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.