On Oracles and Resolutions: New Year's Eve.

Can there be a year of good omen? 2014 was always marked: the hundredth anniversary of 4 August, 1914, beginning the vast malignant conflict once known as the war to end all wars. It was embraced ardently by the nations, on their knees as national anthems played. By its end millions lay dead, by battle, by war-caused disease, by civil conflicts continued far into the new century. Scipio Aemilianus on viewing the ruins of Carthage that he had destroyed (146 BCE), is said to have wept fearing the same fate might one day overtake his own land.

            What have we discovered in 2014? Firstly, that all good works can unravel with astounding speed. The word of Isaiah: ‘The villainies of villains are evil; they devise wicked devices to ruin the poor with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right.’(Isa 32:7) We see invasions, bombing of cities, exiles of peoples, mass murders, taking of slaves, hostage-taking, public beheadings, all the panoply of war in this year of war memorials.

            We see large scale theft and the reign of the rich, decried by the prophets thousands of years ago. We see the earth plundered. Prophetic stuff.

            Our houses are troubled. Family beatings and murders abound: those we hear about — eight children stabbed to death in one home — and those we do not. Weekly. Daily. Correct relationships of respect and protection too often fail.

            2014 was a year of mourning. Planes fall from the sky; some disappear. A year of the plague called Ebola. Shooting of a school full of children. A carpet of flowers over Sydney’s Martin Place in honour of the dead. ‘Consider the lilies of the field, ‘says Jesus, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin’ yet ‘even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ I see a carpet of flowers over the whole earth, a tribute, a memorial, and a hope for all in the midst of tragedy.

            This isn’t an exegesis of scripture. Scripture comes to me in word and image to help me make sense of things. Unlike the prophets, I have no oracles for 2015. They’re hardly needed. The prophets of old have already declared them.

            But I have some resolutions. I plan to ask more questions, to view with care the statements made by interested parties, particularly public ones. I mean to set myself straight about the relative importance of my concerns, especially about the past I can’t alter, and the major ones facing the world every day.

            I think it would be a good idea to live in 2015, with as much beauty and kindness as possible, with as much reverence and thoughtfulness as I can. To remember that the carpet of flowers is also a memento mori, meaning we have only so much time on this earth, and that is unknown. Scipio feared that deeds like his could fall upon his own country, and he was not wrong; so be aware of your deeds, as far as you can.

            I have a wish for peace and prosperity in 2015: even a prayer. Peace and prosperity to all.

On Choosing the Right Time: Christmas.

Chapter Eight of the Tao Te Ching compares the Sage to water. ‘Water benefits all things, and does not compete with them.’ It has many qualities, among them the art of ‘choosing the right time.’[1] Water is also the symbol of Baptism, which benefits all who partake of it.

            What is the right time? An example from music suggests the critical time or space between the notes: Mozart called this absence of sound the most beautiful sound in music.The liturgical calendar includes the times or spaces between the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter: these are the seasons of Ordinary (ordered, set in order) Time.

            I recently met a friend who attended a family funeral in Advent, and who said he found it changed the meaning of the season for him. Before this, he thought that funerals (and so of course deaths) should only happen in Ordinary Time. Or maybe that’s my interpretation of his actually most profound thoughts. Ordinary Time between Christmas and Lent comprises the events of Christ’s childhood and public ministry: not ordinary at all.

            When is the right time to have a nervous breakdown? Who would choose Christmas? Yet the difficulty of getting a bed in a psychiatric ward during the holidays bears witness to the season being full of time. No one chooses to break down at all, of course, yet something about the time chooses itself.

            The date of Christmas on 25 December places it close to the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere: logical that the birth of the true Light should fall then, when the sun’s power grows again after the fading descent into winter. Yet for us in the South, it’s the Summer Solstice, which provides the greatest number of daylight hours: the most Light.

            The date is actually a little before Christmas Day, 21 or 22 December, giving plenty of time for the Magi to have their conversation with Herod the Great before getting to Bethlehem. The Church originally set 21 December, this year’s solstice date, as the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, who famously asked the evidence of his senses before believing the risen Christ, since worshipping a ghost would be a serious matter. He chooses the right time: it’s not too late for him.

            St. Paul writes: ‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.’[2] The right time was, he says, ‘while we were still sinners.’ There are many theological implications of this statement. But as regards the time, it seems, it’s not too late for any of us.

            Water seeks a level. That level is often the lowest. Lao Tzu suggests that although everyone despises what is low, the water has no thoughts about this. It just goes on flowing, filling up the low places and dwelling with the Tao.

            Christmas is about the Light of the World, the water of Baptism, the fire of Pentecost. It brings to earth the airy angelic song, ‘bending low’ as the carol says: all the elements, all the seasons, all the past and the future, all at once, at the right time.

---

[1] In the translation of Lin Yutang.

[2] NIV.

On Guilt: Advent

Many of us spend a lot of time feeling guilty — except for politicians, some of whom seem to have no sense of guilt at all — but what is actual guilt? There seems to be a distinction between feeling guilty about something, and carrying guilt for some crime actually committed.

            The heroes of antiquity, like Agamemnon and Orestes, responded to the anger of gods who demanded explicit recompense for insults against them: Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, leads (not amazingly) to his own murder by his wife, Clytemnestra, who then dies at the hand of their son Orestes, avenging his father. Such antique domestic violence here, but also national violence, where kings and rulers are involved. These people carry actual guilt for deeds done, as commonly in Greek tragedy, under compulsion from the gods. The consequences for themselves and others are typically severe.

