On Experiencing Life.

A homeless person does not have a home. You know, like Jesus: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.’ A person experiencing homelessness is having an experience. There’s a lot of experience around. I could experience bullying, home violence (often fatal), disability, sickness (physical), illness (mental), addiction, imprisonment, or a range of other misfortunes. I might experience discrimination, racism, or misogyny. Nobody is despised or rejected: Jesus was both.

            I struggle to read the news, comprising the lie direct, indirect, imaginative, rhetorical, masked, theatrical, privileged, or corrupt — typically pronounced by the powerful — and the soup of euphemisms in which the rest of us daily swim. Jesus wasn’t experiencing asylum seeking as he went into Egypt with his family. Herod was experiencing wrath, killing young children right, left and centre: they fled for their lives.

            All worldly enterprises, the Buddha noted, end in sorrow. Sometimes they begin there. In the process of experiencing life, it may be necessary for the sick to seek healing, the despairing comfort, prisoners freedom, the despised and rejected to seek justice. Hear truth: show mercy, do justice.

On Finding the Niche

This Pentecost, I went down the street, looking for a niche. I found the niche where the homeless fellow slept on the pavement in the alcove of the grand hotel. I found the niche jacket in the window niche in isolated splendour watched by the old man leaning on his stick.

            The Holy Spirit being colourless, Whitsun was celebrated as white, (confused with wise), though now it’s red as fire. Would Whitsun be the ultimate niche experience, since no matter how niche your language, you can still expect to hear something to your benefit?

            I know many who seek their niche. Something that fits like a glove. Many there are, also, who want to fill a niche with some enterprise. Or some thing. Or some one. Can we have a niche salvation? Everyone to be saved in a singular way?

            Every religion seems split into fragments, factions, ever finer niche expressions. Perhaps these are niches in one grand cathedral.

            On the pavement where Pilate pronounced his judgements, in the day of isolated splendour, then, as it was not possible he should be holden of death, we received one salvation. Because you cannot be saved in your own little niche, alone.

On the Weight of the World

History is. We live in it. Black Death: yesterday; ice winter, when the Thames froze solid, a few hours past. Now we live in transforming times, so mutable. Do we carry the world’s weight in a declining era? Or is it building out of sight?

            Buddha said: suffering is. St. Paul said: this mutable must put on unchangingness. Eternity is. So heavy, the world.

            Methods of carrying the world and its griefs: you can be angry at yourself (so weak), or angry at the cause (those people), or angry at the sufferers (why are you suffering in my face? And why so many?) You can have fear. You can cultivate fear. From there but a close step to hatred, the devil’s treasure.

            ‘Have mercy on me,’ said blind Bartimaeus.

            ‘What do you want me to do?’ said Jesus.

            ‘Let me see again.’

            Good question. Good answer. The labour of building; the ease of destruction. Ways in, out, over, through? Learn to ask: ‘What do you want me to do?’

            ‘Be of good comfort,’ they said, ‘rise, he calleth thee.’

            Anger doesn’t bear the world’s weight; fear doesn’t bear it.

            Lord, that I might receive my sight.