/Stop, Look and Listen!

Many years ago children were taught a version of the Highway Code that required them to Stop! Look and Listen, to make sure it was safe to cross the road before stepping off the kerb.

In many ways this is also at the very heart  of the Christian Faith. 

Firstly we have to stop. Stopping or even pausing to reflect on things seems almost beyond people these days. Life viewed from the outside now, looks increasingly busy and fraught for many people. It may just be age but I don’t remember it being like that as I grew up. It is very easy to recommend people stop, perhaps less easy for people to actually do it. There are calls on our time that just didn’t exist a decade ago, never mind the years before that, a constant buzz of phone life, of internet life, of Prime Delivery slots. 

All that said, if we don’t manage to stop, to pause, to allow space so that we can simply exist then we will run ourselves into the ground. Occasionally many years ago people would tell me they couldn’t afford to go on holiday. Holiday for them meant the package abroad, theme parks, eating out. For me out of choice as well as necessity it was a field, a tent and time to sit. To play simple games with my children. To walk in woods or cliffs or even just sit on a bench by the water and watch the way the sun played with the ripples or to be more brutally honest to watch the rain bounce off everything.

Once we’ve stopped and come to ourselves, then, we might be able to look. To look at Jesus. Just to gaze reflectively on his life. When I grew up it was a given that every school child would at least know the basic life story of Jesus. Sadly those days have long gone. If you want a short, sharp read about the life of Jesus, then find Mark’s Gospel in the Bible and read it. It won’t take very long at all. It was a short life. These days you don’t even need to own a Bible just type it into a search bar and the Gospel will be there to read. Never have we had access to so much knowledge, easily available to us and yet how foolishly we can waste our time.

So you have stopped, you have looked. The next step is to Listen to Jesus. There are four Gospels each with a different emphasis, each telling us about Jesus and the things he said and did. All you need to know is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. An eternity of wonder can be found in these four short books. If I may make a bold suggestion, if you plan on reading them in full for the first time then read them in this order, Mark, Luke and then Matthew. Lastly and by no means least comes John which is deeper and challenges us to think more and really ought not to be read till you are grounded in the more straightforward Gospels.

So, Stop. Look! and then listen. All you need is a little time.

Learning to See, takes time but it is worth it.

Part 2

/A New Year Dawns for the World

Despite my very best intentions to ignore the secular turning of the year I find myself feeling that I am starting anew. The Church year begins a month earlier and it is full of anticipation as we look to celebrate the coming of the Christ Child. It may be, this feeling of new beginnings, be due more to recovering from illness than a fresh spiritual insight. Again I am beset by the game of second guessing everything. In seeking clarity I therefore muddle the waters considerably.

So what am I feeling? A call to silence. It is very attractive to sit and contemplate in a zen like tranquillity but part of me sees that this could be the very path that leads away from God. If I withdraw into silence how then do I reach out to others to try and draw them to the faith? 

So I see that silence can be a running away from  rather than a running to God. But it is in silence that God is always found. It is at times like these that I long for a wise spiritual Director who would by the grace of God lead me to see what is phantom thinking and what is of God.

The story of little Samuel has always resonated in my heart. To serve childlike in the house of God seems such a perfect goal, to be happy and safe in His presence. Again I question whether this is running away.

I suppose I could encourage myself. 

But I could as easily fool myself. I think I am good at that.

I live as far as possible in quiet isolation partly out of choice, mainly of necessity, if necessity then can it be a virtue?

Difficult also is the separation of realities. I think that needs to be expanded to allow the reader to understand that the various drugs used to treat my illnesses can also alter my perception of reality and perhaps that is why I question everything? Perhaps it is wisdom to test each footstep I take to make sure I land on solid ground. My own mental illness which can only be kept at bay also causes confusion and a blurring of reality, perception. This grave darkness and occasional paranoia leads in its very nature to a desire to flee from all contact with the world. To crouch in safety or perceived safety in the heart of God. I say perceived because I am merely human and open like the first of my kind (Adam) to being easily led astray by my own arrogance of thought and by the great evil that courts every soul with its slippery and eloquent speech.

