/21

24,901 miles is the equatorial circumference of the earth (40,075 km). If there were no sea to stop daily walking it would take us nearly three and a half years to walk that distance at a steady 20 miles per day.

If there was a road to the sun that you could walk  it would take us 12,740 years to walk to the sun. The sun is so far away from us the light that travels to earth takes eight minutes to arrive on earth, so the sun we see in the sky is actually a picture of events that took place eight minutes in the past. Extrapolate those distances and the sky at night is a real exercise in time travel, would you believe that there is light reaching us now that started its journey towards us before the earth was even formed.

It is impossible given the limitations of our frail human minds to comprehend these distances. We can work them out, write them down but we can't begin to understand them, the effort to try and imagine such events and distances defies us.

The Universe is so large that we cannot comprehend it. It is also impossible to see it as it actually is at this moment in time given the limitations of the speed of light. We have no idea about the current state of the Universe. It might not even be there anymore!

In the last few chapters I have made much reference to the intimate and personal nature of the relationship we can have with God. Now I want to try and lead us to see something else about the reality of God. This book is after all called Learning to See.

If you aren't feeling very small now in this universe, then I have failed to engage you in the reality of its size. It not only makes us feel small but also our petty worries and arguments seem utterly inconsequential when considered against the vastness of the Universe in which we live.

God who is the creator of this Universe is bigger than the Universe. He is outside existence as we know it, untouched by time or space. He created time as we understand it but He isn't in time. Time is irrelevant in discussions about God. So is the concept of size. I only mentioned it to try and awake in us a sense of awe. To realise that God is utterly other, unknowable and incomprehensible to our minds. 

Put bluntly it is impossible to comprehend anything about God. We are clueless. There is nothing which allows us to make any comparison.

So what do we know?

We know that within each and every person who has or will live we have an idea of God. A desire for God placed there by Him. We even call him, Him, which is an attempt to reduce the divine to something we can relate to and understand. No matter what you try to understand of God it is impossible.

Yet within us we have a desire to worship the giver of all things, this has been built into us. Can we do anything for God, could He possibly require anything from us? Of course not.

He needs nothing from us He is complete within himself.

Yet He has chosen to make known to us in terms understandable to us that He loves us. He is the essence of love itself. Our ability to love is a gift given to us since we are made in his image. Strange though it may seem our souls cry out to God, cry out to be removed from our isolation and to be made complete in Him. As we read in the Bible, we love God because He loved us first.

All of this stretches our minds to breaking point. It is utterly incomprehensible to us.

When we begin to see properly and understand, as we are able, The Divine, we can do nothing but fall to the ground in fear and trembling.

Our lives are as frail as the grass in the fields, the leaf on the tree, yet this God has chosen to grant us a glimpse of His reality and the only proper response is to praise, adore and love the Giver of our very short and fragile lives. And to return an absolute submission of our lives to Him.

These few hundred words in this chapter are worthless ashes. Who are we to even try to understand anything about The Lord and Giver of Life?

Do not reduce God to someone we think we know. Try to understand we know nothing of Him except a vague instinctive need to Love.

/20

Although it is nearly twenty years since I drove a car, I do remember losing concentration while driving. This happened to me in two ways, the first would be the actual inattention that allowed the car to wander while I was busy watching something on a hill or in the fields, the other is that autopilot period when you have no memory at all of the last few miles. It is hard to stay focussed. We can lose our way regularly and easily if we let our minds drift aimlessly. Letting our minds be quiet in this way can have occasional benefits but for the most part the negatives outweighs any positivity. I'm sure we have even found ourselves reading a book, perhaps even this one and finding ourselves several pages further along than we realise without having taken in anything we have been reading.

This lack of attention, loss of focus, can easily turn into a  trap set to snare us in our spiritual life. How easily we can forget about our journey, our relationship with God, we can even find ourselves bored at Mass and we let our minds wander during the Readings, the Homily or even the Prayers. It can become so routine we gloss over the events and pass on as in a dream.

At its worst it can become laziness, a sort of letting go, till we find ourselves forgetting all about Mass or Church and even prayer. We drift away like a rudderless ship.

I put my hand up as easily being a drifter and a putter off of holy things, of going through the motions without being truly present in the moment. I think we can all claim that and own it.

So we have aids. We know I hope the ones the Church can provide us with and even when we are slogging through a morass of unfocused living we can at least keep our anchor firmly rooted in what matters. We must be alert to fight this, though, as it is not acceptable to fall into an unfocused life that drifts by.

