Reflections of God

It's 6 o'clock in the evening. I'm sitting in the conservatory, a bit bemused by this amazing spell of weather. There's a second flowering of our lupins, and a delphinium about to come out. Having bloomed all through the summer, the roses are all in bud again, and the climber which normally has white flowers has almost a peach blush on its single full bloom. Meanwhile the grass is unseasonally green - good news for stock farmers - and our pots, despite their earlier battering in the winds and rain, are still a riot of flowers. And the forecasters are promising us a short spell of Mediterranean sunshine. Bring it on! In fact, already the sky is cloudless turquoise blue and the sun's reflected off the brick gable-end of next door's garage. I'm not able to nip out and take a picture, but Jane has - taking my instructions in good part, bless her! And I'm thankful again to be able to enjoy so much, even if it is through double-glazing vicariously. I'm glad to read of Facebook friends "sunbathing aka gardening" and to think of my grandchildren walking home in the sun.

And actually I am able to go out. This morning Jane and I went to Cornerstone, the local coffee-shop, to have a last cappuccino from the old hand-made method before the new Swiss (and swish, no doubt) machine was installed this afternoon. The manager, Mary, was there taking pictures before the big weekend celebrations marking the award of the top 5* Food Hygiene rating and the introduction of a new menu (plus the new coffee machine). I've written about this unpretentious-looking café in my other blog, but it has an atmosphere all of its own, friendly and cheerful. For us it was our spiritual home in the first year after we moved here, and still retains some of that feeling. Mary and the staff quietly make it happen.


One of my delights since going there was the creation of a little garden on my route through the estate. It suddenly began to appear on a small area of waste ground adjacent to two rows of garages. It's tended by a lady who, I suppose, has one of the garages. There it is, complete with man-hole cover, right beside the pedestrian and cycle route through the houses. She obviously knows her stuff, as her choice of bulbs and flowers is just right for the position and the conditions. As is nature's wont, it's always changing - perhaps most remarkably of all it's never been vandalised. Just a small patch of lovingly tended scrubby ground. I love it.

And, thinking of good deeds in a naughty world, yesterday was very still, and we noticed a gassy smell - which at first we thought came from outside. However it lingered all day and, coming in from the conservatory, we realised it was emerging from our fire. I remembered that I'd tried to light it (via a remote control) when Jane was out one evening a week ago, but it hadn't worked. Perhaps, we concluded, the pilot light was leaking. I was reluctant to let Jane sort it out - I didn't fancy seeing her with a blackened face and singed hair. So we gave Craig a ring, who goes to one of the local churches and who services our boiler. Within ten minutes he was round and calmly sorted it out. The kindness, I thought, reflected God's - like Jane and Mary's. I read this today, "Ever since the creation of the world his (God's) invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Romans 1.20). It's true - in the small actions of care and in the irrepressible force of the natural world, we glimpse hints of our Father's mysterious nature.

Blessings and breast cancer

A friend of mine today put this on Facebook: "It's been a long hard week....but it's been a week where I've lost count of the blessings in my life......thank you, God, for each and every one of them!!..." 

On our neighbours' roof, too many starlings to count!

You'd better believe it when I say that her life is tough at the best of times. Her father has Alzheimers and she herself seems to have an as-yet undiagnosed condition like mine. He was rushed into hospital for a heart operation last weekend. The shock and disorientation for someone already confused cannot be imagined. Neither can be the distress for his loved ones. And yet she writes about losing count of her blessings this week!


It put me in mind of a remarkable article I read this week, Exquisite and Excruciating: The Life of Married Love. Before those of you who are single switch off, please don't, because it's a remarkable article in itself and says a lot about God's love and suffering. It begins like this:

"Like many survivors of breast cancer, I have some serious battle scars. My un-bandaged body after breast cancer certainly made for some interesting pillow talk between my husband and myself.

"Going into the crisis long ago, we barely considered what it would mean for our love. But when I was done with all the treatment, the question lingered unspoken in the air—what would our marriage look like? Stranger still, what would it feel like?

"I knew he loved me before all the surgeries. Fourteen happy years and three children assured me of that. But we had never really, really been tested by the experience of heartache, loss, and fear that a cancer diagnosis brings.

