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.

On Being on Time

Waiting at lights, swearing at traffic while trying to get to appointments on time, gives time to reflect on the uses of time. Time takes up space. Time past, time future, time present take different meanings from the space they fill.

            Ancient Romans liked time past. It’s filled with deeds. Time past could take up a lot of space, because the ancestors lived there. Modern Americans like time future. That’s where deeds reside. For ancients, though, the future belonged to the gods. It might be better not to allow it too much space. Time could be juggled, through lucky and unlucky days, festival time, calendar time that continually lost time, water clocks and shady sundials. Now we have digital clocks and atomic time.

            Time for some is eternal present. Therefore don’t swear at the traffic: this too is living. Time is also status. One who waits is lowly. In some cultures, a couple of hours late is good to impress high status. The space in time a person takes up is the right of a social position. Impatience from a waiter would be folly.

            The time of the Eucharist is triple time: past, present and future brought together. A Trinity.

On Intercultural Gayness

Studying intercultural communication, its difficulties and rewards, I learned that culture determines all things; cultures have one right way of doing things. Culture shock can be disorienting, or distressing, because everything you thought you knew is different here.

            Imagine, then, a situation where you seem not to belong to your natal culture. Finding that the one right way of doing things is foreign to you. Permanently uneasy, sometimes distressed, feeling yourself in an exposed, possibly even unique position of adjustment. Tell me this is not still the position of many gay and transgendered individuals and I must point to the suicide and mental health statistics that shame our governments, religions, and indeed cultures.

            How did Jesus deal with intercultural communication? The Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar spoke from one culture, Jesus from another. She is sexually different: she has had five husbands, but now lives with another man. She speaks of the still water in the ground; Jesus speaks of the living water becoming a spring of eternal life. This communication leads her to become an apostle to her city, carrying the word that God is a spirit. Worship is not of culture, but of spirit and truth.

On Tenebrae: Darkness

Tenebrae means darkness. Light by light is extinguished in this service, the first of Holy Saturday, as Jeremiah predicts ruined cities, violated women, starving children. How long will ye blaspheme mine honour? cries the Lord.

            Many years ago, I heard the prophecy of a student cadet: In the wars of the future, there will be no such thing as a civilian. The war will be everywhere.The German army, shooting thousands of civilians, women and children on the Eastern Front in WW II, appealed to the government: You are destroying our young men.

            The Nazis then trained specialists to see to these killings, persons specially corrupted for that work, as is happening today.

            What did the Lord say to those at the foot of the cross? They know not what they do. But their officer was not completely corrupted. He saw, and said: Truly this was an innocent man.

On Vanishing

Today I had a dismaying event; I accidentally deleted all the pictures on a digital camera. There were some good shots there, too. I wouldn’t think I’m the only person ever to do this, so I have to chalk it up to experience. But I can see those lost images in my mind’s eye.

            Fortunately, last night I was at a lecture on Rilke. Rilke, like Dante, saw that loss creates memory. Now my pictures vanished into complete nothingness, and nobody but me will ever see them. You can’t remember the present, because it’s still in progress. The past must then be loss, even if only lost time.

            There were other losses and vanishings. A child knocked on my door in tears to tell me her dog had died. A woman spontaneously said her young niece had just suddenly died. And it happened to be the anniversary of a tragic family death that travels with me as a faithful guest present or hidden: a vanishing.

            Deaths flow through the underground channels of our memories, where vanished things go. Consciously or no, they remain as companions. God also is present in the underground channels. Here in Lent, we prepare to meet the death that refused to vanish.