No wonder I take every step so carefully. Edge forward in darkness, trusting only in the solidity of, and here the metaphors take wing and I am left so to speak with nothing.

If however, and this I do know, seek after the Lord with all my heart, He will reach out and even if I perceive it not He will hold me in safety.

/40

I watched a documentary called Eden Revealed. It was about an archaeological dig in northern Turkey that had found a complex of  carved standing stones that led them to rethink the current views on the life of hunter gatherers in the Fertile Crescent.

It came up with a hypothesis that showed the reason they went from being hunter gathers to farmers toiling day and night to grow crops. Perhaps most interestingly from other sites as well they came to the conclusion that human health suffered a dramatic decline as result in this change of life. The bones spoke to them of many of our own problems with arthritis and other diseases.

They suggested that this change from roaming and enjoying the fruits of the earth in season and eating meat to a life lived in one place where they toiled to grow food less nourishing than what had been gathered and killed in the old life could be likened to the Biblical story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

It was a tolerable idea and one that set my mind off on its own track.

The fundamental thrust of the Biblical story is about trust and reliance on God. In the Garden of Eden all was provided for Adam and Eve they neither toiled nor wept but ate freely of the bounty around them, given to them by God. When they broke that trust and were expelled they found life hard and had to work their fingers to the bone in order to survive.

There is a lesson we need to learn from all this and it is a hard one to achieve but with clear sighted vision it can be grasped if not as a permanent state then at least as an occasional grace. To be truly imitators of Christ we have to learn to trust completely in God, not just for the big things but for everything we need every day. To let God be in charge and to behave with Him as once we did with our parents as children. Did we worry then what we ate or wore? No of course not everything we needed was given to us. As adults it can be very difficult to place ourselves in that position where we let go and trust God with everything in our lives. What needless stress we live with trying to be self sufficient.

Happiness (or perhaps a better word would be contentment) lies  in living in that relationship with God. It is a little like learning to ride a bike we don’t think we can at all and suddenly after practise we learn how to balance and off we go. Trying to live in that trusting relationship with God is like that learning process, we daren’t try it on our own, we are tentative perhaps a bit scared and then once we trust we are off, free.

Learning to submit and to hand over everything to God and to walk daily in that trust, that childlike dependency, is no easy task but it can be done and it brings with it an enormous peace.

I would not suggest such a path unless I had learned it myself and lived it as a reality not knowing where my next meal would come from. I never tested God but I did come to rely on Him many times in my life and was surprised over and over again by His Fatherly care.

/39

It might seem strange to start this chapter with a movie review but bear with me as it is pertinent.

“One Magic Christmas is a 1985 American/Canadian Christmas fantasy film directed by Phillip Borsos. It was released by Walt Disney Pictures and stars Mary Steenburgen and Harry Dean Stanton. It was shot in Meaford, Ontario with some scenes in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada.

Harry Dean Stanton was one of my favourite actors who sadly died in September combine that with Mary Steenburgen and I had to watch this rather old Christmas film.

Ginnie is not in the Christmas spirit at all and you can’t blame her, her husband has been out of work for six months, they are being evicted from their home after Christmas and she works as a checkout assistant in a supermarket where she has a miserable boss. Money is tight and she sees other people struggling without the wherewithal to make ends meet.

Lurking in the background is an angel tasked with bringing her the spirit of Christmas. Enter, Harry Dean Stanton looking more like a serial killer than an angel.

The children in the story are like soft centred chocolates. Too sweet to be true of course. As the lights go out on all the houses, life takes a tragic turn for the worse, a bank robbery, Dad is shot dead, the children are kidnapped and the car runs off a bridge into an icy river. Death and misery abound.

It all is a plan by Gideon, a plan used in countless films, to make people see what’s really important in life.

The lights go on again and the day is rerun and Ginnie is able to see what really matters and rejoices in Christmas.

It’s utter pap of course, the overly sentimental hogwash beloved in Northern America. Yet if you remove your critical faculties for ninety minutes and curl up on a horrible wet afternoon, you find you have learned a lesson yourself about what’s really important and ninety minutes of your life have slipped by, with perhaps a little nap along the way.”

