On Supposing September

We are surrounded by sky. The days of above and below have long passed. I was once interested in astrology, in the idea that gigantic forces flinging suns and planets around the sky might pinpoint us in the way that one sparrow does not fall. Is psychology more astronomy, more biology, more alchemy, or more chemistry?

Maybe you were practicing a youth spent trying to be worthy, not realising how beautiful and perfect you were then, and will not be again. Maybe you’re curating your past, walking into the darkness of memory, with all the figures of those times. Maybe you’re walking into the light of wisdom, whether wise yourself or possibly a listener, hearing what cannot be seen. Nothing that is done in secret will not be revealed.

You might be sailing across the seas of spirituality, which are now said to project the music of the spheres, of which the earth is one. You might be taking risks, being warned when sailing too close to the rocks, receiving the gift of transparency. Seeing into September, half the world pink with Spring, half gold with Autumn. Hearing the Gospel, the good spell, the wholesome story. As above, so below.

On Ascending August

 

The days are short, but they lengthen. We’ll hardly know ourselves by September. There’s just enough time to visit the city for an appointment, till the chill of evening slides forward. In the morning, passing someone muffled and blanketed, the face entirely wrapped in knitted scarves, seated on the ground at the hospital corner. The only movement one finger on each mittened hand, scratching behind one ear of each tiny Jack Russell Terrier, bright eyes peeking from beneath one elbow on each side. Two small dogs, two hands, one human face, covered against the cold. Whether chemically, socially, or financially abandoned, so it seems.

Does houseless mean homeless? Can you be homeless in a house? Can you be at home outside a house? Who decides?

There was no appeal for money here. No bowl or basket, no looking up and no voice. No appeal for anything at all. A wrappedness of everything except the four bright eyes, like seraphim maybe. Perhaps the gift of warmth for the two little creatures, a gift that can still be given when other things have been taken...somehow.

What does August ask of us? “The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)

On Moving July

 Moving house is like a pilgrimage. Travelling from one space to another, carrying as little as possible, although a lot doesn’t want to be left behind. Or maybe the pilgrimage is like moving house. What to take, what to remain? Can the ancestors travel with you? (When, if ever, do your ancestors even leave you?) The past may manifest as a procession of ghosts, yet remnants of old are alive in your genes.

Your mentality moves with you. You can’t leave it behind: your opinions have you. To behold the holy relic once meant to change you; after so much travel, traversing so many risks and dangers: facing a transformation, becoming anew. A renewed individual in another place. Not the last place; moving is continual (look at the stars).

Maybe you learn to move less. Have you, like Atlas, seemed to carry the world? The weight, heavy responsibilities, accountability: is not this a kind of grandiosity? So important you could have altered fate? (Peace, ghosts!) Consider the words of Jesus: “My burden is light”. Light because shared; shared in the company of others; guides and followers, lovers and worshippers. Led by the light, moving from house to house in pilgrimage. 

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. 

On October Occasions

 

October, my birth month, brings reflection. Entering an era of realising how much I don’t need. Responsibilities I’ve outgrown, inheritances I can no longer carry, impressions of a lengthy past that either stands accusing or seems exactly like a dream. Not a dream, but a story.

I rescue an English teacher’s words: “We’re not tragic heroes of literature; we are comedians.” We’re not King Lear, at best, we can aspire to Don Quixote. I find this more comforting with each passing year. To be conscious of failing is actually good for you. To have laid one brick in the path that leads to perdition – but only one brick. To weigh it up: If this happened in the past, something else must happen in the future, if you want balance.

To view the occasions: enigmatic events, tainted times, instant inspirations — casting light across the shadows — or fated flickers changing lives forever. I’ve outlived my detractors and many of my friends; I’ve observed history repeat itself in cyclical patterns. But hopefully, I’ve learned there’s always more to learn, everything fascinating. Occasions arise to live unending transformations, to stop performing the role of someone else. God willing: all occasions dwelling beneath God’s will.

