billy

[stick this one on my funeral song list...]

faith

i really like this thought from the our friend abbot ian of mayBe's blog... "...explore the possibility that faith is stepping into the stream of what God is already doing. That faith is not primarily about our faith in God, but about God's faith in us.... "

[van morrison's version of 'be thou my vision']

si

the bible

so i'm trying to do the lectio divina - seek some silence, ask god to inspire my thoughts and speak as i read through a passage several times. in the morning before i start work, and then again at night before i kip. i'm going through john's gospel, paragraph by paragraph. and i'm enjoying it.

via maggi dawn's blog, i found this interesting quote about the Evangelical approach to bible study here - http://revlamblove.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/the-evangelical-hermeneutic/

"When approaching a text such a one unconsciously applies the following principles to elicit its meaning.

1. It is about me. Whatever the book, be it Pentateuch, prophets, psalms, gospel or epistle—it is talking about me.

2. It tells me what to do or what not to do. An action is required on my part. My ability to do or not to do what the bible tells me is equal to my goodness or wickedness.

3. It condemns those that are different from me. People who are non-Christian (those who freely admit their lack of faith or worse profess a false faith) or unchristian (people who say they are Christian but demonstrate their lack of salvation by their actions, whether it be thinking premarital sex is not bad or going to an Episcopal church).

4. It implies the opposite. Every pronouncement of grace points to my own condemnation if I fail. Every promise is a threat. Everything that God does, reveals what I must do."

that pretty effectively caricatures the mentality that i was taught or at least thought was 'right' when i became a christian.
and i think it's why i struggle with bible reading now - it's hard to shake.

but i'm enjoying the 'good as new' translation. for a start it has no verses numbered, so it flows better. and it's written in a very provocative way - names are altered to better reflect their original context [eg - peter becomes 'rocky'!] - and sometimes it's infuriating, but it's always thought-provoking, and for me that's good - i'm arguing with the text and thinking about it and questioning it like i've not done before. it's really good stuff.


['tinseltown in the rain' and 'regret' by the blue nile]

si

sharing god's nature...

read this morning [in my 'good as new' bible] that we are the rightful children of god because we share god's nature. later in the same passage it says that christ is "the one faithful likeness who shares god's nature [and] has shown us what god is like"

when i look at myself, can i truly say that i share god's nature? like christ did/does??

can i honestly say that i even aspire to that in the everyday course of my life...?

my head's down so much of the time, bogged down by mundanity; again, i need to lift up my head and aim higher...
i need to actively work out what it means to share god's nature.



[that's not meant to sound like i'm beating myself up over it btw, more that i'm a bit staggered and excited and possibly a bit daunted at the thought...!]




['so here we are' - bloc party]

From afar

Thank you Si for making an effort to write. I decided to take a quick look at the blog to see if anyone had written and wasn't disappointed...

I love the macabre but sensible way you're ensuring your favourite tunes get played at your funeral too. We will all hold Sue accountable for it.

Just incase you're worried Sue - my tongue is close to my cheek right now.

I'm not giving myself a lot of head space right now either. Oh I have lots of time and plenty of opportunity but it's incredible how distracted one can get even miles from home and with very little to do.

However I will keep trying. I have a couple of books here that contain prayers which may assist me. I could at least try reading one those every day.

By the way, thank you Si for letting me know about John O'Donohue's death. I think I'm in mourning for him a little... and it feels strange considering his words helped me to come to terms with the other deaths that have happened recently. Like a horrible kind of coincidence.

Well. That's all anyway. Just wanted to clock in for a bit.

Esther

nothing much

nothing much to post this week. feeling a bit uninspired, spiritually speaking. work is taking up a lot of my headspace and my time at present.
the good thing is that i feel uncomfortable about it. in times past i don't think that i'd even have recognised the inbalance...

(funeral playlist = 'jimmy james' - steve lawson)

quiet

spent the day yesterday more or less in silence - no radio or iTunes - and enjoyed it.
heard birdsong and distant police cars and builders doing stuff up the road and kids playing in their lunch-hour.
found it hard to be still in myself though - i'm too used to thinking about stuff; as sue likes to remind me, my head is full of rubbish...!
so no great insights here, just that i need to practice silence much more - to spend more time in the quiet, to learn how to be still.

song for my funeral = 'down there by the train' by tom waits

si

resolve!

happy new year!

i have already broken my first monk-y resolution - namely to get back into the habit of my weekly post here and to stick with it.
ah well...

meantime i've been looking back at the things that we said that we'd look to do in 2007, and which we'd gently hold one another to account for - maybe we can talk them through when we next meet. for my part i started to get somewhere with silence and solitude and the work-life balance but then totally lost the plot sometime in the summer.
ah well...

so this year the aims are as follows -
1. to add another song to play at my hopefully-not-very-imminent funeral each time i post here. for starters - 'vapour trail' by ride [though i'd like the version by trespassers william played too, please]
2. again, to lift up my head, both metaphorically and physically. it occured to me today that it'll mean that i step in some poop along the way, but it's worth the risk.
3. watch at least one film a week [on tv if not at the cinema. we don't make the most of film4]
4. to read the bible. not all of it. maybe just the gospels, for starters, over and over.

