On Reflections

3 February 2020

At the bottom of a drawer, I found a mirror from Norway, given me as a child. It had nothing to reflect there: decades of happenings passed it by. Typically a mirror should reflect yourself; this reflected only the wood. If the mirror gave a Norwegian reflection, would another give a different national reflection? Or do nations reflect?

How do we know what happened? What is actually happening or what will happen? Is it the responsibility of facts to convince? Do we scrutinize motivations with a scrubbing-brush?

There are witnesses. Witnesses, as anyone who works in court will tell you, vary in reliability, suitability, and being in the wrong place at the right time. Mary Magdalene is the most reliable witness we have, though she wouldn’t have been allowed to testify in court. It’s not who you saw; it’s who you are.

Many arguments, political or religious, fail to reflect their surface subject. In the end, they’re about something called “plain sense”. Overriding scholarship, scientific analysis, history or philosophy, “plain sense” derives from the interpretation of a dominator. It reflects himself, his view of the bottom of the drawer. It’s plain only to those who buy it.

On The Limits

2 January 2020

The limits of the Roman Empire were set as a boundary containing expansion: rivers, timber-fenced fortifications, or Hadrian’s Wall. The word originally meant a path, or course, even the course of heavenly bodies; then a frontier, differentiation, ultimately military reinforcement: Roman roads, forts, palisades. Limits contained civilisation within, deflected invaders without.

Limits: we don’t flow too freely into neighbouring territory; we refuse entrance to harmful entities. Limitations, though, impact upon ourselves. We may meet barriers, or we may be unprepared: either can limit us. Limitations keep us within or without.

While individual limits are important (vaccination to keep out diseases; self-control to restrain violence) comprehending limitations has universal significance.

We are reaching the limits of the Human Empire as we continue to destroy the earth. The means of life dissolve and with it, civilisation we have refused to limit. A limitless universe belongs only to God: the world which has inherited us bears limits in every feature. We cannot know what God is, says Aquinas, but only what God is not. The limits of God are unknown, but the limits of creation are clearly present. We have before us a path: the Way of limiting our carelessness, ignorance, and greed.

On Loving Enemies

2 December 2019

I was recently asked to love my worst enemy; hard to discover who that might be. Love is one of the hardest terms to define and there’s a dearth of defined words out there. Arguments spin around rebutting meanings unintended, unexpressed. Cross-communication.

What do we mean by love? Am I to love as mother and child love: complete dependency, attachment, protection, tenderness? Wouldn’t it be curious to love as lovers do: intense desire, possession, attraction, singularity? What about family love: exclusiveness, blood ties, responsibility, bonding? Or love of country?  Patriotic love to die for, or heart-rending love of dispossession? Self-abandoning love of God? The love of money, of course, is the root of evil, often the branches, too.

If the love of friends, as the ancients believed, will always seek the good for a friend, is this close enough to love of enemies who by definition always seek harm for an enemy? Now who is out there seeking harm for me? Don’t answer that. Wouldn’t it be safer to seek the good for everyone? Not specific enough? Wishing honour, dignity, well-being and divine favour to my dearest enemy? Christ approaches. Not for nothing is he called the Prince of Peace. 

On Energy

2 November 2019

A survey asked if I felt happiness looking back at life. What? Undeserved luck, unexpected disasters, inspired celebrations, fair solace, or my regrettable behavior locked in the past? Relief and remorse. Cogitation draws energy. Getting out of bed in my morning mood, I imagine others have energy: unfortunately, they’re probably not the majority. Why? Energy produces work. In fact it’s a unit of work. What comes between us and our proper work? Energy can be transferred between bodies, places, other energies. Sometimes it’s called a unit of change. Change is implicated in the Buddhist idea of suffering, even when the change is welcomed. Stillness contains energy; death releases it in a series of breakdowns and transmutations.  What channels most energy? Whether to fear God, or enjoy God forever? Granting that ‘fear’ means ‘reverence’ and ‘forever’ is subject to change (transfers of energy) how best to glorify God? So much knowledge, so little wisdom. Gesture is life. Signs are indications, or they may be miracles. On this All Souls Day I think of energy still in motion. If energy is a unit of work, what’s a unit of rest? Do we need a unit of play?

On Time Around

3 October 2019

A great deal of time is spent regretting my past or leaping into my future, while the present moment escapes detailed attention. Personal time resurrected may expunge whole time, though:  past lacking knowledge of history, future lacking purpose and plan. Concentration on the immediate and personal, advised by new age masters, closes us to the spaciousness of time: its promise, its sometimes dire fate.

The kind of time I’m missing is time around. Around activities, commuting, conversations, and all artistic practices. Some things can’t properly be done without swathes of time around. Eroded by canvassers, pets, calls from friends reminiscing old times, seekers of money or volunteers. Children both need and consume time around. It’s the space between letters and words; the silence between the notes. Exploded by screens, ringtones, news and everlasting opinions.

            Unfocused time, free of deadlines, reactions, paperwork, recorded messages. Time expanded away from medical appointments, crises, cortisol and sleep. Calm time for walking around, patting things down, thinking along, pottering, daydreaming, getting poised. A peripheral vision of time.

