What am I? I am a word spoken by God. Can God speak a word that does not have meaning?” Thomas Merton

When I read these words for the first time the other day they thrilled me. In our daily prayer, we were in the midst of the creation stories in Genesis in which God “spoke” and things came into being. To think of myself as a word that God had spoken, called forth and created, put me in a new place. But Thomas Merton, in his book “Contemplative Prayer” from which the above quotation comes, soon challenged my reaction. He goes on to say,

Yet am I sure that the meaning of my life is the meaning God intends for it? Does God impose a meaning for my life from the outside, through event, custom, routine, law, system, impact with others in society? Or am I called to create from within, with Him, with His Grace, a meaning which reflects His truth and makes me His ‘word’ spoken freely in my personal situation.

This brought me up short. I know that for most of my life I have acted from the outside; that I have cared too much what certain people thought of me and tried above everything to please and impress them. I know that I have not lived freely and courageously out of God’s law but often with fear and anxiety lest I do something that exposes my vulnerability and inadequacy. I know that I have tried to be what my culture tells me is a successful human being.

The most subtle temptation, however, has been to try to live a “successful” Christian life; to be the sort of person others look at and are impressed with – to give into, as T S Eliot says,

“The last, the greatest treason,

to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” (Murder in the Cathedral)

Wrong, in my case, because it is all still about ego and pride, humankinds’ lifelong adversaries. And, of course, in trying to live like this, I have tried to live this ‘good’ life on my own and left God out of it. I have not lived ‘inside out’ but ‘outside in.’

One of the great gifts that comes with age is that you get tired of trying to impress. It ceases to have the allure it once had and becomes empty and meaningless. This can be a crisis if you don’t know who to live for now. But it can be the greatest opportunity if you can see that the call is to own up to your vanity and its hollow promise and to turn to the source of real life, Christ. We have to learn yet again to start again. Back to the beginning, to what some of us were taught kneeling by our bedsides. But not as we once were: not saying our prayers by rote. Now we are called to rest entirely on God in prayer, to hear again his voice calling us into life, his life. We move with him from the inside to action on his behalf out there.

As many of us will know who were in church on Sunday and heard John’s gospel, the first words Jesus speaks in that gospel are to the two disciples who follow him after John the Baptist has pointed him out.  Jesus turns to them and says,

“What are you looking for?”

Sitting in the darkness of Launde chapel early on Sunday morning with only the Pascal Candle for light, I asked myself that question.

“What are you looking for, Alison?”

It is a question I have asked before, obviously, but it is worth doing so again every so often because it helps one to stand back and to look afresh at where one is and what one needs spiritually.  My response on this occasion was that I wanted peace.  I was dealing with some thorny problems personally and like many other people, I imagine, I am also cast down by the news of so much war and its devastating effect on millions of lives.

As soon as I gave the response, “Peace,” I felt, I cannot have personal peace as long as there is so little peace in the world.  But here I was wrong.  I found myself imagining Jesus asking me again,

“What are you looking for, Alison?”

Having shared what was uppermost in my thoughts and feelings I was able to go much deeper and name what I always want, and I realised after a time that I now had a deep sense of personal peace.  I had after all approached the God who gives peace beyond human understanding.  My personal problems were no longer thorny and the things I have no power over in the world were no longer over-powering me.  Don’t ask me why.  I had shifted so their power over me had shifted, too.

Throughout the bible we find that God asks questions.  These questions are invariably asked to help the hearers stand back and look at their situation and their relationship with God afresh.  They are sometimes repeated until the recipient is able to hear.  They are questions that bring healing, freedom, clarity and confidence.  They are question that enable us to journey on with God.

We are not promised an easy ride in this world but we are promised that we will not have to do it on our own and that there is always one with whom we can share our burden.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back.”

John O’Donohue

On the evening of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th) we met at Launde as usual for Evening Prayer. But on this night we did something different. We did a sort of “Examen,” not of our day, but of those turning points in our lives when we had encountered God in some special way and experienced our own epiphanies.

St Ignatius wrote that if we prayed any prayer in our day it should be the Examen, which is usually a time of reflection on the day or week we have just had. In the Examen we ask various questions of ourselves like, where was I present and awake to God today; what gave me life and energy; where did I connect with others? Then the reverse question is asked; where did I turn away from God today? What deadened me? Where did I harden my heart?

