Category Archives: Healing

HE LIFTED HER UP

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compassion

Compassion

HE LIFTED HER UP: Readings & Homily for today here - sorry, preached “off the cuff” as usual, so no transcript available. What follows is a kind of addendum, a reflection upon a reflection. It probably won’t matter which comes first, the audio of the preached homily or these after-notes.

I – Not to help angels

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested. - Hebrews 2.14-18

II – Jesus Heals Many at Simon’s House

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

A Preaching Tour in Galilee

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. - Mark 1.29-39

IT IS CLEAR that he did not come to help angels – Hebrews 2. This is good news indeed for people like me. And probably like you. Human people. The descendants of the very human – and very marvellous and extraordinary – Abraham.

Today’s eucharistic readings speak of what Psalm 46 calls “a very present help in trouble”.

The help that the Life of God offers to us is not a fanciful or ethereal sort of a help, not the kind of help that’s only offered to winged and feathered angels. The help on offer here is of a very practical kind, and it’s to be available to one’s mother-in-law, or indeed to anyone struck down by “fever”, or depression, or the ‘flu, or any of a billion other vicissitudes of life. It’s a help that the Divine Life offers to all humankind through “God’s only Son”, through God’s “CHRISTOS-anointed” – yes, through Jesus from Nazareth, but also and absolutely (on his say-so) through the  universally “breathed into” Body of Christ: that’s to say through me and you.

The sacrifice for atonement that’s seen in Jesus is an at-one-ment, a-being-at-one-with the suffering that’s experienced by me and you and every other child, woman and man upon earth, too. And that very sacrifice models the human self-emptying that can change the world, that can “lift her up”, from the slough (or, OK, just from her bed!) of despond so that it can be said of all of us: “she began to serve them”. Eventually it came to be said of this closely-identifying Jesus himself: “he was lifted up”.

God’s only Son? The Body of Christ?

There’s a danger in so over-divinising God, so over-divinising Christ, that we fail to see “Immortal, invisible, God only wise” – a danger that we fail to see “Christos”, anointed, right here before our very eyes in Simon’s mother-in-law, or in any and all who could conceivably be described, for any reason, as “poor”!

There’s an equal danger in so personalising “the devil” that we fail to recognise the common-or-garden evil root causes that so trouble the lives of “those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.”

And that we should be willing to see God in humble and ordinary humanity is exactly what the Divine plan is all about. That’s precisely where we’re to look for him. In shepherds and star-gazers and carpenters and teenage mums. And even in the mirror (seeing through a glass, darkly, but then … )

Is anybody on earth, under the terms of such definition, not a member of the Body of Christ? Was Jesus often to be found praying in a deserted place that the crowds he was surrounded by might come to rely not upon magic tricks administered by him, as though he were some kind of quack or magician, but upon one another, upon the “Body” of God’s presence in the very hearts and flesh of all humanity – sometimes joyful, sometimes suffering, sometimes sick and dying, sometimes laughing and learning and thriving.

Was Jesus of Nazareth praying that we might come to rely upon God incarnate – in one another? I think so. I think that’s why he was disinclined to perform for the crowds. I think that’s why he was inclined to move on when people started to look only to HIM for healing. Healing is not so much a once in a lifetime magic trick (or one-off miracle, sign or wonder) as it is full and wholesome communal (or bodily) living.

This morning’s homily (audio link) has been an attempt to honour the importance of Jesus of Nazareth in the lives of every child, woman and man upon earth – in the way that Jesus himself lived and practiced. By being incarnate. By being the Word and the Presence and the Practice of God in human flesh. By exercising compassion and encouraging others to extend the bounds of that compassion to every heart and soul and mind and body. By preaching and by LIVING a message, a gospel, of HOPE. By turning attention away from quacks and magic tricks to the fullness of life already at work in each of us by the generosity and grace of the God who fashioned each of us, and all things.

Through the tender mercy of God: whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us …

The Benedictus: Luke 1.68-79

He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

Compassionate and tender. Contemplative and reflective. We’re to do and to be likewise. We’re to be the only Son of God now on earth, until the reign of God be fully and eternally come.

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY

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FR RICHARD ROHR is one of the great inspirations of my life and I’m grateful to my friend Ivon Prefontaine for reminding me recently of Richard’s Daily Meditations.

In a series of Meditations on his “lineage”, whilst planning the opening of a new Living School for Action and Contemplation Fr Richard’s meditation on Sunday read

Orthopraxy in much of Buddhism and Hinduism

Orthopraxy is usually distinguished from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy refers to doctrinal correctness, whereas orthopraxy refers to right practice. What we see in many of the Eastern religions is not an emphasis upon verbal orthodoxy, but instead upon practices and lifestyles that, if you do them (not think about them, but do them), end up changing your consciousness.

