'Be good to me, O God.......

 .....your sea is so big, and my boat is so small'. This, or variations on it, is the famous Breton fishermen's prayer; often the first phrase- today's blog title- is missed out. It's struck me in times past that it's an honest statement of vulnerability, a plea for protection and safety.

But a re-acquaintance this week on retreat with the writings of Isaac the Syrian have helped me see it in a new way. This watery seventh century saint who grew up on the shores of the Persian Gulf uses the sea very often as a metaphor for God- boundless, inviting, home of great treasures. 

So I can now see the Breton prayer, uttered in colder, possibly more stormy and uncertain climes, as a call to explore, rather than a request for protection. Isaac would have us 'dive in' to God, be adventuresome, discover what the sea has to offer, wonder at its constant bounty. No need to utter a prayer for protection; God is good, the sea is good, we can revel in it, even far from land, know there are discoveries to be made, even in the depths. 

A boundless God invites us to explore. Shall we always paddle in the shallows?

what happens next?

Prof. Brian Cox's stunning new series 'Universe' - stunning because of the CGI stuff and the impossible numbers (know what a trillion years looks like?)- leaves me, and by extension, all thinking members of the faith- with a number of questions. But there are always more questions than answers, and perhaps the questions are more important..... 

To horse; he asserts, inter alia, that the universe will 'end' in 22 trillion years time, when the last star has burned up.(if I heard it right). I have no reason to disbelieve him. But it's a long time to wait for heaven- to put it at its simplest. Also, is that the right conclusion to draw, question to ask? 

I don't usually concern myself with the afterlife. It's enough to contend with whatever time I have here, making it holy and useful. But today being the feast of Christ the King, when at the end of the Christian year we celebrate the lordship of Christ over all creation, the cosmic Christ, questions about the end of time, the end of history, one's future beyond death, naturally arise. 

I will praise God this morning for the lordship of Christ over all. And continue to ask questions to which there may be few answers in this life. It's the reasonable, faithful response.     

 

Truth where you find it

 A modern translation of the Apocrypha arrived yesterday; the only copy we had was in the Authorised Version, and in very small print. Something more modern (and less taxing on the eye) was called for after an encounter with the Wisdom of Solomon earlier this week, which astounded me with its truth.

The author is talking of wisdom, personified, as in many parts of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament. For me, it's easiest to think of this as analagous to, even identified with, the Holy Spirit. And it was a marvellous passage, which increased my understanding of the person and work of God-as-Spirit. 

This engaging with the Apocrypha might draw a sharp intake of breath, a knitting of brows, in some sections of the Christian community. But if  Wisdom/the Holy Spirit is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile. clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure and altogether subtle  (Wisdom of Solomon chapter 7)- then why should not truth be found, be communicated to me from these scriptures?

I've come at this in a roundabout way; the Spirit/Wisdom  has spoken to me through the mundane, the ordinary, the quotidian stuff of life, as these blogs have tried to demonstrate. So why not through the apocryphal writings of holy men, the lives of holy men and women such as are found in that bit of the Bible which much of the faithful ignore? The defence rests, mi Lud. 

I shall carry on reading.......

The box and the present

 I and was amused earlier in the week to watch a young toddler unwrap his present, and then proceed to play with the wrapping paper. Every parent, everyone who has watched children, will smile a wry smile at this; we've seen it before. We've seen it before because we've probably done it before ourselves when young. The box it came in, the paper it was wrapped in, all more fun-filled than the present itself.  Well, boxes provide endless opportunities for creative play, don't they?

And this has a direct parallel with how we might approach the faith. Get so wrapped up in church that God misses out. Become so concerned with the fripperies that the relationship with God never materialises, or suffers as we put all our energy into the secondary stuff, forgetting the primary love, love for God. 

You would think that the Great Commandment makes it clear enough- to love God with all our passion, with all our prayer, with all our energy and all our intelligence ('The Message' translation), but we miss the mark more than hitting it, If our attention isn't on the fripperies, then it's somewhere else altogether, and loving God doesn't come into the picture at all. 

Advent is approaching- a penitential season. Time to take stock- the present inside the box (discovering the love of God again in a new way) or being content with the wrappings, seductive as they are. Seductive, but only wrappings. 

 

 

The swimmer

 On an exercise bike at the gym, I had a good view of the lane swimmers in the pool below- the accomplished, the smooth, the ones who were giving it their all in spite of a lack of proficiency. , ploughing up and down, up and back through the pool. 

I am not a good swimmer. I can make my way in the water, get from one end to the other, but little more. I realised as I watched the swimmers below me that I was more concerned, whilst swimming, to stay afloat, than to pay attention to the style, the efficiency of my strokes. Essentially I still had something of that old fear which I guess we've all had as we learn to swim- will the water hold me up?

I wonder how far this translates as a metaphor for love of God, trusting God, but more especially how my head belief is in tune with what my heart knows . How my love for God (your love for God?)  is infused with some remnant of a false picture of God, some vestiges of an authoritarian figure, or an uncaring one, someone who will let me down at some future point. 

Water has proved countless times it will hold me up. I love that floating experience, just lying there, held up, letting the water take me where it will. But in  my head there's still a doubt. Maybe we will never entirely rid ourselves of false notions of God, until we see 'face to face'. I have enough of the truth to know I am held up, and as I live in the waters of grace, I hope some of the falsity, the doubt, disappears. 

  

Passing a milestone

 It felt like a small victory over decrepitude when I saw the drop of blood  from my finger sink into the green liquid in the test tube; my iron levels were good enough to allow me to donate blood. It was almost more important to have a decent iron level than to donate this, my fiftieth pint. The iron level was the marker that must be passed.  

I started donating late, and will never reach a hundred pints; the regular sixteen week visits to various large halls filled with donors like me, interrupted in recent years by anti-malarial pills which necessitated a six-month break; but fifty is a satisfying number. Still, sixty would be better, so I'll keep on donating. Who knows, maybe sixty-five....... 

I had thought I might stop giving once I had reached the magic fifty pints. But no, the call is still there, in an email- formulaic, and sent to everyone who has reached this milestone- and so I'll go on as long as I reasonable can. 

The call of God works in a similar way- I come so far, thinking I've answered it, and find the call still goes on, find that Christ is still ahead of us, that there is road to travel yet.   

A wide mercy

Among the unlikely candidates for guiding me onto the Christian path I would place the 1944 Education Act, with its stipulation that there should be a daily act of worship in each school. This was where I learned my first hymns, still remembered today, and such an important part of the formation of a heart and mind attuned to God. 

It helped of course, that I loved to sing- still do- and that daily assembly at primary and secondary school channelled a love of singing into a proto-love for God. It gave the Spirit stuff to work on to awaken me more fully to the love of God, so that words sung became at last words believed, words experienced. 

All our experience is grist to the mills of the Spirit, to bring us to God. As I listen to people telling me how their story became part of God's story, no two are the same, and many have a part introduced by a phrase such as 'it may seem unlikely but....'. 

The wide mercy of God is able to harvest all our experience, in order to capture us into the love which frees.