The power of the Examen is that you see, often for the first time, those moments that have really touched you in your day; those moments of encounter with another person – sometimes just in a smile or a kind word ; those moments of creativity; those moments when you felt more fully alive. You become more aware of creation in all its beauty. It is amazing that very often you have taken these things in on one level but not fully into your consciousness so there is surprise and joy as you see what you have received. Alongside this seeing you engage with the feelings that are stirred up, the most important of which is gratitude, which generally leads in turn to thankfulness to God, for life and for the richness that it offers. The reverse question of where you turned away from God is not supposed to lead to a sense of failure or guilt, but to sorrow, self-knowledge and ultimately repentance.

This is the usual work of the Examen, but as I have already said, on the Feast of the Epiphany we looked especially at moments in our lives when God had been disclosed or shown to us in a very special way. To go back and to look again prayerfully at those moments can be a very powerful experience. We can be taken once again to the feelings engendered by those encounters. We can rediscovered our “first love.” More than anything else we can know the truth that prayer is a response to the God who always called us, is already calling us now, praying in us. The moment we turn and see; the moment of revelation, is when our soul awakens to the God who has always been there. Then as John O’Donohue puts it, paradoxically the search begins for what we have already found, and we can never go back to the person we were before. We want more epiphanies.

New Year’s Resolution of 2014

Seven days in to 2014 it might seem a bit late to be talking about New Year’s resolutions but this is the first opportunity I have had so I make no apologies for it.

Some people sneer at New Year resolutions but I think that every now and then we need to take time to stand away from our lives, to look at them and to see what needs to be amended or worked upon. We do it during the Church seasons of Lent and Advent and it seems that as we say goodbye to the old year and hello to the new one we have another useful opportunity.

This year I have been greatly helped in my thinking by this poem of R S Thomas, which I had not come across before.

Resolution

The new year brings the old resolve

To be brave, to be patient,

To suffer the betrayal of birth

Without flinching, without bitter

Words. The way in was hard;

The way out could be made

Easy, but one must not take

It; must await decay perhaps

Of the mind, certainly of the mind’s

Image of itself that it has

Projected. The bone aches, the blood

Limps like a cripple about the ruins

Of one’s body. Yet what are these

But the infirmities we share

with the creatures? It is the memories

That one has, the impenitent bungler

Of love, refusing for too long

To say ‘yes’ to that earlier gesture

Of love that had brought one

Forth; it is these, as they grow

Clearer with the telescoping

of the years, that constitute

for the beholder the true human pain.

This poem deserves to be meditated upon long and hard. It begins by calling forth in us the need for courage and patience as we continue our Christian journey. We have to face the bitterness and resentment we might feel because life hasn’t turned out as we planned or wanted, “the betrayal of birth.” We are invited to acknowledge full on the false self that has had such a grip on our lives (and continues to do so for most of us most of the time), “the certainty of the mind’s image of itself that it has projected.” We know that we have to meet the challenges of aging. But most of all this poem summons us, alongside RS Thomas, to see clearly how we have refused, “for too long to say ‘yes’ to that earlier gesture of love that brought us forth and continues to sustain us.” Longing to be in charge of our own lives, to be perfect (so that we have no need of God) and avoiding all that we cannot bear about ourselves, we have refused to acknowledge our dependence on that love which gave and gives us being, which knows and accepts us as we are.

This is a poem to pray with and to set up as a standard of measurement in this year. Can I be as honest, as brave and patient as this poem invites me to be in 2014? Do I dare to strip away the false self? May this be the year in which I recognise and learn to give thanks with joy to the love that brought me forth? I hope so.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11: 6-9

This is the time of year when we look at the Old Testament prophecies, which, in part, seem to point to the coming of Christ or to the “end times.” The prophecy from Isaiah 11 was one of the readings last Sunday, the 2nd Sunday in Advent. As I read it I thought, but I am seeing this prophecies fulfilled, albeit it only partially, this week.

In the week that saw the death of Nelson Mandela the whole world seemed to rise up to celebrate this extraordinary man as if he were their own – and in a way, Mandela does belong to the whole world, even though South Africa has first claim on him. Like all truly great men, he rose above those things that separate us by working for justice for all people, including care of those who were oppressed by being oppressors. One of the things said about him was that he had integrity. In his wake he created integrity. His “Rainbow People,” have shown to the world that the wolf can live with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid. What we do not see and can never know is the internal struggle, courage and perseverance – and above all ability to stand in the other person’s shoes; that it must have taken to become the person he was.

Great people become icons for the whole world. They give us something to live up to. They give us hope because they make us realise it is possible to become truly “human” human beings. Thus we honour Gandi, Martin Luther King, Mandela and others. Their nationality doesn’t matter; their religion doesn’t matter (even though deep faith made each of these men), the colour of their skin doesn’t matter. What matters is that they see beyond the individual and the insular to the community of humankind.

