/32

My adult children still mock me for my love of Star Trek which I have watched since it was first broadcast. “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.” is favourite phrase along  with the Vulcan hand greeting.

In our journey, in our learning to see, we must reach a point in our prayerful meditation, when we consider life itself. Life is a gift. That is a truth we deny in our every day language. We talk of “my life” as though we owned our own life and can choose not only its direction but its purpose.

Life is a gift from God. It is also His to remove at his choosing. Nothing we can do can bring us into existence nor can we prolong it, although many try. These few thoughts are not directing us towards discussions about abortion or euthanasia. The sacredness of life we may take here as a given truth. Rather let us dwell for a short while on the way in which we treat the gift of life. Firstly have we learned yet to hand over our life to our creator or do we still cling to idea that it is our life to do with as we please? Once we come to the deep understanding that our life has been given to us as a gift we are compelled by logic to ask what is the best use of our life gift? Tied closely to such a thought is time for it is in each moment of time that we can make proper use of our life. Each moment can be used wisely or it can be wasted. The whole direction of our living, no matter how busy we are, is to draw closer and closer to the Lord and Giver of life.

We need, through as rigorous a training as any athlete undertakes, to learn the art of inner silence and peace, to create space, and in this space to be attentive to God. It is a life long struggle to keep our wayward minds under control. Some will find it an easier path than others, some may never be able to shed the burdens at all. We are talking about an ideal of perfection in our relationship with God.

Some find it helpful to try to live completely in the moment and in that way experience a slowing of time and body movements. This is to be sought. If achieved, if remotely possible given our life situation, then good, we will be blessed. This is not the path for everyone. It is about being aware and not frittering away every precious moment. Avoiding external distractions, even the beauty of nature, of bird song, is helpful whenever it is possible.

Our gift of life is most truly fulfilled when we are walking with God in each and every moment of the day. Such an attitude of life is counterintuitive in our current world. Being connected, busy, seeking satisfaction of every need and whim is the nature of the beast we have to contend with.

Of course such a state is not sustainable in ordinary every day life, probably not even in a monastic setting either but it is a joy to occasionally achieve. We strive to do our best to stay in communion with God. Don’t beat yourself up when you cannot maintain this state just try to return into peaceful silence whenever possible.

/31

It is a long time since I went to a restaurant. I never found the experience one that enjoyed. I dislike the noise and the distraction of other people eating and ordering. But more than that the choosing of food from a menu was a chore. A set menu with limited choice was helpful but an a la carte menu was a labyrinth I would seldom enter. Usually I would have chosen my meal before hand assuming the dish was on the menu. Simple plain food. There is a danger in choosing your own meal from the multiple choices facing you.

Sometimes a similar choice faces us in our long, life long, spiritual journey. There is a danger we may fall into the trap of choosing bits and pieces of faith and spirituality that are easy for us and that we are comfortable with, while consciously or unconsciously avoiding those parts we don’t like or are hard for us. We may fool ourselves into thinking we can pick and choose which parts of Church teaching we want to accept which we can choose to reject or ignore.

Such an attitude, and it is a danger we all face, is not to be countenanced. It is an all or nothing approach. We take it all, believe it all and live under and with it all. We are not at liberty to make up our own set of beliefs to make ourselves comfortable.

If there is truth then truth is all.

This doesn’t mean a blind conformity where we park our intellect at the door. We can question, think and discuss areas we find hard but only to reach an understanding to allow us to accept them. Truth is truth, there aren’t shades of truth.

We have to be fully immersed in faith before we are truly able to understand what is presented to us.

Over the many decades of my life I have listened to many who wanted to pick and choose which parts to believe and where to obey. This is not a good path, we cannot make it all into something in our own image we cannot be self indulgent.

There was a time when Jesus was making hard and tough statements and many left him at that point, going away and shaking their heads in dismay. Be aware there is a danger of falling into that trap.

Our journey is not an easy one and as society becomes ever more secular and detached from even the most basic morality of the Christian faith, we can think of compromising in order to feel we still can fit in with the customs of the world.

Such is the path paved with good intentions and we know where that will lead us.

We have to learn not only the inner spiritual discipline that allows us to accept all that is truth whether it be to our taste or not but also to hold fast against external circumstances that surround us.

Our faith has to be attested to, in each and every circumstance every day. Let us not shy away from being bold in the service of Our Lord. We may in following this hard path of love face many mini white martyrdoms. Our blood may not be shed but we may have to bear many taunts or even mockery or hostility, if we are to faithfully follow the Lord. No pick and mix religion will see us through these difficult days. Time and again we will have to mark ourselves out as different from the flow of society, that takes courage but the Lord will strengthen us.

