tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30311095508199755262024-03-05T11:06:46.367+00:001and3From my reading and reflecting ...Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-37994379138270114482012-08-16T21:23:00.000+01:002012-08-22T20:11:33.882+01:00Moving On - Part 1<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>How to disengage after 24 years as incumbent in the same place? How to </i>explain<i> it and and then how to </i>do<i> it. Here's my first attempt in the Parish Magazine to explain about handing over the role of vicar</i>:-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have been asked some good and kind questions about retiring from being vicar. So, I have been trying to explain how it works. At issue is that unusual relationship between a vicar/rector and the people and places in which he serves, the parishes. <br />We are fortunate here that two out of our four parishes have resident clergy. In the changing village over the last century or so, many of the ‘community servants’ who used to live and work in the same parish have moved away. The successors to the resident head teacher, nurse, doctor, midwife, policeman, undertaker, builder, blacksmith, taxi driver, bus company, haulier of 1912 have all gone. For good reasons and bad, the model of support of a village is now less holistic and self-sufficient and more remote: professional intervention from outside. In the 21st century village, only the farmer, publican, parish clerk, shop-keeper and clergy still live and work on the same patch. The trend is strongly in the opposite direction. A more efficient use of scarce resources? Maybe. Good for building the networks of village community life? Definitely not. The wider the variety of resident workers in a village, the deeper the all round personal investment in its life. <br />It moves me to be currently last in a long sequence of vicar’s names on a church wall, stretching back to the 13th century. Vicar and rector are strong public roles which a number of men have filled over the years, like a relay baton passed on from one generation to another. They really have lived here too, through Black Death, Plague, Civil War and Reformation; through changes of dynasty and sovereign; through enclosures and agricultural riots, good and poor harvests, through acute poverty and comparative plenty. From this point of view, it is the role which is the important thing, not so much the people who have carried it for their few years. On the other hand, it really does matter who each person is, whether they are acceptable, accepting and accepted – whether their life and spirit can survive the 360̊ exposure to living and working in the same place. <br />In retiring, it is the role which requires us to move away. The incoming vicar must take the baton for his or her stage of the race without another hand also upon it. So I must give my successor, when appointed (it may take until late 2013), freedom from my interference in the role. When I leave, I cease to have any right at all to minister or live here, because the right only comes with being vicar. That of course leads me into the dilemma which I shall write about later this year in Part 2: the other, more personal side of leaving. That needs a lot of care and prayer – and understanding.</span></div>
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Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-260748528878445602012-07-14T11:55:00.000+01:002012-07-14T11:55:16.502+01:00Ministry over Time<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">"Without
the capacity to rest and wait, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">the
call to belong can degenerate into craving for affirmation and approval; </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">the
call to be holy can degenerate into religiosity and eccentricity; </span></div>
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call to be human can degenerate into inappropriate self-protectiveness; </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">and
the call to lead can construct mission and ministry as project management with criteria
for success and failure that miss the heart of the gospel by a mile.”</span></div>
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Gordon Oliver, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ministry
without Madness</i> SPCK</div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-71768548964665117632011-09-07T22:02:00.000+01:002011-09-07T22:02:12.903+01:00Primacy of Love in Spiritual Life<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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All through the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verba
Seniorum</i> we find a repeated insistence on the primacy of love over
everything else in the spiritual life: over knowledge, gnosis, asceticism,
contemplation, solitude, prayer. Love in fact is the spiritual life, and
without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of
content and become mere illusions. The more lofty they are, the more dangerous
the illusion. </div>
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Love, of course, means something much more than mere sentiment,
much more than token favours and perfunctory almsdeeds. Love means an interior
and spiritual identification with one’s brother, so that he is not regarded as
an “object” to “which” one “does good.” The fact is that good done to another
as to an object is of little or no spiritual value. Love takes one’s neighbour
as one’s other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion
and reserve and reverence without which no one can presume to enter into the
sanctuary of another’s subjectivity. From such love all authoritarian brutality,
all exploitation, domineering and condescension must necessarily be absent. The