For me Mandela reflects what it is to be a son of God. We know that South Africa has huge problems and that with the passing of time it could go backwards as well as forwards. But for a moment we have seen and watched lived out the kingdom of God and its values of mercy, forgiveness, justice and freedom for all people. The world has come together this week in joy and thanksgiving for the hope Mandela has given us. This is a real Advent message.

Advent – the beginning of the Church’s year and therefore the time to make resolutions. One of mine is to get back into writing my weekly blog for the Launde Abbey website, which you will know, if you follow it, I have been an abject failure at doing for the last few weeks. Like most people, every now and again I get overtaken by the demands of my diary and certain jobs are put off. This is what has happened to the blog.

It shouldn’t be so – we all know this. None of us should be so over-committed in our work and, of course, very often what we are having to do in that work is not the creative, life-giving things but the dreary, life draining jobs. This is dangerous to us because it affects our sense of well-being, our contact with ourselves, with God and with others.

To the rescue like a knight in white armour, comes the wonderful season of Advent. It demands of us that we slow down, that we give the Spirit time to grow something new deep within us, that we watch and wait. Like a mother who does not feel the baby move within her womb until about 17 to 18 weeks, we may not sense the new life within immediately but if we watch and wait on God, if we give God time, space and attention, he will deliver.

The waiting is not a doing nothing but a conscious allowing of God to grow something in us. The expectant mother knows all the time that something is happening deep inside her. She lives both with a vital sense of the present moment, of all that is happening in her, and with anticipation of what is to come. The present and the future are held in tension. And she watches: watches for the signs of change and new life.

If you are not already preparing for the new life which is at the heart of the Advent season by giving yourself more time to watch and wait, might I suggest you put some of those dreary, life-draining jobs to one side and turn to the one thing necessary, attention to all that God wants to give in the present moment that will lead in due course to new life. Watch for it and wait.

I had the privilege last weekend to be alongside some ordinary lay Christians as they talked of their journey of faith and their understanding of Christianity. When I say “ordinary,” I mean that these were mature Christians but not people with degrees in theology. Watching and listening to them I understood afresh the meaning of the phrase “Spiritual treasure in clay pots.” (2 Corinthians 4: 7)

The treasure that shone out of them was Grace. Grace was at work in and through them and because they were offering something that they loved and which had great meaning for them their egos were not getting in the way. Despite their ordinariness, their earthiness so to speak, light was shining out of them. As it says in 2 Corinthians 4:5 “For it is not ourselves that we preach; we preach Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

What is this clay of which Paul writes? It is not only our outward appearance, which is in most cases unpromising of hidden greatness. Surely it is the fragility and weakness in which we carry this gift of grace and it’s potential. Everything can get in the way: our enormous need for affirmation from others, our competitiveness, our hunger for power, our vanity. The ego’s voracious appetite appears the very moment at which we do something good for God. And we all experience it. I believe it was John Bunyan who on being told how brilliant his sermon was, said, “Yes, the devil told me exactly the same thing as I came down from the pulpit!”

So even as we offer our best to the Lord we are aware of our weakness which is the temptation to trespass: to take that which does not belong to us. “Forgive us our trespasses,” we cry, trying to hold true to our calling, “And lead us not into temptation.” But at the same time this is God’s gift to us. As we give it away we are enriched, enlivened, know ourselves as gifted people.

This is the paradox of God’s grace. The more we give it away the more we have it. The more we die to ourselves, the more alive we feel. The more we struggle not to trespass and take what is not ours, the more we realise our inheritance. What an extraordinary experience this is, to be so weak and yet so strong because of a God who in his grace made himself small enough for us to hold him in our frail clay pots.

My husband and I have just returned from a great ‘city-break’ in Vienna and one of the things that struck me whilst we were there is that the Cult of Celebrity, so often bemoaned as a modern obsession is, in fact, not such a new thing.

On our first afternoon in the capital we came across the so-called ‘Sisi Museum’ in the Hofburg Palace. Sisi was the pet name of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was married at age sixteen to the Emperor, Franz Joseph, leaving her beloved childhood home and freedom in Bavaria. Sisi was, as the picture shows, very beautiful and people became obsessed with her. But in reality Sisi was deeply unhappy and became more and more reclusive and disengaged from the role she had had thrust upon her with her marriage. Upon her death from an assassin’s knife in 1898 her life took on a cult status. As I walked around her state apartments I kept being reminded of that icon of our own time, Princess Diana. In life both women were beautiful, gifted and unhappy, thrust whilst very young into the public domain and a life they were not prepared for. Both found ways of being independent; both died tragically and both became part of a cult of celebrity; more famous in death, if it were possible, than in life. It could be said they lived and died from too much attention.