With Christ and His Church there is no a la carte menu. We have the truth laid before us, and that is the banner we walk under all the days of our life.

/30

“Why are Christians so hung up about sex?” It was the 1980s and I was asked that by a very sincere and decent gay guy I was meeting face to face for the first time after many months of talking online. I helped him through a difficult relationship break up, all his pain about the loss of closeness and affection were all poured out to me and by the time we had formed a relationship I discovered he was gay, up till that point all his pain was identical to any heterosexual break up I had to deal with pastorally. It woke me up rather a lot to the emotional reality and turmoil that afflicts deep gay relationships.

I had no pat answer to give him and neither the place nor the time was appropriate to answer in detail. In fact there is no pat answer to those questions when we live in a world where sex has become detached from love and procreation, and is seen by most, as an apparently harmless recreational activity no more relevant than other recreational activities that bring pleasure.

As Christians of course love and sexual activity go hand in hand like a horse and carriage. We see love as something pure and to be treasured  a mirror of the love Christ has for us and his Church. We have a different world view. We regard marriage as a sacramental act taking place within the family of the Church, a blessed union of two souls and bodies to become but one. Place sexual activity within that context and we see it as the deepest and most profound relationship in which every such act might lead to the possibility of new life gifted by God. We see it having no place outside of such loving unity as gifted to the man and woman who come together.

That’s the perfect Christian ideal. It is hard work to even approach such perfection. But we are called to be perfect by Jesus. It is something to be aimed for, strived for, and celebrated. Sex is but one aspect of such a union which is still perfectly possible without sexual encounters. The couple with Christ as the centre of their union soon realise that, and an even closer union may be realised without the sexual element.

So we don’t have hang ups about sex. But all sexual activity within and without the marriage bond is measured by us against such a yardstick. To us anything less than that ideal is at best a failure and at worst a twisted perversion of love. Sex without love is meaningless and damaging to the well being of the soul and our relationships with others, and of course God.

I really wish I could have had time to explain all of that to my friend of long ago. Like all our virtues we aim high but often fall short of the mark, we aim for a bullseye but are often happy if the arrow simply hits the target at all.

So we don’t have hang ups as I said but rather a completely different world view about the nature of relationships and of love and marriage. In the current climate it is hard to communicate such values and often the way we proclaim them can seem like condemnation and judgement. The reality is we cannot enforce our world view on others, nor should we make any attempt to do so. It is God who sees our hearts and motives, only He, the merciful one knows what is truly going on.

Hopefully given a loving warm understanding any person coming seeking to learn to see how God wants us to exist will be drawn to understand the very high and precious view we have of marriage and sexual encounters within it.

Chastity is a virtue to be practised and obtained by the grace of God both within and  without marriage. We are called to seek higher things than  merely the satisfying of any or all earthly desires.  We only find happiness in truth and truth is only found in union with God.

It is never too late to turn our lives around and walk a different path. We have till our last breath to do our best.

/29

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic.

He wrote this which is as pertinent to our discussions as any human insight:

“When we talk about God, we are like a school of fish discussing the existence of the sea.”

This great immutable God, omniscient, omnipresent and many more beautiful titles, creator of all, out-with time, is with us around us and as the author of the Book of Acts puts it, “For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

If we have learned to see, God can be seen in everything and everywhere and in every other creature. This realisation fills us with awe, with amazement and thankfulness, with love and with joy. We are his children. Our life, our heartbeats are His and His alone and therefore only the blind fool turns his back and denies the existence of the sea.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we could understand God in a more human way? If we could see Him. 

Thus in a moment of time He came to us, not as a mighty roaring in the skies but as a helpless baby, given the name Jesus. Understanding that Jesus was both fully God and Man is hard to grasp, but less hard to accept. It was hard for those who first met him. Yet they weren’t with him and in his presence for very long before they began falteringly to realise that this human being was also the perfect God. That he was walking and talking just like us but was also the mighty God.

Yet he came peacefully, quietly, with love and mercy into day to day life. His words and actions told the story. So he gave us the ability to see all that we can cope with just now with our limited intellects something of the reality of the nature of God.

We may not physically see him now. But he is alive and well and with us and two thousand years of experiencing him lie behind us. Billions have found their way into his loving arms and have enjoyed a joyful union with him. Those of us who have the wonder of this in our own lives can only share with others the joy of this experience. We are the fish that accept the existence of the sea.