            What, then, is ‘feeling guilty’ about our real or imagined misdeeds? First of all, how important do we think we are? Secondly, is our sin, crime, or mistake real, or is it imagined? Obviously something imagined requires a different approach for our healing than something having consequences in the real world.

            Advent is a season of repentance. All around us the secular world jingles, croons and crows about everything Christmaslike from reindeers to drummer tunes. Traffic rushes hither and yon, banking up and barking, while trains close their doors stuffed full of package-carrying maenads. No matter what the weather is, it adds to our woes. Schools and workplaces, in this part of the world, pack on closing concerts, parties and entertainments, plus lists and events towards next year’s demands, while adults struggle with extra workloads, financial burdens, general complications and dramas. Everything is folding up and caving in.

            Do we get to ‘look forward’ to a spectacular day at Christmas, or do we ‘feel guilty’ about ‘not making it’ with the right behaviour, expenditure, excitements, family bliss, vacation plans? Do we have any family to have bliss with; is anybody really speaking to us by now, is our money dire, our health dodgy, our temper short? Do we feel guilty?

            Christ comes as a human being to share our human limitations. These are many. More than you think. Almost certainly, more than you think should apply to you and me. The Gospels don’t discuss the general health of Jesus, but given prevailing patterns in the first century, it seems likely he would have suffered sickness from time to time. He does require rest and respite, rather often, going into the desert with a few friends for prayer, and one hopes, sleep.

            At Christmas, despite the New Year rushing towards us filled with regrets for the old, we have a glimpse of a new life. Sadly there’s too much feeling of personal guilt, anxiety, depression, anger turned outwards or inwards not only throughout Advent but for the whole Christmas season. Perhaps we know that we have an old life, and must learn to live with it. For that reason, Advent is a season of repentance. As John the Baptist cried: ‘Repent, and believe the good news!’ That news is good, and not fearsome. When the haunting emotions arise, blessed is the one who can say, “I have repented!” and for the lucky ones among us, as Luther has it, ‘In spite of everything, I have been baptised!’ You can feel guilty if you must, but your guilt has been washed away.

           

           

On Apocalyptic Names.

The books will be opened. The secrets will all be revealed. Everything will receive its true name. Prophets, angels, teachers, saints have been sent to reveal the truth to us, and still we fail to learn.

            Those who name God as Merciful show no mercy. Those who name God as Love shed blood in hate. The rhetoric of religions is saturated with violence, while Jesus stands in the midst of this maelstrom saying, ‘Do these words mean nothing to you? I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

            The name represents the identity. The name acts, often, as the person. Your signature is something you had better not lose. ‘Identity theft’ is a crisis for people. The past that has given you meaning, your place in the divine dispensation, as well as your presence in the present secular order, all lost: this is what has been done and is being done to the Aboriginals. Their house of prayer has been ransacked: its name is Country.

            Uncompromising religions sweep across the Middle East. In the fifth century another uncompromising religion swept across the same lands, destroying the monuments of the protectors of cities: Christendom triumphant. We see the ruins of these ancient places, study the archaeology, try to understand them.

            Persons are to be loved, not understood.

            The hymn At the Name of Jesus speaks of Empire. It is God who is humbled in this hymn, in order to be named. Indeed naming is a limitation. You must be humble to receive a name.

            Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and others fight across countries, sacred lands, naming enemies and killing even the youngest children, as Herod killed the innocents, martyrs to his power.

            What does the transcendent God think of all this? If ‘think’ is a proper word to use of so great a Being. ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

            Jesuit spiritual directors have a question that I think is a good question, worthy to be thought over, something to be solved for this day, the only day you are certain to have, although tomorrow you may find a different answer. “Who is Jesus Christ for you today?”

            Who is Jesus Christ for you? What does he say to our present griefs? To me he says: ‘Go and learn the meaning of this: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

On Light Lifting: How Hard Do You Work?

The Melbourne Cup favourite, Admire Rakti, returned to his stall after finishing last in the race, and suddenly died. Due to his previous wins, the horse was carrying an unusually heavy 58.5 kg, although the weight itself was not apparently implicated in his death. An autopsy discovered a rare condition called ventricular fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm that may occur in athletes — humans as well as horses — in which the heart is unable to pump blood leading to collapse and death. The very strength of his heart and the speed of the race might contribute to the electrical imbalance that led to Admire Rakti’s heart failure.

            Is it possible to be too strong?

            Racehorses are born and bred to run under a set of strict conditions. They’re carefully vetted as valuable animals whose fate may be involved with millions in money. Things like weight and distance, age and form are considered in assessing a horse’s suitability for certain races and tracks. Admire Rakti had just won the Caulfield Cup which led to the extra .5 kg he was carrying.

            Is it possible to be too successful?

            I once met at a day care centre a lady called Alice, only 48 years old, yet unable to take care of herself because of her damaged memory. Alice, a school cleaner, had a heart attack at work. Now she couldn’t be left alone to make a cup of tea. But she had some memories. “I didn’t know how hard I was working,” she said. She said it again and again; she couldn’t remember she’d already said it once.

            Do you know how hard you’re working?

            We’ve spoken of the heart in the body: what about the other heart, that rules your emotions? Can the mind break, the heart break, the spiritual commitment even break? Is it possible to work too hard?

