son, so, in each of us bringing Jesus to our meeting with each other, we enable Christ in me to communicate with Christ in you and vice versa. The Spirit speaks to us and within us, and we are in the midst of the shared secret of our hearts; all we have to do is share that secret fully with each other. Then will our love be enlarged.

That is true freedom in the hands of God; and Christ is in it.
It becomes increasingly clear that I have yet to yield myself fully to this freedom in which progress lies hidden. It is only in having been confined by my own questioning that I have seen how incomplete my freedom was, and only in having regained some measure of it that I realize I had been drawn away from my place of peace and solitude: away from the edge at which I am most likely to be in tune with that which feeds me and breathes within me.
It is in God’s hands that all answers lie, and it is where I slip effortlessly out of the noisy activity of the world that I am most aware of being held within them. My guidance will be unlocked through the sharing of my heart’s secret, and my answers will be found while watching and waiting at the very edge. I must return to the path that takes me there.

‘... let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God ...’

(Romans 12:2)

Another tree

The freedom we must not merely allow, but must actively encourage in all who follow after us as well as in our own children, is the same freedom in which we are now able to live our own lives. It is a freedom to become, to be and to live as ourselves: as the people we were born to be. The world effortlessly drowns our recognition of it, and little wonder perhaps, as even for those whose lives are a continual quest for understanding, for meaning and for truth, it does not appear to be any form of freedom until they are already living within it.
Every aspect of a journey of faith is a further step on the journey into an even deeper faith, and every such step transforms us: we are brought to a place we could not have imagined before arriving there, and the shift in our awareness, hope and trust – however small the move may be – could not have been anticipated. It is granted through an openness to the unlimited possibility of God’s presence and His awareness of us as individuals. With every small step we take towards Him, He reveals all that we need to draw us ever deeper towards our goal: freedom in His hands with a longing for nothing but to do His will.

Viewed from without, faith brings restriction and self-denial, endless struggle with temptation, inevitable failure and consequent feelings of guilt: a mental and emotional incarceration without the merest hint of freedom. And yet, though unrecognizable, this is the freedom for which we long. It is what seems to be another paradox, but when that freedom is attained even in the smallest measure, the contradiction dissolves into an appreciation of the impossibility of comprehension without our own experience.
The whole process of journeying into the arms of God can appear to be one of walking blindfolded on a narrow and difficult path, and in allowing ourselves to be guided along the way, of being led by others who are equally blind. This is one of the sad products of our living and growing in the world with no conscious trace of that ‘first light’ with which we had been born. Instead of growing both naturally and supernaturally into and through the stages of realization, we have to battle our way back to the beginnings of that essential awareness, and then, building on a hesitant faith in an unknown Presence, we find ourselves among The Found, we hear ourselves being called by name and we feel His touch; He grasps us and steadily draws us toward Himself; we know we have been claimed as His own, and we begin to feel the impregnable safety that is His embrace. All this leads to the fulfilment of our worldly life: we are fully transformed into the men and women He made us to be. We truly become ourselves, and we are able to put every facet of our being and our longing into the words, ‘Do with me what You will Lord.’

Mark 4:28 speaks of the growth that occurs in the transformation of a seed while unattended in the ground. This is how our spiritual growth should have been, but the reality is that we have to strip away all the veils and curtains that separate us from that growth before we can begin the process of recovery.
My garden once again provides me with physical reminders of the extra labour and support needed to achieve what nature would herself have accomplished without effort if growth had been allowed to continue undisturbed from seed to maturity.
The established root system of any plant is the source of life and the stability that enables it to take its place in the world, standing strong and fulfilling its purpose. This is particularly evident to us in the life and the strength of a tree.

Nearly every tree visible from my home, including those in my own garden, has grown where nature placed it,. They have simply done what they do, and they have done it well. But I have two Ash trees that were found growing from seed in the lawn, and having managed to see them and avoid them with the mower throughout what I took to be their first two years of growth, I eased them out of the ground and heeled them in again where they could be left in peace. That was more than twenty five years ago, and today they are real tree sized trees.
In their case the potentially disastrous upheaval had no lasting ill effects and their continued growth required no more than being placed back into their natural environment.

So it is with our spiritual awareness; early in life the potential is all there and feeding on what it is given, and seemingly drastic setbacks can be countered and overcome in the right environment and atmosphere. The childhood awareness of the light within is not easily quenched other than by the wrong example of those from whom a child takes its lead, and by the distractions of the man-made world into which we bring them.
As adults however, getting back to a position of safety, stability and fruitful growth into a meaningful maturity is far more difficult.
Whether moving towards faith for the first time, or trying to rebuild it after gradually falling away, or after some major event that has shaken all belief to the very roots, simply trying to connect to the support and nourishment we need, and hoping that this will ‘heel us in’ to the right environment will not suffice. It takes hard work, commitment and perseverance, advice and moral support from the right people, and a very real and rock solid means of steadying us through whatever may come; and that may be needed for a long time.
This does not deny the possibility of being suddenly brought to life and faith; this is an ever-present possibility for all of us and we should be praying for the Spirit of God to fill us in that way, but it does not bring everything at once, all the answers and all the understanding, all the trust and all the peace, and it does bring a need for a supportive and ongoing nourishment of a different kind.

Unlike the two Ash trees transplanted when in their infancy, I have recently planted another tree that portrays the more drastic needs of the mature when trying to establish or re-establish themselves in the ground of faith. It is a larger than usual tree for transplanting and needed a sizeable hole to receive it, preparation of the soil around it, the laying of perforated pipe around the roots to ensure that watering will get down to the right places, and three large stakes to hold it securely in place by means of strong strapping. Its support has already been severely tested by the recent strong winds and without it the root system would never be able to successfully grow and spread into the surrounding ground; the tree would have no chance of becoming firmly anchored in it’s maturity, and could not be expected to become the tree it was made to be. The stakes will remain in place for at least the next three years. When they are removed it will no longer need that support, just as it will no longer need watering and feeding by anything other than nature herself.
Growth and transformation will continue unseen, and I shall have made way for its freedom in the hands of God.

‘And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.’
(Mark 4:29)