Diving in

I've been thinking a lot recently about the connection between water and the faith- partly encouraged by my reading, and partly by recent weather- we seemed to be heading for a drought, with the driest May recorded for one hundred and fifty years, followed by the usual British downpours which have more than soaked the ground, and certainly filled the rain barrel and the six other tubs and buckets I put out to capture the rain. This last amply illustrated a phrase  of St. Bonaventure which struck me sometime during the Easter season, of  'the torrents, the torrents, I say' of pleasure God takes in his children.
 Equally, the dry weather of May, when the rain barrel ran dry, and I was watering the garden each night ( May being the month when everything runs riot in uncontrolled growth- forget 'June is busting out all over') turned my thought to de-hydration, dryness, and the effects of this on body and soul. I remember well working alongside community psychiatric nurses in the community, when a joint visit to a patient always included the question 'How much water are you drinking?' There were follow-up questions, if needed, or a gentle pinch on the back of the hand- having explained what was going to happen- to see if the skin stayed in a peak for an undue time; this was a sure sign, I was told, of dehydration.
On the last great day of the feast, St John tells us in his gospel, Jesus called out in the Temple 'if any one is thirsty, let him come to me and drink, and living waters will flow out of him'. The output we hope for- to be refreshment, cleansing agents, sources of life for our communities- demands an input commensurate with the output. It's a challenge; torrents may be more than we can take, but sips will hardly sustain us, and do even less for the world around us. 

Back in 'Ordinary Time'

There's one job I've resisted doing since we made a list, way back at the beginning of lock-down; painting the utility room. It's small, it's got awkward and inaccessible spaces, there's less than one square metre where paint can be put on with the same speed and efficiency as if I were painting a wall in (say) a bedroom. And... And.... the excuses go on. We chose the colour last weekend, set aside Thursday and Friday to begin the task, and I still found reason to put off Thursday.

But as I write, a start has been made. And since you ask, the colour is 'coffee liqueur'. By midweek, with a second coat of the said emulsion paint on the walls, and an application of white gloss on the woodwork, it should be finished. And it will take a good deal of persuasion to think about doing it again for another decade, at least (by which time we'll need to pay someone to do it, I should imagine), given the awkwardness, lack of accessibility, and all the rest.

There's always a tension between the 'now' and the 'not yet'. I thought I had successfully managed to put The Painting Of The Utility Room into the 'not yet', but it crept into the 'now'. For those who adhere to the faith, this tension is a reality we know in daily experience. We rejoice in the daily reality of God-with-us, and yet have set seasons- Advent, Pentecost- where we pray for God to come to us, as if he were not here already. We know the 'now' of God's presence with us and in the world, and yet see God as the One who is always 'coming to us'. Time and experience somehow collapse into eternity. Or maybe eternity expresses itself in time and our experience. We divide the church year into special seasons, punctuated by those wonderful weeks of  'Ordinary Time'. Like now, where we can just get on with soul-stuff without having to focus on Easter stuff, Advent stuff, Lent stuff, et al. 

I rejoice that in the ordinary as well as the special, we can find God, God with us, God coming to us. Telling me, that like the utility room, whatever my excuses, I can be made new.   

    

An in-between time

There has been much talk during this pandemic, with its concomitant restrictions on movement and much 'normal' activity, of this being an 'in between time'. And the past ten days, between the Ascension and today's Pentecost, has had much of this;- perhaps focussed it in ways we had not thought.
All this is true, but all this is also false; all times are 'in between times'- between the past and the future, or say, my birthday and yours, one project or another. It's a reminder that all we have is the present.

That should demand of us an attentiveness to the moment, in the light of how precious the moment is; a 'being present' to the present. Well, it's something I wish and pray for, rather than the jerky attentiveness to some big event yesterday and some big event to come, leaving the present just a passage of time with little meaning or content.
With the advent of the Spirit of God today, we have, if we choose to take it up, a new way of looking at the present. It is the gift of seeing the moment as Jesus saw it, the moment when he knows power has gone out of him; the moment he sees what no one else sees- a blind beggar who needs healing; the moment he sees his mother by the cross, and gifts her and his disciple John to each other.

'Once I was blind, but now I see' was the witness of one healed by Jesus; it could be all of us, in the healing of time which his Holy Spirit brings us.

A little peace, a little hope, a little calm

I guess if we're not filling our lives with distractions- and there are plenty of those around- in these strange times, we may well be facing some of our demons. In the possible emptiness, or boredom, or quiet of this time of retreat, into a smaller, domestic world, that which has remained hidden, or not dealt with, or suppressed, in the frantic busy-ness of life before Covid19, may be coming to the surface. No wonder mental health is mentioned with such frequency.

