On Praying Some Prayers

The past weeks have been conducive to prayer. Earth trembles, cities crumble, people lie fearful in rain without shelter. Men face firing squads, women slavery; thousands drown fleeing wars and tyrannies. What prayers to pray?

            Do I have the right to pray for my own health and agency? Every day I thank God for treatments and think one little miracle wouldn’t hurt. I lie in comfort in a brilliant hospital, smiling angelic-faced attendants drip-feeding miraculous medicines. While others lie in rain or drown in cold sea. What prayers to pray?

            All over the world, governments get it wrong, and imbuing the hearts of ministers with righteousness is slower than the drip in my hand. Prisoners die by noose, gun and knife, and a variety of inventions devised by inventive souls. The Lady Jane Grey, a fervent Evangelical, asked her executioners: ‘May I say this Psalm?’ and began Miserere Mihi, aged 16.

            You can pray for all prisoners and captives, and sometimes this is heard: nearly 300 women and girls freed from captivity by military action. I can send money to Oxfam, and hope for blankets, water, shelter, to be given. Brushing past my conscience, still praying for myself. What prayers to pray?

            Or you can pray, with the Buddhists, for the welfare of all sentient beings. The West has been taught to say this, thank God, but much enlightenment must come to pass.

            The Lord, says the Psalm, is plenteous in mercy. What prayers to pray?

On Cleaning the House

This week I decided to clean my house thoroughly, helped by bright sunshine. This is actually a privilege, as long as you don’t do it too often.

            Benefits of cleaning house: you’re in your own space, moving things around, placing them just where you want them. You decide what’s clean and what’s dirty. You come across valued objects from happy times, and things that make you wonder where you were when. You take notice of oils, chemicals and possible poisons you’ve overlooked in your environs. If, like me, you’ve been too sick to clean up, there’s the simple pleasure of agency, being able to do it.

            A mental or spiritual cleaning has the same benefits. Moving outworn ideas into back cupboards; accepting events or persons you thought were unwholesome; becoming aware of poisonous emotions like greed, revenge, egotism and hostility. Binning what you can.

            Have you outgrown some old prayers that can retire behind new ones? Maybe you now think passing the exam has more to do with your devotion to study, while winning the lottery is in the hands of chance. Is living the Gospel a possible prayer?

            Having the strength to clean house can be pure pleasure. Looking at the clean house, dwelling in it, even though you know you’re going to have to do it all again.

On Burning Churches

The poet W.H. Auden regained his Christian faith after reflecting on the burning of churches during the Spanish Civil War. He’d gone to the war an idealistic Marxist-materialist-atheist, but the burning of churches disturbed him. In trying to discover reasons for his distress, he returned to his Christian belief.

            Atheism presents itself as a wise reasonable alternative to the fires of faith. This is neither new nor reasonable. Revolutionary France turned Notre Dame Cathedral into a Temple of Reason. It doesn’t last. Icons and churches once burned in Orthodox Russia.

            Treasures of art and music may burn with the church. Churches hold the reverence of our ancestors, so burning churches may symbolise obliteration of ancient civilisations.          

            Churches burn for many reasons: if someone lights the hedge on fire and it spreads to the church, is it accidental? Deliberately firing a building is arson, a crime. In 1936, Gaudi’s plans and models for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona burned when the church was set on fire by revolutionaries: the models are being reconstructed as work on this mighty basilica continues.

            When churches burn, the faith of the congregation continues to flow like fire. A church stands a holy island amid the waves of worldly space. When any church burns, the most important question will be: who has the photographs, drawings, and plans?

On Living in History

I’m a diverse reader, following various interests. This Lent, I’m reading biography, the stories of people living within history. The diaries of German diplomat Count Kessler, a Cassandra post WW I, foresee Hitler’s rise step by step: all meetings, conferences, diplomacy fail.[1]

            Similarly, British Minister Duff Cooper vainly tries to persuade his government of threat, as it fails to arm or mobilise (and Cooper never again speaks to Chamberlain after Munich.) Later, Cooper is anxious about the Levant (region: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and more) between British and French.[2]

            Then Byron, whose admiration for Napoleon (as Napoleon fights across Europe) embodies the seductiveness of great figures on the Romantic mind. Byron in Ottoman Greece discovers antiquity as prey as Elgin carves away the Parthenon marbles.[3]

            The martyrs of the Venerable English College Rome (many deemed traitors as Roman Catholic priests under Elizabeth I) witness the state’s power to enforce religious compliance, as well as convictions compelling martyrdom. We are heirs of the Reformation, for good and for ill.[4]

            Frailty of civilisations, reach to world conquest, religion as history. History shows what has been, what may be, sometimes what will be. We should read it; we live within it.

