New Year revisited

                           Around me the trees stir in their leaves
                           And call out, "Stay awhile."
                           The light flows from their branches.

                           And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
                           "and you too have come
                           into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
                           with light, and to shine."  *

It is almost a new year and a time when we may find ourselves looking back and looking forward in a way we perhaps only do at this time of year. Sometimes, I suppose, we hardly want to look back if the year has been a hard one for us - illness, sorrow, financial problems - whatever troubles our lives. Looking forward can be more hopeful I think but it is also a bit unsubstantial because life never quite goes where we had hoped it might. Sometimes it is even more wonderful than we dreamed; sometimes it is a bit worse. 

But in all this: the good, the hard, the unexpected, I believe that it can all be seen with a heart of gratitude. Does that seem odd when you are faced with hardship? sorrow? terrible difficulties? It isn't that it makes light of hardship but that somehow, a gift of gratitude lightens the burden of our sorrow. It is still sorrow but it is lightened by a sense that there is much that we can be grateful for - perhaps most especially that we are loved and cherished by our God.

Here is a beautiful meditation on beauty and gratitude that I hope you might think worthwhile to take 10 minutes to watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude.html


*Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006 The poem is "When I am among the Trees".

The God of Christmas

It will be Christmas this Wednesday. For many people it is a time of celebration and joy. For some others it is a time of pain and loneliness and for many throughout the world it is nothing in particular. So, why do we make such a big thing of it?

The way I see it, as a Christian, we are celebrating the birth of a very special person who showed us through his life, what goodness and truth and compassion look like in the flesh. And though we sometimes seem to portray Christmas as a kind of fairy tale - it wasn't at all. Jesus' life was hard and full of challenge and suffering and rejection. He knew though that he had a gift to give that was unlike any other and yet many, many people turned against what he had to share. 

I do wonder at times, how we can reject goodness. I am pretty sure we all admire it as a human quality and wish we could be like it. As people did with say, Nelson Mandela whose recent death has been a reminder of the goodness in his life. Perhaps it is that we are not good at accepting the messenger, the carrier of goodness or compassion or truth because they also seem too human, too much like us. We focus on the flaws, trying to tip the pedestal we ourselves have put them on not realizing their flaws (and our own) are part of the gift of their humanity. Without the flaws perhaps they would not be the people we also admire.

I thought about all this recently because someone wrote an article about Nelson Mandela headed: N.M. Saint or Sinner? I found myself saying, but of course, he was both. We all are.
                               

As Christians we do believe that Jesus was the one person who could show us perfectly what humanity could be. Even so lots of people criticized him, hated him and thought he was a fraud. So maybe the lesson is to see the best in others, be grateful for it and keep on working to be better ourselves. 

The message of God at Christmas comes to us in a human being; someone who had a race, a personality, ideas, a family, a culture - someone, in other words, amazingly like us. People used to say of him ' how can he be special, after all we know his parents, we know where he came from, we watched him grow up?'... 

I believe the message in all this, is that our humanity is indeed, the precious instrument of all that is good in our world if we allow it. Our daily living can be filled with all the qualities we love in him. We believe he made that possible.  But it is a time to recognize and accept our own responsibility to live out daily the gifts we have received, the power we are given. So isn't it a time for great celebration of hope and joy?

Mary Oliver again:* 'For what is life but reaching for an answer?' 

..and a journey too during which, it is never too late to start again.

* Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992. The poem is called 'Magellan'.

Being besotted!

At *Rosedale United Church a while ago, Rev. Doug Norris spoke of the season of Advent and of  being 'besotted' by it:

I am smitten, besotted, with the language of this season.  Words that are spoken and set to music and printed on cards that drop through the door -  this is a season of the eloquence of hope, and I love it!

He went on to say as he was speaking about the light which is part of what Advent brings:

... right through to the late night in here on Christmas Eve – when we let every light go out, every last bulb, understanding that at times for all of us and at that moment for somebody – there is only darkness, and then a single candle is lit, brought to the front, the apparent weakness of a candle lit at midnight, and a voice speaks : ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined…’
To light a candle at midnight is to say to the darkness ‘I beg to differ’ – I love the words of this season…  I am smitten.

Advent is indeed a time when a light shines in the darkness. And, I believe, all of us long for that light. Advent is a time of longing and of hope. But it is true, the darkness we see around us sometimes makes it all seem nonsense. We look around us and see too much that is chaotic, violent, self-absorbed and we say, 'this message cannot be true'.  But we mustn't lose sight of the beauty and goodness all around us:  the kindness of friends,  the beauty of a baby,  the exquisite detail of a flower and the peace in unforeseen places. We must not let the dark even vaguely win. 
                    

Another poems of Mary Oliver which speaks to this. It is called, *Praying:

              It doesn't have to be
              the blue Iris, it could be
              weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
              small stones; just
              pay attention, then patch

              a few words together and don't try
              to make them elaborate, this isn't
              a contest, but the doorway

              into thanks, and a silence in which
              another voice may speak.

There is much about Christmas in our society that is special: it is a time for family and for the giving of gifts to show our caring, but the core of Christmas, the reason it exists, is to celebrate the birth of goodness, the birth of light, the birth of hope made visible in a tiny baby. To believe this is not to deny the existence of these gifts in other faiths but only to say that for many, this has a face, a person we can hold on to.