This was summed up in the Eighth Core Principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation: We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. I hope that can be a central building block of the Living School.

And – joyfully – today I’ve been chestily croaking ALLELUIA! upon reading today’s thoughts about the witness of art

Unique witness of mythology, poetry, and art

My earliest recordings often included mythological stories, poetry, or art to make the point. Many people are more right-brained learners than left-brained. When you bring in a story, or a poem, or refer to a piece of art, you can see people’s interest triple: “Wow, I’m with you!” Whereas, if you stay on the verbal level all the time, their eyes glaze over, they lose interest, they lose fascination and identification with the message.

I don’t think Western preachers and teachers have really understood the importance of art in general. Until people can “catch” the message with an inner image, it usually does not go deep. We’ve also been afraid of myths that weren’t Christian. In fact, we were afraid of the very word “myth.” We thought it meant something that wasn’t true when, in fact, it’s something that’s always true—if it’s a true myth. This will be a very important substratum of the Living School curriculum.

One of the things I most love and admire about Richard Rohr is his generosity of heart, mind, soul and body. He’s open to seeing the Divine all around us, open to contemplation and to receiving the Wisdom from traditions other – though as he shows us, not always so very “other” – from his own. I love that Fr Richard balances the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy; that he both thinks deeply and feels profoundly. That, it seems to me, is what the call of Jesus Christ – and of other great spiritual masters and teachers – is really all about. As Richard has it, “living ourselves into a new way of thinking”. That’s something all of us can do, all of the time, with or without particular religious frameworks – though many, in the living, will thrive in the kind of religious environment that seeks – as the word religion intends (from Latin religare - ”to reconnect, to bind together”) – to bind up the whole.

My friend Mimi is a generous contemplative - Between Night And Day; as is the marvellous Rebecca Koo - Heads or Tails; and Bill Wooten’s - The Present Moment brings a wonderful word from Thomas Merton – and a stunning photo; Francesca Zelnick is as special as her Today’s Special; David Herbert is one of my diocesan friends and I love his latest post (and we share affection for Parker Palmer); and Rachael Elizabeth’s been having a good time doing Christology and incense-sampling ( ! ) in Durham; James Fielden – always showing us “The Way Home” – meditates exquisitely upon Time; Ginny at “Chasing the Perfect Moment” writes about Re-creation; Ria Gandhi has been wondering about who and what’s Beautiful and has flagged up one answer here; Jenni has been Watching the Symphony here.

What are we looking at in all these human “works of art”. What do I see as I reflect upon the colours, upon the wide spectrum that arches over the whole of my life?

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus

Holy, Holy, Holy

Multi-coloured and blessed sanctity – God’s art: whether we’re always aware of it – or not …

LIGHTLY

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S E MURRAY has blessed the world with the hymn Touch the Earth Lightly perfectly complimented by C Gibson’s tune Tenderness. Encounter with a host of tender-hearted people in the past few days has served as counter to some of the causes for sadness in our contemporary world. This hymn provides a similar sort of counter and encounter – and is also a helpful prayer:

Touch the earth lightly;
use the earth gently,
nourish the life of the world in our care:
gift of great wonder,
ours to surrender,
trust for the children tomorrow will bear.

We who endanger,
who create hunger,
agents of death for all creatures that live,
we who would foster clouds of disaster,
God of our planet, forestall and forgive!

Let there be greening,
Birth from the burning,
Water that blesses and air that is sweet,
Health in God’s garden,
Hope in God’s children,
Regeneration that peace will complete.

God of all living,
God of all loving,
God of the seedling, the snow and the sun,
Teach us deflect us,
Christ re-connect us,
Using us gently, and making us one.

ASCENDING ALLELUIAS

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I OFTEN SPEAK about life’s being, for me, a colour-full affair. I’ve read on several occasions that some blind people can “see” in their dreams. This doesn’t surprise me.

Anger, anxiety,
adoration and awe,
celebration, communion,
confession, consolation,
consternation, contemplation,
dying, fear, joy,
lamentation, loneliness,
longing, love,
Magnificat, meditation, mediation,
passion, poetry, prayer and prose,
sadness, sleepiness, silence, song

- any and all forms of worship – often translate for me into vivid and fluid colour. The movement is gentle and healing. And thankfully, for a minimalist like me, the colour sometimes involves shades of plain and lovely uncluttered white. Neither the movement nor the colours are loud or aggressive or overwhelming. But they are bright. And each represents someone, some emotion, or some thing. A bit of time spent with “Alleluia” above may reveal some faces and one or two particular spaces …

In common with many artists, pray-ers and writers I think of our ultimate Heaven as fullness of life expressed in colours hitherto beyond our wildest seeing and dreams, but utterly reminiscent, too, of experiences we’ve known throughout our incarnate lives, here, in “this world”. Our hymn book contains a (much too long) version of the Ascensiontide “Hail the day that sees him rise”. Printed service orders (our Sunday usage) allow for discreet pruning. Not so when we use the hymn book, as we did on Thursday. So lots and lots of alleluias! For me though the words sometimes become the means of transport to a different level of seeing and / or hearing.