There is of course only one God. Yet he is three distinct persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This we have experienced yet we know there is but one God. It is difficult, impossible to understand this and yet it is our experience. It was what Jesus showed us as the truth.

No words can hold or explain all of this. We stumble and fall if we think about it, as such a state of existence, is beyond our ability to put into words. We don’t need to know all the ins and outs, we wouldn’t understand it anyway. It is not however a blind leap of faith, we experience it.

I fell in love with my wife the first time I cast eyes on her when she walked through the school hall. I had no idea who she was or her name but in that instant I knew I would marry her. I was twelve. Five years later we met properly. My love has grown but never altered from the knowledge of that first sight of her. Can I explain that in anyway that makes sense, not a chance!

So it is with God, just as I was blinded by love for my wife so I was blinded by love for The Lord, when finally my eyes were opened and I learned to see.

/28

“Today St Benedict sets before us the twelfth step of humility (RB 7. 62–70). It contains both a wonderful promise and a powerful warning. We must make a habit of virtue and move from fear to love in our following of Christ.”

The above quote came from a blog post by Dame Catherine Wybourne.

It sparked a train of connected thoughts about our relationship with God and our journey in the Christian life. Rules can dominate our lives, not the kind of rules of St Benedict, but our own hidden rules. We for example may decide to read the Bible everyday and fail and with that failure bring upon ourselves a sense of not being worthy of God. Hidden in our own psychological make up we may even have hidden rules and patterns of life that we try to follow and yet fail and this can bring with it a sense of worthlessness, that in turn sours our relationship with God. It may not even be a holy pursuit, it might be our weight, our relationship with food, our looks and we can feel we are failures and that can also sour our relationship with God. We feel we are unworthy. We can try and hide our failures or implore God for forgiveness for our failings. We may even reach the point where we so dislike who we are we cannot accept that God loves us. We are unworthy and live with this fear that we are displeasing to God since we can’t even measure up to our own standards and desires.

An image may lurk in our mind as to how we are so supposed to live in the image of God, how we are supposed to live as followers of Jesus. We will never live up to such ideals. We may fool ourselves by adjusting the message of God to fit our own perception of following Christ. We might even rewrite in the name of mistaken love the basic teachings of the Church.

A thousand pitfalls surround us. We may live with them for decades or even to the end of our lives without learning to see the truth. This is hard to read, harder to live, harder to acknowledge, that we at  have got it upside down and back to front. It leads to despair, fear and misery. We are failures. We have fallen into the trap of trying to save ourselves, of trying without intending to, to try and earn our salvation, to try and earn God’s approval. To win his love.

What fools we are to live this way. God loves us. It is as simple as that. We can enjoy that love, that security, that freedom that has for so long eluded us. There is nothing God wants of us but acceptance of Him and for us to love Him.

We love Him because He loved us first.

Our failures are as nothing to Him, he sees our efforts and He is pleased but like a parent caring for a toddler His love is unconditional. Does a mother or father cease loving their children because they throw a tantrum or make a mistake? If you are a parent you know this to be absolutely true. Indeed even your grown children no matter what they do cannot lose true parental love.

So live with love in your heart, love God because He loves you and throw aside all the rules and expectations you have placed upon yourself, all the ways you think you have to be. Be free.

Be happy, God gives you the freedom indeed the command to be happy after all we are living the resurrection life. Jesus is alive and well and our future is assured. We are safe. So be free and happy in His love. There are only two rules to follow, Love God and Love Your Neighbour.

There is nothing to fear!

/27

Sometimes the Christian journey can be really rocky. Prayer dies on your lips. Your heart once filled with warmth and love, seems cold and empty. We can feel useless. I’m not talking about those times when we are super busy with just living when the whole question of God and our relationship gets pushed to one side. Nor about the chaotic days that mark the arrival of children in our lives. I’m talking about those times when we are able to be still and know we ought to be able to spend rich rewarding times in spiritual exercises or prayer, yet there is nothing, those times when we feel unable, bereft, hopelessly lost. When even uttering a favourite prayer becomes an apparently useless act.

Let’s be honest, sometimes God seems a long way away, or far worse we feel very far away from God.

Unless there is some reason we can search out in our souls for this emptiness, like sinful behaviour or laziness, there is little we can do. Of course we must make the effort to painstakingly examine our conscience and our life to clear away anything that might be our fault.

If we do all this and perceive nothing wrong in our own lives, then what?

This is not an uncommon experience. It is something that afflicts most people and I am always slightly suspicious of those who don’t experience these problems.

It’s not doubt. It’s not because we are fools following a made up path. It’s not the devil at work.