* See Rosedale United Church website:http://rosedaleunited.org/ and you can hear the whole of the sermon.
* Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006

Hope and Advent

One of members of the little prayer group to which I belong reminded us of this poem by Thomas Hardy called The Darkling Thrush. It is a wintery poem - both of the season and of the heart, but it is also about hope - however fragile. I also think it is about the season of Advent whose second week we are entering. I mean by this, that I see Jesus these days, almost as the voice of the thrush in a world that is weary and dark. There is hope in what he came to tell us all and light and like the song of the thrush it warms our hearts.

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,      
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,    
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth      
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among                                 
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

Being astonished.

I am, once again, reading the poetry of Mary Oliver. I am always touched by her sense of immersion in the world where she is at any given moment and then the questions that that presence gives rise to. She says it in the first number of lines in her poem entitled, *Messenger.

        My work is loving the world.
        Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - 
             equal seekers of sweetness.
        Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
        Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

        Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
        Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
             keep my mind on what matters,
        which is my work,

        which is mostly standing still and learning to be
             astonished

There is more to this poem but this part is what has struck me especially. It relates too, to a theme often found in the work of the spiritual writer Henri J. Nouwen. He speaks about the need of each one of us to take time just to be. He says we all need moments of space in which to meet what - or who - is deep within us. We need moments of stillness and quiet in order to become whole; in order to become who we are meant to be.

For Mary Oliver that is what her poetry is all about. She would describe those moments of stillness as ones in which she is learning to 'be astonished'. That is beautiful.
                

December 1 is the beginning of the Christian season of Advent. Advent is the time leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus at Christmas. It too is a time of stillness, waiting and watching. It is a time when we are called to recognize the longing in our hearts for something MORE in our lives. It is the MORE, in a way, that gives our lives meaning - whether you are 'religious' or not.

* Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston 2006

The wintry season of life

A while ago I walked down to the building where my brother and sister-in-law live. It was to my mind, just about the most perfect day I could imagine. The sky was brilliantly clear, the air was crisp and not too cold, the remaining autumn colors were radiant: yellows, oranges, reds in trees and flowers even and green grass. Wonderful. 

What went through my mind as I walked was a sense that this almost perfect beauty was like a gift to hold on to before the grey and bleakness of winter set in. It is a bit like the hope and lift of the heart you feel when you see the first signs of Spring's very different beauty.

Then, I suppose, because it is what some people my age think about, I found myself contrasting this prelude of glorious if fading beauty before the grey of winter, with middle and old age. Middle age is, or can be, a beautiful time. One is, if well, still fit enough to do what one wants physically and mentally. There is, hopefully, a certain wisdom that makes life a bit more peaceful. Sometimes, as a gift, there can be deep understanding and appreciation of the beauty of life. All of this of course, is subject to the qualifications of life experience , what kind of life each of us has had. Possibly,it is a bit like the difference between a tree that is quite beautiful but whose colours are modified by blotches of some sort and a tree that has remained relatively unscathed.

Then, slowly we move into old age - the wintery season of our lives as Karl Rahner would put it - when we are losing our leaves and feeling less full of the energy that propelled us earlier. We become - many of us - increasingly less agile and more dependent and sometimes distressed by all this. And yet, and yet... isn't there a magnificent, stark beauty in the winter trees? You can see their shapes and the strength of their trunks and guess the depths of their roots. So perhaps, however badly we may feel, we may also see beauty in age which is after all, its own part of the journey. We tend sometimes to see the frailty, possibly the crankiness, the wrinkles. But why can't these be beautiful? They are after all, the fruit of a life lived and every single one of us, if we do not die young, will arrive there in the end. Maybe we lose a lot of the enjoyment of life when we too narrowly define beauty.

Of Trees and Keys

I wanted to show this photo again because I love this tree. It speaks to me of many things but most of all how beautiful something gnarled and old can be. This tree is all knotted and misshapen but it is strong and has its own loveliness. It is useful too for, among other values, it provides shade and cool in the heat of the day. That is all I wanted to say about it but you will have your own thoughts I'm sure.

                              

 My second pondering is on the subject of keys. You may think this strange but the importance of keys struck me particularly the other day when I saw a man on the street who looked like some of the homeless men one sees far too often on city streets. But then I saw that this man had a bunch of keys on his belt. I felt quite startled by this. As I thought about why I felt that way, I realized that keys, for most of us, symbolize that one has access to one or more places that are private and in some sense privileged: do you expect a homeless person to have keys? For keys are for your home or place of work or at least, some place where you have access that others do not. Many of us carry keys - sometimes quite a few. So does having keys give a certain status? Even if it isn't to a mansion..?

Do we ever think about what our own set of keys means about our own lives?



               

The Gift of Weakness

The photo here is of some of my oldest and closest friends at the L'Arche community in Burnaby, B.C. My gratitude for their friendship and for all that I have learned from them is huge.

Though I no longer live in this community I am part of it. I helped found it and I am what is called a 'spiritual member' which is something I am also so very grateful for. It means that my vocation of prayer includes the commitment to pray for them; to ask God to help them through the hard times, to fill them with joy for all times and to let them be a little light in our world.