St Paul writes about this a lot as do others and the Bible is full of people falling away in an aimless drift. This is a hard life we have chosen, every thing around us, pulls us away from being citizens of the Kingdom and how easily we are distracted. At present we look after a puppy three days or more each week, he has an attention span of a few seconds sometimes, flitting from one thing to another when he isn't curled up sleeping, that can be our lives as well, especially in the age of the smartphone and Facebook!

I have to fight very hard, even after decades, to stay focussed. I try to help myself by doing some of the following. Every room has a visual aid so that my eyes hit on something wherever I look, to my right as I type there is a statue of the Blessed Virgin, to my left more or less in line of sight an icon of the Holy Family. If I rise I am aware of the Rosary in my pocket. If I head to front door there is a small crucifix on the wall, thats serves for me, like a Jewish Mezuzah, something to be touched and used as a blessing point on entry and exit. I have alarms set on my watch at noon and three to remind me of the crucial times of the crucifixion. At noon, the time of darkness, at three the bowing of the Lord’s head with the words, ‘It is finished’. Everywhere I go, in my home in every room there are reminders to stay on track, to remain focussed on the Lord at all times.

Even so, I must confess it is hard to keep paying attention, to stay alert and focussed. These little things I do help a little but the journey we are on and the narrow road we have to travel are hard. But I want to complete my journey, I long and hope that one day the Lord will be able to say, Well done, you good and faithful servant.

What I dread most is letting Him down.

No matter how far you may drift or lose focus, you can still snap back into focus, just don't give up.

/19

‘If I had a Hammer’ became the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.A.

When we are born and come into contact with the giver and author of life we are like a block of granite brought into the sculptor’s studio. As we respond to the life long calling and work of God, we are bit by bit created and brought out of this block of granite and shaped by His hand with our willing acquiescence. By shutting our hearts to Him we can of course stymie that work. If we are open we will encounter His quiet voice and gentle hand in surprising places.

When Trini Lopez crackled from the valve radio tuned the always fading Radio Luxembourg singing If I Had A Hammer, I was in my childhood bedroom in the 1950s. This song moved me in my prepubescent life to have a life long desire for love and justice. This was the hand of God beginning to shape me to become a servant, a tool in his beloved hands. Later when George Harrison sang My Sweet Lord, the revelation of a loving adoring relationship with My Lord was born in my mind and caused a huge shift in my teenage understanding of the divine.

Neither song was Christian in anyway. One was written to support the idealism of  Communism and the other about the Hindu god Krishna. Nevertheless the one true God used both to chip away at me, to speak to me, to call me irresistibility to the path of Grace. 

God speaks to us all the time when our hearts are open. It is only now looking back do I understand God’s work in my prepubescent life. The loving devotional life that I was being called to was crystal clear when I heard the words of George Harrison. Sometimes we know we are being moulded at others the work goes on without our being aware.

I grew up in staunchly, Sabbath observing, Presbyterian Scotland. As the years passed I could find no way within that structure to express the deep devotional needs of my soul. There was the bad side of Christianity about judging and condemnation and an angry God who scrutinised our every move waiting to punish us. And it was cold. No one spoke about faith.

Yet despite what I felt I was observing experiencing the Lord remained at work within me despite my many failings and grievous sins,  He never abandoned me. It is a life long work, this changing us, this shaping the block of granite into something beautiful. 

So never despair. God is with you. If you let a Him you will be transformed into the most beautiful creation.

For years I waited for the Lord to open the door that would allow me to escape from the situation I found myself in, a square peg in a round hole. Like the children of Israel spending forty long years in the wilderness, trying to get to the Promised Land, it took me slightly longer before the Lord let me shake the dust off my feet and without a single hesitation be received into the Catholic Church. Here the song of my heart, my longing to fall in adoration before the divine was normative. I was able finally to express my love within the Divine Mercy of Our Lord.

The purpose of this chapter it to illustrate the way the Lord is constantly at work in our lives, and to realise that it is a long rocky road. God leads us and keeps us safe within his Amazing Grace. We need to be willing to work to His timetable and not our own. He knows what He is doing with us, even when we can't see it.

Each of our journey stories will be different. Remember that!

/18

Here we might usefully take a break on our journey to explore some of the dangers we will experience. There are clear and present dangers to be found by all who embark on the journey towards God and everlasting life. Not everyone will experience all these difficulties but I do have to warn you that if you are sailing along without any problems then you need to stop and take stock of your life because the chances are you have strayed very far from the truth. It is not my intention to bring you down or lead you into a pit of despair but rather to encourage you, so that you can be forewarned and therefore duly armed for the battles ahead.