"In the aftermath, I could not begin to fathom what our intimate moments might be like, now that I had been surgically taken apart and permanently altered.

"My husband just smiled and kissed the boo-boos. And he never stopped.

"The miraculous healing power of lips to scars transformed the broken hearts and the marriage that cancer had tried to lay to waste, better than life-saving surgery ever could...." 

Marc Chagall, Wedding

Pat Cohn's article is as inspiring as it is beautifully written, and I recommend reading it all, because the truth is, as St Paul tells us, that married love is just a picture of Christ's love for the Church; that means you and me. I hope I'm not being irreverent if I say he wants to kiss our painful scars and heal our broken hearts.

You'll not be surprised that I picked this bit out too:

"Our marriage is a vowed life until death. We know one of us will get there first. We just don't know how or when.

"So when headlines shout to us about making physician-assisted suicide legal, or whether or not it is ethical for a "healthy" spouse to divorce a "sick" spouse because the illness has robbed the marriage of its protracted happiness, we know that we have to redouble our efforts to affirm life and love."

She ended her article like this: "This is the truth of laying one's life down for the sake of the friend, the spouse. It is how we, mere mortals, live Eucharistic lives: "This is my body, given up for you" (Lk. 22:19).

"Loving someone until death is as hard as it is beautiful. It will mean sacrifice. It will also be a well of deep, refreshing joy.

"You will have battle scars over time from the hardships that life throws at your marriage. But when we invite Christ into our marriage, he sends graces to heal every scar that our fingers can trace, as his love magnifies and lingers in every embrace."

"If you believe in God, all bets are off!"

Today I learned a new word. I like to think I've got a good vocabulary, but I'd never come across accidie before - I think. I had to look it up. It's pronounced aksidi, and comes from the Latin "acedia". Its meaning is "spiritual or mental sloth; apathy" (Oxford On-line Dictionary). It's one of the seven deadly sins. I suppose I ought to have known it in the light of my last job, but no one ever came to me with the confession, "Father, I've been guilty of accidie." A good thing too. It wouldn't have been helpful to have responded, "You what?"

Accidie Sloth

I don't know why we use obscure language so much in the church, but in this case it made me stop and look. I came across it in the service sheet which we picked up at our parish church on Sunday. I think the comment bit is edited or even written by Jane Williams, who teaches at St Mellitus' College in London. (She also happens to be married to the Archbishop.) This week the article was about the two sins, avarice and accidie. "Avarice, or greed, is an active, dominating, forceful passion, while accidie or sloth is utterly passive, exhausted, and uninterested." "Avarice despises the generous self-giving of God... Accidie on the other hand, is indifferent. It can look on God's exuberant vitality and overflowing love and feel nothing but weariness. Accidie despairs of life, holding it cheap, worthless. It cannot bear to see joy or pleasure in others, but creates dull, deliberate sadness all around it. It has none of the honest depth found in genuine pain or despair. Instead, accidie hugs its dreariness to itself, with a kind of quietly destructive self-satisfaction. Nothing can ever penetrate this mood: not love, not laughter, not pain, not suffering, not triumph or despair. Accidie is cynically determined that nothing is worth the effort; God's life is just too much effort" (Live the Word, 18th September, Redemptorist Press).

When I first read it, I thought, "That's harsh." And then I thought, "It must be serious to feel like that." And next I thought, "Actually, I've met people like that, people who hug dreariness to themselves," and they are desperately unhappy. What, I wondered, is their remedy if nothing can penetrate that mood? I suppose the answer is recognising when one's in that place and recognising that it's a sin, a deliberately (even if understandably) chosen and cherished state of mind. A recognition which requires expressing and confessing - and being absolved, forgiven. We weren't meant to live in the grip of accidie - so world-weary - and we don't have to.

Quite the opposite from world-weary, I derived much enjoyment from listening to a conversation between the stand-up comic, Frank Skinner, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Frank Skinner is a cheerful Catholic with a lot of pithy observations about life and the spiritual journey. One of the parts I most enjoyed was his account of the eleven years he spent in "the wilderness" from the age of 17 until he had returned "home". What was refreshing was to hear two men not ashamed of the Gospel which had changed their lives. Rowan Williams & Frank Skinner in conversation. At one point, near the end, Frank has a go at people who water down the truth, to make it more palatable for others, including atheists. It's too big for that, he says. "There's been too much apologising for the 'magic' in religion. Don't give in to 'em . If you believe in God, all bets are off. There can be angels. The Red Sea can part. There's a temptation to 'Let's be a little bit reasonable, let's be a little bit atheist.' I don't want to do that. I want to feel that absolute mystery in the air."