saints of the desert were enemies of every subtle or gross expedient by which
“the spiritual man” contrives to bully those he thinks inferior to himself,
thus gratifying his own ego. They had renounced everything that savoured of
punishment and revenge, however hidden it might be.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Thomas
Merton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wisdom of the Desert</i>, Introduction
pp17-8</span></div>
Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-19255325126002393782011-08-30T16:35:00.001+01:002011-08-30T16:36:23.244+01:00Dialogue, Love and Revelation<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">He had complained that Heaven had cast him off, but now the whole breadth of heaven leaned low over his bed holding out two strong, white, woman’s arms to him. His head swimming with joy, he drifted into happiness, as though losing his senses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">All his life he had been active, doing things about the house, looking after patients, thinking, studying, writing. How good it was to stop doing, struggling, thinking!—to leave it all for a time to nature, to become her thing, her concern, the work of her merciful, wonderful, beauty-lavishing hands.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">He soon recovered. Lara fed him, nursed him, built him up by her care, her snow-white loveliness, the warm, living breath of her whispered conversation.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Their low-voiced talk, however unimportant, was as full of meaning as the Dialogues of Plato.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Even more than by what they had in common, they were united by what separated them from the rest of the world. They were both equally repelled by what was tragically typical of modern man, his shrill textbook admirations, his forced enthusiasm, and the deadly dullness conscientiously preached and practised by countless workers in the field of art and science in order that genius should remain extremely rare.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">They loved each other greatly. Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it. To them—and this made them unusual—the moments when passion visited their doomed human existence like a breath of timelessness were moments of revelation, of ever greater understanding of life and of themselves.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Boris Pasternak, <i>Dr Zhivago</i>, p387</span></div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-84174354821744176302011-08-30T13:54:00.000+01:002011-08-30T13:54:37.291+01:00Incarnation, Love and Hope<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Night watch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Even though I am Novice Master and am in the novitiate all the time, the novitiate takes on a great air of mystery and revelation when I pass through it on the night watch. The rooms which I hardly notice during the day seem, when they are empty, to have something very urgent to say, so that I want to linger in them and listen. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The novitiate no longer speaks to me of my own past (see “Firewatch” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sign of Jonas</i>). To begin with, it was remodeled six years ago, and now it speaks more of the present generation of novices. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As I was going through absent-mindedly on my round, I pushed open the door of the novices’ scriptorium and flashed <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the light over the desks, and the empty room spoke again. I stood there for a long time before going up to the chapel. Four long rows of desks. Their desks are all they have that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is more or less “theirs.” It is there that they sit reading, writing, thinking whatever is most personal, most truly their own. They keep their letters, their own few books, their own notes there.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Looking at the dark empty room, with everyone gone, it seemed that, because all that they loved was there, “they” in a spiritual way were most truly there, though in fact they were all upstairs in the dormitory, asleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It was as if their love and their goodness had transformed the room and filled it with a presence curiously real, comforting, perfect: one might say, with Christ. Indeed, it seemed to me momentarily that He was as truly present here, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in a certain way, as upstairs in the Chapel. The loveliness of the humanity which God has taken to Himself in love is, after all, to be seen in the humanity of our friends, our children, our brothers, the people we love and who love us. Now that God has become Incarnate, why do we go to such lengths, all the time, to “disincarnate” Him again, to un-weave the garment of flesh and reduce Him once again to spirit? As if the Body of the Lord had not become “Life-giving Spirit.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">You can see the beauty of Christ in each individual person, in that which is most his, most human, most personal to him, in things which an ascetic might advise you sternly to get rid of. But these attachments, too, are relevant to your life in Christ, and I have noticed that novices who try to be too grimly detached from parents and friends, and from other people in general, often lack a most important spiritual dimension in their lives, and frequently fail altogether as monks. Those who are more “human” make better monks, precisely because they are more human and because they simply do not believe the injunctions of those who try to tell them that they must be less human. