sitting on eggs

worship

2009-10-07T20:38:00.003+03:00

Worship can be oriented correctly to God, yet not engage the worshipping community - then it is no longer worship but performance. On the other hand, worship can engage the community but not be oriented to God - that is simply self-congratulation.

via St. Aidan to Abbey Manor

thoughts

2009-08-13T00:16:00.001+03:00

Can we be honest and admit that a large part of the Old Testament is nationalistic rather than theological in character?

There’s a difference between believing in the Bible and its power to transform, and believing the Bible as a sort of rulebook containing normative behavior and rules for all cultures and times.

labyrinth

2009-08-02T13:20:00.003+03:00

via St. Aidan to Abbey Manor

question

2008-12-26T20:20:00.002+03:00

What good is it to me,
if Mary gave birth
to the Son of God,
and I do not also give birth to him
in my time and
culture?

Meister Eckhart

seeking the pearl

2008-12-21T20:40:00.005+03:00

Consider the story told by Timothy, a patriarch of the Nestorian church. Around 800, he engaged in a famous debate with the Muslim caliph in Baghdad, a discussion marked by reason and civility on both sides. Imagine, Timothy said, that we are all in a dark house, and someone throws a precious pearl in the midst of a pile of ordinary stones. Everyone scrabbles for the pearl, and some think they've found it, but nobody can be sure until day breaks.

In the same way, he said, the pearl of true faith and wisdom had fallen into the darkness of this transitory world; each faith believed that it alone had found the pearl. Yet all he could claim - and all the caliph could say in response - was that some faiths thought they had enough evidence to prove that they were indeed holding the real pearl, but the final truth would not be known in this world.

of dying, and living

2008-12-12T11:08:00.001+03:00

This week my uncle died. His death has affected me far more than I would have expected, because I see echoes of my life in his. It is tragic to have to say that someone wasted their life, but in his case, it is the harsh truth. After a point in his life we could only see sadness, dependence in many forms, and wasted potential.

So where are the echoes? I see in myself a fear of fulfilling my potential, of living. I often find myself stuck in negative and self-destructive patterns of thinking, of feeling angry and blaming others. Of always finding excuses.

I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to look back at my life and see all the paths not taken.

Maybe then his life was not wasted, if it is pushing me to act, and to change.

May he rest in peace.

a sculpture of christ with swings and a slide

2008-09-27T21:59:00.006+03:00

I found him like a fossil in the rock,
in the slab, waiting to be broken out.
Others I’ve chiselled have burst from the blocks
like genies from lamps, and one creature sprang

like a jack from a box. But not this one:
I took back the stone like flesh from a bone
while he dozed, sleeping it off on his cross.

The council bought him, stuck him in the park,
as out of place as a dog in a church.
The simple people came, told him secrets,
dressed him with flowers and polished his face,
put sweets in his mouth and gave him a name.
That’s when I saw the thing these hands had made.

from The Dead Sea Poems, Simon Armitage

of calmness

2008-05-10T21:03:00.009+03:00

But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my

being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport

in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of

unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down

and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal

mildness of joy.

Moby Dick

forgiveness

2008-04-21T18:25:00.004+03:00

Forgiveness, as an act of love, is felt, not achieved. It can be given, but it may not always be received. It cannot be bestowed as either a triumph over another person, or as the means to secure their humiliation or acquiescence.

It is most healing, most profound when it grows out of humility and realism, a hard-won sense that, whether you are entirely to blame in these events and I am blameless, there is in each of us insufficiencies and imperfections that can be our greatest teachers.

You may not recognise forgiveness even when you have experienced it, for what we are seeking to know better is subtle, difficult to define, multi-layered and contains an element of magic. You will, however, feel it in your body. Something – very nearly a ‘thing’ – has left you. You are no longer carrying the load you were; you have put it down. Anger may have given way to sorrow or regret. Rage may have flattened out into indifference or pity. Into what seemed black and white has crept a little grey. ... You are more available to other people and a great deal more available to yourself, yet you think about yourself less, and less anxiously.

Can I do it? Can I let go of that hurt and simply forgive? I would have to acknowledge that my behaviour in the past contributed to leading us to that point. And maybe more difficult, I would have to agree to be a bigger and more generous person, a leader, because that’s what he needs from me. He needs my approval and support, and I can’t ask the same from him. He is my brother, but perhaps I need to be like a mother to him.

