A collision of times

 This weekend devout time and secular time coincide, though for different reasons. For the devout in the faith, after all the preparation of Advent, joy and gladness will have blossomed in the celebration of the birth of Christ. For the secular minded, food and drink and self-indulgence in a time of covid, as well as a celebration of family, will have come to the fore. 

The coinciding of these times will come to an end by next weekend. The devout in the faith will still have five days to take in the enormity of Christmas, before the times move on to Epiphany. The secular mind and heart will be thinking about and planning next year's holiday, as the daily papers and tv ads are filled with glamorous and sun-filled destinations for next year's summer vacation. 

And these two mind-sets, the devout and the secular, will not meet again until this time next year. Both have their rhythms. For the secular, the rest of the year is taken up by planning for the summer holiday, and the fulfilment of the same. There is a minor diversion for the chocolate feast of Easter to welcome spring, before summer holidays come more forcefully to mind the nearer to summer we are. And come September, minds and hearts turn to planning for Christmas, this becoming more insistent once Hallowe'en- a minor diversion- is over. For the devout, times of reflection, preparation and stripping back to essentials (Advent and Lent) will be followed by seasons of joy (Christmas, Easter) and quieter periods of learning and consolidation (Epiphany, Trinity). 

Both are rich in planning and execution, anticipation and fulfilment, cost and satisfaction. And truth to tell, the boundaries between these two visions is often blurred. Covid times have dented the application of the the secular model- holidays cancelled, families unable to meet; efforts are redoubled to make it work. Human effort. In the devout, much, most of the work is divine; we surrender to a movement of God. Let each find joy as they can. 

The graced ordinary revisited

 More evidence of  'the graced ordinary' this week; ordinary lives well-lived, doing the best they can in ordinary and sometimes extraordinary circumstances. I first became aware of this in the novels of the late (and to my mind great) Kent Haruf, and the still-alive Marilynne Robinson. The ordinary folk- the parents, the neighbours, the siblings of the person in the middle of the story are never the heroes, but form the moral centre of those books, while around them uncertainties, dilemmas, wrong turnings play out, with the graced, ordinary background lives to somehow anchor the chaos, bring the ship, in whatever state, to port. 

Thursday's gospel reading from the lectionary was the first verses of Matthew. Those dry, dull verses which give one account of the genealogy of Jesus. forty two generations, neatly arranged, of fathers and their sons who in turn became fathers, and only four women among them. But it struck me, in this line from Abraham to Jesus, that simply by living, marrying and having sons who in their turn married and had sons; all this somehow forwarded the purposes of God, brought the day of salvation nearer, until it was fulfilled in Jesus. 

Some of those names were notable, a few were heroes, but most were only a name, recorded as a son and a father. The graced ordinary- there's much to say for it as it brings forward the purposes of God.  

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The weather

 The weather is a constant topic of conversation here. And a topic to moan about; too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry......the list goes on. And on. It's a function of the changeability of British weather- four seasons in a day! 

There's an internal weather which we talk about less often, but is nonetheless real. The storms which boil up in us; the times we are becalmed, the sunny nature we remark on in someone we know, the cold personality, the dry humour. 

And no doubt we go through all these, and more at one time or another, oftentimes without understanding where this 'weather system' has come from. Why did I do that? Where did that come from? Meteorology is an inexact science, but probably far more exact that our self-understanding when it comes to our moods, our fluctuations, the way a storm can brew up inside us and overtake a sunny period. 

The hymn writer writes 'O still small voice of calm'. It's as if  part of the work of the Spirit is to give us settled internal weather. Not necessarily sunny, but calm. Allowing headway to be made, without the distractions and byways, diversions and accidents of stormy times. Headway would be good......  

Walking in the dark

 The car went for its service and MOT test this week; I delivered it early to the garage and walked back home - it took about 40 minutes- in the dark. In a half mile stretch through the countryside between our village and the garage, there were no streetlights. It was more dark than light, but just enough of the latter to know where the pavement was, even though the details of it were obscure. 

Was there ice there? or a small pothole? Was the grass from the field beside me encroaching on the pavement, making it narrow enough to be careful? I'll never know the answers to these questions- it was too dark to see the details. Suffice to say I arrived into our village, street-lights and all, and thus safely home. 

'I am the way' says Jesus. We may know the broad outlines of the road to follow, but the details, the hinterland, may be obscure, hidden from us. Nevertheless, we keep on keeping on, following him who gives us a lamp unto our path, a light unto our feet. It is enough.    

'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.......