Here is something that Jean Vanier who is the founder of L'Arche, has written:

[In L'Arche] there are all the ups and downs of life, the disappointments, misunderstandings, disagreements and even conflicts. But that is very human and natural. We come from different backgrounds , cultures and faith traditions and have different temperaments. But we are seeking to love one another and to create in this broken world of ours a tiny place that radiates love and forgiveness and a desire for unity...My experience is that the God of love and the love of God are hidden in those who are weak and vulnerable, in our own weakness and vulnerability; God is hidden in our communities...I take rest and joy from that. *

Most of us don't see any gift in our weakness and vulnerability. In fact, we do all we can to be strong and in control. But the reality remains that we are in fact not in control. I think L'Arche teaches us that it is when we are willing to let go of the effort to control, to embrace our own and other people's weakness (and strength) and to be willing to be vulnerable and to share our gifts as we journey along the road together, then we move forward in joy.
* Jean Vanier: Our Life Together, A Memoir in Letters, Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., London, 2007

Trees

I often wonder how aware many of us are of our surroundings - especially when those surroundings are ones that we pass every day. I think the Buddhists would want to say to us that we need to be really mindful as we walk to wherever we are going. Do we feel the ground under us? do we see the faces of the people we pass? do we notice the gardens with their flowers and their weeds? Or are we just looking at our phone or head - down rushing to work or to an appointment or ... 

You might wonder where this is leading. Lately I have been noticing trees. Do you? Those of us who live in cities maybe don't see trees but I would guess that if you look around, you will see they are there. In a city like Toronto we are, I think, very fortunate. We have many beautiful parks and lots of trees along the sidewalks. We need trees. We need them both for the survival of our breathable air and also for their beauty.

  It also strikes me that trees have a kind of metaphorical 'value'. We can see for instance, in the life cycle of its leaves something of our own: fresh tender leaves in Spring; hardened, darkened slightly nibbled leaves in summer; dying leaves in autumn and dead leaves in winter. 

 

 
Then there are the trees that are deeply rooted and can survive almost any storm or drought and the trees that are more fragile which will suffer and perhaps die if they don't receive special care.

You can no doubt think of other ways that trees teach us. They also of course, protect us.

So, I reckon we need to protect them.

Have a lovely week.

Thanksgiving

Last weekend was Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. It really is a time, a bit like Christmas, when family becomes a focus. Many people who can, share a festive meal with family and maybe others who have none or are alone. It seems to be a time for sharing a meal and giving thanks for all that we have. 

But several days after, I was on the subway on my way to my volunteer work and I was standing beside a woman who looked utterly miserable. She looked incredibly tired and sad and almost, I would say, hopeless. Her nose at one time had obviously been broken and I wondered how or perhaps, who? At that moment I thought how easy it is for me to be thankful for family and sharing and the joy of friendship but what was it like for her - and for so many others? 

I have said before how challenging I find it to recognize the injustice of birth in this world. I can take no credit for being born with all I need. She did nothing to deserve being born into a life that was, perhaps, all struggle and even brutality. It is at the very least for me, a reminder that because we did nothing to deserve our birth gifts we do have to recognize our responsibility to work to make this a world in which everyone has all that enables them to flourish...We don't have to be rich in money or things, but I think everyone needs, indeed deserves, to be rich in love and peace and care. It is perhaps something we can help one another to achieve.

Finally, I just wanted to share another gift for which I do not know how to speak enough of my gratitude. For, during the month of September I was visiting the United Kingdom. That is to say, I was mostly visiting friends and most especially, the Sisters with whom I had shared some or most of my 30 years there - and several other friends associated with that life. It was an absolutely wonderful visit, indeed it was perfect. Two things struck me as most wonderful: the abundant hospitality that people offered and the gracious gift of friendship. I am so thankful. And thankful too...

For beauty

For family

And more beauty

For tranquility

For each one's beautiful humanity

Are we really enemies?(revisited)

We were at a bible study group one morning and one of the readings we read is  from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and among other things it says, basically, ' you have a responsibility to and for one another'. He suggests for instance, that even when we may have a right to do something, we may have a responsibility not to do it if it will harm or scandalize others. At very least, I think he is suggesting that we think about the implications of what we say or do before we act, out of respect for our brothers and sisters.


This took my mind to something that I have noticed since I have come back to Canada from my life in the monastery; something I think is becoming more evident to us all. That is, it seems to me that our civic and political life is becoming so confrontational that there is less and less will to compromise or listen or love. So for instance: I am certain I am right, you do not agree with me, therefore you are wrong and I will destroy you. Or, at very least,  I will shout you down when you try to speak, I will cast all sorts of doubts on your truthfulness and credibility, I will be certain that you don't 'win'. Because if you win then I must lose. That is certainly evident in American politics just now but it may be increasingly true here in Canada too. 

But it is not just in political life that this happens. I hear more and more often  people speaking about entitlement for instance. 'I am entitled to...' and follows a whole list of perks. With that goes the sense that if I don't fight for myself and my rights, no one else will and if I fight for mine I can't fight for yours. In feeling that way, may we not be losing sight of that humanity that Paul speaks of?

.

There is a kind of beautiful interdependence here that perhaps we could learn from- it creates beauty.