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In any case, I felt there was something quite final and eternal in looking at this empty room: that though they themselves might not understand what they are going through, and though many of them may fail, may leave, or may have to look elsewhere to get the real meaning of their lives, yet the sign of love is on these novices and they are precious forever in God’s eyes. Certainly, it has been a great gift of His Love to me, that I am their Novice Master. It is very good to have loved these people and been loved by them with such simplicity and sincerity, within our ordinary limitation, without nonsense, without flattery, without sentimentality, and without getting too involved in one another’s business.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">From this basic experience one can, after all, recover hope for the other dimension of man’s life: the political. Even though we have the power to destroy the whole world, life is stronger than the death instinct and love is stronger than hate. It does not make logical sense to be too hopeful, but once again this is not a question of logic and one does not look for signs of hope in the newspapers or the pronouncements of world leaders (in these there is seldom anything really hopeful, and that which is supposed to be most encouraging is usually so transparently hopeless that it moves one closer to despair). Because there is love in the world, and because Christ has taken our nature to Himself, there remains always the hope that man will finally, after many mistakes and even disasters, learn to disarm and to make peace, recognizing that he must live at peace with his brother. Yet never have we been less disposed to do this.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The fact remains, this is the one great lesson we have to learn. Everything else is trivial compared with his supreme and urgent need of man.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Thomas Merton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander</i>, pp212-4</span></div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-83569596690822407732011-08-30T13:24:00.000+01:002011-08-30T16:26:22.258+01:00Totalitarian violence<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">“Vitalism,” the enthusiastic exaltation of life in neopagan and totalist forms of mass-society is, as Bonhoeffer saw, in reality a masked hatred of life, and a radical unfitness for its common and simple joys, the natural joys implanted in nature by God, and which prepare us, by gratitude and hope, to enter into His Kingdom.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Where the animal “joy of living” is expressed brutally with ferocity, and with many violent images, what we have is no longer a superabundance of life but a failure and a deficiency of life. Perhaps the mixture of satiety, boredom, violence, and despair which characterizes our mass-society comes from the impotence of well-fed bodies with empty and lost minds. The obsession with lust and violent, erratic forms of sex is not a sign of great passion but of the absence of passion. On the contrary, Westem society is characterized above all by its abstraction, its confusion, its pseudo-passion (passion fabricated in the imagination and centered on fantasies). There seems to be excitement—but there is only the superficial agitation of a nervous daydream. So much for our lusty apes with cowboy hats—they are not even comic any more!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But collect them together, put uniforms on them, give them a leader that fits into the pattern of their fantasies and knots their dream images all together into a psychosis—then the whole thing comes alive in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">destruction</i>. The total incapacity for love is let loose, with extreme and efficient effect, in hate that smashes cities and ravages whole countries. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yet even this hate is impoten</i>t. It can burn buildings and ruin crops, it can smash and mutilate bodies, it can torture and degrade: but life comes back all the stronger and derides it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Thomas Merton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander</i>, pp202-3</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-58663592973861919292011-08-30T13:15:00.000+01:002011-08-30T13:15:02.385+01:00Life<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">" Nowadays there are more and more cases of small cardiac haemorrhages. They are not always fatal. Some people get over them. It’s the common illness of our time. I think its causes are chiefly moral. The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Your nervous system isn’t a fiction, it’s a part of your physical body, and your soul exists in space and is inside you, like the teeth in your head. You can`t keep violating it with impunity. … </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">" All right, I’ll give you my answer. I’ve been thinking something of this sort myself recently, so I can really promise you that there’s going to be a change, I think it’s all going to come right. And quite soon at that. You’ll see. No, quite honestly. Everything is getting better. I have an indescribable, passionate desire to live, and living of course means struggling, going further, higher, striving for perfection and achieving it." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Boris Pasternak, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dr Zhivago</i> p471-2</span></div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-2082932321307700762011-08-30T12:57:00.000+01:002011-08-30T12:57:23.810+01:00A wise heart<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A holy day in December….