This “Alleluia” developed whilst humming “Hail the day” on and off over a period of about 48 hours. Sometimes these paintings start out with canvas or paper, paint and brush, and are photographed and digitally developed later. For this one the “medium” has been entirely my miracle iPad with BoxWave stylus. Have a great Sunday-after-Ascension. And may your Alleluias be colour-full and joyful.

MARY’S DRESS

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BANK HOLIDAY weekend affords a happy extension to “left brain time.” There are always more books I want to read, more paintings I want to paint, more photographs I want to make, more writing to be done, more poems to unfold, more prayer to be celebrated, more people to share some time and stories with, more songs to be sung, more colours to be marvelled at, more silence to be revelled in – than time ordinarily allows. And that very fact is cause for thanksgiving! Life is indeed a rich tapestry. The signs of the reign, the joy of God, are all around me. And I’m immensely thankful for the connections that blogging makes possible with people all around the world.

Today’s artwork is inspired, in Eastertide, by Mary Magdalene, beloved apostle of Jesus, first witness to new life in the Resurrection, loyal provider of intimate and loving support and sustenance, someone generous, open-hearted and giving, someone who just “knew” instinctively, what Jesus’ mission on earth was about, someone released, by God’s goodness, from the kind of prison every one of us finds ourselves in from time to time.

All human persons are “bedevilled” by “Legion” the perpetually underlying and taunting belief that somehow we’re failing to make the grade, we’re unlovable, bigger and better “failures” than anyone else, destined to be “alone”, faithless, heartbroken, misunderstood, wretched. All human persons yearn for the kind of release that Jesus’ love and acceptance brought about in Mary’s life; for the kind of release that she brought about in his.

Mary Magdalene: someone cruelly maligned and abused by religious patriarchy and misogyny across the centuries, but all the while someone I’ve admired and looked to as an icon of life’s richness and fullness, of life’s goodness and generosity, of life’s being – under the vivifying reign of God – a beautifully, colourfully, gorgeously dressed dance with our Creator.

Sydney Carter described Jesus as The Lord of the Dance. In my heart I think of Mary of Magdala as Jesus’ dance-partner and she is clothed, dressed, like the environment all around and about her, in colour and glory. And theirs is a partnership, theirs is a dance that, far from being exclusive and excluding, invites you and I to join. “Shall we dance?”, Mary asks. “And shall we sing?”, asks the Lord of the Dance. And sometimes the colours blur a little in the swirling. And sometimes they’re blended by our tears …

Have you seen the wonder of it? Have you seen Mary’s dress?

GLANCING …

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THERE’S AN ENCOUNTER with Heaven in William P Young’s The Shack  that has left an indelible mark on me. It’s a vivid, vital vision of colour-expressed emotions

a wash of ruby and vermillion, magenta and violet, as the light and color whirled around and embraced him …

Countless connections. Whirling. Swirling. Shimmering. Glowing. Loving. Forgiving. Embracing. Changing. And – ever since I read the book – gifts of daily such “visions” have delighted me.

The artist Wendy Rudd recently encouraged me, and a group of friends, to let go of “right brain” connection sometimes and let “left brain” make itself heard. I’ve blessed her many times for that encouragement. I let go of mental overload, on a fairly regular basis, by listening / looking instead to “left brain”, allowing wordiness to become colour and image. And colours – perpetually glancing, gently bumping and bouncing into and through one another, make connections and communion …

YOU KNOW PEOPLE

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YOU KNOW people there. Their faces are photographs on the wrong side of your eyes

Carol Ann Duffy, In Your Mind

WHAT’S GOOD NEWS?

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I’M OFF TO A DAY CONFERENCE on “Catholic Evangelism” tomorrow. I’m not wholly sure whether it’s going to be about Catholic Evangelism (capital C, capital E) or catholic evangelism (small c, small e), and I’m rather hoping for the latter … hoping, that is to say, for a catholic evangelism that really is about good news (evangelism) universally applied (catholic), ie, for everybody – no matter their “faith tradition” or lack thereof – everywhere.

I’ve spent a very great deal of my life passionately pondering what exactly constitutes good news, and in particular why having some sort of acknowledged relationship to / with the Source of our lives might matter – to individuals, to communities, to nations, to our world, to the whole created order – some of these whole and healthy, some desperately broken, hurting, and in need of that Divine touch that brings healing. And I’m consistently finding that old definitions of what it means to be Catholic, or Protestant, or Christian, or shades in between all of these, don’t fit all sizes any more, if they ever did.