If we only think in terms of 'us' and 'them', if our neighbor becomes somehow an enemy, what chance do we have to become full, loving, whole human beings and a society of care? If we look around us at the people we admire I should imagine that they are people who are in fact, the opposite of those of whom I have been speaking. They will be people who are caring, self-less, truth-full people. I should imagine that we admire their courage in doing the loving thing. How will our world be one in which future generations can live in peace if we go on building a society and a polity that cannot live compassionately?

I have mentioned before that Karen Armstrong and others have have taken up the 'cause' for compassion with the Charter for Compassion. The purpose of the Charter states that it 'is a document that transcends religious, ideological and national differences...The Charter activates the Golden Rule around the world'. The Golden Rule states, in one of its forms ' do not do to others what you would not want done to you'. What a way to begin!

Here is their website. www.charterforcompassion.org

Forgiveness and some beauty.

This is another blog which is mostly going to be a sharing of some photos but maybe it is possible to make a connection between them and this quote from Jean Vanier*:

Likes and dislikes are motivated by our own natural needs and fears. We are attracted to those who seem to affirm and encourage us, who love and admire us. We reject those who do not affirm or encourage us but who judge and condemn. We may not be imprisoned in anything as strong as hate, but our likes and dislikes create equally high walls of prejudice. Behind them we can act as if others do not exist, or as if they do not belong to our common humanity.

To be truly liberated, we have to make an effort to communicate with those we dislike, to try to understand and accept them as they are, and to experience our mutual humanity. This is forgiveness.

* Jean Vanier: Becoming Human, Paulist Press/House of Anansi Press, 1998

More about anger

I wanted to share a bit more from Harriet G. Lerner's book 'The Dance of Anger'*. She is writing about family dynamics but most especially from a woman's point of view. 

One of HL's major premises is that women often fight ineffectively. That is, we frequently express anger in such a way that we don't in fact make our point and so our anger isn't accepted and that leads to more frustration, anger and depression. This is not usually conscious or intentional but she suggests that this happens in part because we don't always have much of a sense of confidence in our own right to have an opinion and to be angry and to express it.

So, HL explains, 'In situations that might realistically evoke anger or protest we stay silent - or become tearful, self-critical or "hurt". If we do feel angry, we keep it to ourselves in order to avoid the possibility of open conflict. But it is not just our anger that we keep to ourselves; in addition, we may avoid making clear statements about what we think and feel, when we suspect that such clarity would make another person uncomfortable and expose differences between us.

HL suggests throughout her book that we fear and avoid our anger (and that of others as well) not only because it brings about the disapproval of others but also because it signals the necessity for change. What she seems to mean by this is that anger in ourselves or in another obviously indicates an unhappiness or dissatisfaction with a person or situation and includes the implication that that person or situation needs to change. And that is difficult for the simple reason that we very often do not want to change or see the need for it. And often enough, in any case, we feel it is the other person who really needs to change.

If we decide it is important to change the way a relationship has been going then, Lerner says, we have to be prepared for resistance and threat from the other and even within ourselves.

A kind of summary of one of HL's major themes then is: It is extremely difficult to learn, with our hearts as well as our heads, that we have a right to everything we think and feel - and so does everyone else. It is our job to state our thoughts and feelings clearly and to make responsible decisions that are congruent with our values and beliefs. It is not our job to make another person think and feel the way we do or the way we want them to...There is nothing wrong with wanting to change someone else. The problem is that it usually doesn't work. No matter how skilled we become in dealing with our anger, we cannot ensure that another person will do what we want them to or see things our way, nor are we guaranteed that justice will prevail. We  are able to move away from ineffective fighting only when we give up the fantasy that we can change or control another person. It is only then that we can reclaim the power that is truly ours - the power to change our own selves and take a new and different action on our own behalf.
* *Harriet G. Lerner: The Dance of Anger, Thorsons, HarperCollins. 1989.

Anger...

This is a bit of a shift I guess but I do enjoy sharing about my favorite books. One that I read some years ago when I will still in the monastery and found incredibly helpful is: The Dance of Anger by Harriet G. Lerner*. You might be surprised that I found this book so helpful in a monastery with those nice holy nuns but I am pretty sure you will find anger as much inside the monastery as out. The very simple and beautiful reason for that is that nuns are human beings not angels and they bring with them to the monastery all that has formed them before they came. 

In this book Lerner focuses mostly on family and interfamily relationships. I like it because it is also geared to women and women's unique difficulties with anger and guilt. It includes a sensitive discussion about the ways in which women express anger - or not (and the 'or not' is alas, an important way we seem to have of dealing with our anger). Men tend to express their anger more physically or else they absent themselves, whereas women's anger is more likely to be subtle and often disguised. It includes indirect things like silent submission, ineffective fighting, blaming, innuendo, gossip, etc. (I do want to say as an aside however, that over the years I have come to experience that men also gossip).

Here is a quote from Lerner: Women...have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the smoothers, the peacemakers and the steadiers of rocked boats. It is our job to please, protect and placate the world...Women who openly express anger at men are especially suspect. Even when society is sympathetic to our goals for equality, we all know that 'those angry women' turn everybody off. Unlike our male heroes who fight and even die for what they believe in, women may be condemned for waging a bloodless and humane revolution for their own rights. The direct expression of anger... makes us unladylike, unfeminine, unmaternal or more recently, 'strident'.