            Jesus invited the crowds that came out to see John the Baptist, the people so heavily burdened, “Come to me, and I will rest you.” It’s not the giving of a rest that’s like a cloudy feather bed where you can lie down and go to sleep. It’s the order of a master to his slaves who’ve been doing some heavy lifting: sit down and take a spell. He works them; but then he rests them.

            Heavy lifting can be sustained for only so long. Extreme speed, success, achievement can only win for so long. Unlike many masters, he respects their limitations. Do you respect your limitations?

            Heavy lifting seems to be much admired these days. We’re not supposed to have limitations. What about some light lifting?

            We could respect the rhythms of our minds and hearts and even our souls and spirits. Is it really necessary to move so fast? It’s very unlikely that you have to run like a racehorse. Nor do you need a penalty weight following your latest success. The practice of something tending to failure might be good for you: I play the piano, despite having a pinched nerve in my neck, which guarantees me a little wholesome failure every day.     

            I can recommend light lifting. Do you know how hard you work? Jesus had another idea. Take a rest, now and then.

On the Blessing of Gay Marriage.

When I was studying at UFT, I took a course called Liturgical Sources. A primary source of liturgy is Blessing. To illustrate the blessing formula, each of the students had to create a blessing for the marriage of Adam and Eve. When it came to my turn, I said, “I’m going to bless the marriage of Adam and Steve.”

            My blessing ran, “Blessed are You, Lord God, Creator of Love, who has caused your Son Jesus Christ to be born of a Virgin, to be our Light and Salvation: we thank you for the love between Adam and Steve, that we celebrate here today, and for the uniting of their families through their union. We pray that you will give them length of days together, in unity, patience, wholeness and joy, that they may serve as an example of true affection, faithfulness, and care, and  through their marriage enrich their families, their friends, and all who come to know them. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

            The Jesuits who were taking this course with me thought this was a fine blessing: they particularly liked the part about uniting the families. Marriage was always a family affair, and this is one reason why gay marriage is so important. The churches should lead the way even if the state resists something ‘different.’ The church should be blessing gay marriages no matter what the state thinks.

            Families like marriages. (They love weddings!) You know who your family is with marriages. For who is my brother’s husband but my brother-in-law? You can have more people in your family. That’s a consideration for some of us. And you can openly acknowledge your family, which is something that more and more straight people want to do and are doing: this is my brother, my sister, his husband, her wife.

            Then there’s the blessing that gay marriage is. Rather like the blessing that any marriage is. You could get to the point of dropping the word ‘gay’ and understand that when two people commit themselves to love and be faithful, to share and support, to protect and serve one another the whole social fabric is strengthened.

            Since I’m supposed to be writing about social justice here, I’ll just mention that of the 2500 annual suicides in this country, as many as one third may be gay, with young persons particularly vulnerable. I’ll never forget a significant churchman saying, one day, that when he was a child a gay couple had visited his parents’ church for a while. They didn’t stay, but, he said, “they meant the world to me, because for the first time in my life I saw that I might have a future.” This man deserves to stand at the altar and exchange his vows with his husband. Every gay child deserves to look forward to having a future: the lack of that perspective (among other factors) can lead to death.

            What is marriage? It is a bond that, as St. Paul says, contains sexual desires and places them in a context of family belonging. It may often (not always) lead to the birth of children who must be cared for, educated and protected in a set of secure relationships. Hence it is a collective, not only an individual, responsibility: all the family is involved.  It is, as the Prayer Book has it, ‘an honourable estate’ if by honour we mean the public acknowledgement of worth and value. Married people are esteemed and respected wherever the family is regarded.  Therefore the church needs, in its pastoral oversight, to bless gay marriages. Blessing gives life, hope, love, light, and value: it is a chief Christian action, Blessing, in the name of Jesus Christ, who blessed all the world.

On Praise: All Saints.

Thomas Aquinas was a wordy man. But what attracts me is his life. All those words spilled in combat with the Gnostic heretics, who claimed that the world was created by an evil spirit. Not perhaps entirely different from today, when some claim that the world is created by nobody. Surely not the right spirit.

            It has all the ingredients of a good fairy tale. The castle, the seven brothers, the imprisoned prince, the mysterious Quest. Aquinas’ cousin was the Holy Roman Emperor. The seven brothers’ favourite thing was fighting: big landholders fighting other big landowners. Aquinas was the strange fairytale hero whose childhood question — What is God? — fuelled the incessant reading that disturbed his family: they were religious, of course, as everybody in the thirteenth century was religious, but Thomas was taking things too far. There’s a place for people like him. The local Benedictine monastery will do fine: let’s make him the abbot! (Monte Cassino, no less.)

            That’s the kind of family he has: Let’s make him take a vow of stability, run the monastery like a real aristocrat, deal with all the admin and the personalities, do a little reading in his spare time. No, says Thomas. The brothers tried everything: they kidnapped him, locked him up in the castle, locked him in with a pretty girl. He threw her out, escaped, and took to the roads as a wandering friar.

            Let’s see the world! Of course, since he’d joined the frightfully exciting Dominican preachers, he had a Dominican boss: you nearly always have someone to obey, in the thirteenth century. You will see Paris, he’s told: specifically you’ll see the University of Paris. He won’t be the last young person to be directed thus.

            Thomas was wordy, but also silent. The words were all inside. They called him ‘the dumb ox’ because he had so little to say. When the words came out, they smashed the heretics’ case.