Frankly, Amen to that, Brother!

Through the... narrow door

In Closer to God (that's the Bible reading notes than Jane and I use) yesterday there was particular good note, I thought, on Luke 13.18-30, with the heading "You have to choose". If you, like me, are too lazy to look up passages when they're mentioned, here it is!
'Jesus said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."
'And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened."
'He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say,'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!' In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."'
Richard England commented:
"You know that awkward moment in a blossoming relationship where the girl (it's usually the girl) thinks to herself, 'Why won't he just ask me out?' Perhaps you've seen it among your friends or it's happened to you. What it indicates is that in a romantic relationship, it's not enough to hang out and say nice things to each other; you have to make a choice for a relationship to go forward.


"Perhaps one of the most deeply held errors about God is that, in the end, he will let everyone in. Today's reading shows us how mistaken that is. While God's kingdom will grow until it reaches every part of the planet, we still have to choose to enter it. Even those who could say to Jesus, 'Hey, we hung out with you, eating and drinking' - if they don't choose to follow him - will in the end hear him say, 'I don't know you.' We want to believe that being a good person is enough, but we're like the boy who hangs around the girl without realising that you have to make a deliberate choice. God desires a relationship, and a genuine relationship  cannot be coerced. It has to be chosen.


"This is a painful truth for many of us, but we cannot let ourselves be drawn into the mire of well-intentioned platitudes that claim 'it'll all work out'. Jesus transcends that. Love must be chosen."

That, he concludes, must make us pray for those we love who haven't chosen that Love. I think I'd add that that choice may be very tentative at first like fingers linking rather than hands firmly interlocked. The extraordinary thing about God is that he does not reject even the most hesitant approach, the tiniest seed of faith.

I quoted in full one of my favourite poems in I Choose Everything, which is George Herbert's Love, which begins: 
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.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";

         Love said, "You shall be he."...

Disaster and disappointment

To disappointed friends
People often talk about remembering exactly where they were when 'historic' events happened such as Kennedy's assassination or Princess Diana's death. I never do, with one exception, and that was what's become known as 9/11 - exactly 10 years ago today. I was in the Vicarage in Stanford, and Bryan gave a shout. He was watching TV upstairs. I sat down and we watched with disbelief the WTC towers collapsing in smoke and dust, and the unfolding story - which of course is continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in our own intelligence services, even today.

I've been thinking a lot today about personal disasters and disappointments. In New York unsurprisingly they decided not to rebuild the Trade Centre, but to build a memorial instead. The write-up says: "The 9/11 Memorial features two enormous waterfalls and reflecting pools, each about an acre in size, set within the footprints of the original twin towers. The Memorial Plaza is one of the most eco-friendly plazas ever constructed. More than 400 trees are planned for the plaza, surrounding the Memorial's two massive reflecting pools. Its design conveys a spirit of hope and renewal, and creates a contemplative space separate from the usual sights and sounds of a bustling metropolis." 
Where, I wondered, is the hope and renewal when we ourselves are faced with the two "Ds"? When our hopes are shattered? When our trust is betrayed? When what we spent our lives working for seems destroyed at a stroke? When our friends are grievously let down? When they, or we, face deep bereavement? 


When Jesus announced his ministry manifesto in Nazareth, he read from the start of Isaiah 61, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me... to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour..." Isaiah continues: "to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
   the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
   the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
   they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
   the devastations of many generations." There's a progression about his mission. He's come to comfort and restore those who are shattered by life, and the restored will be restoring people in their turn. 

This morning I was reminded of the couple walking on the road to Emmaus talking to the unrecognised Jesus about his death: "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." How wistful, and how familiar is that! And yet of course their journey hasn't ended. He reveals himself as the one who even turns death around, in the breaking of bread. There's nowhere that he's unable to transform. Having plodded away with a faint spirit, they run back to their friends in Jerusalem to gee them up with the news (Luke 24). 

