On June Intentions

June, the month of youth, of weddings and families and beginnings.  Intentions, purposes, goals. There’s what you intend, and there’s what actually happens. Closely tied to the reason it is done. Be clear about your intentions, confusion serves no one.

Good intentions famously pave the road to hell. But what’s a good intention, that leads to such a bad end? If good is beneficial, who benefits? If good is moral, who decides? If good is excellent, or superior, who fails? Whole projects of domination, expropriation, colonisation, extinction have been called good.

The wrongs of today are the wrongs of yesterday. Planted in the fields of regrets, harvested in times of too late.  Are the children causing the problems or are the problems causing the children? There are three stages: Intent. Process. Result. Intent interrogated: is it just, moderate, wise, or brave? Result interrogated: justice returns to everything that which belongs to it. Is it just? Moderation balances, courage perseveres, wisdom discerns. How to reach a good result?

In June, we celebrate the loving spontaneity of youth, the loving embrace of family, the love that links intentions and results. Here is the process. Without love, saith the Apostle, I am nothing. 

On the May

 

To speak of the May is to speak of the seasons. The stars, including the Sun, enact their performances without reference to humanity, yet our cycles chime the turnings of earth and planets with religious attention.

Eve of May, like All Hallows’ Eve, is a point of transition, a doorway. All Saints Day follows  the attempt of the powers of evil to bar the entrance to Allhallowtide, remembrance of the dead, the ancestors. Traditionally in the North, on May Eve the same powers try to hold back the flowering of warmth and growth. What then of the South?

What does it mean to live on ancient land, with different plants, different stars, even different ancestors? On May Eve, is it the sinister powers of ignorance, greed and fear that try to hold back the flowering of understanding and grace, the confession of our manifold sins against the nature of place?  Spring becomes autumn, a time of reflection. As we walk over someone else’s land, we in Australia owe honesty and courtesy to our (however involuntary) hosts, as to country itself. To ourselves we owe humility, entering May knowing we do not know, becoming as little children, as Our Lord requires.

On Drawing Poetry

 

The Lent Project is more reflection than penance, but continually faces me with my limitations. My messy desk. Blots on paper. The wrong brushes. Measurements, and how not to take them. Mixing styles: a bad idea. Finding out this is a bad idea. Not waiting for the paint to dry: so impatient. Ink and watercolours in a book so any mistakes stay around to be regretted. Just gotta live with it.  A lot like life.

Do I have the time to do this today? Where can I make the time? Am I pushing time? Should I have done this yesterday? Sure. What thing has to go elsewhere, even out, so I can find the time? Is time not it, but he, as the Mad Hatter proposes? Where is he? Hiding? Asleep? In another reality? Is Time but a feckless child?

The moment you engage with poetry you are faced with its intellectual quality. Poetry is one language, drawing another. Words and images have to speak to one another. Some lines, even the most descriptive, are abstract. Faced with the abstraction of all words. What’s beneath, behind, within words? Searching the words of poets to find the image beyond all words.

On Chorus Call

 

Fake facts are not new. The Greek tragedies hinge on them. The gods are by no means predisposed to overlook them. Confronted by catastrophe, Chorus knows that every one shall be afflicted by the resulting fall.

Who believed history tucked safely into the past? Catastrophe overturns the existing order; fatal reversal. Chorus hears it in the death of Agamemnon: “Anyone can see it, by these first steps they have taken, they purpose to be tyrants here upon our city.”[i]  Chorus foresees, inquires, fears, recounts, witnesses, prophecies. “Where shall I turn the brain’s activity in speed when the house is falling?”

Jesus, also, faces his followers as prophet. In Wycliff’s translation: “Moreover when ye se the abominable desolacion, whereof is spoken by Daniel the prophet, stond where it ought nott, let hym that readeth it, understonde it.” (Mark 13:14) What is standing in the wrong place now?  Your role is Chorus: stay awake.  Meanwhile the disciples are absorbed by the problem of who is worthy.

You still have a spiritual life. What is the state of your soul? The great and troubling mysteries of Lent and Holy Week are before us. (Let whoever reads understand).

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[i]Aeschylus, Agamemnon, tr. Richard Lattimore.

On Many Calls

 

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” Although few are chosen, does this mean many are called? Many who were called did not turn up. The great audition lacked some otherwise ambitious performers. (That’s how you don’t get the job). When the choice is down, the call goes to whom you did not expect. All the usual suspects found somewhere else to be on the day when the Holy Spirit stood beside Paul and made the right call. For a while.

            You can choose or be chosen. Which is more worrying? Think of the last kid chosen for the sports team. (Suffer the little children). Is one choice better than the other? Many vocations, many locutions. Who has the choice to choose? Then who is called, and who’s called out?

            Out of court, out of time, out of options. Some shall be out, some shall be in. (In favour, in prison; in trouble, in luck.) Where Martha has many calls on her attention, Mary has one only. That’s just a fact: if Martha didn’t answer, dinner wouldn’t make it to the table. The dinner, the table, the bread, the wine. The gift. The last shall be first; the first last.