Memories

My dear Grandma - Phyllis Melville Richards - died yesterday evening around seven. Thankfully we've been prepared for her death, and since she reached the impressive age of ninety-nine, the overwhelming emotion is one of thankfulness: for her long life and the years she's influenced our lives.

Death holds a different sort of sadness when someone has fulfilled their "allotted" time and lived a good number of years. But it's still sad when I think of her previous vibrancy and energy: I want to be able to return to some of those moments in my past and re-live them with her - to remember. It seems like a long time until I'll see her again.

God be in her understanding, in her eyes, in her mouth, in her heart and in her departing.

When I pray those words I see her blending with the colours of the sky, the earth, the sea and the sun... I see her soul soaring like a swallow into the blue, blue expanse of eternity. I feel like she knows I am here and she is there. Whether or not we are together - we are at least not completely apart. Whatever that may mean.

Listening prayer

That thing you said Si about prayer being more about listening than saying - that makes a lot of sense.

I once read a whole book on listening prayer. I remember it being brilliant but suggesting quite a time-consuming method of ensuring that one was praying in a listening manner - something to do with a ring-binder and writing lots down I seem to recall...

I think it's more helpful to use the simple structure of the 'Jesus' prayer or our 'God be' prayer like you suggest.

I'm currently reading another John O'Donohue book - Anam Cara - (which translates as 'soul friend'). It has a lot of lovely illustrations of how Celtic Christians did things like prayer - just the sort of thing we love at 'monks'. I might have to bring it along on Monday...

In the meantime. I'm going to keep praying and listening and drifting and listening and soaking and praying and thinking and listening. Hopefully some sort of rhythm will emerge out of the melange of meditation. One day.

Esther

more prayer thoughts...

i like what you're saying about the prayer esther...

i'm finding myself praying the jesus prayer quite a lot - 'lord jesus christ, son of god, have mercy on me, a sinner' - and at random times too...
i'm also doing the breathing thing with it [breathing in = 'lord...god' and out = 'have... sinner']
getting into that rhythm really helps somehow - it works for me with the 'god be...' prayer too...

i really like the idea that prayer is about saying as little as possible, and listening as much as you can. with some things that i'm praying about at the mo, i have absolutely no idea what to ask god to do, and so it's comforting to have the repetition of a set prayer... you can just bring the situation to god and trust him/her with it...


si

God be in my head

I've found the prayer useful too recently...

When there's no words to face a situation with, you kind of have to rely on the simplest of structures and let them hold you - like this prayer does.

I pray it all the time at the moment... sometimes I drift halfway through and outside noise drowns out the meaning but then I come back to it and start again. Sometimes it becomes almost circular and I go round and round the same lines like a buddhist chant,. Sometimes I say 'her' head or 'his' eyes or 'our' departing. I think about the people I'm praying it for.

Mostly I say 'my'. Mostly I'm praying it for myself.

in my heart, in my thinking...

i'm still using the 'god be...' prayer and finding new depth in it...

the hardest line for me has been 'god be in my heart and in my thinking'

i love the idea that the way that you think is an attitude of the heart, rather than of the mind... it explains why it's the place in the prayer where i've struggled most.
my thinking is so ingrained, my attitudes have become so well rehearsed and self-justified and reinforced and entrenched down the years; they're second nature.

[it's not called a mind-'set' for nothing...]

and yet i think that i am being challenged and changed. moving up here to leeds and the things that we've experienced since we've been here through revive and now this monastic stuff have been a big part of that process... my thinking is [painfully slowly] changing. what's that line from the psalms? '...create in me a new heart, and renew a right spirit in me...'
i think it's happening...

si

A short addition

Changing

Porcelain skin and sapphire eyes
A voice I remember best in song
Hands that conjured tastes and melodies
A brain brim-full of irreverent rhymes

You’ve become full of years now
And your hands cannot conjure anymore
But your words still glimmer and twinkle
And your determination remains sure

I think of you as simply changing colour
Blending with the sky, becoming brightest blue
Absorbing the emerald of the greenest hills
Catching sun-fire: turning yellow, red, orange…

I think of you as stepping into star-shone light
Into the pool of a golden shadow
Where a person’s truth lies and
Where your soul survives after your body dies

04/10/07

Welcoming the night

I wish I knew how to encourage someone to welcome the night. I wish I had the words to say and the strength to impart.

I know someone who's nearing the closing of the day, to the welcoming of the night. I wish I could be with her to at least stand and face the darkness by her side. But it's probably not my place anyway. And I could probably not find the words or the attitude or the compassion or the courage to be truly there.

It may be that she holds on and doesn't go straight away. I'm not sure what she'll decide. Maybe this time next year she'll still be here - holding on to her piece of light. To the patch of experience that she knows. But the night will still be there, and I will still want to be there facing it with her.

I'm reading John O'Donohue at the moment, he writes this, among other things, about the journey of death:

"At the time of death, the soul knows how to protect its precious cargo. While death will stop and empty the body, the soul will ferry your essence into eternal life. Not one moment of you will be lost in the crossing. Eternal life is the province of the soul, this is where the soul is at home. For your soul then, death is indeed a homecoming"

I hope she knows this. I pray she may know this.

"...it's like deja vu all over again..."

heh heh - like everyone except esther, i've got out of the habit of posting these past two weeks...

and so even though i've not much to say for meself this week, i'm writing this now, just to get back into routine...

actually, routine is what i need right now. re-establishing the silent prayer time to begin the day. learning to find time to end each day with prayer too would be good.
getting my eating back right again [i've slipped back into snacking recently...!]
and starting to exercise - that's still left undone on the 'to do' list...

post-greenbelt i'd promised myself [and sue, and the kids] that i'd get the amount of work i was taking on back down to a manageable level, and that it wouldn't take over our lives any more; but to be honest it's not really happened.
last week i found myself cancelling a nite out at the very last moment to stay up and draw stuff instead, and this week i'm already facing up to three deadline crises between now and the end of wednesday...

so that's me at the mo; despite my very best intentions, still wrestling with the old work/life balance...

si

Time to grow up?

Well once again, I've faced the supervisor gauntlet and come through the other side, relatively unscathed...

It turns out however that the chapter I've been working on would have been better crafted had a silver-back gorilla been given the task and told to write about the first thing that came into its head. So I'm back to the drawing-board and preparing to work like a mad-person (or like Si at least) for another 4-6 weeks at which point I'll have to get ready to leave the country again in a little over a month - as soon after New Year as possible.

The reason I have to leave so promptly is that I've been told I may have to spend 8 months rather than 6 months gathering my data as 6 is just not enough. This would be fine (ish) if it weren't for the fact that one of my oldest friends is getting married August 2nd and I was planning to be there. I may not be able to be there now.

Yesterday as I reflected on the interesting turn my life seems to be taking (i.e. I'm having to put work before my friends and make choices based on prioritising work rather than my relationships) I realised that actually this is something a lot of people have to do and it's a little bit about growing up. I'm not saying I want to always put work ahead of my friends - in fact it's something I want to avoid doing as much as possible. But it's good to learn a little bit about working really hard and what that actually involves. It's a fairly new concept for me I have to say.

I'm not sure what God thinks about working hard. I think it can be a valuable and a dangerous thing and maybe God sees it both ways. For me, right now, I think it's part of a steep learning curve that seems to have characterised the last 11 months of my life. It's a good curve but a slightly daunting one at times.

Thursday

Well it's Thursday again... I forgot it was Thursday last Thursday so I did not blog. However I've remembered this week...

I was recounting the story of Esther to some friends today. Kind of to explain why I was called Esther and why it was a bit of a churchy thing (what with my parents being fundies - ho ho ho). So anyway, I was telling the story to them and emphasising just how misogynist it is: how the king is a bit of a woman-hater what with him divorcing Vashti for standing up to him and then treating the local virgins like cattle etc. And so of course they were saying 'oh how awful - what a terrible book'. And I was momentarily sad. But at the time I didn't think about why. Until now...

Now I realise I'd quite like to tell them about some of the good bits in the Bible. I'd like them to know about how ground-breaking it is - I'd like them to hear some of the best bits: Isaiah and his fasting, Song of Solomon and his passion, Paul and his grace, Jesus and his "the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed"...

I suppose that's why we still do stuff like the Advent thing. So that we can remember the bits of the story that we love and celebrate them in art and music and words.

So I was thinking about that. And it made me feel glad that I am part of a something that enables me still - after all my doubt and all my cynicism - to enjoy the story of God and Jesus and the Church, at least when I'm not denigrating it that is!

PS - updates

If you log in to blogger, you can set one of the settings so that it will email you whenever there's a new blog post - that way you never miss any - I'd recommend it! ;)

Learning

Just a quick one to say thanks to my fellow monks for being there - you are providing an incubator for a new and improved James (I believe!). I have been reflecting today on what we learn, and what we do with what we've learnt. It seems to be that God is using monks as a tool to work changes in me (slowly but surely!).

An example being that through monks I have become aware of my own chatter (spiritual, emotional and psychological noise) which I believe makes sense, but is in the main useless, and generally quite harmful to mine and other's well-being too. This manifests primarily in what I say, and I am increasingly open to noticing this, and being challenged on words and their underlying attitudes.

So thanks monks. Looking forward to seeing you soon (Monday?) and wish that it were still school holidays so Eddie and Joe could come and play on Wednesdays!

Love to all,

James