            Dominicans like to praise God: naturally enough, God must first exist to make this possible. I sympathise: when I look around, I see much to praise. In yesterday’s hailstorm I saw the red young maple leaves tossed upside down, showing silvery undersides amongst the red in the Japanese garden. Praise. Of course. What else?

            All Hallows: all saints praise God. Francis famously praised God in nature: earth, air, fire and water. Benedict, whose name means ‘blessed’ listened carefully for praise of God in every soul. Thomas followed the Dominican way: praise, bless, preach. The first of his preaching is the existence of God. Otherwise, he said, there’s nothing to discuss.

            The God of Exodus is named I AM. Existence is the basic quality. Thomas, in the end, lost all his words. Praying before an icon of Christ, he fell into trance and had a mystical experience that changed his life. He no longer wrote a word. He had received the only thing he wanted: his Lord. Soon after, he died.

             His Lord, Jesus, called himself the Truth. As truth is, God is. Is this logic, or faith? Praise is a sure thing. All saints, praise God.

             

On pins and needles.

It started with tingling in my fingers: pins and needles. I found myself at St. Vincent’s having a nerve conduction test to see if my elbow was transmitting trouble to my hand.  The gentle, concentrated Indian doctor moved her soft dark hands across my pale, cool skin placing and releasing electrodes. Ten lists this week: she did nine of them. Elbow, wrist, arm, hand, fingers, small electric shocks invading nerve paths, something external controlling me from within: only a small amount of pain, but a disconcerting twitch that becomes a shade more daunting when it becomes a repeating drumbeat.

            I couldn’t help knowing that somewhere in some leather bar people are enjoying electric shocks with their sexual passion; or that somewhere, under grave duress, others are suffering shock torture inflicted by politics, religion, or simply the whim of their captors. We’re only trying to find out the truth here.

            The shocks failed to reveal the real situation, so we had to have some needles. A little more pain with this: sharpness, particularly in the wrist, as I had to bend the wrist ever farther, deeper into the pain. I wouldn’t like to dramatise this sharpness. Elbow, arm, hand, wrist, little dots that remain on the skin for a day or so but do no lasting harm, little cross marks inked into place where the needle has to go.

            I looked out the window over the roofs of the hospital complex and leaned into this really negligible pain. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis came into my mind: so why is the Creed a proper subject for reflection while the machine (rather noisy) roars away recording (Recordare) the flinching of my nerves for future reference? I’m no Latinist; I can hardly conjugate a verb. But I do listen to quite a lot of music.

            The most famous needle in the New Testament is the one whose eye the camel can’t get through. Or can it? Does this animal have magical properties derived from modern physics where a wave is a particle and a particle is a wave? The Kingdom of God is hard to get into, especially if you’re rich. Therefore be poor. And the disciples say: ‘Who then can be saved?’ We’re only trying to get at the truth here.

            Remember, gentle Jesus, that you did it all for me: for us, pro nobis, for all of us. If I can lie there, invaded by needles, pricked by physical pain— however limited— and yet find myself without guile in the presence of the truth of our salvation, it only proves one thing. Wherever you are, wherever you go, the Divine will remind you of itself.

            Everything in this story is small: little pains, small needles, very small camel. Only the truth is great.

On Knowing Who You Are

I had a dream where I was confused about who I was, where I was, who I was with, and when it was. I thought I was living in the past, when my husband was alive, and I was concerned that my dogs had not been fed as we moved from one house to another. I wanted to go back and feed them. Yet at some level, I knew I belonged in the present, at yet another address, with different dogs who had certainly been fed last night. What was I looking for? Why did I think I was moving from place to place? Why didn’t I know when I was living?

            When I awoke, this reminded me of Jesus’ question to his disciples: ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ and then his second question: ‘Who do you say I am?’ In ancient times, it mattered very much what other people think of you. Ideally, it should agree with what you think of yourself. What God thinks of you, God knows.

            It matters even more what people say about you. ‘For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?’ This passage in Luke 9 raises the likelihood of being shamed because the Son of Man is ashamed of them. That is being cast away: we can’t trust you, because you have been ashamed of us. On the one hand, the disciples are told to be silent, but on the other hand, something honourable has to be said. How to get out of this dilemma?

            I’m afraid the world is full of prominent people who have lost themselves although they appear to have gained the whole world. It’s a mistake to envy them. Not a few examples come to mind, from politicians to business leaders to entertainment stars. Would you, in cold blood, want to change places with them? Would you like their ruthlessness, crudity and greed charged to your account? Who are they? Who are you?

            Who was I in my dream? A mean person who doesn’t feed her dogs? An anxious person trying to live up to responsibilities? Someone who moves around all the time? Someone who stays in the same place all the time? Someone living in the past, or trying to regain the past? But I knew the present existed. Those were good times, but these are good times too.

            There seemed to be a page unturned, and it had to do with feeding the dogs. Anyone who knows me knows I love dogs. Maybe I need to do more loving of dogs. More loving in general. Some people might believe I think too much, and feel too little. It doesn’t feel that way. Maybe I love thinking about ideas. Although there are surely ideas I wouldn’t cross the street for.

            I love the city where I live, so I photograph it, and its people, and its dogs. Who are we? Are we who people say we are, or who our friends think we are, or who we say we are in dreams, in public, or privately to ourselves? Or all of the above, whether in a parallel or a circular pattern? What God thinks of us, God knows.