Anger has its beauty as well as its harm

Lerner also speaks about guilt. We are often taught to feel guilty about our anger for instance. So, we think we shouldn't feel angry. But she says, 'anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel and certainly our anger is no exception'. The issue for Lerner is not what we feel or that we feel, but how we express it.

 There is much more and I will try and share some of it next time. In the meantime, I think the book is still available. It is well worth reading.


*Harriet G. Lerner: The Dance of Anger, Thorsons, HarperCollins. 1989.


  

Prayer

Some of you who read this blog will know that prayer is for me, my life's food. I spent 30 years in a contemplative order and continue to pray each day because I believe not only in my own need to pray but in its  power and gift. But I know that for many (most?) people prayer is difficult. Is this because we see prayer mostly as asking for things and when there seems to be no answer, we lose interest? Or is it because we don't have time? I know there can be lots of reasons but let me share a few thoughts anyway.

For those who do sometimes pray, there can be a real ambivalence, indeed conflict, about prayer and its companion, silence. Maybe this is partly because we feel a bit lost about what we should be doing or how we should be praying. Also, since we don't seem to get much feedback in prayer, we notice that there are plenty of other things to distract us and keep us from focusing too much on something as insubstantial as prayer seems to be.

I found this quote from Sister Wendy Beckett's book on prayer.* She says:

The astonishing thing about prayer is our inability to accept that if we have need of it, as we do, then because of God's goodness, it cannot be something that is difficult. Accept that God is good and that your relationship with God is prayer, and you must conclude that prayer is an act of the utmost simplicity. Yet so many people seem to feel that there is some mysterious method, some way in that others know, but they do not. 'Knock and it shall be opened to you': they seem to believe that it needs some sort of Masonic knock and their own humble tapping will go unnoticed. What kind of God thinks of tricks, lays down arcane rules, makes things difficult? God wants to love us ...God wants to draw us close, strengthen us and infuse peace. The humblest, most modest, almost imperceptible rubbing of our fingers on the door and it flies open...Prayer is the last thing we should feel discouraged about.

On the Way

 I know for myself that I spent years keeping busy, watching TV, filling my life with noise and distractions of one sort or another to keep from facing what, deep within, I knew I needed to do. Be quieter. Be less self-absorbed . Pray. What I believe God did was first of all to send into my life, people who could point the way; people who knew far better than me, the way to find God. Eventually and happily I had the courage to begin to try to pray and I found I did not need to be afraid because God who is love, asks and more to the point, gives, only what is for my good and the good of others. 

How did I know what God was asking? Mostly, what is asked is right before me each moment of each day. The daily living out of ordinary life. The daily contact with others who challenge and support you. The difference is, I think, that there in God is a context which gives meaning and purpose and a goal; the growth of love. That of course, is a life-time's work. 

Next week I would like to try to say a little more about prayer and about the silence that I think helps us toward well-being and joy.

* Sister Wendy Beckett: Sister Wendy on Prayer, Continuum, London, 2006

Silence and God

I remember the first time I was ever really aware of experiencing silence. I was skiing in the mountains near Vancouver and I suddenly could feel and hear an incredible stillness. There was no one else but me standing in the snow amid huge trees. Even at the time I remember thinking: 'I am hearing silence!'. I felt a wonderful sense of awe. When I look back now what I understand is that it wasn't simply the physical sound of silence I experienced but something much deeper, much more awesome - it was in some sense the silence of the presence of God. It was so powerful that to this day, I know I remain touched by it. It stirred me and awakened in me a longing which I couldn't then identify but I now realize was a longing for God.

So what I want to say first is that I believe that the silence many of us long for is, simply, God. It is not just that God is found in the silence but that God is the very silence itself; a kind of calling silence. 

The conclusion I then reach is that as we as a society get both increasingly distressed by all the noise around us and, at the same time, find ourselves filling our lives with yet more noise and more activity; this drowning out may be in order to muffle that calling silence. For we are in so many ways, hugely conflicted about God. On the one hand many of us want something more, something more meaningful than just the apparent day after day grind; on the other hand we can be afraid of surrendering to this calling God. We may be afraid of what might be asked or we may not be able to drown out the voices of scorn around us.

As Sister Wendy says in the quote in my last blog, God wants to love us...God wants to draw us ever closer to strengthen us and infuse God's peace. I know that it is hard, really hard, to believe that a God of love exists when our world seems so full of all sorts of very bad things and immense suffering. I guess I can only say that, in your work life for instance, you read up, you study, you learn all you can. Well, try that with God.  
 

Not a very 'mystical' photo but the snail does get to where it is going!

Besides reading and listening to God-lovers, as I have been trying to say this week and last, pray. You will find God in your busy life. You will find God in your relationships. You will find God in your ordinary day to day life. You will find God in your moments of silence. You will find God in your prayer. And the more we can pray the more we will see the beauty in life and in the other people in our lives.

A great lover of God said, Prayer is nothing more than friendly converse with one we know loves us. How's that for simplicity?

Life and death, our constant companions.

I belong to a small group of folks who meet one early morning each week to pray and share together. To give some structure to our sharing we are using a book of meditations built around the writings of Thomas Merton, the American monk who was one of the major spiritual writers of the 20th century. One of the additional writings is by a Tibetan Buddhist nun named Pema Chodron. I wanted to share some of the excerpt because I feel it to be so apt for our modern time. It is from her book: When Things Fall Apart.*

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that's death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn't have fresh air. There's no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we're going to have an experience we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head.... The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter.
  