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[1] Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937).

[2] Cooper, Duff. Old Men Forget. (1953).

[3] McCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. (2002).

[4] Saint Michael’s Abbey. The Forty Four: The Martyrs of the Venerable English College Rome. (2000).

On Human Space

Today, due to a competition called Iron Man (the last Iron Man I heard of was Bismarck: times change) I took the old way to the city not the freeway. I hadn’t taken that route in a generation. I’ve reached a place in my life where everything reminds me of something else; my trip was a revival of whole sheets of my former life.

            Witnessing the industrialisation of suburbs I’d known, where I’d stayed, lost events enacted, shops, hospitals, schools, communities overwritten, signage in new languages, blocks of boxlike factory outlets over gardens and homes. At least the sad dusty pony rides by the highway now gone.

            Parts of life have enchantment such that living them blocks out time: passionate love, ambition, joys of parenthood. Time seems not to move while within them: yet finite. The Stabat Mater we sang today tells of a Mother facing such an end: Lenten sorrows.

            It’s of this mutability of human space that Paul writes, saying how we must be changed, the places of our lives like sets to be struck and rolled away, the dramas and traumas like joys and delights concluded, leaving us on the bare structure and stage of God’s Reality.

On Lenten Reading.

Mid-Lent, time drags. My nominated charity has acquired so much loot from my mistakes: all curiosities, not hard news. But I’ve kept up my Lenten reading.

            Lent brings slowness: for a portion of the year to contemplate our sorry selves in search of the Way. For Christians, Jesus Christ is both Way and Truth, and this fact takes time in contemplation.

            Lenten reading, spiritual, inspirational, historical or ethical? I’m reading Alberti’s Book of the Family, a 15^th century discussion on the ethics of households. The wife is a child, who shouldn’t, like other ‘little girls’ wave her arms about while chattering with girlfriends, but comport herself with silent dignity before neighbours and servants. She must guard, keep, preserve whatever comes into the house. Men can gesture freely in loud arguments.[1]

            Illiterates have no Latin. Without Latin, you lack rhetoric, eloquence, beauty of expression. You can’t cite the finest authors of antiquity. It’s to be hoped the vernacular will someday catch up.

            Every day rendering thanks to God who in his mercy gives gifts: tranquillity of heart and respect for the family. By my Lenten reading, I see what has been thought: life as it has been lived.   

      

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[1] Albert, Leon Battista, 1404-1472. Renaissance humanist, architect and polymath. Alberti was in Holy Orders; he never married. His own family is said to have laughed at his book, which was written in the vernacular. Today his writings are considered classics of Italian literature.

On Not Reading the News: A Lenten Update

I gave up reading the news for Lent. Car repair workshop: what’s news? Choice of newspaper, gossip mags, large screen TV. Magazines relentlessly procreational: weddings, engagements, infidelities, jealousies, breakups, babies, parental panics and occasional interesting illnesses, especially children. The only news in town.

            Resisted temptation to read newspaper: political news, local or international, devious and corrupting. Is TV lifestyle news? Can I avoid news previews running across the foot?

            Social media causes. Meritorious causes I support. Would you make your type so huge if you knew I won’t read news headlines? What’s news?

            What was news in Jesus’ day? Man bashed senseless, left by roadside; white-bleeding taxes to be enforced soon; partisan leader Barabbas released without trial; government infrastructure project attracts rioters (deaths at aqueduct protest); legions on march from Syria; world-obliterating war in Judea; fall of civilizations. ‘Can you not discern the signs of the times?’ says Jesus.

            No news at the mall. Only a muffled ambient acoustic, as I descend the escalator, a stream of souls gliding upwards beside. It’s not clear: I think I hear crowd music, alleluias. Only for a moment. No news. Can you read the signs of the times?