At the very start of this book I talked about the mish mash of ideas that people have about the nature of the Divine. This film has it in heaps.

Fallacy number one is that people who die become angels. I hear it all the time, it used to be stars as I recall, where the idea came from I have no idea but it isn’t true of course. Are there Angels? Yes indeed. They are powerful creations of God, they are around us and my blessed Guardian angel has been with me throughout my life. But he isn’t a human being and dead people don’t become angels.

Fallacy number two is the idea of a Christmas Spirit. There is no such thing and without trying to sound like Scrooge, Santa Claus, baubles, lights and trees and a pile of presents have nothing to do with Christmas. Nor is it about sentiment, babies and cooing.

It is and the clue is in the name Christ Mass. Christmas starts on Christmas Day and goes on for far longer than commercial interests would lead you to believe. It is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. About God intervening at a set place and time about 2,000 years ago. The Christ child who had been foretold for centuries was both God and Man. It was the turning point in history.

When we remove Christ completely from the Christmas season we miss the whole point of the celebration. The same of course also applies at Easter when eggs and bunnies and daffodils replace the glory of Christ rising from the dead.

The more society turns these celebrations into commercial events the harder it is for those who are trying to learn to see the reality of the Divine. In our current western societies where anything to do with Christian faith is quietly subverted or removed entirely it is hard to swim against the tide. It requires enormous strength and courage to hold fast to what is true.

What we can learn in this chapter is the need to look at all aspects of our life and re-evaluate everything in the light of truth. Examine our thoughts and attitudes and beliefs to make sure that what we think, do and practise is in line with the revealed truth. It can be a very painful process to discover that long held attitudes, ideas or acceptance of the societal norms where we live are no longer acceptable in light of the Divine revelation.

Jesus made this very clear and in a late night chat with Nicodemus when He told him that in order to enter the Kingdom of heaven we need to be born again. A fresh start is needed.

This isn’t some magic wand waving moment but a life long willingness to let God into every part of our life and to be willing to change as God leads us into conforming ourselves into the image or imitation of Christ. To learn to see.

/38

Lamentations :

“It is good to hope in silence for the saving help of the Lord. Let him sit alone and in silence, when it is laid upon him.”

Into my normally peaceful life has come chaos both internal and external. I endeavour to live as quiet and peacefully as I can. I do this by choice and as an adjustment to personal circumstance. It is in this silence that my soul can come to rest. It is here that I can pray, here that I can think, here that I can dwell on the things of God.

In writing this book not only is self discipline required but also external circumstance that lead to quietness and periods of silence. I have been in a chaos of external events and this in turn has reduced my mental state to that of a loud fairground. Even Mass or sitting before the Blessed Sacrament has been less than helpful. My mind would not still in these moments and along with a sense of guilt came a sense of failure. I cried out or perhaps more accurately the Spirit cried out for me to the Father and at last I came to healing silence before God and with that came peace.

I felt compelled to share this because it is important that we learn to see the absolute importance of finding solitude. Then and only then are we able to sit in the schoolroom and be taught by Our Lord and Master. For ten days I have lived in chaos and it is an emptying experience like being in the desert and lacking water.

For me this will be a short respite but I am here now in total silence. Not a sound. Here I can listen to the heartbeat of God, can rest awhile in the sacred Heart of Jesus. Finally I had to make the choice to settle here, to get rid of all distractions and focus on the Lord. The chance was offered and I could so easily have wasted this precious time.

“Let him sit alone and in silence, when it is laid upon him.” So it is for me. Perhaps it is not the path for everyone but is most certainly my path. I may be trying to help you to learn how how to see with all its many levels of meaning but of course I can only share with you what I myself have learned. What is helpful to me may not be helpful to you. Only the Lord can speak to you. If my words are a vehicle that work as a conduit for His word to you then that is wonderful. But I am only a fellow traveller on this road. We have come together to share part of the, it is no more than that, and here I have shared with you my own adventures on this spiritual road we travel. Soon our ways will part and we will go our separate ways. It was ever thus, be glad for those times when paths cross and we can learn from one another as we share our experiences of the road and our own precious insights into the Christian journey.