Life and death are always with us.

This excerpt says something that has been on my mind for quite a while. I see around me - and maybe there is something of this in me too - such a fear of suffering and aging and death (they are all related I think) that we are spending huge amounts of time and money to overcome this. But I think that Pema Chodron is saying, try as we may, we can't do that. 

Life is full of fragility and vulnerability; life and death, and that can be a gift or it can be destructive. We get to choose how we will view these aspects of being alive, we don't get to avoid them.

*Chodron, Pema: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Boston, Shambhala, 1997.

More present moment thoughts

You will realize by now that I am very taken by the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh and especially his thought about living in the present moment. I have certainly come to appreciate with sadness, how often I am not in that moment and therefore, how much I have missed. Still, the other thing that the great sharers of wisdom tell us is that it is never, never too late to start to change and grow. I will know that I am dead long before I am physically dead, if I see that I have given up being excited by all that is beautiful and challenging and amazing in our world.

Anyway, another quote from TNH that is really worth pondering:

Life is impermanent, but that does not mean that it is not worth living. It is precisely because of its impermanence that we value life so dearly. Therefore we must know how to live each moment deeply and use it in a responsible way. If we are able to live the present moment completely, we will not feel regret later. We will know how to care for those who are close to us and how to bring them happiness. When we accept that all things are impermanent, we will not be incapacitated by suffering when things decay and die. We can remain peaceful and content in the face of continuity and change, prosperity and decline, success and failure.

These words are of course, not only about the present moment but also about the reality of life and death. We are - most of us at least - afraid of death and spend a good deal of time avoiding the reality of it in ourselves: our aging, our growing aches and pains, our increasing frailty and vulnerability. 

 As a Christian I have always found the words in the Letter to the Hebrews in the bible so very supportive and hopeful. The writer is trying to say something about what Jesus by his life and death offers us. So, the writer suggests that Jesus came to help 'free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death'. Those seem perhaps, like strong words but just looking around our society at its stress on youth, on health, on protecting ourselves from suffering - maybe there is fear of death there, especially in our fear of suffering. Maybe we miss the present moment because we are worried and distracted and fearful of many things...  
       

Children are pretty good at being in the present moment .

*Thich Nhat Hanh: Your True Home, The everyday wisdom of TNH, Shambhala, Boston and London, 2011.
 

Anticipation and the Present Moment

For some time now I have been planning a very big trip. I am going back to England to visit the sisters with whom I lived for almost thirty years. I have been back before but this time feels different for some reason. I am very excited and the anticipation and what seems like a very slow passage of time is really putting me to the test.

The test I am being 'put to' is the whole issue of living as totally as possible in the present moment. I realised early on that I was going to have to undertake some serious attentiveness to keep myself here, now and not be dreaming of an as yet, unrealized future. It has been and still is, a really good exercise for me. 

All this is further enriched by my awareness as always now, of my age and the reality that there are not a lot of years ahead in comparison with what is 'behind' (is there an ahead and behind in time?) and that through the years I have missed a lot in my rush to get to whatever is planned for tomorrow. What a waste - rushing towards a non-existent future! But, once again, that man of wisdom, Thich Nhat Hanh comes to the rescue: 
 
'It's best not to lose ourselves in uncertainty and fear over the future, but if we're truly established in the present moment, we can bring the future to the here and the now, and make plans....the present moment contains both past and future. The only material that the future is made of is the present. If you know how to handle the present in the best way you can, that's all you can do for the future. Handling the present moment with all your attention, all your intelligence, is already building a future.' *

For me, this is very much a present-momentish image

So, I am trying to be grounded in the present; trying to be attentive to whatever is happening in my life now so that when (and I suppose, if) the trip happens I will not have 'wasted' any moment. All this is so contrary to my temperament that it is very much - and perhaps always will be - a work in progress.

*Thich Nhat Hanh: Your True Home, The everyday wisdom of TNH, Shambhala, Boston and London, 2011.

Loneliness as a journey to human wholeness

I took this photo a few years ago and it has, as its title, 'Midnight Wait at the Pizza Pizza'. At the time I was struck by the solitary space the woman was in and I wondered why she was there, all alone, waiting for her pizza at midnight. 

 

Who was she? where had she come from? what was her story? Of course, I still don't know and won't ever. However, I felt that she was in some way symbolic of loneliness in our modern cities. There seem to be a lot of people who, even if they have friends, family, colleagues, feel isolated and alone. Of course, loneliness is part of our human condition even when we are deeply loved and closely held, but in the cities perhaps especially, it can be hard to reach out in our loneliness to seek the love and community we each need. 

I have begun reading Jean Vanier's book 'Becoming Human'* and was startled that he begins his book speaking about this very thing. He speaks about how loneliness can become either an open wound or a journey to wholeness. When Jean speaks about loneliness as a journey to wholeness he says for instance, 'loneliness can become a source of creative energy; the energy that drives us down new paths to create new things or to seek more truth and justice in the world'. When he then goes on to speak of the wounding aspects of loneliness he says, '[Loneliness] can also be a source of apathy and depression, and even of a desire to die. It can push us into escapes and addictions in the need to forget our inner pain and emptiness'. 

