New meanings

Picture: Hidden cottage

Surrendering to new meanings

Following on from the last blog I came across these few sentences from the Benedictine Joan Chittister which I thoroughly enjoyed and hope to allow space for...

Surrender does not simply mean that I quit grieving what I do not have.  It means that I surrender to new meanings and new circumstances, that I begin to think differently and to live somehere that is totally elsewhere.  I surrender to meanings I never cared to hear - or heard, maybe, but was not willing to understand.

Faith and attention

As usual some part of me registers the wispy presence of something meaningful and then other parts slowly catch up to this increasingly significant reality.  The timescales and triggers for this acceptance and surrender are a mystery to me.  The quote echoes through my insides but what meanings and circumstances are we talking about? Noticing is important, in fact some voices would say it's all about the noticing, and the attention.  Is this what is called faith, and participation?

Andrew Hook

Both sides now

James Maebmij

Both sides now

 Reflecting on how I’ve experienced the transition (occasionally the seismic shift!) from youth to, and through, middle age, I’ve found it illuminating to listen to Joni Mitchell singing her own heartfelt song of love, life and loss, “Both sides now” in two versions recorded nearly thirty years apart. Written and recorded first in 1969 when Mitchell was 26, she re-recorded it in 2000. The lyrics show remarkable insight to have been written by someone so young yet her performance in the early version seems to skim over the surface of the very words she penned.

Something's gained, something's lost

In the later version (recorded when she was approaching 60), the song takes on a whole new aspect. Her voice, soaring over a shifting and ambiguous orchestration, draws out the ambiguity, ambivalence, sense of loss and hope unique to later life. Maybe it takes until later in life to know and communicate that we’ve looked at life from “both sides now”, from win and lose and to know that “something’s gained and something’s lost in living every day”. And to know that that’s OK. [Performances of both versions can be found on YouTube, 1970 and 2000]

Gus MacLeod

When Our ‘Truth’ Becomes Monolithic

“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.” C.J. Jung

It makes faith a very small country indeed.

When we are young in our faith (whatever that faith may be) the necessary questions we ask are ‘What must I believe?’ and ‘How do I believe it?’ In essence, what are the rules? Bearing in mind that many in our modern world do not have any faith engagement this is a worthwhile place to be. It provides us with foundations, a necessary set of rules and a marker to find our place on the map. It’s black and white thinking but it is good. We grow some understanding of faith and look at some wider fundamental questions about our existence and the meaning of life.

But many never get beyond this stage. There is security in the faith group we are born into (or adopted by). The language and rituals of our chosen subculture are underpinned by belief in a shared ‘truth’. This ‘truth’ becomes monolithic. Questioning it will see you moved to the edge of the group and eventually you will probably jump or be shoved. This is because the groups’ continued existence depends on maintaining that edifice, even if it makes faith a very small country indeed.

Tribalism pulls us down at all levels

So it’s time to move on, but many will not question or leave, because of the security and comfort the group brings. Some, though physically present on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday (please delete as appropriate), are metaphorically travelling the back lanes and rocky shores (turning over stones to see what crawls out).  They are wanderers on their way to some sort of desert experience. Others may ‘lose’ their faith at this point or be sidelined as heretics or backsliders.  These happenings are all part of a faith transition which makes room for doubt, critical analysis, questioning and deeper spiritual growth. It takes some courage to go there, but this journey is essential to get us beyond dualistic thinking.

This type of thinking opens our minds to wonder at our place in it all – insignificant but important – a paradox at the centre of our existence as individuals and a species. Failure to reach a point where we can embrace paradox is a failure to even begin growing up.  It could be said that the human race still behaves like a spoilt teenager, making a mess of everything – economically, environmentally and socially. Being altogether too big for our boots we have failed to realise that our unique and special gifts are ours to serve the Earth community, not to rule it. Tribalism – identity with my ‘right’ group - pulls us down at all levels – government, group or family. We need seers and wise elders to incorporate life transitions correctly into our group settings. Unfortunately it is often people with this potential that get excluded first and are lost to the process.