There are many trials. You might find yourself bored, losing interest in all things spiritual, distracted by all the temptations that the material and earthly life offers. If you find yourself in such a state, you must simply make the effort to reclaim your former discipline and keep moving forward. It is like a test and if you keep going you will once more emerge into light and you will be so much stronger for having faced your personal trial and overcome the obstacles you found on your journey. It sounds easy but it is hard going and may not be a quickly resolved.

Never Give Up!

Prayer life can appear to wither and die and you are left without words or comfort. God may appear to have wandered off leaving you abandoned and alone. Don't give up, you don't need words! If, as you should have created a little prayer place in your home, perhaps a little home altar with a cross,  make time to go there or stay in your armchair and simply say quietly to the Lord, Here I Am, and Be Still in His Presence. He knows you better than you know yourself and knows what you need and what is best for you. Trust Him!

Your personal life may throw awful things your way from family problems to ill health. You may find yourself walking in darkness. Do not be afraid, the Lord is YOUR shepherd. He will guide and help you at all times, although it may only be long afterwards that you are able to look back and see clearly how he carried you through those difficult days.

Perhaps you are carrying a huge burden that makes you feel constantly a failure and unfit to be a follower of the Lord. I carried one for nearly fifty years. It was a constant in my life, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to feel free of this burden of guilt. It wasn't until after weeks of agonising and facing up to my shameful fear that I was finally able to make a full face to face confession to my parish priest, as I prepared to be received into the Catholic Church. That was several years ago now and since that day of truly saying sorry to God and promising with His help to walk a different path and never repeat my actions, have I had the burden lifted. It vanished in an instant. I was healed. I was forgiven. My life was set free from the burden. My confession had been deeply sincere and I felt a warm rush of forgiving love and a deep sense of peace overwhelmed me.

There is nothing that can separate us from the Love of God, except perhaps our own choice to turn our back on Him. But there is nothing that cannot be fully forgiven if you turn to Him, He will throw warm safe, welcoming, arms around you.

No trial, darkness, sin or doubt need stand in your way, ever.

Be aware however there are many forces around you, seen and unseen, that will try to make you stumble, fall or even convince you that you aren't fit to enter the Kingdom Of God. Don't let them win, hold fast to the rock on which our faith is built and you will be safe and secure.

/17

In this chapter let’s lay some groundwork for our thinking about the Church. Over many years I have heard numerous excuses and attacks on the Church. It’s full of hypocrites. It has so many bad people in it, how can they be Christian? They just want your money. It needs to move with the times. It needs to get in tune with modern secular thinking. It needs to go back to the way it was fifty years ago. I can worship on a walk. What kind of vain deity takes attendance or needs to be worshipped? If they sold their riches, they could feed the world’s poor. My God isn't like that.

The list is endless, the excuses lame, the attacks  based on ignorance or lack of knowledge. Those holding such views have failed to learn to see they have been led astray.

I don't propose to deal with these attitudes, although they can be easily addressed. I'm assuming and I hope I am correct, that if you have read this far into the book, you are already starting on a journey that will allow you to see way beyond these rather vacuous statement and judgements.

Let me provide you at this point with a little solid food.

Jesus created the church by building it on the rock he called Peter. It was a de facto creation of a new Israel a new family from all nations. The church is therefore of divine institution. As children of God, blessed and brought into  the family by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Baptism, we gather to worship. God has no need of our praise as is made clear at every Mass, rather we come to give thanks and to adore with all our hearts the giver of all good things. We are above all else a thankful people. At church, our minds are fed by readings and exposition, our souls and bodies sustained by the precious body and blood of Christ.

Now the human institution has failings. It is made up of fallible, sinful human beings. We will deal with this idea of sin later in the book, so leave deep thoughts or thinking or opinions on sin, for the moment, we will get to it at the right time and place.

Those who have truly learned to see and experience the divine, not only can recognise one another, a gift of the Holy Spirit, but are also filled with a compulsion to gather together with others who know this truth. God calls them together. Staying away is impossible. Why would anyone deny themselves this time of precious closeness to God. Those who have learned to see,  what is really going on at Mass, not just the outward actions, see the great truth of the interaction that takes place. That is why for two thousand years Christians have been prepared to die for their faith and more and more people in this present age are called upon to make great sacrifices, even to undergo martyrdom for love of the Divine. Those who have learned to see, cannot unsee what they have seen they cannot deny, but willingly sacrifice, even life itself for this amazing truth and treasure.

Is everyone in Church at the same point in their journey, of course not! But it is a journey and once we see the truth it cannot be unseen. If you are at an early stage in your spiritual journey you may fall into the error of judging others by external behaviour, as you progress you will find that you no longer judge others and you learn what it means to be humble. 

Those who judge us so harshly from outside the Church or from its periphery are just toddlers in the spiritual world and as we forgive, teach and love our little children, so we love them with a very special love. 