</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I pray much to have a wise heart, and perhaps the re-discovery of Lady Julian of Norwich will help me. I took her book with me on a quiet walk among the cedars. She is a true theologian with greater clarity, depth, and order than St Theresa: she really elaborates, theologically, the content of her revelations. She first experienced, then thought, and the thoughtful deepening of experience worked it back into her life, deeper and deeper, until her whole life as a recluse at Norwich was simply a matter of getting completely saturated in the light she had received all at once, in the “shewings,” when she thought she was about to die.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">One of her most telling and central convictions is her orientation to what one might call an eschatological secret, the hidden dynamism which is at work already and by which “all manner of thing shall be well.” This “secret,” this act which the Lord keeps hidden, is really the full fruit of the Parousia. It is not just that “He comes,” but He comes with this secret to reveal, He comes with this final answer to all the world’s anguish, this answer which is already decided, but which we cannot discover (and which, since we think we have reasoned it all out anyway) we have stopped trying to discover. Actually, her life was lived in the belief in this “secret,” the “great deed” that the Lord will do on the Last Day, not a deed of destruction and revenge, but of mercy and of life, all partial expectations will be exploded and everything will be made right. It is the great deed of “the end," which is still secret, but already fully at work in the world, in spite of all its sorrow, the great deed “ordained by Our Lord from without beginning.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">She must indeed believe and accept the fact that there is a hell, yet also at the same time, impossibly one would think, she believes even more firmly that “the word of Christ shall be saved in all things" and “all manner of thing shall be well.” This is, for her, the heart of theology: not solving the contradiction, but remaining in the midst of it, in peace, knowing that it is fully solved, but that the solution is secret, and will never be guessed until it is revealed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">To have a “wise heart,” it seems to me, is to live centered on this dynamism and this secret hope—this hoped-for secret. It is the key to our life, but as long as we are alive we must see that we do not have this key: it is not at our disposal. Christ has it, in us, for us. We have the key in so far as we believe in Him, and are one with Him. So this is it: the “wise heart" remains in hope and in contradiction, in sorrow and in joy, fixed on the secret and the “great deed" which alone gives Christian life its true scope and dimensions!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The wise heart lives in Christ.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Thomas Merton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander</i>, pp211-2</span></div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-35482812147942086472011-06-05T14:53:00.000+01:002011-06-05T14:53:30.357+01:00Modernity and Church<blockquote style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the whole question of the (Catholic) Church and the world, we come again and again to the various ways in which adaptation to "'the world" can in fact be an expression of shame and fear – guilt at having failed to "hold" the modem world and to charm it with spectacles, pageantry, lively new debates, and other contrivances. To be dominated by the fear of losing our "hold" on men, especially on youth, is implicitly to confront the world in abject shame at the name and power of Christ. We do not preach Christ, we preach our own modernity, our own cleverness, our liveliness, our fashionableness, and our charm; or (if we are conservatives) our unshakable security and unchangeable rightness, our inviolable respectability (and God knows that is no attraction for youth of the world!). <br />
Bonhoeffer, writing in the time of the Hitler Jugend, wrote: "The Church offered no resistance to contempt for age and the idolization of youth, for she was afraid of losing youth and with it the future. As though her future belonged to youth!" <br />
The last thing in the world that should concern a Christian or the Church is survival in a temporal and worldly sense: to be concerned with this is an implicit denial of the Victory of Christ and of the Resurrection. <br />
Yet this is what seems to concern most Christians. It is this fear of destruction and of suffering that has reduced the "Christianity" of so many Christians to mere anti-Communism and little else. It is this mortal terror of not "surviving," or indeed of not having a privileged place in society, that makes Christians willing and eager to destroy Communism with H-bombs. Or, in the case of liberals, the same fear takes another form: the fear of falling behind the intellectuals and the radicals who seem to make more sense than anyone else, and who seem to know the way into the future. The same fear of not surviving, of not being acceptable any more, of not having any place m the world of the future!<br />
Anything that a Christian does under the impulsion of this fear is bound to be, in some way, an evasive repudiation of the name of Christ, whose death has "overcome the world" and whose resurrection is the only pledge of a real future that anyone can possibly have!<br />
<div style="color: #6fa8dc;">Thomas Merton, <i>Conjectures of Guilty Bystander</i> (Image Books, 1968), pp125-6</div></blockquote>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-75023973356651404792010-08-28T09:46:00.003+01:002010-08-28T09:59:18.273+01:00Creator<span xmlns=""><p><b>102. Der Weg zum Schöpfer</b><br />