On Ignorance

To the Buddhist tradition, suffering is caused by three poisons: hatred, greed, and ignorance. And the greatest of these is ignorance. From ignorance both hatred and greed arise.

            The Nobel Peace Prize has been shared this year between a young Muslim girl and an old Hindu man. Malala Yousafzai is 17 years old, and Kailash Satyarthi is 60. Malala, who began her speech at the United Nations in 2013 with the Muslim declaration: ‘In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful’ was shot in the head by the Taliban because of her advocacy for girls’ education. Mr. Satyarthi, inspired by Gandhi, has helped free an estimated 70,000 children from slavery in India which is a major slave trafficking nexus and destination, through founding the Save the Childhood Movement and the Global March Against Child Labour. He believes that freedom is a divine gift that should not be taken away by slavery.

            Both of these heroes, the Muslim and the Hindu, would, I think, agree that childhood should be a time of learning. Not of working endless hours in a rug factory, or being mutilated to beg on the street, or being locked up in the house without instruction, or being armed and forced to fight and not to read. Jesus said, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’ but they did plenty. Ignorance is an enemy.

            Pope Francis addressed a similar idea on the morning the Peace Prize was announced. Do we know what is happening in our hearts? he asked. What are the results of not knowing? Have we let in jealousy or envy (greed) without being aware of it? Have we let in hatred? Do we keep open house for every kind of delusion, without discrimination?

            The sin of Adam was not to aspire to knowledge, but to taste specifically the knowledge of good and evil: such knowledge belongs to God. Hatred can appear when we think we know, and don’t know. Those who hate Muslims because of the war crimes in the Middle East should observe that Malala is a Muslim. Christians who think that ‘God hates fags’ could learn that God hates nothing that God has made, that they should forgive their brother seventy times seven, and perhaps it would be a good idea to forgive themselves a few more times than that, for luck.

            Pope Francis advised the Ignatian practice of examination of conscience as an antidote to ignorance. At the end of the day, he says, you should interrogate your heart, the heart that is the seat of thought and reverence, as well as attachment and emotion. What has happened? he asks. What devils have you let in? What could be the results? What might they make you do?

            God is beneficent. God is merciful. It’s humankind, prey to the three poisons of hatred, greed and ignorance, who need to spend our childhood in learning, in peace, without being bought and sold, or confined and forbidden, or enslaved or brutalised. It’s we adults who need to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts with learning that treats of mercy and compassion. And blessed be God who gives us guidance through heroes like Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi, and Pope Francis.

On Energy.

I have a dog who is a minimum energy expenditure animal. He’s had a traumatic time in his life, so now he wants rest and recovery. His favourite thing is sleeping. When I get up in the morning I go to check whether he’s still breathing: he sleeps so deeply I have to watch close for the subterranean rise and fall of his reassuring breath. He’ll eventually stagger to his feet, accept a dog biscuit, and find his way down to the lawn where he takes up his daytime position for sleep.

            What is energy? My dictionary speaks of vigour or vitality, ability for intense application of force, activity, or power. According to the laws of physics, energy has different roles, different works that it is called upon to perform. Kinetic energy moves things. Vigour is a drive to health and growth in living beings, which translates into forceful expression, physical or mental. Vitality is related to energy with the added component of enthusiasm or animating force of life.

            You’ll know what it is when you haven’t got it. When people are physically or psychologically drained, that sounds much like a battery that has run down and needs to be recharged. With energy. The question is: how?

            When I consult books on how to get more energy, they tend to emphasis chemical energy, in the form of food, drugs, even internal chemicals such as adrenalin. Sugar, for example, adds energy in the short term, but may deplete it further on. Certain vitamins are necessary to life: a lack of energy may be a symptom of malnutrition. Good food, sufficient sleep (a lot more than you think) and good health (absence of disease and often, its medications) all tend to giving energy.

            Some things encourage mental energy. Actual interest is one of them. The greater the interest, the more energy for investigation. In this, interest is akin to love. The more love, the more attention is likely to be given, leading to more interest and more love. I was once told that you have to fall in love with a PhD project, because eventually you’ll come to hate it. You need a lot of interest to begin with.

            Some things deplete mental, psychological or emotional energy. Worry is one of them. Unfortunately, worry is a genetic trait; I have my share of it. Just give it back to your ancestors and let them carry it. Another is confusion. Clarity about what is actually happening is energising. The rose-coloured glasses are not helpful; neither are the dark dark glasses. Clear glass is the best. You can see through it.

            To become energetic, the self-help books advise surrounding yourself with energetic people. Real can-do types. I know many people who can and do get things done, but I don’t know anyone who’s charged with energy all the time. People generally seem to be looking for help from each other. As St. Paul says, no one has all the gifts, but people’s abilities complement one another. If you look around, you’re likely to see someone who has the answer to your problem.

            People long for love and attention, and that is best addressed by loving. Love and interest will carry you a long way. It will lead to the giving of attention, which generates its own energy.

            And I’ve found that I can take a leaf from my dog, the gentle rise and fall of his breath, taking a rest when it’s needful, taking a space between moments of energy. It’s not gone; it will come back. Animating life.