/16

Let’s deal now however briefly with the elephant in the room, The Bible. Oh dear,

how it has been abused and misunderstood.

It could occupy many many pages detailing all the erroneous ways it has been abused, interpreted by cults, Protestant sects and many others to say what they want it to say. If however you were a Catholic and attended Mass every day or simply read the readings each day, after three years you would have been fed the entire Bible in bite sized pieces. I have read it twice from beginning to end more as an academic exercise than for spiritual growth and thus have such worthwhile gems tucked away that like logarithms have proved really useful in life, King Og of Bashan had an iron bed!

So let’s address a simple question where did the Bible come from? Fortunately that is an easy question to answer. From all the various documents floating about in the early centuries the Church pulled together the various books of both the Old and New Testaments that they felt as led by the Holy Spirit, had the mark of Divine inspiration and were useful for edification of the faithful. Many if not all of the books they excluded are still around to be read. Many like some of the other Gospels are laughable works of fiction. Others are very worthy of reading as they contain wonderful insights, as do many good books that have been written over the last two thousand years.

So as the Church created the Bible as a useful repository of what we should know, containing history, poetry, biography and mystical writings, so the Church itself is the one body that should and does interpret the Bible for us. It can be a very dangerous book in some hands, used to bludgeon other people.

It is about God. We can't take it as literal history, because it isn't. It has to be explained where it gets difficult, by those steeped in knowledge and training. But to return for a moment to taking it literally. If you do, you have enormous problems, how many animals for example did Noah take into the ARK? Was it two or was it seven, depends which part of the Bible you are reading. Do the Gospels all agree, no they don't, anymore than eyewitness accounts of any event ever fully agree. Are these problems, of course not, unless you think it is a literal account of human history. Take the Book of Revelation or as it is also known The Apocalypse. Firstly this a form of literature that was common in the time that it was written it has its rules but we don't write like that anymore. To the Church which brought all these books together it is a beautiful description of The Mass and the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven with a beautiful poetic vision of future bliss. Read it that way and it makes perfect sense. To those who misuse the Bible, if I can put it as strongly as that, it is a weird and wonderful vision of a future hell on earth. It has been used to support strange ideas from the destruction of the Twin Towers to the rise Hitler. It is a happy hunting ground of eccentrics and conspiratory theorists.

It makes me very sad to see such a wonderful book as the Bible brutally misused. Read it with care, love and under guidance, it is a source of comfort, inspiration and spiritual growth but don't rush at it without understanding or you may fall flat on your face or into real error. It is a precious jewel to treasure and love.

/15

Silence. Some people seem unable and uncomfortable with silence. I remember years ago asking for  silence during prayer for people to offer their own needs and prayers. The silence lasted less than 120 seconds and I was faced with a barrage of complaints from people who were uncomfortable with silence. Others fill every waking hour with noise from TV and Radio or other means to fill the void.

I crave silence. It is one of the great routes to God and to self knowledge. If you can't be quiet, how will you hear the quiet voice of God, who doesn't roar at us but rather whispers to us in quietness.

I am lucky to live by choice in a place where as I wake in the morning there is total silence most of the time and most of the day, perhaps a bird or the cry of a child but apart from that the only thing I hear is the ringing of tinnitus in my ears.

But it goes deeper than the absence of external sound. Once we remove distractions, books, phones or anything else we are left looking only at ourselves. Our minds may scream at us at this point but we have to work through that and any anxiety or fear that troubles us, face ourselves and deal with each issue that presents itself, until we can master the chaos of noise from within. Silence for spiritual growth needs to be accompanied by physical stillness as well. 

For some people this can be extremely tough but work at it, the rewards and revelations are immense. As you still your body and mind which can take a lot of patient practise you will find that you can lay yourself open to the Divine Presence.

It is sufficient to say, Lord here I am.

Since God is God He knows everything you don't need to pour out words. The Lord knows. Be still and wait, silent in body and mind and be patient.

Try to do this as often as you can until it becomes second nature and you find you can quickly switch to this inner place for even a few minutes, filtering out all distractions.

This is how we learn and are led by God to discern His will for our lives.

There is great merit in reading and learning about the things of God but spending time with him in silent contemplation is a superior way to grow spiritually. After all an encounter with the author of all things is bound to be better than just reading about Him, gaining second hand knowledge.

Don't rush at this, you cannot achieve this in a day, it is hard work and may take you weeks, months or years. 

The rewards are worth it of course, otherwise it would be a pointless exercise. If life is too hectic to find time during the day, start in bed before you go to sleep, focus on silence, stillness and calming your mind and opening up in submission to God.

Be Still and Know that I Am God.