Du armer Sterblicher, ach bleib doch nicht so kleben<br />
An Farben dieser Welt und ihrem schnöden Leben.<br />
Die Schönheit des Geschöpfs ist nur ein bloßer Steg,<br />
Der uns zum Schöpfer selbst, dem Schönsten, zeigt den Weg.</p><br />
<p><b>Book 3 102 The Way to the Creator</b><br />
Alas, O mortal Man, do not set such vast worth<br />
On baser appetites and colours of this earth.<br />
The beauty of the creature is nothing but a bridge,<br />
Which leads to the Creator, Who Himself Beauty is.</p><br />
<p>Angelus Silesius, <i>The Cherubinic Wanderer</i> </p></span><br />
<p><span xmlns="">German version <a href="http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/Cherubinischer+Wandersmann">www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/Cherubinischer+Wandersmann </a></span><br />
<span xmlns=""></p></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-16830160828987922212010-08-28T09:44:00.003+01:002010-08-28T09:57:27.277+01:00Trinity<span xmlns=""><p><b>234. Wirkung der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit </b><br />
Der Sohn erlöset uns, der Geist, der macht uns leben,<br />
Des Vaters Allmacht wird uns die Vergöttung geben.<br />
</p></span><br />
<span xmlns=""><p><b>Book 6 234 The working of the blessed Trinity</b><br />
The Son redeemeth us, the Spirit vivifies,<br />
The Father omnipotent will make us divinized.</p></span><br />
<span xmlns=""><br />
<p>Angelus Silesius, <i>The Cherubinic Wanderer</i> </p></span><br />
<span xmlns=""> <p>German version <a href="http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/Cherubinischer+Wandersmann">www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/Cherubinischer+Wandersmann </a></p></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-56613525564260846162010-08-22T21:59:00.001+01:002010-08-22T21:59:22.367+01:00Creation and Trinity<span xmlns=''><p>Thus, as Maximus the Confessor said later, to contemplate the smallest object is to experience the Trinity: the very being of the object takes us back to the Father; the meaning it expresses, its <em>logos</em>, speaks to us of the Logos; its growth to fullness and beauty reveals the Breath, the Life-giver.<br /></p><p><span style='font-size:10pt'>Olivier Clément, <em>The Roots of Christian Mysticism</em> (London, 1993), p63.</span></p></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-35820132526431727432010-08-10T21:46:00.002+01:002010-08-10T21:51:54.378+01:00Maintenance as Love<span xmlns=""></span><br />
<span xmlns=""><b>Atlas<br />
</b></span><br />
<span xmlns="">There is a kind of love called maintenance, <br />
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it,</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget <br />
The milkman, which remembers to plant bulbs,</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">Which answers letters, which knows the way <br />
The money goes, which deals with dentists</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, <br />
And postcards to the lonely, which upholds</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">The permanently ricketty elaborate<br />
Structures of living, which is Atlas.</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">And maintenance is the sensible side of love,<br />
Which knows what time and weather are doing<br />
To my brickwork, insulates my faulty wiring,<br />
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes, remembers<br />
My need for gloss and grouting, which keeps<br />
My suspect edifice upright in air,<br />
As Atlas did the sky.</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>UA Fanthorpe, Collected Poems (2005).<br />
</i></span></span><br />
<span xmlns=""></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-59524279591964945682010-08-08T20:44:00.000+01:002010-08-08T20:44:35.816+01:00The Rose<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dsfGoxAkBAEpZUT7dNC3ycVD23zstcKiCMb52egkjbmmLk7IjikTmrbFGDAfGzVnB6kjLK7NcJEkqoDJhSgZR1yMIF6FI5SN4Iz5YeXP2bwer7Y0VNKP04ryhvArFwZXHayrCxAd2PaL/s1600/Rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dsfGoxAkBAEpZUT7dNC3ycVD23zstcKiCMb52egkjbmmLk7IjikTmrbFGDAfGzVnB6kjLK7NcJEkqoDJhSgZR1yMIF6FI5SN4Iz5YeXP2bwer7Y0VNKP04ryhvArFwZXHayrCxAd2PaL/s320/Rose.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.289. <i>Ohne warumb</i>.<br />
Die Ros' ist ohn warumb / sie blühet weil sie blühet /<br />
Sie achtt nicht jhrer selbst / fragt nicht ob man sie sihet.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms.<br />
Forgetful of itself, oblivious to our vision.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler), </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><i style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Cherubinic Wanderer </i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">(1657)</span></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-64110776373285757242010-08-08T14:01:00.002+01:002010-08-08T14:15:50.272+01:00I find you<span xmlns="">I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all<br />
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;<br />
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small<br />
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">The wondrous game that power plays with Things<br />
is to move in such submission through the world:<br />
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks<br />
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.</span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>From "The Book of Hours" 1 The Book of the Monkish Life--22, by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)</i> </span><br />
<br />
<span xmlns="">Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen, <br />
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin; <br />