Not for nothing is my favourite Bible book Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity. Find space in time. Blessed time around.

On Protection and Blessing

5 September 2019

I’ve given up protecting people. After many decades I’ve seen how some people don’t want to solve problems; they might want something else.  They might want a fight, for example. All that adrenalin has to go somewhere, in priority to reason and good sense. One source of unwholesome chemicals in the body is fear, a profitable commodity. Who profits? Currently forces of reaction are exercised on religious freedom, defined as license to vilify. Some proponents may be honest clergy simply selling hell — at a very good price, no doubt — or politicians selling anxiety. Others, in the chess game of ecclesiastical maneuvers, may be protecting their queen. Neither Solomon nor the Queen of Sheba possessed all the assets of the known world, though in a much larger, globalised world, such ambitions can now be suspected. The rage of the rich deprived of the smallest sliver of gold motivates dominance, hostility and control. The real Biblical treasure was given to the queen’s Ethiopian eunuch, a man of no sexual credibility in a culture obsessed with ancestry, genealogy, and inheritance. “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised?” And Philip gave him the blessing of Baptism.

On Judgement

6 July 2019

I dreamed of an undecipherable exam. We were panicked because of unreadable handwritten questions: an artistic attempt of confusion and obscurity.  Running out of time, can’t make it out, no appeal possible. Deep in the unconscious, there are layers upon layers of cliffs of exam failures to fall. Metaphors of judgement.

            A Last Judgement at the end of time, time run out, last chance café, posits questions of how to be judged, to say nothing of judging. Judgement by association, or sight unseen: deportation by fiat, for example. Final judgement might take place a long way away, in an age of globalisation. No matter that a Last Judgement is likely to comprise mainly sins against the poor, we seem to have difficulty reading, (especially scriptures), addressing the wrong questions.

            What is exam success? How would it look to stand around saying, ‘I did it right?’ It feels good, but conscience is not about feels. Conscience has the tax collector repaying fourfold what he stole, and this is defined as salvation. Jesus never said he was the answer, though many seem to think that’s what he said. He said he is the Way. Without a Way we walk in darkness, like the rulers of the nations.

On Heresy

3 August 2019

Everybody’s a heretic, it seems. The mirror of the divine is so splintered that every fragment has sharp edges. Heresy is fake news, but is fake news heresy? Denial of truth, by those who should know better, makes climate change deniers the greatest heretics yet known. It’s possible to live within each cult or practice so entirely that the whole aura or culture of your nearest neighbor is opaque. Political ideas of left and right hardly apply to religion: extremities of right and left meet rounding the corner, for politics is circular, while religion is ultimately free of time and space. Without the abrogation of time and space certain doctrines of the Churches become fanciful, while liberation and enlightenment release seekers from the time-bound processes of the Wheel. Neither time nor space will ultimately prove to be as we now comprehend. Surely they will be built on numbers: both sacred geometry and sacred music are established and grounded in number. If the statement that God is love is truth, what’s the number of love? Dante thought it was 9, or 3x3. The church teaches it as 1 in 3. It won’t be man alone, a single self. Count my heresies.

On a Way of Life

5 June 2019

Life contains large circles, patterns unseen till they close: often empowered by birth and death. Cycles of giving and taking. Paul recalls a saying, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ The word for ‘blessed’ might be ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’: a state of honour and bliss like that of the gods. In antiquity, benefactors gave everything, with consequent obligations. Who gives? Those with resources. Who receives? The others. The dead receive eulogies; the sick, care; children, guidance and, we hope, protection. Are they then blessed?

There are obvious circles, enclosing a life. And secret circles, based in meaning. The young singer sings for her grandmother’s death; and much later for her aunt when herself gravely ill. She gives from her strength and then from her weakness: a hidden circle, unforeseen. Paul didn’t wish to receive silver or gold, but to give of his own resources. Lazarus received only from the dogs, who licked his wounds. A way of life holds discernments: when and what to give and receive. Giving can be a spiritual practice; receiving a spiritual clarity. Receiving is not passive. It may require effort. As a way of life, it closes a circle.

On Rising Again

1 May 2019

We mourn differently for buildings than for people. Architecture that takes 200 years to build can be destroyed in less than a day. The late war — now seventy-five years gone — ruined monuments and brought down cities; it’s now 100 years since the war to end all wars. In many cases, plans and records allowed structures to arise again, where the will to restore recognised the value of the spirit that was in them.

            Yet many millions died, and each soul must be mourned: one by one. Evil is one thing that always rises again. The determination never to repeat the like has been forgotten; the methods set in place to prevent it are abandoned. Also, consider what happens inside buildings, where crimes and innocents collide: Orlando, Beslan, Christchurch, Easter in Sri Lanka. Generations are short. Greed and domination are eternal.

            Metaphors proliferate, comparing one catastrophe with another, denying each its individuality. Individual, yet collective: terrorism, colonialism, revolutions, wars and civil wars, exploitation and expropriation, not to mention natural disasters and accidents of fate.

            May was the month of Mary, hence of mothers: attentiveness, tenderness, concern of mothers, mirroring the feminine care of God. Mourning, rebuilding, rising again.