Coracle Trust E-Reflections archive
All E-Reflections to date:
Faith transitions: Doors opening
Joy teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made
Sabbaths 2001, I. Wendell Berry
Faith transitions: Compass and rudder
Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict?
Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean?
O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?
O Christ, will You help me on the wild waves?
St. Brendan’s Prayer
Faith transitions: Secure and strange
People need a life of practical romance;
the combination of something that is strange
with something that is secure.
Orthodoxy: the romance of faith, G.K. Chesterton
Advent 2011: That we may be one
Make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning,
Uttering the new name of your exultation
Deep in the vitals of your soul.
Make ready for the Christ, Whose smile, like lightning,
Sets free the song of everlasting glory
That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.
Thomas Merton
Faith transitions: Reading to Being Read
What is this wondrous mystery
unfolding within me?
I have no words to name it,
for that One is above all praise,
transcends all words
St.Symeon the New Theologian
Faith transitions: Turning around yet one more time
The soul should always stand ajar
That if the Heaven enquire
He will not be obliged to wait
Or shy of troubling Her
Emily Dickinson
Faith transitions: Deepening what we already have
I tell you, do not worry about your life
Matthew 6:25
Faith transitions: Crossing threshold after threshold
It is morning, afternoon or evening.
Begin
A Book of Hours, Thomas Merton
Faith transitions: A fear of becoming
The soul, that glancing, Aeolian*, thing, elusive as a butterfly.
C G Jung, Archetyes and the Collective Unconscious
*Soul, from Old German saiwalo, may be cognate with aiolos, “quick moving, changeful hue, shifting”
Faith transitions: A grand sweep
Suilven’s a place
that gives more than a basket of trout. it opens
the space it lives in and a heaven’s revealed, in glimpses
No accident, Norman MacCaig
Faith transitions: Migrations
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.
Genesis 11: 31
Faith transitions: Our comings and our goings
The Lord will guard your coming and your going
both now and forever.
2 Corinthians 3:18
The Everyday: Daily miracles
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.
Walt Whitman
The Everyday: LBJs
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?
Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
Luke 12:6
The Everyday: Sleeping
I lie down this night with God,
And God will lie down with me;
I lie down this night with Christ,
And God will lie down with me;
Carmina Gadelica
The Everyday: Eating and the meal table
If love unfolds, it unfolds here.
Here where Heaven shows its face.
...Ignorance mixed
with longing, intelligence mixed with hunger.
The sacred in the planting, the wading
in mud*. Eating what is here. Fish, bread, tea, rice.
Fish tea rice, Linda Gregg (* paddy fields!)
The Everyday: Sitting down
We may ask in all seriousness whether we have the strength of mind, integrity and independence of spirit to sit down and rest occasionally, or whether we are the sort of people who must always be up and doing…Are we too always running about in an effort to run away from ourselves?
Karl Rahner
Holy Week: Give me your hand
Near here is the Land
That they call Life.
You’ll know when you arrive
By how real it is.
Give me your hand.
God speaks to each of us, Rainer Maria Rilke
Holy Week: Is God there? Is faith real?
no soul is rested
Til it is emptied of all things
That are made.
When, for love of Him,
It is empty,
The soul can
receive His deep rest.
For he is our very rest, Julian of Norwich
prayer’s
dynamic action,
that scoops out channels
like water on stone.
Holy Week: Where am I from? Where am I going?
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there…
Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?...
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
Holy Week: Do I matter?
A new life requires a death of some kind;
otherwise it is nothing new,
but a shuffling of the same deck.
Source untraced
Holy Week: Does putting other first really make a difference?
Conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet, Act III, scene i
Holy Week: Does the will of God mean life for me?
It is impossible to accept the death of the soul unless
one possesses another life, outside of the soul’s
illusory life…
in the hands of our Father who is in secret .
Simone Weil
Lent: Loosening or tightening our grip
Die into becoming! Grasp
This, or sad and weary
Shall your sojourn ever be
On the dark earth dreary
Ecstatic longing, J. W. Von Goethe
Lent: The lightest touch
Then my darling’s hand reached to open the latch,
and my heart stood still.