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen <br />
und in den großen gibst du groß dich hin. <br />
</span><br />
<span xmlns=""> Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Kräfte, <br />
daß sie so dienend durch die Dinge gehn: <br />
in Wurzeln wachsend, schwindend in die Schäfte <br />
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn. <br />
</span><br />
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>Das Stunden Buch (1906): Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben, Erstes Buch (1899) 22 <br />
24.9.1899, Berlin-Schmargendorf</i></span></span></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-22598286458665572092010-07-31T17:37:00.003+01:002010-08-28T10:10:21.923+01:00Mystic Creation<span xmlns=""></span><br />
<p><b>264. Die Kreaturen sind Gottes Widerhall</b><br />
Nichts weset ohne Stimm: Gott höret überall,<br />
In allen Kreaturn sein Lob und Widerhall.</p><br />
<p><b>269. Bei Gott ist alles gleich</b><br />
Gott gibet so genau auf das Koaxn acht<br />
Als auf das Direliern, das ihm die Lerche macht.</p><br />
<p><b>270. Die Stimme Gottes</b><br />
Die Kreaturen sind des ewgen Wortes Stimme:<br />
Es singt und klingt sich selbst in Anmut und im Grimme.</p><br />
<p><b>264. Creatures are God's Echo</b><br />
Nothing is without voice: God everywhere can hear<br />
Arising from creation His praise and echo clear.</p><br />
<p><b><i>269. With God all Things are One</i></b><br />
<i>The croaking of a frog to God appears as fair</i><br />
<i> As does the Lark's sweet trill, which upward soars in air.</i></p><br />
<p><b><i>270. The Voice of God</i></b><br />
<i>Creatures are but the Voice of the Eternal Word:</i><br />
<i> It sings and sounds its self, in sweetness and in dread.</i></p><br />
<p><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>Angelus Silesius tr Maria Shrady, </i>The Cherubinic Wanderer - Book 1<i> (Classics of Western Spirituality, 1986)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i> </i></span><br />
<span xmlns=""><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i> German version: <a href="http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/">http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Angelus+Silesius/Gedichte/</a><br />
</i></span></span></p><span xmlns=""></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-39504898979241132962010-07-25T19:38:00.001+01:002010-07-25T19:38:51.251+01:00Everything Holy<span xmlns=''><p>For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;<br /></p><p><span style='font-size:10pt'>William Blake, <em>America: A Prophecy</em> (1790-3), part 8, line 13<br /></span></p><p>For every thing that lives is Holy.<br /></p><p><span style='font-size:10pt'>William Blake, <em>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</em> (1793), last line<br /></span></p></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-65857897309566337092010-07-24T14:04:00.001+01:002010-07-24T14:04:10.382+01:00Bonaventure on Creatures<span xmlns=''><p>Aperi igitur oculos, aures spirituales admove, labia tua solve et cor tuum appone,<strong><sup>8</sup></strong> ut in omnibus creaturis Deum tuum videas, audias, laudes, diligas et colas, magnifices et honores, ne forte totus contra te orbis terrarum consurgat.<br /></p><p>Open therefore your eyes, alert your spiritual ears, open your lips and apply [appone] your heart,<strong><sup>8</sup></strong> to see, hear, praise, love [diligas] and worship [colas], glorify and honour your God in all creatures, lest perhaps the whole circle of the earth rise together against you.<br /></p><p><span style='font-size:10pt'>Bonaventure, <em>Journey of the Spirit into God</em>, 1.15<br /></span></p><p>Significant autem huiusmodi creaturae huius mundi sensibilis <em>invisibilia Dei,</em><strong><sup>8</sup></strong> partim quia Deus est omnis creaturae <em>origo</em>, <em>exemplar</em> et <em>finis</em>, et omnis effectus est signum causae, et exemplatum exemplaris, et via finis, ad quem ducit: partim ex <em>propria repraesentatione</em>; . . . Omnis enim creatura ex <em>natura</em> est illius aeternae sapientiae quaedam effigies et similitudo.<br /></p><p>Moreover, these manner of creatures of this sensible world signify <em>the invisible things of God,</em><strong><sup>8</sup></strong> partly because God is the <em>Origin</em>, <em>Exemplar</em> and <em>End</em>, of every creature, and (because) every effect is a sign of a cause, and an example [exemplatum] of an exemplar, and a way for the end, towards which it leads . . . For every creature by <em>its nature</em> [ex natura] is a certain likeness and similitude of that eternal Wisdom.<br /></p><p><span style='font-size:10pt'>Bonaventure, <em>Journey of the Spirit into God</em>, 2.12, <a href='http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon05295.html'>www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/opera/bon05295.html</a><br /> </span></p></span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-88302384302770119032010-07-17T21:08:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.637+01:00Counterpoint<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXKjxQZCYGi6jXGB9dBrD5uu253x-ECRTILoo7czTvwY2EuRrsJoctGscxLLhfkAZj-UQ1nDAmcsKoC9QRnuDILhB_l8olv2RsbfXP2k7uS3gGub1vkibVWKcMoXQSCWJ-kya8yBNxanQ/s1600/Counterpoint.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXKjxQZCYGi6jXGB9dBrD5uu253x-ECRTILoo7czTvwY2EuRrsJoctGscxLLhfkAZj-UQ1nDAmcsKoC9QRnuDILhB_l8olv2RsbfXP2k7uS3gGub1vkibVWKcMoXQSCWJ-kya8yBNxanQ/s200/Counterpoint.jpg" width="120" /></a></div><br />
