Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Just visiting?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

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. Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 1988 VI

Sound: Sweet bell Make your home in me as I make my home in you. (John 14:23, Henri Nouwen's translation ) What does the worker gain from his toil? (Ecclesiastes 3:9)

Scratching around?

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.^ What if we are just dabbling about, scratching the surface of the world? Are our energies and 'expenditures' about order and fixing things - do I wrestle with the right things, whatever they are? Is it possible to go through midlife crawling about on its circumference? Rainer Maria Rilke puts it similarly: 'Is it possible that despite our discoveries and advances, despite our culture, religion and science, we have remained on the surface of life?'

Resting and wrestling

Is there more? Is there something deeper? Not merely visiting or pining to leave it, but sinking into the 'sweet darkness' of God's world penetrated with his stamp and rythmn: a deep undergirding union of all things. Make your home in me as I make my home in you, says Jesus. Am I at home in God's world? ^ Mary Oliver, When Death Comes