In the book Jean will go on to speak of the importance of human relationships which are healing, forgiving, nourishing through community...community which is large or small, but in any case, caring, accepting and loving. I think he wants to say to us that we can seek this out, we can form community with others, we can help one another if we grow to overcome our fears. 

I found two other photos in my collection which speak to me of how these relationships of healing and joy are meant to begin. I am sure each of these older men and each of the children is experiencing the delight of companionship and the joy of being important to another. 

 We surely must not let loneliness be a destructive element in our lives when it can be a source of life - odd though that may seem.

*Jean Vanier: Becoming Human, Paulist Press, New Jersey, 1998

The beauty of your life and mine(revisited)

A while ago I had a lovely visit with two friends from l'Arche. I always enjoy these visits because there is lots to share and lots of news to learn. We each have a special association with the l'Arche community in Greater Vancouver and so, getting together is a wonderful occasion for remembering the people we have lived with and loved.

L'Arche is there as a community which includes at its core, men and women who seem to be intellectually challenged in some way and who live with others who come to assist them. When we have these reminiscing sessions it is always the core people we talk about because, I believe, it is usually they more than the others, who have touched our lives and helped transform them. When I think of this I am startled to think that these are people whom we as a society have often written off (and that is not too strong a phrase).

I wanted to write about this because it occurs to me more and more that many of us from time to time question ourselves and what we do or don't do, by saying something like, 'what is the point of my doing this or that, I am only one person and nobody will care. What I do won't make any difference'. And yet, as I thought about the conversations I have had with my friends about our companions in l'Arche it occurred to me that this is never true.

One of the people we were talking about was our friend Geraldine. This woman was, yes, in some sense intellectually less agile than some but you could only admire her sense of herself: she knew what she wanted (or didn't - and this was always clear) and she had an amazing capacity to sit, to observe, to supervise and sometimes, to choose to do as little as possible. This is not a criticism because you recognized an art form when you saw it. Geraldine had managed to live quite a long life by choosing a way of getting the most with the least effort. That in some ways is a gift many people long for. She had a wonderful sense of humor, a beautifully unique laugh and she touched each life around her by her almost majestic presence there on the couch. She was one of the most interesting people I have ever known.

Someone else I always remember with love is Iris. Iris was very different from Geraldine. She was quite able in many ways and perhaps if her parents had not been told she was 'retarded' she would have married and lived a relatively normal life. In any case, she struggled lovingly, to be all that she could be. She was kind and considerate. But one of the things I remember most about her was something she taught me. Iris had come to spend some time with us in order to see if she would like to move to l'Arche, and so towards the end of her stay I said, 'Iris, have you made any decision about whether you would like to come and live here?'. She looked at me sadly and said, 'Well, I don't know. No one has ever taught me how to make a decision. I have never had to make one before.' Wow! That was an education for me. But it was also a glimpse into the heart of someone who was rich in humanity and who had suffered because no one had had faith in what she could learn to do.

My point in sharing this very tiny bit about these two wonderful women is that they profoundly affected me. Their presence and friendship enriched my life. Two (but of course there were many other unique, very special individuals as well but this is not a book) individual women whom society had judged to be 'handicapped' 'retarded' were two of the most interesting and human people I have ever known. Each one was a gift. Each one made a contribution to the world around them. They might have said 'what is the point of my living, what is the point of my trying, I am someone of no account'. But life proved differently. They touched not only my life, but many others as well. And all of us who were changed by knowing them have somehow passed that gift on to others. And so it spreads.

 

Here is a whole community of beautiful 'ones'...L'Arche Vancouver, 2009

I guess what I am trying to say here is that hardly any of us are what the world calls 'big players'. But what we are, every one of us, is beautifully unique and precious individuals who touch the lives of many people in a lifetime and so, one does matter because it is like the ripples in the water- our little life touches another who touches another and on it goes. So wouldn't it be wonderful to see that as an incentive to be the best and most loving people we can be.

The pull of horizons

For some years I made a little money for the monastery by taking photos for greeting cards. I was told that there were certain ways to focus in, so that the eye was drawn into the centre of a flower or toward a horizon. The view of the Weybourne cliffs that was in the last post for instance, has a path with a tiny figure walking almost, into the future. It also has the horizon of the north sea. Though it isn't a particularly great photo I find it touches that part of me that seeks? longs? searches?

In Elizabeth Johnson's wonderful book ' Quest for the Living God' * that I have mentioned before, she has a chapter on the theology of the great 20th century thinker, Karl Rahner. In his early years Rahner thought that one of the great gifts of human beings was our curiosity. We are always asking questions, seeking answers and in many cases we find we never get to the end. Johnson sums up Rahner's thinking at this point 'While analyzing, weighing, judging and defining concrete objects in the world, our reasoning power keeps on slipping beyond standard definitions to seek new horizons. The number of questions we can ask is limitless'. Human experience is always oriented to the 'more'.

Which brings us to God. In this context Rahner refers to God as the 'whither' of our seeking. It is a rather old word in English but I hope we find it meaningful. Johnson goes on, " We will never reach the end of exploring, having figured it all out. It is something like parallel train tracks that appear to meet at a point in the distance, but when you get to that point the tracks have opened up to another distant point. It is something like the horizon one sees when flying in a airplane; no matter how fast the jet goes it never catches the horizon which remains still farther beyond the window. It is something like being in love and finding your beloved endlessly interesting and beautiful. There is always more'.