When I rose to open the door,
my hands and my fingers
dripped with perfume.
My heart stood still
while he spoke to me.
Song of Songs 5: 5-6
Lent: Consoling presence
“Lord if You had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
John 11: 32
Lent: Listen and Live
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
I am, you anxious one, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lent: The Shepherd revisited
Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.
Lent: The seeing
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
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Lent: Christ, receptivity with persistence
The divine will
is a deep abyss
of which the present
moment is the entrance.
If you plunge
into this abyss
you will find it
infinitely more vast
than your
desires
Jean Pierre de Caussade
Lent: Our status barometer
“Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”
John 9:1
Lent: A Given Life
Some asked the world
and are diminished in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.
The gift, R S Thomas
Lent: What me? Broken?
Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.
Anonymous
Lent: A Father and a Future
They grew up without a good man’s love, without a father’s understanding and affirmation. So they always hunger for it, and they search for it from teachers, coaches and ministers.
Richard Rohr, Wild man to wise man
Lent: I am the bread of life
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
John 6:30-31
Lent: The fountain within
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvellous error! -
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
Lent: Mary, receptivity with presence
At the still point of the turning world, neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
T S Eliot, Burnt Norton
Lent: Jesus hid himself
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind
Emily Dickinson
Lent: Who do you think you are?
Give me this night, O Father, the peace of mind which is truly rest.
Take from me
All envy of anyone else
All resentment for anything which has been withheld from me…
And all futile regret about the past.
Prayer, Source unknown
Lent: You belong, forever
You are the vastness
into which you gaze.
“Deep calls unto deep in the
roar of your waters”
Psalm 42:7
Lent: Coming and Going
Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”
John 8:21
Lent: Jesus, Light of the World
The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 27: 1
Lent: Simeon, receptivity with patience
Man must see his dignity not only in being a point of activity in the world but also in being a point of receptivity: not only in his potential for ‘doing’ but also in his exposure in ‘being done to’.
W H Vanstone, The stature of waiting
Lent: Inspecting anger
You were inside me, and I was
out of my body and mind, looking
for you.
I drove like an ugly madman against
the beautiful things and beings
you made.
You were in fact inside me, but I was not inside you….
Augustine, Confessions
Lent: Action and Authenticity
“No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”
Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do.”
John 7:4,6
Lent: For whose glory?
How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God.
John 5:44
Lent: Visions and Vision
Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out.
John 5:28
Lent: Lord, I will take up my mat
Lord, you have released me.
With a word you have set me free
and I am transformed.
Jane Denniston
Lent: Calling out faith in the hidden places
I have
touched it (the Uncreated),
it undoes me
wider than wide.
All things, Hadewijch II
Lent: David, receptivity with penance
I don’t take your words
merely as words.
Far from it.
I listen
to whatever makes you talk -
whatever that is -
and me listen.
Shikichi Takahashi
Lent: A word awaits you
The details of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well are so ordinary that the story would not look out of place if it had happened today in a service station on the M6.
Lent: Walking through walls
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance -
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which,
hardly sensing it,
we already are.
A Walk, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lent: The journey of descent
We walk in the footsteps of God
for the feet of our God will become for us
the Way, the Truth and the Life
In this hour - Liturgies for pausing. Dorothy McRae-McMahon
Lent: Hide and Seek
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack,
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d anything.
George Herbert, Love III
Lent: The gifts of life
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;
The Gift Of The Spirit To All Who Believe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lent: Weddings and temples
We see in this passage two very different and vivid pictures of Jesus.
Lent: Receptivity
The single clenched fist lifted and ready
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
Lent: Who have we written off?
Teach me to seek you in all that has life
that I may see you as the Light of life.
Teach me to search for you in my own depths
that I may find you in every living soul.
J.Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal, A Celtic Psalter
Lent: Come and see, taste and eat
“You must sit down,” says love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert, Love (III)
Lent: God’s own Lamb
Eternal Word, you entered the weakness of our human
condition, you humbled yourself
even to death on a cross,
because this is eternally your nature.