Christ everywhere …

What constitutes Good News in a ‘catholic’, pluralistic world? Where is an / our anointed Christ to be found? (as I’m sure such a Christ is indeed to be found, anywhere in the world, and across the world’s faith traditions). And the questions are so important to me because as a Christian priest, seeking always to live and learn – to be a disciple – after the pattern of Jesus of Nazareth, I have observed that some kinds of Catholic, some kinds of Protestant, and some kinds of “Christian” plainly do not represent very good news for many people at all. So catholic evangelism must be something quite different, something much more open, something prepared always to be held to account as to the reach of what it purports to be good news. Catholic evangelism will not, I think, be too prescriptive.

Feast of life for all

Catholic evangelism will offer the “feast of life” to people in the “highways and byways” won’t it? Catholic evangelists, personal and corporate, will have dismantled their drawbridges. Catholic evangelism will be less concerned (although not wholly unconcerned) with the Faith of our Fathers and hugely more concerned with Faith Being Received Today. When I’ve asked adults over the past thirty years whether they’d like to come to confirmation classes, so that they can be presented to the bishop, confirmed, and thereafter receive Holy Communion many have politely declined. When I’ve offered the Sacrament of Holy Communion “no questions asked” it has been the case, more frequently than I can count, that the recipient has ended up doing the asking, seeking to confirm a present and acknowledged reality – satisfied hunger – in their lives.

Let’s explore!

And I remember that Jesus was ever ready to go the extra mile for children, too. “Do not try to stop them for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these”. Catholic evangelists will work hard at becoming more, well … catholic – so that they’re more plainly seen to be, well … “Christian” or “Anointed”. Catholic evangelists will be interested in marginalised multi-tasking-capable women, tax collectors, prodigal sons, unimaginative but very opinionated men, quieter and more imaginative men, too, and in lost sheep. Catholic evangelism won’t chastise the lost sheep for having left the fold in order to “explore”, still less tell the poor creature that God forbids it. Instead truly catholic evangelists (like Jesus of Nazareth) will make the fold larger so that there’s the space for MORE sheep to engage in the business of exploration, to engage, that is to say, in their God-given Life!

The Sound of Silence

One of the biggest growth areas in our parish (liberal Catholic with blurry edges – a bit like my paintings!) – has been a call to shared and silent meditation in the parish church – arriving and departing in companionable silence. No coffee or handing out electoral roll forms afterwards. And numbers in excess of many a church’s entire Sunday congregation have responded to a call – we believe a Divine call – to dwell for a space, together in the “house for the Church”, to wait upon the Word that touches life in silence. (The Word – not words. There’s not “even” a Bible reading). It’s life-changing, say many participants. It’s the only occasion in my month when I’m really and deeply aware of the heartbeat of God, the pulse of life, say others. This silence, this “that’s not very Catholic” but absolutely catholic encounter is breathing into our common life new elements of what it means to bear good news in our lives today, what it means, first and foremost to BE the Body of Christ now on earth, what it means to be religious in the original sense of the word (religare) – reconnected, re-membered. Restored to what we’ve forgotten.

Old assumptions yield

So whether tomorrow proves to be slanted more to Catholic Evangelism, or to catholic evangelism, I hope we’ll be asking the same question – What is Good News? – at least sometimes. Because, remembering Louis MacNeice’s Mutations again:

… old assumptions yield to new sensations.
The Stranger in the Wings is waiting for his cue.
The fuse is always laid to some annunciation …

COLOURS

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I’VE BEEN playing with colour (when not fast asleep) during a lazy hazy relaxing Easter holiday week in the Lake District. Here the colours have been changing moment by moment, and today I’m reflecting – as it’s time to head South and “back to work” - on the gift of colour in our lives, and the ever-changing spectrum; upon the goodness, the generosity of it if you like.  Life could have been given to us in greyscale, or just plain black and white. In middle age I’m finding that I like, more and more, to use the whole pallet in the artistry of life, and sometimes just to splash a bit of colour about here and there with a sort of relaxed abandon! And the English Lake District is one glorious area in which to glory in the spectrum. God is good!

TINY BOAT LARGE LAKE

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MORE EASTERTIDE encounter today – on a sun-blessed Ullswater where, whatever the season, in time or timelessness, I am a tiny boat in the company of a large and beautiful lake … ashore, or afloat, going or staying, lying down, sitting or standing just out of sight, warm or cold or dark or light or shadow or bright? Funny: here the questions don’t occur. I’m not conscious (except in the recesses of my memory) even of being a boat. This encounter, it would be better to say after all, is simply joy in the company of a large and beautiful lake. And all is well here. All is well.