On Time and the Novel

A few weeks ago, all the clocks stopped working at my place. The one by my bedside was losing twenty minutes a day; the one in the kitchen the same; my wristwatch lost a bit more every time I looked at it, and my pocket watch was half an hour out.The clocks recovered with new batteries, and a trip to the watchmaker replaced another battery, but the wristwatch had to be cleaned and reset and has been ‘monitored’: I’m told it has lost no time in three days, and now can come home. The jeweller informed me that hand wound watches have to be calibrated, as a little grit can disturb them: watchmaking is a science, she said.

            There's been a project running around Facebook lately that asks people to list their 10 most influential novels. Some interpret this broadly and list their most influential books; some include children’s books, and some non-fiction. I tried to stick to novels, but included children’s books, like The Eagle of the Ninth.

            My boss, Philip Harvey, is a deeply intuitive thinker who as he lists his books includes an exegesis based on the basic principles of each type of book, although he claims to have no system for how to read novels. Ulysses is ‘the greatest comic novel in English’ and Finnegan’s Wake ‘the most terrifying verbal object in world literature’ and on his separate list of 10 children’s novels, The Tailor of Gloucester, ‘a story of the actions of grace.’

            When I looked at my list and tried to make sense of it, I thought that a lot of my most influential novels had to do with time. The Magic Mountain tells us on its first page that it deals with the passage of time and ‘the pastness of the past.’ Proust’s volumes state time as their theme in the title. I might be in search of lost time myself because I show such a preference for historical fiction. Memoirs of Hadrian is set in the Roman Empire; The Nutmeg of Consolation during the Napoleonic era. A Study in Scarlet paints a particular view of Victorian England. I think the pastness of the past appeals to me; I find it more interesting than the future, which is unknown, but which the past illuminates.

            The action of The Magic Mountain comprises seven years. While the main character is sunk in every kind of philosophical debate, artistic manifestation, health concern and family complication, the external world is keeping its own time, so that Hans Castorp suddenly finds himself drafted into the army as WWI breaks out, where all the seven years’ efforts to keep him alive may very possibly come to nothing. It strikes me that this is how time deals with us. We are so deeply engaged with our own lives, and we have to wake up sometimes and look around at what the world has been doing in our absence.

            Even the children’s books The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, although they are fantasies with a religious subtext, show this inexorable passage of time: for all the magical and mystical achievements of the heroes, the great city falls in the end, due to the carelessness of its people, and even its name is lost to history.

            History is what we are living today. And it’s good to remember the name of our city. I’m going to collect my watch, and watch it keep time, and watch time pass.

On hardness of heart, and contempt of God's Word and Commandment.

From the time of Matthew Brady, during the American Civil War, photographs of war dead have been choreographed to affect the public mind. We run out of words to express the horrors of the wars, invasions, and destructions of our times, although Euripides, Shakespeare, and the Bible have told it all before.

            What is hardness of heart? Are our hearts in danger of being hardened by exposure to such demonic images? Or are we instead to be awakened?

            I was amazed last week to have a conversation with someone who claimed in all seriousness that evil does not exist. Everything takes place on a personal level. Everyone is misunderstood. To see all is to forgive all.

            I take strong exception to this view. If we live at peace for generations, we may forget the devastation, cruelty, violence and degradation: the common coin of war. Most of what we see today, we have seen before, only now we see it faster, and infinitely reproducible.

            In The Trojan Women, Euripides gives us Cassandra, who speaks for women raped, sent into slavery, and murdered; Hecuba, whose poignant farewell to her little grandson as he is handed over to be thrown from a cliff to his death tells unbearably of all children relentlessly slain; Andromache, defenceless after her husband’s death in battle. The piteous anxiety of those awaiting their fate when their men have all been slaughtered is left to the chorus to sing.

            Photojournalists capture many, but not all, the images of war and destruction. Some films and photographs are made by the violent themselves: the recording of their deeds is part of their pride in them, and part of the punishment of their victims. (Such film may have further purposes also.) When journalists go into danger to secure these images their motivation is often to awaken the world, not to let us rest but to put into remembrance what has happened and what is happening. To be witnesses.

            A martyr is a witness: that’s the meaning of the word. And so many journalists have been and are being martyrs for the truth. They witness to the contempt of God’s Word and Commandment — to love, and not to hate — that we pray to be delivered from in the Litany. God commands love: love for God first, and then for humankind, God’s living image. The images of violence depict the desecration of the image of God. And this is evil. I think it’s a good, if limited and partial definition of evil: desecration. What God makes holy you must not profane.

            For those who repent, forgiveness is possible. For those who take pride in their violent deeds, God is their judge. For ourselves, we pray to be delivered from hardness of heart. To heed the martyrs, to be awakened, for our hearts to be broken, broken open and shared with our tears.

On Reaping What We Sow.

A few days ago I had a pleasant surprise. While I was standing at the supermarket checkout, a lovely young mother of two active boys hailed me by a former name. At first I didn’t know who I was; I didn’t recognise her, for I’d last seen her when she was ten years old. I used to teach ballet, and here was one of my students reappearing to me. This is an example of reaping what we sow.

            Past activities prove to leave a lasting imprint. You might be so busy from day to day that you haven’t time to think about a word carelessly cutting deep, or indeed a moment of praise or support that will bear up another for a long time. You might think you’re engaged in a hobby or have put on a one- time- only party or have just volunteered to help out, to say nothing of being in a line of work that’s going to mark you for the rest of your life, even after you changed jobs or got a new vocation. You might be practicing and think it’s only practice. Yet all of these have the potential for you to reap what you have sown: the bad and the good.