Lord we believe -
help our unbelief
A Litany
Lent: Who are you?
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
Lent: One with God
A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
God doesn’t vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God?
Mechtild of Magdeburg
The Everyday: Seeing it differently
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
The Everyday: Ordinary human mode
It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode,
with one’s hunger and sleep,
one’s cold and warmth,
rising and going to bed.
Putting on blankets and taking them off,
making coffee and then drinking it.
Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying.
I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die.
Amen.
Thomas Merton
The Everyday: The eucharist of the ordinary
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
John O’Donohue
Pilgrim Stories: Blog launch
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared.
Today we launch a Pilgrim Stories blog.
In suspense and incomplete
The mills of God grind slow,
but they grind exceeding small.
Winston Churchill, CHECK
Absurdity and seeing things as they are
The time will come in your life, it will almost certainly come,
when the voice of God will thunder at you from a cloud:
“from this day forth you shall not be able to put on thine own socks.”
John Mortimer
Courage and Dignity
It is time to be old,
To take in sail:
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: “No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There’s not enough for this and that,
...
Leave the many and hold the few.
Make ready
Make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning,
or scripture part
Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours
Growing down
Not even for a moment
do things stand still – witness
colour in the trees
Seiju, 1776 aged 75
Late afternoon to evening
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Let it happen to you: beauty and dread
Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.
Simply go — no feeling is too much —
And only this way can we stay in touch.
Near here is the land
That they call Life.
You’ll know when you arrive
By how real it is.
Give me your hand.
Just visiting?
By expenditure of hope,
Intelligence, and work,
You think you have it fixed.
It is unfixed by rule.
Within the darkness, all
Is being changed, and you
Also will be changed.
Caught by a strange warmth and a crackling sound
Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R.S.Thomas, the Bright Field
Let us play
Then will I go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
What am I supposed to be doing?
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
Yes
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
Running and kneeling
When will my eyes of rejoicing turn peaceful?
When will my joyful feet grow still?
When will my heart stop its prancing
as over the summer grass?
Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake.
I would climb the highest tree
to be that much closer.
Lord, I will learn also to kneel down
into the world of the invisible,
the inscrutable and the everlasting.
Our passions help to lift us
I slept but my heart was awake.
Listen! My lover is knocking:
“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew,
my hair with the dampness of the night.”
Lives marked by authenticity
Whatever happens to me in life, I must believe that somewhere in the mess or madness of it all, there is a sacred potential, a possibility for wondrous redemption in the embracing of all that is.
Benign yearning at the heart of the universe
The inward stirring and
touching of God
makes us hungry and yearning;
for the Spirit of God hunts
our spirit;
and the more it touches it, the greater our hunger
and our craving.
The inward stirring, Blessed John Ruysbroek, Flemish 14th century
All our seeing rinsed and cleansed
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed.
A word from the light, a flash from the dark
The light flows toward the earth,
the river toward the sea,
and these do not change.
The air changes, as the mind
changes at a word from the light,
a flash from the dark
Sabbaths 2000 VI (extract) in Given by Wendell Berry
Choosing a Way
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Beginnings of Identity
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Identity and Expectations
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own.
Marking the Way
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
Not Love Perhaps, ASJ Tessimond
You are lovely
The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness.
_flowers_by_Avenue.jpg)
The Everday: Breathing
There is only one life and that is God’s life which he gives us from moment to moment; drawing us to himself with every breath we take.
Thomas Merton
Beauty and the obscured image
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and freshness of a dream.
The Everyday: Gardening
The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
Psalm 24:1
Pursued by symbols
He called a little child and had him stand among them.
And he said: ‘I tell you the truth,
unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’
Journeying with Innocence and Imagination
As a child I imagined the life beyond this life
as one enormous room, all mist and kinship,
now I would have to insist on walls and factions,
hidden compartments, corridors leading off
to secret gardens seeped in changing light
John Burnside, Retractationes from Gift Songs
I’m not finished with my changes
In that first hardly noticed moment to which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
And now with God’s help I shall become myself
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have emerged.