On September Spaces

Does space surround us, or is it through us? Not only universal space, worlds exploding, fragmenting, flaming, but local space as well. The spirit of the person meets the spirit of place, the genius loci. Sometimes it’s not who you are but where you are.

September spaces may be places of safety, places of sense. True spaces appointing the seasons, not truth as an arm of power. Not space as a stage for violence.  Breathing spaces, breathing as a privilege. Sacred spaces, cathedrals and landscapes, seas and skies. Holy spirits.

But the past is not past, fragments are everywhere.

Haunted spaces, that hosted scenes of desperation, inspiration, adoration, abuse, conflict, obliteration, loss. Inhabited by people you knew, now at their eternal rest, spaces negligent and void. New inhabitants. New stories, new conversions, new myths. Space for the crimes of this age.

The genius walks with you; we call her the guardian angel. Given by your ancestors, whatever you think of them now. Ask yourself, anywhere, what is my role in this space? Building, interpreting, extending, imploding, ascending. Find out where you are. Who am I in this place? Here as a witness, here to engage, here in God’s liminal space. 

On August Assumptions

 

Where do you stand right now? What do you assume to be true (does that word still have meaning?). What do you assume to yourself:  responsibility, authority, guilt? What to assume in August?

It has this double significance, you see. There’s assuming the faith of certain sources, a very ancient understanding. There’s assuming the trust that others should have in you. Do you trust yourself, though?

Looking around the world is a painful process, with the earth itself unstable, unable to be comprehended. Earth, air, fire, and water corrupted to unknowable ways. Human agency, deployed in wars, invasions, crimes, and fraud.  We stand in Dante’s dark wood, facing the assaults of violence and greed.

Can we assume that anyone will bail us out? Must we assume the task ourselves? What is called for? To cease oppressing — everyone — to stop assuming we know what’s best everywhere. To bring about the liberation of the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind. Even to find the right words — often no words — to preach good news to the weak, among whom we are included. So read Jesus, in a time of Imperial domination, when the truth is not in us.

On July Habitations

 

July in the Southern Hemisphere: the centre of winter. Weather inhabits the great outdoors. Indoors, a metaphor, a habitation, and a house. January is named for Janus, god of doors, facing both old year and new; July, called after the assassinated Julius Caesar, faces back into the former future that became the past so quickly, and forward into the present future sliding seamlessly into the past, every day.

Home is a where. The body is also a habitation and a house. At home in the body opens space for the soul, that is, where Jesus is at home when we’re at home in him. At home with someone who knows who and where we are, more than we know ourselves. Without our habitation, are we anywhere?

Habiting with neighbours. A gathering, community, or company who profess to know each other in a certain space. Walking together through the same doors of time, however evenly or otherwise the space may intersect. At home among us is as much on earth as it is in heaven. At least, refrain from the harms you hate yourselves, for home is free of fear. Rest, hope, love bringing you home. A habitation in the heart.

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).

---

[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.

On Quarter Time

 

Ocean currents flow both on the surface and below. Wind currents sweep above lands and waters, from sky to low. Everything is in flow, through time. All that you loved is in flow; what you did and said, loved and held, flowing back and forth, around and over and under and through.

Is the cosmos full of fire, and the earth of water? Is time regular, or full of floods and pools? Is God both mathematician and musician? Evidently. Common time in music is quarter time; four fours, a quarter note one four. The seasons divide into quarters. So a quarter of a century is a big chunk of time; it’s a real bite. From 2000 to 2025 looks like a quarter from here. Now someone will tell me my maths is most suspect, but history is cyclical, of this I’m sure. The forces of purity and fear retreat, and then return, when you don’t expect them, when your attention is directed elsewhere. From Christ’s time to our time, we entered the third millennium: it’s called the Common Era, but I prefer the old term Anno Domini. You can’t hope to see it all, but you can hope to see.