/37

I spent this morning trying to get my head wrapped round some of the teachings of the Blessed John Duns Scotus, a philosopher priest from the High Middle Ages. I failed as I always do when tackling philosophy to understand the confusion and complexity of thought that lies behind their ideas. I guess after fifty odd years of trying to get to grips I have to admit failure. Part of the reason I think is the tortured way they deal with subjects, that and the fact none of it can ever be proved, we never get to the definitive answer. However all was not lost in my morning study as I read part of his proof of the necessity of the Immaculate Conception in our theological studies. I found this to be helpful as I struggled with this idea for a long time trying to get to grips with it intellectually. It was refreshing to read the clarity of his writing on this subject as he ended up in the same place as myself, not that for one minute do I equate myself with his masterful mind. I muddled my way through to a similar conclusion.

It was his thinking that five centuries later led to it being declared in the 19th century as a Dogma of the Church. It wasn’t a new idea, it had been around for a very long time, especially in Eastern Christianity.

Basically we are to believe that Mary was born without the stain of original sin and therefore was the perfect host for the Son of God. His argument goes like this, and here I quote from the excellent article on Wikipedia, : 

“Mary was in need of redemption like all other human beings, but through the merits of Jesus' crucifixion, given in advance, she was conceived without the stain of original sin. God could have brought it about 

1. that she was never in original sin, 
2. she was in sin only for an instant, 
3. she was in sin for a period of time, being purged at the last instant.”

To grasp it fully we must of course refer back to a previous discussion about the nature of time as a created entity that God is not bound by in anyway. Whether we understand these things fully or not doesn’t really matter as long as we realise the importance of the role of Mary in the bringing about our salvation and the devotion due to her as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and first of the disciples.

God does not demand from us the abilities of a Duns Scotus but rather simple childlike faith and trust. If we can understand then it may be helpful or it may not,  but we should be thankful for these intellectual giants who forged new paths of thinking. His arguments for the Immaculate Conception caused uproar in Paris when first presented. But his thoughts have stood the test of time and examination to become an accepted part of the deposit of faith handed down to us. He like so many others over the centuries was both teaching us and learning to see the truth.

/36

There is no earthly reward to be claimed for following Christ in this world. Our reward if you want to think of it this way lies in the future for us, an eternity of service and praise. The Lord showers many blessings upon us as we travel through time to our destination. But these are  small compared to that which awaits us in the day of joyful union. During our sojourn on this earth the Lord will provide us with what we need for our journey. Even down to a loaf of bread he will care for us as any loving Father cares for his children. Living in our state of disobedience He still cares for us, in giving us freedom we are free to make a mess of things, yet He is always ready to comfort and care for us as soon as we turn to Him.

I heard a very gentle explanation of original sin in a homily given by a newly ordained Priest. Let me share it with you.

Don’t touch the stove the parent commands a child it is hot you will burn yourself. It will hurt. If you are a parent you will be well aware that despite all these warnings nine times out of ten the child will disobey and pay no heed to such admonitions. The little hand goes out to see what happens, to touch what is so fascinating. Pain follows and loud wails fill the kitchen. What does the kindly loving Father or Mother do. They immediately run to care for the infant, running the hot burning hand under cold water and dealing with the consequences of the disobedience no matter how severe. So God deals with us in our dumbness and idiocy as we stumble through life. The rules He has given us are designed to bring us good things in life and to keep us safe. It is only when we abuse such rules as individuals or as a society do we come to real harm.

The disobedient child in the kitchen is as valid a way of reading the story of Adam and Eve as any other. Consequences follow but a loving God gives a pathway to comfort as well.

We can often fall into the sin of pride in our adult thinking as though we, mere specks of dust in a vast universe, can truly question God. Many try  to place their intellect on par with the mind of God as they proclaim His existence, non existence or try to tell us what He thinks or wants. I am often dismayed by their actions by their failure to grasp anything beyond themselves and their limited understanding, limitations they fail to see or acknowledge. They remind me of the child warned not to touch the hot surface who nevertheless goes ahead convinced in his limited understanding that all will be well.