            It doesn’t stop there, though. You might reap what others have sown. This again can be the bad and the good. We acknowledge our debt to those of the past who have left us valuable ideas, institutions, works of art and the public benefactions of our culture. We may show gratitude as we consider our families, the difficulties they faced and the generosity they showed as they passed on to us their attentions, their educations, their friendships, their material goods as well as their genes. We reap what they sowed every day.

            We may also reap what the feckless, confused or malicious among us have sowed whether in moments of distraction or deliberate harm. For example, from the drunken driver who causes a road accident we might reap anything from a broken arm to a grave.

            Entire nations may reap what they have sown. Environmental disasters can result from blind government policies or private greed; diseases can plague the population where the public health is neglected. Even more commonly, nations may reap what others have sown, in the form of economic catastrophes,exploitation, invasions and wars.

            These are seeded not only by other nations but sometimes by individuals. The ministers of governments, most particularly the leaders of governments, bear heavy responsibility for the crop of human welfare or human suffering laid down on their watch. Pious emperors and kings, classed as martyrs of the faith (like Charles I of England or Nicholas II of Russia) have nonetheless bloodied their lands through weakness (disguised as inflexibility), arrogance, and failure of understanding. A glance at the state of the world may see this in play.

            Solomon prayed for wisdom, and was granted it. When rulers pray only for power, the path of wisdom is lost, and many innocent persons reap bountifully of misery.

            If you want to know what the future holds, and what of your own you may reap, take a look at what you are doing today. It will have consequences, both good and bad. And pray that all the powers of this world may be given hearts of mercy and justice. That is, to have a harvest of wholesomeness and peace. Amen.

             

           

MH17: On Deliverance from Evil

Some say that reading the news is bad for your health. Surely it is often bad for your peace of mind. This week has featured progressing catastrophes in the Middle East, the violent end of a civilian plane as it fell to earth over a zone of civil war, ongoing sieges, mass kidnappings and sectarian murders in parts of Africa. And that’s just today’s reporting.

            The writers of the Bible, some of them historians, understood fighting over the land. Very little seems to have changed since those ancient days with the cruelties denounced by the prophets. Micah knows about those who ‘devise wickedness and evil deeds’ and then ‘perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house.’ (Micah 2:1-2) ‘Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man’ says Psalm 140, ‘preserve me from the violent man … Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked…’ (KJV). The violent are much with us today, for it seems no time or place has been free of them: often their deeds carried out in the name of religion.

            The width of such tragedy is notable. There are complaints of greater interest in the fallen plane, with its Western and European context, as comparative silence rests over the current disasters in the Middle East. Sometimes, I think, the problem is not so much lack of interest as lack of words to express our continuing appalled despair. Yet where we fall within the context, where everyone may know someone who knows someone who was on that plane, interest and perhaps comment is natural.

            Matthew records that ‘from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force’ (Matt 11:12). This, to me, is still the case. The kingdom of God particularly favours children; indeed one must be childlike in order to enter it. Yet we find at the hands of the violent, neither ancient sacred monuments nor tender young children are spared.

            Morally speaking, are the deeds of the violent due to original sin, or is there an active spirit of evil at work in the world? The faculty of justice, the chief virtue that inclines us to give to everyone what properly belongs to them, is a divine quality too often lacking in humankind. Original sin, as I understand it, is the likelihood that human beings will fail in justice due to our faults and limitations. And this is a mark that we are not divine; however, we are not animals either. We seem to possess both reason and revelation, and often to ignore both.

            I’m no philosopher: I doubt that I could address these questions if I were. Yet I know that when we pray, we call upon two sides of this question. ‘Do not put us to the test’ says the Lord’s prayer, or ‘Lead us not into temptation; save us from the time of trial.’ Surely whoever brought down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 failed the test, abandoned justice, and gave in to faults and limitations to which humanity is subject.

            But then we also pray: ‘Deliver us from evil. ‘Us’ in this verse, being the entire human race. The destroyed persons, the devastated lands, both the most ancient and the most recent, belong to everyone, everywhere. We pray for divine justice. We pray for deliverance from evil.

On Your Spiritual History

Recently I was interviewed by someone who wanted to know my thoughts about God. This interview was fascinating in many ways, but the initial question took me back a bit. The interviewer wanted to know about my spiritual history: how had I related to questions of God from my earliest beginnings?

            You know, I found this question hard to answer. I realise — looking back on my reply — that I answered largely in terms of my experience of institutional religion. I said I was brought up on the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer (1662) in the High Church Anglican tradition. And as a result, my vision of God was of a King, a supreme monarch, and that there were good reasons for this perception, rooted in the Reformation. I related how this came to feel antique, mediaeval, and somewhat oppressive, and how the arguments of my atheist boyfriend encouraged me to leave off going to church, although I didn’t agree with his position.

            And this in spite of being grateful today for Cranmer and King James as the gift of the English language, its beauty, and its spirituality in a form that is in one way at least, eternal.

            My travels through various forms of religious involvement, both within Christianity and outside it, I described by naming things, places, denominations. Where did I go, when God was no longer a king?

            Although later in the interview we fell into a deep discussion of prayer, I found on looking back that my awkwardness in answering that first question hid something interesting. And that, I think, is story.

            We all have a spiritual history. This same atheist boyfriend had a small sister, who used to make up tales about ‘the people who made us.’ He thought that was quaint, the way people deceive themselves without ever having been taught.

