On Collecting June

 

Winter’s doorstep. Losing autumn’s glowing colours; splashing chilling rains. When you raise your head up over the parapet do you need to be needed? Do you want to be wanted? So much changes, so fast. Even looking at the past year.

Tax reporting time crawls up. Generosity and greed are two sides of the same coin. When addressing the donations list, it seems to be getting harder to conserve any privacy. Are you planning to sell my data among yourselves? This was an item in operating income for a charity I once worked for. As AI collects more and more I’m inclined to interact less and less.

Media-ting. Comparing yourself to your former self. Opening the box that leads to the past, when you were a different person, in a different place and time. What was collected, that you uncover unexpectedly, in another world: experiences exhausted, values expired, ambitions expiated.

Everything is collected somewhere, the good as well as the bad. Prayers collected in company, appeals in collect. ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me.’ Do you want me and need me? Am I one of the collection? One of the donation? Within these endless changes, hold fast!

On Driving May

 

Computing the mileage in the time of blockades. The screens in my car carve it into fine slices: time travelled, fuel consumed, amount left in the tank. Suppose we did this for the world – I’m sure someone has – decades of extraction, energy burned, amount left in the ground. Or we could figure how much power remains in a life span: years lived, passions achieved, time yet to be attained. “Teach me the measure of my days” sings Isaac Watts: it’s always later than you think, and simultaneously never too late.

History is circular; we’d like a clear trajectory, progress all the way, fairness and freedom, yet in reaction when things get out of hand we grasp at stability and authority. Who is free, if you are not free? Who is constrained, whether for good or ill? What’s within reach, what overbearing? Where’s your natural bent?

We might be driving growth, or unfortunately driving losses. We can drive towards the stars, or drive into the lake. We host an endless train of driving quantities. Even on the spiritual highway, while driving church attendance is a possibility, driving spirituality is flaky. But when you stand on holy ground be still. Be still.

On March Motivations

 ‘Motivation’ refers to a Latin word meaning ‘a moving cause’. It implies a willingness to act; the cause directs the movement. It differs from ‘purpose’ which sets the aim. Purpose is the reason something is done: theme, goal, design. War is an archetype, according to Jung’s psychology, and our reactions to war follow a pattern, deep in the human mind, still evoked by Homer and Euripides. Is the cause the war, or the war the cause?

“What is truth?” Pilate inquires. In antiquity, as today, power claims truth. There was the father’s power, the gods’ power, the Emperor’s power. When Jesus appears, transfigured, with Moses and Elijah, his power is attested by the company he keeps. He speaks to Pilate as witness to the truth: this is an act of power. (We have a clash of truths). At Emmaus, Jesus directs his survivors “that repentaunce and remission of synnes shulde be preached in his name amonge all nacions. And the begynnynge must be at Jerusalem”.(Luke 24:47. Tyndale).

Now, in the Middle East, we have a clash of powers. War shows its motivating and purposed powers. War is an archetype. But so is peace. “And the beginning must be at Jerusalem.”

 

On February Fantasies

Everybody is fantastic. Even the fantasy-merchants are hard to imagine. Where everything is for sale, the price is fantastic, the deal is fantastic, the cost most fantastic of all.

There’s a fantasy of the laws, protections, authorities, governments. Jesus of Nazareth knew this well. “The kings of the nations are their lords, and they who rule over them are called Benefactors.”¹

Where everything is for sale, as in February, the rulers of nations define their fantasies as blessings.

Dig lower, fly higher. It’s all good. Good boys.

There’s a fantasia. A fantasia on health, on security, on single-mindedness. ‘Divisive’ is a fantastic word, we must be united while dividing up the world, the wealth, and the devil’s brew.

Technology is fantastic, obsolete in a decade. A fantasia on time. Time however is limited, a boundary encircles our lives; this is no fantasy but a thing that exists, even in February, itself a strange construction of time and the cosmos.

If moderation knows our limits, and greed is not so good, the real becomes our treasure. What is real is close to our hearts. It can’t be blurred by fantasy. Not even in February.

1Luke 22:25. Aramaic Bible in Plain English 

On January Journals

 

Journals come by day. Or day by day. Witnessing, authenticating, recording, against the day, hour, moment of rendering accounts. Everyone’s trying to correct the past. But these mistakes and confusions are only small eddies, little whirlpools in the midst of a long fluency in the ever-flowing river of time.

There are limitations. A quarter of a century has left the 20^th behind, and all our errors can stay there too. How embarrassing! That’s so 20^th century.

Journals record the present, good and bad, strong and weak, honourable and miserable. It’s hard to be good at everything, mostly you have to choose. Prioritise kindness, but sympathy is not the same thing; help can be ambiguous. Practice discernment as a skill.

The poet Basho said the masters make more mistakes than others. Because bold. And recovery is an art. Retrieval, rescue, resilience. Anyway you were there; thereness is to be appreciated. Histories are everywhere, crossing and retreating, pulsing and crumbling, histories of stars and nations, individuals and companions, animals, buildings, trees, ideas, oceans. I remember a fraught conversation once (that’s so 20^th century!) interrupted by the comment: “Here we sit, in the midst of eternity.”

It is good, Lord, to be here.

On December Desires

 

While November is the ghost month, December directs our desires: not mourning the old, but embracing the new. Increasingly, the newer and newest of the new. It’s clearly to be seen from the general December environment: secular, retailistic, benevolent (hopefully), expectant (optimistically), crowded, noisy, exhausting. Seeking desires is wearying, because desire is endless.

If I crawl out from under the pile of December demands and expectations, I seem to be still the same person, self-absorbed, flawed, repeating constantly the same mistakes and misperceptions.

The ability to desire is more than instinct. My dog wants a bone; my cat wants a mouse. Humanity, however, is able to imagine more abstract desires put into practice: peace on earth, good will towards men. (There’s no good will towards mice in the cat world.) Yet we continue with these endless mistakes and misperceptions.

Desires for land, resources, prominence, authority, domination, salvation (of others), haven’t changed since Roman times.

I mention Rome because in the days of Caesar Augustus a census was taken, which included the least of subjects, a little child, to be known as the Desire of all Nations, (to those who could see). From all blindness of heart, Good Lord, deliver us.

On November Nocturnes

Have you ever met, in lucid dreams, someone from the distant past, looking as old as you are now, surrounded in light? Did you apologise for what you did? Did the light fracture? What called this visitation? Did you know you could not have done otherwise? November is the ghost month.

 All Souls Day. One place these souls now inhabit is memory. Since ghosts are travelling with us, it’s ungracious to deny them a blessing. How exhausting to be a ghost! Ghosts of those who detracted and hurt me; ghosts of unfriends. This could be the month of ghosts resting.  Rest in peace.

The past is a mountain, and we are mountain climbers.

You are owed nothing after raising this ghost and so troubling others, a kind of incantation. You are more than the wrongs you have caused. The past will settle by itself; consequences fall out by chance or design. You are worth many sparrows.

You are now forgiven for being a witness, a victim, or collateral damage. Forgiveness means - when vengeance seems proper – you write off the debt. The Lord, for example, is plenteous in mercy. So you may forgive your ghosts, (dead by definition), or not.