I look around at our hedonistic materialism and consumerism indeed our whole post Christian way of life and I want to cry. For me it is a rending of garments. I weep for those who blindly continue on the road to nowhere. Jesus looked at his generation and in particular at the jewel of Jerusalem and wept for He would have gathered them all to his bosom, wrapped them in his love if they would have let him. He was filled with sadness.

We may feel a similar sadness about those around us and our society and our world and we may condemn it all as foolishness and self destructive, but never ever forget we may rail against the sin but never the sinner. We are all sinners. To stick with the imagery of the child in the kitchen we have permission as it were to despair at the inevitability of disobedience and the touching of the hot surface but we are never to direct that at the child who will soon burst into tears and need all of our love and compassion. 

/35

There are all sorts of painful pitfalls to be aware of on the spiritual journey. For many, and here I most definitely include myself, it is pride, or feeling superior or better in the practise of faith than my brother or sister in Christ. How easy it is if you attend Mass every day without fail to feel special and superior to those occasional attenders. If you receive some special revelation from God, some wonderful experience to think yourself particularly deserving of that grace. Such temptations to superiority and pride are part of our fallen nature and therefore we become easy prey to the whispers of the Devil. How quickly we can pass judgement on others for all sorts of reasons. There are many temptations to puff ourselves up above others. But we all know the Lord will have no truck with that kind of behaviour in us and sooner rather than later if we are in a true relationship with God He will burst our bubble and bring us with a thump back down to earth and shamefully carrying this sin into the confessional.

You only have to read the Gospels to be aware of how scathingly Jesus treats those who want to lord it over others or boast of their prayer lives or devotion or fasting. He is often quite brutal in his condemnation of those who twist things to suit themselves and his beloved disciples are frequently taught his upside down approach. He tells them clearly the first shall be last and the last first. He tells us not to claim the best seat but take the worst. Everything, it seems, Jesus says turns our thinking upside down. So as we progress on the spiritual path of faith let us do so with great humility and humbleness of heart. We must be aware of our own failings of which there will be many in our relationship with the Divine. We must never get above ourselves. It is true we are blessed to be called children of God, it is true we are being made ready to leave this life and to enter the heavenly kingdom, it is true God loves us, it is true we are destined to eternal life in the Kingdom of God, but do not let such great truths cause us to be puffed up or to think of ourselves as better than others. Rather we are to realise our hope in the gentleness of love, to be concerned not for ourselves but for those who remain lost in this world. If we progress it is not to become better than others but so that we might serve and help our weaker members in the faith and importantly to reach out to those who are currently for whatever reason outside the family of faith.

The true follower of Christ the King, follows Him in grateful humility and is made gentle in love. We are servants of the servant King.  The Devil as St Peter tells us wanders about like a hungry lion looking to trip us up at every stage of our lifelong journey. The father of lies can appear as the gentlest whisper as a tempter who can be mistaken for the light itself. The more we progress in submitting wholly to God the greater the temptations to fall. Be on your guard at all times. We may have to fear  the authorities where we live as secularism creeps into society and our freedom to speak of our beliefs is eroded but the greater danger to our souls comes from those spiritual entities who surround us and would keep us from the Divine truth.

Put on the necessary protection, be grounded in faith, read the Holy words, be persistent in prayer and faithful in honest examination of our spiritual health, and never be so self sufficient that you can no longer seek help from others and of course throw yourself into the safety of the arms of Jesus, seek safety in the Sacred Heart.

/34

God doesn’t change. He is a constant. However human understanding of God does change. People will also frequently erroneously claim things about God that are no more than human inventions and have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of God. In the Great War both Britain and Germany claimed God was on their side. An obvious nonsense as war is abhorrent. Women have been burned at the stake for witchcraft because that was what God wanted. Another obvious nonsense. God gets the blame for a lot of actions or the absence of actions where people think he should have acted like some inflated super human being. Because people claim or blame things on God doesn’t mean they are true or even close to anything that relates to the Divine.