Compare this then with another picture we saw in Vienna – Brueghel’s wonderful masterpiece, “Christ’s Way of the Cross.” At the centre of the huge canvas Christ carries his cross, surrounded by crowds, but no one takes any notice of him. The crowds are far too interested in having a good time, being entertained, trying the latest thing, the popular fashion, the newest cult; all, that is, except for one small group near the front of the painting. These people, obviously Christ’s family and dearest friends, are dressed in the traditional clothes of religious paintings. Everyone else in the painting is dressed in the clothes of Brueghel’s own day. It is as though Brueghel is indicting his own people for their superficiality and escapism. There in their midst, right under their very noses, something is happening that will revolutionize and transform human life, but they chose not to look, not to see. The Cult of Celebrity creates something substantial from something unreal and ephemeral for the sake of entertainment, whilst ignoring the life-giving and eternal because it is too demanding. As T.S. Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

This weekend I was told that I could choose three books out of nine to keep for my own. My two sisters would share the other six books. The books were all written by my great grandfather who in his time was a well known and popular author but with the passing of the years his books are really only read by students studying the minor Victorian novelists. I looked at the books. At first glance it was not easy to choose. There were none of the better and more famous novels amongst the group and none appeared to be of any financial value. And then I saw a handwritten inscription in one of the books that was repeated in two others. It said, “To my beloved son, Dudley, from Mother 1909.” Those were the books I chose and my heart was deeply touched.

Dudley was the grandfather I never knew; the father my father barely remembered. In 1914 Dudley, aged 21, signed up for the army. He died shortly after the end of the war as a result of wounds and TB from being in the trenches. 1909 was the year his father, my great grandfather died. I imagined my great grandmother giving the books to Dudley in the year of his father’s death as a remembrance, a keepsake – something of his father.

Thinking about my initial disappointment about none of the books being of any real cultural or material value later, I realised that I am much more pleased with this sense of being in touch with my never seen ancestors; literally in touch as I can run my finger over the signature of my great grandmother. Just as recollection in prayer at the end of the day often makes us wake up to something lovely in our day which we had not seen at the time, so this meditating on what was of value in these books makes me realise how much more special they are to me because they are, in their way, about relationship, the fundamental reason for being alive.

I come from a family of writers. The new books will go on the shelf alongside books by my mother and her mother and my father and his grandfather. These people are part of me and I am part of them and their simply being makes them of eternal value to me.

Suddenly they have gone – the Swallows and House Martins who have lived cheek by jowl with us all summer. Four weeks ago there was still a nest full of young birds right under the eaves in our courtyard. Delighted visitors drank their coffee and watched as the fearless parents flew in and out to feed their young. A week later they were fledged and went into heavy flying training. They were everywhere, swooping low on the ground, turning in the air, building and consolidating their strength and seeming to fill the Abbey grounds with their presence. It was as though the air was alive with a kind of wild but graceful energy and I thought to myself, heaven must be full of such delight.

And then they were gone; but not all at once. The majority left five days ago but it is only today that I have noticed they are nowhere to be seen. The Swallows have left for Cuba and South America and the House Martins will go to Africa and Asia – no one knows quite where, and we are left quieter and a bit bereft.

But they will return next year. These birds mate for life and are creatures of habit. So, hopefully, most of them will return if they do not die in their long and perilous journeys. In their lives we see the rhythm of the seasons. We see the mysterious, compelling and urgent need to leave their birthplace and travel far, far away to a distant land. But we also see continuity, intuition, faithfulness and perseverance undergirding everything, holding everything.

We are not so different. Watching our sons grow up and leave home, my husband and I are now aware of them turning to home again; not to re-turn to where they once were –life is still full of exploration ‘out there’, but to take their place in the pattern and rhythm of life alongside us, the older generation. Every young person must journey away from the place of birth in order to become his or herself – sometimes right away to a very distant land (as Jesus’ story of The Prodigal Son so keenly illustrates.) This time can be very hard on parents. Where has the child gone, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well? Sometimes it all goes “pear shaped” but generally speaking most of us respond to life’s inherent pattern of childhood dependency, journey outwards, journey home whilst still exploring and then the final discovery of the latter part of life that not only is “home where you start from” but that “the end of all our exploration is to arrive where we started and to know it for the first time.” We look forward to welcoming back our Swallows and House Martins in the Spring.