On Trying

I’ve been trying to memorise a piece of music. It slips out of the trap of my mind like fish through holes in a net. Trying: discouraging word. To test or try something doesn’t fully commit it. I say, I’m memorising Field’s Nocturne, haven’t got it yet. If I have so much as one bar in secure memory, I’m not trying, I’m memorising.

            ‘Beginning’ can be used in the same way. Beginning to understand how, or beginning to see that, fail to grasp or envision. Like those in John’s Gospel who failed to grasp the light, beginning to see hasn’t yet seen and begs a cure. Seeing, perceiving, understanding the signs of the times could be blocked by an obstacle in the way. If you can’t see around or through you might be blind. Obstacles to sight, like obstacles to memory, take up too much space for themselves. Too opaque, too self-important, too inerrant. Even light around the edges could help.

            Or spectacles. A mirror looks back, glasses look outward: something to sharpen the picture, seeking every glimmer. A photographer knows what light can do. Imagine light playing across the block in the road, illuminating and dissolving. Christ my light.

On Reflections

3 February 2020

At the bottom of a drawer, I found a mirror from Norway, given me as a child. It had nothing to reflect there: decades of happenings passed it by. Typically a mirror should reflect yourself; this reflected only the wood. If the mirror gave a Norwegian reflection, would another give a different national reflection? Or do nations reflect?

How do we know what happened? What is actually happening or what will happen? Is it the responsibility of facts to convince? Do we scrutinize motivations with a scrubbing-brush?

There are witnesses. Witnesses, as anyone who works in court will tell you, vary in reliability, suitability, and being in the wrong place at the right time. Mary Magdalene is the most reliable witness we have, though she wouldn’t have been allowed to testify in court. It’s not who you saw; it’s who you are.

Many arguments, political or religious, fail to reflect their surface subject. In the end, they’re about something called “plain sense”. Overriding scholarship, scientific analysis, history or philosophy, “plain sense” derives from the interpretation of a dominator. It reflects himself, his view of the bottom of the drawer. It’s plain only to those who buy it.

On The Limits

2 January 2020

The limits of the Roman Empire were set as a boundary containing expansion: rivers, timber-fenced fortifications, or Hadrian’s Wall. The word originally meant a path, or course, even the course of heavenly bodies; then a frontier, differentiation, ultimately military reinforcement: Roman roads, forts, palisades. Limits contained civilisation within, deflected invaders without.

Limits: we don’t flow too freely into neighbouring territory; we refuse entrance to harmful entities. Limitations, though, impact upon ourselves. We may meet barriers, or we may be unprepared: either can limit us. Limitations keep us within or without.

While individual limits are important (vaccination to keep out diseases; self-control to restrain violence) comprehending limitations has universal significance.

We are reaching the limits of the Human Empire as we continue to destroy the earth. The means of life dissolve and with it, civilisation we have refused to limit. A limitless universe belongs only to God: the world which has inherited us bears limits in every feature. We cannot know what God is, says Aquinas, but only what God is not. The limits of God are unknown, but the limits of creation are clearly present. We have before us a path: the Way of limiting our carelessness, ignorance, and greed.

On Loving Enemies

2 December 2019

I was recently asked to love my worst enemy; hard to discover who that might be. Love is one of the hardest terms to define and there’s a dearth of defined words out there. Arguments spin around rebutting meanings unintended, unexpressed. Cross-communication.

What do we mean by love? Am I to love as mother and child love: complete dependency, attachment, protection, tenderness? Wouldn’t it be curious to love as lovers do: intense desire, possession, attraction, singularity? What about family love: exclusiveness, blood ties, responsibility, bonding? Or love of country?  Patriotic love to die for, or heart-rending love of dispossession? Self-abandoning love of God? The love of money, of course, is the root of evil, often the branches, too.

If the love of friends, as the ancients believed, will always seek the good for a friend, is this close enough to love of enemies who by definition always seek harm for an enemy? Now who is out there seeking harm for me? Don’t answer that. Wouldn’t it be safer to seek the good for everyone? Not specific enough? Wishing honour, dignity, well-being and divine favour to my dearest enemy? Christ approaches. Not for nothing is he called the Prince of Peace. 

On Energy

2 November 2019

A survey asked if I felt happiness looking back at life. What? Undeserved luck, unexpected disasters, inspired celebrations, fair solace, or my regrettable behavior locked in the past? Relief and remorse. Cogitation draws energy. Getting out of bed in my morning mood, I imagine others have energy: unfortunately, they’re probably not the majority. Why? Energy produces work. In fact it’s a unit of work. What comes between us and our proper work? Energy can be transferred between bodies, places, other energies. Sometimes it’s called a unit of change. Change is implicated in the Buddhist idea of suffering, even when the change is welcomed. Stillness contains energy; death releases it in a series of breakdowns and transmutations.  What channels most energy? Whether to fear God, or enjoy God forever? Granting that ‘fear’ means ‘reverence’ and ‘forever’ is subject to change (transfers of energy) how best to glorify God? So much knowledge, so little wisdom. Gesture is life. Signs are indications, or they may be miracles. On this All Souls Day I think of energy still in motion. If energy is a unit of work, what’s a unit of rest? Do we need a unit of play?

On Time Around

3 October 2019

A great deal of time is spent regretting my past or leaping into my future, while the present moment escapes detailed attention. Personal time resurrected may expunge whole time, though:  past lacking knowledge of history, future lacking purpose and plan. Concentration on the immediate and personal, advised by new age masters, closes us to the spaciousness of time: its promise, its sometimes dire fate.

The kind of time I’m missing is time around. Around activities, commuting, conversations, and all artistic practices. Some things can’t properly be done without swathes of time around. Eroded by canvassers, pets, calls from friends reminiscing old times, seekers of money or volunteers. Children both need and consume time around. It’s the space between letters and words; the silence between the notes. Exploded by screens, ringtones, news and everlasting opinions.

            Unfocused time, free of deadlines, reactions, paperwork, recorded messages. Time expanded away from medical appointments, crises, cortisol and sleep. Calm time for walking around, patting things down, thinking along, pottering, daydreaming, getting poised. A peripheral vision of time.

Not for nothing is my favourite Bible book Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity. Find space in time. Blessed time around.

On Protection and Blessing

5 September 2019

I’ve given up protecting people. After many decades I’ve seen how some people don’t want to solve problems; they might want something else.  They might want a fight, for example. All that adrenalin has to go somewhere, in priority to reason and good sense. One source of unwholesome chemicals in the body is fear, a profitable commodity. Who profits? Currently forces of reaction are exercised on religious freedom, defined as license to vilify. Some proponents may be honest clergy simply selling hell — at a very good price, no doubt — or politicians selling anxiety. Others, in the chess game of ecclesiastical maneuvers, may be protecting their queen. Neither Solomon nor the Queen of Sheba possessed all the assets of the known world, though in a much larger, globalised world, such ambitions can now be suspected. The rage of the rich deprived of the smallest sliver of gold motivates dominance, hostility and control. The real Biblical treasure was given to the queen’s Ethiopian eunuch, a man of no sexual credibility in a culture obsessed with ancestry, genealogy, and inheritance. “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised?” And Philip gave him the blessing of Baptism.