If you take a tour of Protestant churches in the present world situation, you will hear people claim God hates homosexuals and also God loves homosexuals and they should marry. You will hear preachers proclaim everyone is going to heaven others that most people are gong to hell. These are  projections of human views and attitudes on to the concept of a deity that bears no relation to reality. It is in a very real sense a form of idolatry where God has been created to reflect the prejudices and opinions of  an individual or a group of individuals. If you read the Gospels you will easily see the frequency with which Jesus challenges and causes trouble by pointing out How far from the real truth about God people are, even when they think of themselves as deeply religious and rigorous followers of customs and laws. These people weren’t in some way backward or ignorant they are exactly like us. They were no different in anyway and all their faults are still found today in every human and every institution.

In seeking with an open and honest heart union with the divine we must be aware of the danger of making a God in our own or others image. We have to be careful to keep our faith separate from the country and culture in which we find ourselves as none comes close to God. Beware also in politics of thinking that your political persuasion has anything to do with God or that God and democracy walk hand in hand.

It is an eye-popping, watering experience when we learn to see God as He is or that is, as far as it is humanly possible to see God while we remain bound by the constraints of our failing human bodies. We will never catch more than a brief glimpse of God in this life but even that glimpse, that momentary experience will shake you to the core and last you a lifetime.

There are some questions I suppose you can keep in reserve to ask yourself. The primary one is of course about Love. Is there true pure love in this concept? Is it really love or is it human love projected onto the idea or situation. The hippies talked about love. But the love they professed as ALL was a dictatorship that required love to be accepted on their terms and you were either with them on or not, and of course love got confused with sex and an anything goes attitude that was little more than selfish self indulgence. It was without a solid foundation which is why it blossomed and fell away just as rapidly as it appeared.

The truth is out there to be found, just keep following the straight and narrow path of discipleship. Follow Jesus into the very heart of God.

/33

In the writing of this book I came upon a period of frustration or writer’s block. I had reached an impasse and as the days turned into weeks I reached the conclusion that I should abandon the project and leave it unfinished. No matter how I tried to seek inspiration or a helpful answered prayer, I was left with nothing and a small voice kept telling me to be wise and walk away from such a foolish enterprise.

It was at the point where I seriously considered consigning all to the trash bin that I saw the analogy with the spiritual journey we are all on in life. It can be so tempting to fall away from all our efforts to draw close to God when things are tough, answers few and possibly even a great sense of emptiness is our daily experience, staring into a seemingly empty void. It isn’t always to do with church but this is as good an illustration as any, I often spoke to people who for various reasons had fallen away from attending. They felt it had been so long since they had attended that the barrier to returning to the fold seemed insurmountable. I never found an easy solution to their problem except to encourage them to climb the mountain of embarrassment and strangeness and cross the threshold. The crossing of any threshold is hard for many people.

Sometimes the pressures of life, work, and social and family circumstances can make it very hard to hold on to making progress in the spiritual life. If the road we are on was easy we would have little need to make great efforts. It is hard and there are so many reasons so many ways we can convince ourselves that it isn’t worth the effort.

As our western societies move to ever more secular positions we find ourselves not only swimming against the tide but having to live in a separate culture. There is little around us in the world that lends us support on our spiritual journey, in fact most of what lies around us is designed to do the exact opposite. It leads to a consuming need to fill every moment of our lives with “things”.

A generation with its head bowed before a phone, tablet or glued to a screen of any sort, finds it hard to shake off the need for instant gratification and take the slower, quieter, meditative path in life. How seldom we experience quiet, solitude or find time to take in the world around us. We have to make a supreme effort to create even a  small period of calm. Fortunately as St Benedict tells us in his rule, prayer is to be short and to the point, we are not to run away with words and pleadings. So there is no excuse for prayer passing away from our grasp. No matter how chaotic our lives we can still progress in our spiritual lives by being constantly mindful that we are in the presence of God and how easy once the habit is attained it becomes to stay in that prayerful place, that secret room through out the day.

There is an old prayer I use daily, “Sweet heart of Jesus, I implore the grace to love you more and more.” It runs in my own head like the song you can’t get rid of, I think I heard that once described as an ear worm. Ear worm prayers are good.

So if there is a simple moral to this chapter it’s this “Don’t give up!” Like Bruce’s spider try, try, and try again.

/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.