There's a great prophecy to the dispirited Jews who've returned from exile in Iraq, with high hopes of seeing their temple again. The oldies remember its former glory, but now it's in ruins and they can't imagine how it will ever be the same again. Haggai's message to them tells them not to be discouraged because "I am with you... My Spirit is in your midst." That hasn't changed, because God has made his covenant - and he always keeps his promise. And he's in the restoration business, big-time. "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts" (Haggai 2.8,9).

Friends of mine have had three major bereavements in quick succession. I can understand why things might look grey and bleak. On 14 November 1940 Coventry Cathedral was hit in a bombing raid. In the morning it looked like this. 

The story of the charred beams made into a cross is well-known. Today the Cathedral looks quite different. I never saw the old one (!) but the new one is not only an architectural masterpiece; it's a centre of reconciliation, mission and vibrant worship. I have a feeling too that the Holy Spirit is present to transform and restore lives, and that, of course, is the purpose of the Church, to be a community where the Spirit is welcomed and produces his fruit of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control"

The sculpture on the wall of the new cathedral, by Jacob Epstein, is of the archangel Michael defeating the dragon (Satan) in the last book of the Bible (Revelation 12). Here, at last, the all pervading root of evil is to be dealt with, for good. In Mean Talking Blues Woody Guthrie portrayed the character of evil: 

"I hate to love and I love to hate...

And I hate God!
Well, if I can get the fat to hatin' the lean
That'd tickle me more than anything I've seen,
Then get the colors to fightin' one another,
And friend against friend, and brother... and sister against brother,
That'll be just it...." 

There's bad news for the mean-talking devil, which is that his days were numbered from the weekend when Jesus died and rose again from death. Which means there's good news for those of us facing personal disappointment and disaster. God's in charge - not the other lot - and he's the Great Restorer. He restores my soul, he leads me in green pastures.

                                                                                                                                                       

Saying Yes

A particularly good 3-Minute Retreat today, I reckon. It's entitled "Saying Yes", and focuses on Mary's song (the Magnificat) when she visits her cousin Elizabeth. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour."
I love the comment about this, including, "Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, praises Mary for her devotion to God, calling her blessed. Mary offers praise for God's love to those most in need...." That's such a helpful summary of the moment. And then come the questions of which the second is: "How can I develop a habit of gratitude and praise to God?"

Before the rain, from my conservatory chair

After this week of winds and wet, though nothing like the hurricanes and tropical storms we've being viewing from the US, I'm grateful that we seized the day last Friday and enjoyed our garden, before it was flattened. Geraniums and petunias don't like being wet and blown about! And I'm glad we went out and had a picnic in the sun at Snelsmore Common, and then walked (well, Jane pushed me, to be strictly accurate) round the smooth track to enjoy the sights of early autumn.

And I'm grateful this morning that Jane has sorted the leaking drain beneath the kitchen sink. It seems there's no end to my wife's talents. Oh yes, and thank you, Lord, for healing my back and helping me to walk with my rollator again. People might be sceptical, but I believe God created the self-healing properties of living creatures. And, after all these weeks, I'm blooming grateful!

PS Today's celebrated as the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary - and I'm grateful that she said that all-important 'yes' not many years later.

Band of brothers

When I hurt my back five weeks ago, Bryan brought home the dvd series, Band of Brothers, to keep me out of mischief. It's not exactly entertaining watching, but it's certainly gripping. It's the story of E "Easy" Company of the American 101st Airborne Division from their initial training in 1942 through being dropped over Normandy on D-Day to the end of the war in Europe. There are a lot of harrowing scenes. It's brilliantly filmed under the direction of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. I think it should be watched by everyone in the UK, especially those of us with any anti-American tendencies. I'd put it alongside Andrea Levy's Small Island for giving the post-war generation some understanding of what our parents went through and what we owe to them.

There's one awful episode when the company comes across one of the many concentration camps across Germany. "Hey, Web," says one of them. "Can you believe this place?" "No...." replies his friend. True to life, there's a lot of suffering in the series - which includes the veterans who are portrayed reflecting on their memories - and yet....