I’m not wise enough to give a reason for these barren times. I can only share my own experiences of dealing with these times. Since I am a writer by inclination I try to write down how I feel at these times, not to keep, but just as an exercise in studying the moment whether it is short or lasts for days. For me, that helps a great deal and often at the end of a time of prayerful writing down how I feel I find myself in a better place and at peace. Letting it all go and finding at the end the peace I sought with God. That’s not for everyone of course. But I am sure you will be able with a little effort find something that suits you and works for you.

Of course sometimes nothing seems to work. Sometimes not even sharing what you are going through with another fellow Christian helps.

A long time ago a very fine teacher told me that arriving in a classroom at nine in the morning feeling like you could see the class far enough  is the  time to force a smile on to your face and wait for your emotions to catch up with the smile. Transferring that into our Christian life, it is about not giving up on our spiritual exercises. Continue to pray, to read your Bible or the Mass readings for the day. The secret is not to give up. This amazing God who loves us more than we can imagine is fully aware of our stumbling in the darkness. We think we are abandoned and alone, but of course we aren’t. It requires our strength and our discipline to keep moving forward no matter how hard it feels. We are not alone in this apparent spiritual darkness, we need all of our faith and trust to keep moving.  The light may appear to have gone out (it hasn’t) but we move onwards knowing that God and His Holy Angels are with us. We keep faith with the one who cannot and will not let us go. If it is His Graceful intention we will come out again into light. If not, then knowing all that we do, we go on trusting,    He is marking out our every footstep. Even if we are walking through the valley of death the Lord is with us.

Do not be fooled by emotions and fears, God is with us. Do not be discouraged by these times of trial, do not give up at these hurdles. Keep going. The reward after all is eternal union with Our Lord. Life is so short and we all die. Till that happy day, keep faith, keep going. It will all pass and sooner than we realise we will be at  home in  Our Father’s welcoming arms.

/26

Seeing Things You Can’t See

I have always been interested in things we can’t see. Gravitational waves for example can’t be seen but have now been discovered. This fascinates me and I can barely get my head round the consequences of the warping of time and space. The mystery of black holes and dark matter and the sub atomic behaviour that defies all known physical laws are like entering the world of the fevered mind of a science fiction writer. It seems as though anything we can think of can come to pass. This is hard science and I like it. I have no problem dealing with it, except in the limits of my own dull mind, when the maths and concepts go way beyond my ability. In the last few decades we have been able to “see things that can’t be seen”. Of course we can’t see them with the naked eye but they are there in reality.

The more we study the Universe, the less we know and the stranger it becomes, testing us to accept the seemingly impossible.

There are even stranger goings on in the spiritual realm that surrounds us and transcends us. We have come a long way in understanding  about God.  Enough I hope for us to understand that we don’t really know anything. That God is so far beyond us as to be unknowable except when He shares things at a level at which we understand. 

But if we are going to try to understand anything at all we have to know that there isn’t God and then us, there are angels and demons around us as well. More than we can count. They are spiritual beings without form, except when they are instructed to be visible in some form to act as messengers from God. It is beyond the scope of this book to explain all we think we know about angels and demons and all the spiritual powers that exist around us. Rather I want us to know that they exist, and that we each have a guardian angel.

I felt it important to note  it here as there is so much false information around in the cinema, television and books. You only need to have dipped a toe into the nonsense Dan Brown writes to see the how misleading it all is. I recently saw a photo doing the rounds on the internet of an angel caught in mid flight or so it was  claimed. It is of course a fragment of a cloud catching the setting sun as anyone can see.

It is important to be well enough versed in the nature of spiritual reality to be able to sort reality from dross. Angels have seeped into modern culture in a misleading way. We even now have little children dying who are going to be little angels. There is a confused pagan folk religion doing the rounds that if it weren’t so sad would be laughable. We will never be angels.

In order to get grips with it all we need to arm ourselves with knowledge, there are plenty of valuable reading materials around to set you on the right path and the Catholic Catechism is as good a place as any to start.

All I want to achieve in this brief chapter is to awaken your eyesight to learn to see truth from make believe, truth from falsehood and to encourage you to read more about the invisible realm that surrounds us. It is far far more important for our lives than gravitational waves.

Angels exist as do demons. One to help and one to harm and we need to be able to discern the difference. Evil can so often masquerade as good and that is something we need to understand and we must be on guard daily lest we fall into the traps that are set for us.

So arm yourself for the journey we are on and keep struggling to see what is really happening around us on a daily basis.

But be of good cheer trust in God completely and we can overcome all trials.