<!-- Begin .post --> I turned back to this book of late poems by R S Thomas, an Anglican priest in Wales, having read it first in 1994. Could the poems be read and used devotionally to nourish the life of prayer? Reading just two poems a day for a few weeks gave each a better chance to speak for itself. It was still quite possible to admire the architecture of the whole collection, beyond the obvious divisions in <span style="font-style: italic;">BC</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Incarnation</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Crucifixion</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">AD</span>.<br />
<br />
Published when R S was 77, <span style="font-style: italic;">Counterpoint</span> is about so much more than 'an old Christian meets modern life', and 'the machine' - though that could be important enough as a theme. At times brutal, and always determinedly honest, his metaphors twist and turn the reader into new thoughts. Nor is it an easy spiritual ride. Most poems do not convert into a comforting devotional read, though they do have something in common with bracing Psalms. R S is good at lamenting, with just suggestions of a glimmer of light.<br />
<br />
My feeling was that he was writing through spiritual crisis, with vast experience of life and religious tradition upon which to draw. Few of the poems are longer than half a page, some as short as eight lines, and the writing seems even sparer of expression than poems of his younger years.<br />
<br />
I take them to be a major achievement. To continue to be creative into your eighties is relatively unusual, but it may be that the spiritual life can be a brighter flame inside a weaker body. I found the last two poems very moving. With so much exploration of emptiness and the destructive forces of modern life in previous poems, these comparatively shine with hope.<br />
<blockquote>When we are weak, we are<br />
strong. When our eyes close<br />
on the world, then somewhere<br />
within us the bush<br />
<br />
burns. When we are poor<br />
and aware of our inadequacy<br />
of our table, it is to that<br />
uninvited the guest comes.</blockquote>and, with a very fine simplicity:-<br />
<blockquote>I think that maybe<br />
I will be a little surer<br />
of being a little nearer.<br />
That's all. Eternity<br />
is in the understanding<br />
that that little is more than enough.</blockquote><br />
That's all.Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-44747811457031315162010-07-17T21:03:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.637+01:00What a Job<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="7257371810715779770"></a> <h3 class="post-title"> </h3>From Job 29, some words which recalled me to the priestly calling:<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame</span> ... (v15)</blockquote><div style="color: cyan;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Tuesday, 7 August 2007</span></div>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-23161858779014794392010-07-17T21:00:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.638+01:00Reading Underhill<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="3013427443703775679"></a> Evelyn Underhill in all her writing (that I have read so far) never strays far from her main point, which these quotations will make clear, from <span style="font-weight: bold;">The School of Charity</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Meditations on the Christian Creed</span> -- <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Mystery of Sacrifice</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">A Meditation on the Liturgy</span> (combined edition published by Longmans 1956):<br />
<br />
from<span style="font-style: italic;"> The School of Charity</span><blockquote>For Christianity is not a pious reverie, a moral system; it is a revelation .. of the realities that control life [p8]<br />
<br />
God, as Brother Giles said, is a great mountain of corn from which man, like a sparrow, takes a grain of wheat: yet even that grain of wheat ... contains all the essentials of our life. [p8]<br />
<br />
... a reality revealed to us in three ways as a Creative Love, a Rescuing Love and an Indwelling, all-pervading Love. ... Meister Eckhart, "Where I left myself, I found God; where I found myself, I lost God." [p9]<br />
<br />
We believe that the tendency to give, to share, to cherish, is the mainspring of the universe ... and therefore when we are most generous, we are most loving and most real. [p10]<br />
<br />
Humble self-abandonment is found and declared to be enough to give us God. [p42]<br />
<br />
By a supreme exercise of humility, the deep purposes of God are worked out through man's natural life with all its powers, humiliations, conflicts and sufferings, its immense capacity for heroic self-giving, disinterested love: not by means of ideas, insights ... [p53]<br />
<br />
Those who complain that they can make no progress in the life of prayer because they 'cannot meditate' should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. [p54]<br />
<br />
It is useless to talk in a large vague way about the love of God. [The Cross] is its point of insertion in the world of men, in action, example and demands. [p59]<br />
<br />
The incarnation of the Holy in this world is social. [p92]</blockquote>from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mystery of Sacrifice</span><blockquote>The history of the soul is marred throughout its course by cheap and unworthy oblations, which look impressive, but have not cost enough: by efforts to avoid the price of holiness, the totality of its obligation to God. [p22]<br />
<br />
The mystic Erigena looking out on the world said, 'The loss and absence of God is the torment of the whole creation; nor do I think there is any other.' The full presence of God in His creation would mean the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. ... So the Eastern Church, adoring the humble oblation of bread and wine, sees in this the sign of a cosmic mystery, the consummation of all things, the transfiguration of the world in Christ. [p44]</blockquote>By all accounts, she was an outstanding retreat conductor. But that is clear from her written legacy.<br />