It's far from unmitigated darkness. There's tragic waste of life. As Webster laconically comments, on hearing Hitler's shot himself in Berlin, "He should have shot himself three years ago. Saved us a lot of trouble." "Yeah, he should have. But he didn't," comes the reply. Yet there's a powerful comradeship which has been built up through the years of pain and fear and loss - hence, of course, the series' title Band of Brothers. In a brilliant piece of script writing the expression of this is given to a German officer addressing his troops after surrender and translated by the German-speaking American:  "Men, it's been a long war, it's been a tough war. You've fought bravely, proudly for your country. You're a special group. You've found in one another a bond, that exists only in combat, among brothers. You've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments. You've seen death and suffered together. I'm proud to have served with each and every one of you. You all deserve long and happy lives in peace." 

'Our calling is to relieve suffering'

It seems to me that a universal truth is being expressed. Not that war is desirable ("All war is sinful," as I once heard a soldier say), not that suffering is good (Our calling is to relieve, not enjoy, suffering), but that there is a fellowship in suffering - and that is good, profoundly good, and possibly redemptive in a way that nothing else is. Perhaps that's why St Paul talks about wishing that "I may know him (Jesus) and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" as a precursor to enjoying life with him after death (Philippians 3.10). I've always had trouble understanding that verse. But the bond forged in suffering is immensely strong.

Simplicity

An eighteenth-century priest once asked an aged peasant what he was doing during the hours he spent sitting in the chapel. The old man replied, "I look at Him, He looks at me, and we are happy." [Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray]

Pain hurts

I know I might seem a sucker for every new song I hear, but really I'm not! True, I'm not a stickler for every worship song or hymn being a theologically coherent statement, as I reckon they're primarily poetry. I'm not one of the school which wants to censor "Hark the herald angels sing" because of the phrase "veiled in flesh" or to change the line about the wrath of God being satisfied in "In Christ alone". On the other hand, I'm not that keen on songs that seem to have been written from no experience of the reality of life - ones that are full of religious cliches or pious platitudes.

So when I heard the words "In thy service pain is pleasure" in the Walking by Faith cd which I got for my birthday, I must say I was not too impressed, especially as the performance seems to relish the words "pain" and "pleasure". It just isn't true. The psalmists never pretend that pain is anything but painful; Job made no bones about his suffering. I seem to remember he cursed the day he was born. Paul wanted to be rid of his "thorn in the flesh". Jesus himself didn't find his pain pleasurable. To the modern ear, that line is misleading nonsense. It isn't true that being a Christian makes pain a pleasure. It isn't true that faith turns one into a masochist. Pain hurts. Pain is still painful.

I did a bit of digging and discovered that the lyrics are not in fact modern. They were written in 1824 by Henry Francis Lyte - vicar of Brixham in Devon and author of "Praise, my soul" and "Abide with me" - who was quite a remarkable man. He had a far from easy life. Abandoned to boarding school by his soldier father, his mother and brother dying when he was young, his daughter dying in infancy, he must have known about emotional pain. In his late forties his health was declining and he underwent a range of Victorian "remedies". "Lyte complained of weakness and incessant coughing spasms, and he mentions medical treatments of blistering, bleeding, calomel, tartar emetic, and "large doses" of Prussic acid. (Yuk!) Yet his friends found him buoyant, cheerful..." (Wikipedia). 


Actually the poem isn't about how easy the Christian life is, by some sort of magic; quite the reverse, it's about the cost of "taking up your cross" and following Jesus. But all the cost is worth it, because of his love for us from beginning to the end. I get what Lyte is trying to say about counting suffering as "all joy", but that's not the same as pain being pleasure - well, not in the language I speak. I see that some versions leave out the verse with "pain is pleasure". That seems sensible to me, since its plain contemporary meaning is so jarring on people who know real pain. One doesn't analyse songs when singing them, but one does retain the memorable bits. And that's memorable for the wrong reason. Don't give me that.


Here instead is a prayer by Sheila Pritchard which I read in today's Closer to God, based on Ephesians 3.
Loving Father,
I pray that out of your glorious riches,
you will strengthen me, so that I may rooted and established in your love.
By your Spirit
let me know how wide and long and high and deep
your love is for me...
Show me what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God.
Thank you that you will do even more than I can ask or imagine.
Through Jesus your Son. Amen.