But it's not just mental health. This retreated world, this more enclosed world has about it the limitations of a monastery, a cloister, a convent. And demons- but let's just call them 'issues', or 'unresolved tensions' -are not just mental ones; they might be spiritual. But what an opportunity now to welcome them into consciousness, befriend them, find them to be ministering angels, and not demons at all.!

Old remedies, time-proved, trusted stalwarts have stood the test over the centuries to offer the best consolation, healing, release. Prayer, confession, truth, the sacraments, listening to God, a sympathetic listening ear; all these have their place. None is a quick-fix. But together they offer a road to a freer, deeper life in God, less burdened, more in tune with the grain of the universe, the grain of God.

May those who are sensing a surfacing of holy discomfort find the needful insight, fortitude, grace, light, and balm to move into a sunnier soul-place. 

O mad lover!

'Oh yeah, the resurrection'; here I am, just six weeks into the Easter season, and I can get to that stage, of being less than attentive to the resurrection, to what it was, is, what it means, the life it brings. But then- a sign of grace- something shocks me out of that frame of mind and heart.
This time it's been three phrases, all from Italy, from two saints in the middle ages. Bonaventure talking about 'the powerful fiery torrent, the torrent, I say, of the pleasure of God ' in his children. And Catherine of Siena talking of God 'drunk with love, infatuated with your creature' and in another place addressing God as 'O mad lover!'

The power of the images, the force of the words, brings me back to the reality and impact of that event. I have to face it, I cannot ignore the death, the life of Jesus. The writers of these words have journeyed farther into the love of God than I have, to write so large, so loud, so imbued.

I would follow. The torrents of the infatuated, mad lover reinforce my sense that there is more. Swimming, floating, sailing and diving in the ocean of God's love, as I feebly do, I know in my head that this ocean is vast, limitless, and the pull of the deeper sea is something I feel. The saints have gone before, and have survived. A voyage beckons.

the virtual world

Locked down as we are, culture and other such experiences come to us via the tv and the laptop, rather than us going out for these occasions. And truth to tell, many organisations have made it easy to listen to/watch/experience music, plays, gardens, houses, museums which in BC times ( before coronavirus) we would have journeyed to, and paid for. The virtual world- a tour of the palace of Versailles, for instance- has become our near neighbour.

As has church; live-streamed services proliferate on Sundays. It fills a need for me, it's the best that can be done in the circumstances, but..... it's virtual. It's still a laptop screen between me and the rector in his study, leading worship ( and leading it well) for the parish. I have to imagine the other folk I would be with in church. Are they joining in today, or absent? I shall never know.

It causes me to wonder about how direct, or how mediated, is my relationship to God. And as I reflect on this, it seems that quite a lot is mediated; through scripture, through tradition, the sort of church I go to, stuff I learned when I was a child, and all the rest. Is there a direct  unmediated connection to, apprehension of God?

Maybe this world can't bear the weight of that. There is the yearning for knowing, as St. Paul puts it, 'face to face', in a time to come when we have passed from this world, and I truly look forward to that. For now, it's 'as in a glass, darkly'. An imperfect mirror.
 mostly through Jesus, our 'only mediator' as the Prayer Book has it, but with the promise of one day, one glorious day 'face to face'.

The hymns we sing

I was searching for a hymn this week, when I came across another which I hadn't sung for many a long year; I could only half remember the first few words but it brought a lump to my throat- a hymn by Fanny Crosby, that great Victorian writer of hymns of personal devotion. 'All the way my Saviour leads me' it begins; but the last line- 'Jesus led me all the way' jolted me out of sentimentality and caused me to think.

'Jesus led me all the way'; it's patently untrue, of course, in that, self-willed as I am, I have so often gone my own way. The primrose path still holds many attractions. But I guess that if I look at it from another angle, it has a truth- I have been led off primrose paths back onto the Way.

The words we sing in our hymns express truths we hold dear, or truths we would like to hold dear  (as above)  and aspire to; and hymns our parents and others held dear, hymns where the tune seduces us rather than the words, and a thousand things besides. But we still sing them, eagerly, bitterly, sentimentally, hopefully, stoically.

'He who sings prays twice' said St. Augustine, testifying to the power of singing, and the power of praying, however that is done; in faith, in doubt, in anger, in joy, and the rest. Sing a little in these strange times; sing a hymn; God gets it in both ears, so speak, maybe with both barrels from ourselves. It's one way to keep us on the Way, or help us find a route back to the Way.