This made me think too of a lifetime. When we are young we set goals. We are going to be here by 30 and have done this by 40 and so on. Yet somehow it seems to me we never quite get there. There is always that 'something more'. Certainly, in our search for, our life with, God we never do come to the end. There is always the beauty and joy of the horizon never reached definitively, never grasped. I find that wonderful. How boring God would be, life would be if we ever actually stopped longing and seeking and asking questions.

*Elizabeth A. Johnson: Quest for the Living God',Continuum, New York, 2007

Vacation time....

Langham, Norfolk, UK

It is vacation time and so, this blog will be on holiday for a few weeks. Next Post will, I hope, be July 22... In the meantime, keep some lovely images in mind. Most of the photos in the blog have been taken by me over the years and I love to share them. I hope they make you think of beauty and therefore, of God.

Weybourne cliffs, UK

Ashbridges Bay Toronto

The Living God

In 2007 a very thoughtful and challenging book came out called "Quest for the Living God" by Elizabeth A. Johnson*. Sr Elizabeth is a professor of theology at Fordham University in the United States. In the book she wants to look at the various 'new' ways modern women and men see or speak of or think about, God. In the end, she is saying that we are all, of whatever religion or seekers of meaning, much richer for the many ways that God is revealed to humanity in our day. 

I suspect that what many of us have, in one way or another, been taught about God has been pretty unhelpful. Maybe we were told about a God who was 'up' there, or full of wrath, or a harsh judge who is watching our every move, or just a God distant and removed, not interested in me or my life. Even an awareness that Jesus somehow reflects God doesn't seem to help many - though I wish it did.

In any case, at the very beginning of this book Sr Elizabeth is saying a word about what she means when she uses the term 'the living God' in the title. She starts by saying that 'This way of speaking runs through the Bible from beginning to end to identify the Source of life as  dynamic, bounteous, and full of surprises. When they entered into covenant, the people of Israel 'heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the fire at Sinai and knew the living God is among you as they crossed into the promised land'.

Johnson goes on to say, ' Living means the opposite of dead'. That might seem obvious but it is worth pondering its implications. Then she says 'As used in this book, this appellation summons up a sense of the God who is full of energy and spirit, alive with designs for liberation and healing, always approaching from the future to do something new. In addition, the term "the living God" evokes the realization that there is always more to divine Mystery than human beings can nail down. It prepares those who use it for astonishment'.

This beautiful description made me ask myself some questions: How often am I astonished by God? What does it mean to me/us that God is always approaching from the future? How can the reality that God cannot be 'nailed down' help me to live with mystery, with things I cannot explain or control?

Though Elizabeth Johnson is a scholar and theologian there is a wonderful beauty and poetry to the way she hopes we will see God. Although the book isn't curl-up-in-bed-with, reading, it is nevertheless, an eye-opener and a heart-filler for any who want to 'know' God better.

*Elizabeth A. Johnson, Quest for the Living God, Continuum, New York, 2007.

The Child who ran away

I am re-reading, although it almost seems like the first time, Henri Nouwen's book: The Return of the Prodigal Son*. It is a beautiful book, one of the last he wrote and full of his special kind of wisdom and very exposed humanity. Right now I am reading his section on the younger son. For those who do not know the story see the bible, Luke Ch. 15;11 - 32. Nouwen is also reflecting on Rembrandt's wonderful and deeply moving painting called: The return of the Prodigal.   
   

In the painting the father's love is so beautifully expressed. This is love for a son who has squandered his (the father's) money; who has lived a life in which his only goal is to please himself. The son doesn't recognize or, it seems, even want his father's love until he finds himself hungry, lost, experiencing nothing but absolute misery. He doesn't believe his father will welcome him back as a son but he might be grateful for another hand on the farm. However, the father loves in a way that few of us think we have ever been loved. The father asks the son for nothing and is simply filled with gratitude for his return. The father does not chastise or penalize he only welcomes and loves. Many people see this figure of the father as a portrait of God. It is not important that this image is of a male figure, it could easily be God the mother as well. The point is not the gender but the unconditional love.

Nouwen struggles with this. 'To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?...As long as I keep running about asking: "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with 'ifs'. The world says: "Yes, I love you if are good-looking, intelligent and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much." There are endless "ifs" hidden in the world's love... the world's love is and always will be, conditional.'

Later, Nouwen recognizes the literally awesome gift of God as seen in the father of this story. 'God has never pulled back his arms, never withheld his blessing, ...' Nouwen says, ' Here, the mystery of my life is unveiled. I am loved so much that I am left free to leave home. The blessing is there from the beginning. I have left it and keep on leaving it. But the Father is always looking for me with outstretched arms to receive me back and whisper again in my ear: "You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests".

This belovedness is a gift for us all. It is really the only thing that truly brings us peace and makes us happy. When we come to know this then we know who we are, we don't have to impress anyone. We are loved just as we are.

*Henri Nouwen: The Return of the Prodigal Son: a Story of Homecoming, Image Books, Doubleday, N.Y., 1992