Can I be generous, even when faced with someone who cannot give?

kidane mehret

2008-02-24T14:35:00.004+03:00

Our church hosts a large number of congregations, and services are often taking place simultaneously in different spaces. There is an Ethiopian Orthodox congregation, and today they were celebrating a special feast that I found out later was Kidane Mehret, Covenant of Mercy, which honours Mary. I wish I had had a camera to take pictures of the women (the vast majority were women) after the service; some of them were dressed in beautiful white outfits with gold trim, and I was told that they were the choir. Nearly all of the congregation were wrapped in white over their normal clothes.

I could find any photos of Kidane Mehret celebrations in my brief online search, but I did find this lovely slideshow on YouTube, not of the feast but of the Kidane Mehret Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Shawnee, Kansas.

of the mother's love begotten

2007-12-23T20:35:00.002+03:00

Of the Mother's love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,

She is Alpha and Omega, She the source, the ending She

Of the things that are, that have been

And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

the embrace of the circle

2007-12-16T19:03:00.001+03:00

A person who wishes to begin a good life should be like a man who draws a circle. Let him get the centre in the right place and keep it so and the circumference will be good. In other words, let a man first learn to fix his heart on God and then his good deeds will have virtue; but if a man's heart is unsteady, even the great things he does will be of small advantage.

Just today I was discussing with a friend how circles can represent energy and movement as well as limits and restraint, when I found the above quoted on a blog.

I aspire to a rootedness that I don't have right now; the image of standing in a circle helps me focus - being held by it, but looking outwards, beyond myself.

the power of music

2007-11-29T17:52:00.001+03:00

Sometimes I find myself thinking that the lyrics of a particular hymn or song are wonderful - until I realise that it is actually the music that is moving me. Immortal, Invisible is one of those hymns. I don't much care for the grand sentiments and the distant, glorious God it describes - but the tune is so beautiful that every time I hear it it stays in my head for days, along with the words.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
Walter Chalmers Smith, 1867

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

I found a nice acoustic version on YouTube:

understanding, loving, forgiving

2007-11-18T16:35:00.001+03:00

I spend a lot of time trying to create calm in my mind – but not love in my heart. It’s often difficult for me to show emotional generosity towards others, specifically those who have hurt or offended me. But aren’t they the ones I should focus my love on?

In each of us is a seed of understanding. That seed is God. It is also the Buddha. If you doubt the existence of that seed of understanding, you doubt God and you doubt the Buddha. … How can we love our enemy? There is only one way – to understand him. … Understanding a person brings us the power to love and accept him. And the moment we love and accept him, he ceases to be our enemy. To ‘love our enemy’ is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy. To love him, we must practice deep looking in order to understand him. If we do, we accept him, we love him, and we also accept and love ourselves. As Buddhists or Christians, we cannot question that understanding is the most important component for transformation. … You cannot force yourself to forgive. Only when you understand what has happened can you have compassion for the other person and forgive him or her. That kind of forgiveness is the fruit of awareness. When you are mindful, you can see the many causes that led the other person to make you suffer, and when you see this, forgiveness and release arise naturally.

Living Buddha, Living Christ

faithful stewards of the earth

2007-11-13T16:52:00.004+03:00

This is part of a hymn that we sang at church the other day. The words are contemporary, but we used a traditional tune. Because it was typed out on a sheet of paper I have no idea when it was written, or by whom. I liked these verses:

O God of hope, your prophets spoke
of days when war would cease;
when, taught to see each person's worth,
and faithful stewards of the earth,
we all would live in peace.

We pray that our divided world
may hear their words anew;
then lift for good the curse of war,
let bread with justice bless the poor,
and turn in hope to you.

Earth's fragile web of life demands
our reverence and our care,
lest in our folly, sloth and greed,
deaf both to you and others' need,
we lay our planet bare.

Earth's rich resources give us power
to build or to destroy;
your Spirit urges us to turn
from selfish, fearbound ways, and learn
his selfless trust and joy.

why this blog?

2007-11-12T17:16:00.002+03:00

This is a place for me to think.
I came across this quote some years ago, and I find it both amusing and true:

On average, for every year of life you have, it takes about two years to understand exactly what happened. Most people never catch up and so die confused. That's why hermits sit on top of mountains: they're cutting down their input of experiences, so that their understanding can catch up.

How to... know yourself, Guy Browning

Welcome to my mountain top.