            And a history is a story, as accurate as we can make it, about something real, as real as we can make it. It will be profoundly influenced by our own makeup, our times, prejudices, impressions, sins, and failings. Our own history would ideally describe our sensations, emotions, hopes and values as well as events: the meaning is in our ability to find meaning. I feel that a story should flow. A choppy set of facts is no story. It may, of course, not yet have flowed to its destination. But it should be in motion. God, above all, isn’t static.

            It’s good to think about your spiritual history. Each step in it is going somewhere. You may see where you found your ethics, and how you relate to other people. You may see when you were rescued from danger, when you were injured, and when you were amazed into faith. You may learn to trust. Not everyone wants to cogitate on doctrine all the time; not everyone is a philosopher. But you may learn that there is nothing more real than God.

            And this was the last question of my interviewer: the one-word definition of God. Of course this can’t be done. But some have tried to define the Divine. Aquinas thought it was ‘the activity of existing or being’: I AM in the Judaic tradition. I have heard it said that God is love: Dante wrote a Comedy about that. And there are many other views. You will have your own answer. It’s only the best you can do.

            After some thought, I said: ‘Reality.’

On Motivation.

People come into the Carmelite Library to read: journals, study notes, books whose page numbers are carefully recorded from one visit to the next. What motivates them? What is motivation, which must have something to do with movement? Is it an external force — to get out of the wind and rain — or an internal compulsion, like the body’s need to sit down for awhile?

            How much motivation is physical, how much mental? Our thoughts swim in a chemical bath: so do our feelings. When we say we’re not motivated, do these chemicals wash about due to the presence of light, darkness, or wild weather? My dogs aren’t motivated to lift one paw on a cold wet morning.

            Lack of motivation can be fuelled by expectation. Not only today, but in our life frame, we want to fill out the picture and achieve something splendid. But somehow the motivation isn’t there: the getting moving. If you can’t equal or surpass your heroes — or even the child next door — you lose hope. Our culture that demands so much may often give back little. What motivates someone to keep practicing the piccolo for hours every day? Maybe he likes the sound.

            Motivation comes easier when the aim is clear and the reward constant. I’m motivated to go to work to pay my bills, for example. I seem to be less motivated to exercise to improve my health. Is the goal too diffuse, or the reward uncertain? Maybe both, in my case.

            What if we were motivated to do exactly what we want? Seriously. You think you should be motivated to clean the floor, but the idea dismays you so much you want to sit down and cry. So cry. You should be motivated to cook dinner, but you want to relax and watch a film instead. So eat another breakfast today. You’d like to be motivated to practice the piccolo, but you need more sleep than you ever get. So sleep. The piccolo isn’t going anywhere.

            Some things are nearly always motivating. You can do them sitting in an armchair. Look around: you’ll be motivated to praise God. Think about the state of the world: you’ll want to ask for blessings on everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, too. Prepare yourself to stand witness to the truth, in whatever form that may take on the day that you get moving.

            When the reader left the library, she spoke to me. She said: “It’s a peaceful place to be.”

On transitions: Bishop John McIntyre.

This past long weekend I spent some time travelling through a seasonal rainstorm to see the house of a young person who had just bought their first home. As I crossed the threshold I recalled the first homes of others I had known, for this had much in common with them. An affordable first home is often full of ladders, paint tins, no-more-gaps, carpets in need of replacement and kitchens on the list for determined renovation. It’s a home in process.

            I thought of Janus, Roman god of gates and doorways, who ruled all thresholds including the gate to the gods: prayers to other gods had to go through him, with his double faces, one looking at the past, the other towards the future. And so it is with transitions, directed by our pasts, leading to our futures.

            Big transitions like weddings and graduations may be ceremonies attended by many people, while others may be whisper soft with an audience of one. Some can be planned for; others simply appear, perhaps as a stumbling-block in our way. Not so long ago I passed over the threshold from unthinking health to carefully managed illness, where I was the main witness. Some transitions cross the threshold to the future, like the first day on your first job; others draw heavily on the past, like clearing up the effects of the dead.

            Conversion is of course a transition, from one belief to another, or from no belief to finally getting around to thinking about our relationship to the Divine. Is loss of faith a transition? I’m inclined to think it is not. Maybe if you’ve had a faith to lose, you simply can’t get along with your current Divine-human situation, and have lost energy or intellect for the present. It does take both energy and intellect to hold onto faith, and some people at some times have other things to do.

            While we’re here, I don’t think that when one door closes, another opens. Rather, we pass under the archway from one room or state of being into another, not exclusive of the past but informed by it in memory and reality. In the same way, the future can intrude into the present sometimes in prescient, even unnerving ways.No shut doors: nothing solid in between.

            The great transitions are those Buddha noted as bringing suffering: birth and death. Birth, despite its thrilling manifestations of love and attachment, always leads eventually to death. I think of great spiritual masters who have been taken by death, and of martyrs, whose ends tend to be messily cruel. Of the many family and friends who have gone over the threshold into death, which is thought of as the last transition, the final transformation.

            The ancients thought of the cemetery as a dormitory, where the dead await the transition to life eternal, when the universe attains its end, and all things return to God. This week we lost, suddenly, a valued leader, pastor, and mentor in Bishop John McIntyre. He has gone into the changeless realm, and is free of the constant transitions of our mortal life. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.