<h2 class="date-header" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sunday, 5 August 2007</span></h2><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
</span>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-42914774587800038292010-07-17T20:58:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.638+01:00Gilead<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="5650629942619914324"></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHVR6AQL8whB5xXnHRusT4KPLg8X-ZTwNIOUG7BTWWpep8uIUEig1Ka-biYcCiZnPh2ESdigh09ELbGe1hUDEx1-nRrT77W4hNR37rUIrCKWxBkbw28QgbWBplQoYUZH2Z-mbE4HD-lk_/s1600-h/Gilead.jpg" onblur="try
{parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5102748783040023282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHVR6AQL8whB5xXnHRusT4KPLg8X-ZTwNIOUG7BTWWpep8uIUEig1Ka-biYcCiZnPh2ESdigh09ELbGe1hUDEx1-nRrT77W4hNR37rUIrCKWxBkbw28QgbWBplQoYUZH2Z-mbE4HD-lk_/s200/Gilead.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a>Such a gentle book, and so perceptive. I particularly appreciate the way Marilynne Robinson introduces a subject with a short description which seems adequate at the time, but then returns, sometimes more than once, to add further detail and depth.<br />
It feels as though your vision is being continually enlarged as you read. I suppose it is the essence of a reflective method, but it is instructive to see it being used so well in a novel.<br />
This is the first book for many years which I have felt I had to read again. Short but so complete and poetically and humanely written. It is also a considerable achievement to portray a good man.<h2 class="date-header" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Saturday, 25 August 2007</span></h2>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-71605980572123336812010-07-17T20:57:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.638+01:00Just getting on with the job<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="6508892509027825613"></a> Interesting review by Philip Welsh in the Church Times of 13th July, ( http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/41772 ) quotes an unnamed country vicar<br />
<blockquote><i>who was exasperated at being expected to jump in response to another centralised episcopal initiative, or else to say what he was intending to do instead. “I’m just getting on with the job,” he replied.</i></blockquote>Having heard the shameless and very public confession of his source last week, I would agree that it obviously is not seen by some as being enough simply to get on with the job. There must be some new project initiative under way, something which says, "Look at this -- something is really happening here!"<br />
<br />
Yet in a rural parish, the age old giving of real attention, prayer and love is what is needed - which is very far from being a project!<h2 class="date-header" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Thursday, 26 July 2007</span></h2>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-76223164564482974212010-07-17T20:54:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.639+01:00The priest's cure<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="143094856650541212"></a> I'm continuing to be spiritually nourished and surprised by R S Thomas' poems. From one I read today:-<br />
<blockquote>The priest's cure, not a prescription, is<br />
that love's casualties must be mended by love.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Pa</span><span style="font-style: italic;">rable</span><span style="font-style: italic;">s</span>, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Collected Later Poems</span>, p224 <h2 class="date-header" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Thursday, 15 November 2007</span></h2><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></blockquote>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3031109550819975526.post-37202898695057133702010-07-17T20:53:00.000+01:002010-07-17T21:09:56.639+01:00Christmas Presence<!-- Begin .post --> <a href="" name="5927826207560233240"></a> The secret of the Christmas celebration is presence: both being present ourselves to the baby, and recognising God's presence in the tiny form of the new-born child of Bethlehem. 'In', not 'with'. But it is the contemplatives' insight that God is found in the silence within each of us, without in any sense our being God ourselves. 'Within' turns out to be transcendent, and so most completely outside of us, but encompassing all we are, and all our relationships of concern and love.<br />
<br />
In the rush and turmoil of the celebration (for a parish priest very demanding indeed), how might it be possible to be present at the centre, while working at the periphery? By using the moments that present for prayer and offering all that I am to him. It will never feel completely satisfactory, but it is so important to keep renewing the glimpse of God in Jesus, and so beginning to hold in mind and spirit what cannot be fully held in this life. Somehow it becomes enough.<br />
<br />
This paraphrase from Augustine <span style="font-style: italic;">Confessions</span>, 11.20 comes close to explaining what I am trying to express: "The time of the past is memory, the time of the present is contemplation, the time of the future is expectation. These three exist in the soul of the person -- I see them nowhere else. In the innermost place of our humanity there exists no time -- there it is pure present. There God allows us to discover our true selves."<h2 class="date-header" style="color: cyan;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Friday, 21 December 2007</span></h2>Martin Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03573374865441632731noreply@blogger.com