Tag Archives: eternity

ANOTHER VOICE

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windytrees

WILD AND HOWLING winds swirling around the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield made for a reflective, elemental sort of a night. I’m a bit ambivalent about strong wind generally, on the one hand slightly fearful of its power and a tad resentful about its uninvited imposition, and on the other sometimes willing simply to “let go, let fly” – and the encounter with raw nature brings a fleeting sense of oneness with the swirling. With life.

Morning prayer in a gloriously quiet monastic environment lends the soul an opportunity to hear “another voice” – and oh what blessings are to be heard in the silent voices within – whether Divine or divine. Whether Love or loved ones. Connecting. Connected. Silently. Here in this moment. And in eternity.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

Mary Oliver

Just pay attention Simon Robert. Only pay attention. The word of the angels is near. Breathe is the word. Breathe

GLORIOUS THINGS SPOKEN

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GLORIOUS THINGS OF THEE ARE SPOKEN, O Lord our God; not least this week in St Peter’s Square in Rome, and in the Cathedral Church of Christ in Canterbury. Pour out most abundant blessing, we pray, upon your bishops Francis and Justin. Grant hope to each, that they may walk humbly with all your children, women and men, of every nation and faith tradition, in faith and in love.

Interviewed by the BBC on Tuesday, after the glorious Inauguration service in sunlit Rome, Professor Eamon Duffy said, “I’m not optimistic. But I am hopeful”. Interviewed today after the glorious Inauguration service in Canterbury, Canon Giles Fraser said, “I’m not optimistic. But I do have hope. And hope’s a good theological word”. Prophetic men, I think.

Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin alike have called the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, our Christ, to care for one another and to care, sacrificially and unafraid, for all our sisters and brothers in all creation.

Both bishops have called upon humankind to place its trust in God. And it’s the heart of God, the Anointed and anointing Fount and Source, and Mother and Father of all life, where any of us may best place our hope, for in the heart of God all the redeemed creation will dwell in love and mercy and peace. The lion shall down with the lamb. God redeems. God shows creation redemption, “the way home to ourselves”.

And that hope and faith and love in human hearts all around the world begins in this moment. This moment.

This morning I was delighted to preach on the “I AM” sayings of Jesus in our local Bramhall Methodist Church. The I AM we see in Jesus is the same I AM who brought hope and vision to the great leader Moses. I am Simon, an extension of I AM – in company with every other living thing – a member of the Anointed I AM who was, and is, and is to come. Therein lies my grounds for hope. Therein is my Eternal Christ – the Anointed, the Christ that can be accessed and adored by all humankind. The eternally Anointed and anointing God.

After the service this morning a dear member of the Methodist Church gave me a copy of a rather glorious poem, created by the hand and heart of a Jewish friend of hers, a poem about the prayer that God may grant “to us sinners eternal life”. I pray that neither Jean nor the poet will mind me sharing the gift more widely:

Eternity

… et nobis peccatoribus vitam aeternam

‘Give us eternal life’, you prayed.
‘What is Eternity?’ I asked.
‘Eternity is where there is
No time – where all events, all ages
Co-exist,’ you said.
‘If that is so, why need you pray
For what’s already here?’ I asked;
‘If all events that ever were
And ever will be co-exist,
‘Eternal’ means ‘Today’. ‘

Edward Lowbury

Thank you Professor Duffy, thank you Canon Fraser for your honesty. Thank you Pope Francis and thank you Archbishop Justin for your honesty and service. Better to place hope in the eternal God than to be merely optimistic - whether in Canterbury or Rome. None of us, if we’re honest, are very optimistic about ‘solutions’ being found quickly for some very major issues facing humanity at large, not just the Church. But hope, that’s quite another thing – indeed a properly theological word!

Let there be another Lenten ALLELUIA today for that glorious things have been spoken! And may every shade and hue of humanity pray to be eternally reconciled ‘Today’.

GIVER OF ALL GOOD GIFTS

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THREE DEEP DISCUSSIONS and a Funeral Thanksgiving today. The conversations and the Thanksgiving were – each of them – about the same thing: vocation to daily resurrection, the divine call, the graced invitation of God into fullness of life, here, now, for ourselves, and for everything we’re connected to, and with, and for – which is all created things, all creatures – every thing and every creature made and given life by the Giver of all Good Gifts.

Three deep, deep vocational discussions – about persons being called to the life and ministry of liberation, binding up the broken-hearted, kissing and healing those beaten to the ground of their own beings by dis-ease, setting “prisoners” free, proclaiming the “year”, the jubilee, the eternity, the thrillingly, gloriously, good news of God’s life-giving, life-fulfilling, anointing favour. Here. In our bodies. Now. Vocation to daily, moment by moment resurrection. Vocation – to undreamed of aliveness!

And a Funeral Thanksgiving – for and about a good, loving and godly family man, a beloved son, husband, father, brother, counsellor and friend. A man now called to life in company with the liberated, where all the broken-hearted are bound and healed, where all know how to sing the Sanctus song – the Holy song – to the beloved Creator of all things who has granted, and eternally grants, creating, anointing, graced and redeeming favour. In the promised place. In resurrection “bodies”. Now. Funeral thanksgiving for a son of God (in a whole glad company) now called to daily, moment by moment resurrection. Funeral thanksgiving for another vocation – to undreamed of aliveness!

Blessed be the Giver of all Good Gifts.

MINDS WITHOUT FEAR

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IT’S WHAT NATIONS WANT, on the larger canvases, and what individual persons want, on the smaller ones. Nations like yours and mine. People like you and me. Minds without fear … heads held high … where knowledge is free. “I do not put my faith in institutions”, wrote Rabindranath Tagore, “but in individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly and act rightly. They are the channels of moral truth”. Winner of the The Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913, the citation read … “author of Gitanjali and its ‘profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse’”. It’s what nations want, and persons want. And Tagore encapsulated the desire in a prayer:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore
born in Calcutta, 7th May 1861
died there, aged 80, 7th August 1941

Egypt. Libya. Just two among the many peoples of the world who, yearning to know, yearning to be free, have taken the risk to stand up, to stand out, and to make their peaceful dreams known. And then there’s you and me, people of faith, peacefully seeking our own way to be free. “Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection”. This is what faith, this is what love, this is what life is for. “Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action”.

I mentioned the other day that I’ve been reading Gerald G May’s The Awakened Heart. He and Tagore are kindred spirits. “We dull and occupy ourselves so completely”, says May, “that we stifle our desire, anesthetize our yearning, restrict the energy of our passion”. Can we imagine a day, and better than just imagining, can we pray with Tagore for the living of Life “Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.”? “It is truly a matter of choice”, to return to Gerald May. “From love’s perspective, everything is a matter of choice”. This is grace. A risky business for Egypt, for Libya, for you and me. But this is grace. Gift. It’s what we’re all stretching out our arms for. Grace, pure gift, makes it possible for hearts, here and now in this world, to have a foretaste of what it means to be free. And beyond the grace given to us in this world? I hope to to know Grace, “the depth of truth”, with Tagore and May, in eternity.