Ewan Mealyou

We Come Pre-Installed

“Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our own destiny to the full. If we do not, our True Self will never be offered again, in our own unique form – which is perhaps why almost all religious traditions present the matter with utterly charged words like “heaven” and “hell”.”

from Richard Rohr “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”

The Dog and Cucumber Seed

They have been looking, but are apparently yet to find, a dog that is self aware. One that looks in a mirror and knows itself as ‘Rover’ and not as ‘dog’. I hope they never find one. I just want the dog to be doing its thing, unburdened by the search for meaning. Cucumber seeds are definitely not self aware but they know what they are doing. If they germinate, and find favourable conditions, they throw out leaves and tendrils and produce flowers and fruit, fulfilling the calling of a cucumber seed.

It also helps us to find favourable conditions when we are small - love, warmth, food, security and affirmation. Otherwise we may spend our whole lives looking for these and never get to grips with the real purpose of our journey, a search for the unique core of ourselves. This is what James Hillman refers to as the ‘daimon’, the distilled essential essence which is the kernel of who we are. Surely this is what the psalmist is revealing when he writes in Psalm 139 ”All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (NIV)

This isn’t faux Saturday night TV

The paradox here (and isn’t there always one of those) is that we have to search our ‘True Self’ out, live it, agree with it and embrace it. It won’t just happen, and it’s a place of risk, loss and failure as well as fulfilment. In fact, isn’t God sometimes absolutely delighted with our failure? Not because He wants to see us hurt, but because we need to move on. Life, crucifixion, death and resurrection, with Jesus the exemplar. This story of transformation is constantly played out around us in the natural world, in the lives of others and in all good stories and myths. Why should it be any different for you or me?

You already know this isn’t a faux, Saturday night TV “tragic back story, live your dream, be all you can be”, kind of thing. (Although aren’t they reaching for something?).This stuff is fundamental to a fulfilled, whole life, and a good death. Yet living in fear that we will miss ‘it’, is as counterproductive to us finding ‘it’, as Rover chasing his tail. This is surely where faith and trust are vital for us. Faith that we are guided, trust that our experiences are never wasted. If we search we will find, even if we often feel lost.

Ewan Mealyou

You come at me from all sides

An unfolding landscape

Not all surprises are welcome. This one was. Over Easter the family walked the West Highland Way over 8 days. Amidst the banter that accompanies walking I had imagined time to spend with some reflections, some poetry. It didn't happen. A fragment of a desire had surfaced for a moment before going - a wish for lightness and being uncluttered. As words receded the landscape unfolded slowly before our eyes, coming to us it seemed with still and unflustered composure. Only slowly did we cotton onto the impact in us of this simple activity. It brought us into the unfussy and unhurried world of gentle wonder. It was not something observed so much as subconsciously imbibed, a direct interaction with body and soul. And I muse upon the Celtic church's terms of 'the Big Book' (for creation/nature) and 'the Little Book' (for the Bible).

On ways that God comes to us

The similarities with the practice of stillness are obvious, noticing the unfolding moment; the bird that interrupts the silence, the bus breaking, stopping and starting off from the bus stop outside the house, the floorboard that then creaks. This was all a surprise, a message and above all a gift. It's a reminder that gift is central in the universe and that it's not all about me and my effort. It's also yet another invitation to allow for the reconfiguring of prayer, of ways of being with God.

O Love, divine Love, why do you lay siege to me? In a frenzy of love for me, You find no rest. From five sides You move against me, Hearing, sight, sound, touch, and scent.

Jacopone da Todi, from How the soul through the senses finds God in all creatures

On the cusp

Photo: Beach at Charmouth cusps, Derek Harper 

Imagining the world beneath your feet

I was there precisely on the cusp of the seasons. The year was turning beneath my feet, beneath the boat I sat in. The wet season was ending, the dry season beginning. For the herbivores, the time of plenty was ending; for the carnivores, the time of plenty was about to begin. (Simon Barnes in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, How to be wild)

Jesus has been described as a metaphorical theologian*. He introduced metaphors as if they were houses whose windows we are invited to sit at and look out from, view the world, our lives and/or God from. The metaphors of 'on the cusp of seasons' and of a 'year turning beneath my feet' is such rich language and causes me to recall when I thought my world turning beneath me; feet pulled out from under me or swept up and away, also of times of feeling on the brink, at the turn of a tide.

* Kenneth Bailey, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes