Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Friends and Webs

Friends.  Nothing better than an evening spent relaxing with friends old and new - especially ones where it's been a while since you have been able to settle down and have a good blether.  Great to catch up, in fill and just be.  Last night was such an evening and as it came to a close I thought to myself I really must do this more often!

I often miss retreatants when they go and my last retreatant was no exception.  Working one to one for anything from 5 to 10 or more days builds an intense, committed relationship quickly, often with a high level of mutuality as worship is shared and experiences explored.  Sometimes there are connections and connectedness based on comparable outlooks and aspirations that can be profoundly exciting but also especially challenging because it becomes even more important to preserve the person's space to pilgrim and journey.  In a way there are similarities with good enough parenting.

I was caught this morning as I went over to air The Sanctuary ready for guests arriving later today by the most beautiful spider's web which intricately laced a large shrub, which against the pale light was almost a petrol blue.  The dew still sat on the web and it took my breath away.  The fragile beauty; the precariousness of it's position and the play of light on the crystal dew drops.  Magical.  A reminder of the fine balance of life:

In rare moments

when I am at home to myself,

my heart is still,

my pulse a psalm.

I know obscurely

I receive my life

from a power beyond me,

live by a life not my own.

The morsel of life

its ephemeral beauty,

its searing sorrow,

is on loan,

marginal to a greater agency

that always, all ways

engages the darkness

brings life from death.

My own gratuitousness

itself is a gift,

liberating me

to live in this moment,

to be at peace in the world

that, like me, is passing away,

to love it fiercly,

to let it go.

Bonnie Thurston

Amen.

Consolation

Up early this morning to see my son off on his sleepover and visit to the Edinburgh Tattoo.  As I watched him busying himself packing and re-packing our smallest and most loved family rucksack, I remembered similar outings I had been on as a child to The Royal Tournament at Earl's Court in London.  Watching gun carriages career around the ring and shouting myself hoarse supporting the Portsmouth Team - my mum's favourite as a former WRN.  We rarely watched the Tattoo on TV, but I remember the long summers spent in Great Eccleston in Lancashire while my father worked in Blackpool - and our neighbour (a primary school headmaster) on the static caravan park who would 'allow' neighbours children in to watch on his rather super TV as long as we were quiet.  We were.  For at least three minutes.  Then lost interest and left.  Extraordinary the difference watching something live can make.

Busy first thing ironing and preparing The Sanctuary for the retreatant arriving today.  I was caught quite unexpectedly with a sense of how extraordinarily privileged I am.  It was shocking and humbling.  I tend to get caught up in the day to day and so when I do catch the big picture it is, in the correct sense, awesome.  Ironing duvet covers isn't the most scintilating way to spend the early morning hours of Saturday - but I couldn't help but reflect that I have been incredibly lucky to have the chance to realise some of my dreams.  My prayers this morning have been ones of consolation with an open-handed sense of deep gratitude.  In amongst the utter randomness of the life experiences we encounter, there are moments like this morning when some of the usually disparate themes and threads seem to have a visible linkage and purpose.  I am reminded to hold these moments of consolation and remember them.  Treasure in my heart.

Isaac Newton Restores My Sense of Perspective

11th February 2007

At Evening Prayer I was giving thanks for a good weekend and continuing to reflect on what blessedness and chosenness means to me - a reoccuring theme over recent days.  I caught myself reflecting negatively on my own worth. 

Like most of us, I am my own harshest critic.

I read from a favourite consolation these words:

Instead of wasting energy in being disgusted with yourself, accept your own failure, and just say to God, 'Well, in spite of all I may say or fancy, this is what I am really like - so please help me in my weakness'.  This, not self-disgust, is the real and fruitful humility.

Evelyn Underhill.

Underhill hits home every time. 

It seems to me that humility is the key to blessedness.  My inner knowing, growing and glowing that I am as God would have me be, is celebrated through my delight in the important things in life.  My angst in the moment is neither here nor there in the cosmic scale of things.

This is what Isaac Newton wrote of himself:

I do not know what I may appear in the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me...

Sometimes I can't see what is staring me in the face - and I take comfort in the fact that a genius - a person who changed our understanding of what our created world is - like the Isaac Newton had that sense too.