Cosmic angst

Sometimes the world is perceived as all against me, the feeling that every negative force is networked to trip up, to upset, to disengage vision, to detract, to spoil and corrode the security of who I am and why I am. The overbearing cosmic forces pressing in upon me and the paralysis of action and thought sets in. A breathless moment, a gasp for oxygen a cry for hope. It is the journey of the human soul in quest for spiritual union with God. The journey is not about mundane musings, impotent measures or tired rituals. The dynamics are beyond our domain names and prescribed limitations. Then the Other bursts in and all is changed as the psalmist writes about the transcendence of this God we serve, minister to and love with all our heart, soul and mind -
“In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.
7Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
8Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
9He bowed the heavens, and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
10He rode on a cherub, and flew;
he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
11He made darkness his covering around him,
his canopy thick clouds dark with water.
12Out of the brightness before him
there broke through his clouds
hailstones and coals of fire.
13The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice.*
14And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them.
15Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.
16He reached down from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of mighty waters."

My Christmas prayer

Lord Jesus Christ we have come this morning for all kinds of reasons, some nobler than others. But, regardless of why we are gathered, there is a deep sense that through the birth of this baby Jesus the world has been made a better place. We want to celebrate today that in the eyes of this child we have seen a great light, a light that matured into a message of hope for so many. Into the most humble of circumstances you approached us - to think that we might sacrifice our lives to one who was born and nursed in a place fit for animals. We celebrate today knowing that you came not for the cause of the powerful but for the hope of the lost and weary. You showed that power comes from another place, a more humble beginning. True influence in this world is to be found in the least expected places. The shepherds a bunch of unclean, illiterates were some of the first to hear the news of this event – it causes us to linger a little longer on the meaning and reason of Christmas. Thank you God, that we don’t find the answers to this life in the dressed up windows of the shopping mall. Thank you God that our peace and rest do not lie in the trappings of wealth. Neither are they to be found in the high places of government or religious institution. We give you thanks that you have undressed the illusions of this world and provided us with the truth of living through this “Son of life.” A Son whose birthday we mark in our calendars each and every year because his birthday was the day our true life began. Be patient with as we unwrap and unbundled this birthday gift today. We are often not quite sure how to handle such a valuable gift. We are not sure whether our surprise and our emotions justify the enormous grace with which this gift has been given. Forgive us when we mishandle this gift at Christmas time. We sometimes keep it wrapped up in glossy paper and ribbons because we are too fearful of the truth beneath. But, we remind ourselves today that you only bring gifts that ultimately bring life and life to the full in the end. Give us the strength and courage to open the gift of Christ in our lives. To allow the truths, principles, and measures of the entire universe become ours. We kneel before you with open gifts today, thank you for loving us to this extent, forgiving to this proportion, for knowing exactly what we have needed for our lives. Jesus the gift of all gifts from the giver of all givers - glory be to your name for ever and ever Amen.

Pop the bubble

“When we feel like a small child during the day, our frustrated mind is all too willing to make us into tall and great heroes in our dreaming moments: into victorious heroes admired by all those who do not take us to seriously when we are awake, or into tragic heroes recognized too late by those who criticized us during our life.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

The illusory world of imagination is our joy and our sorrow. The poet ‘builds castles in the air’ entertaining and instructing our hearts as we are carried away by her deeper perceptions of life. The ethereal castles if not understood as such can also become places of hide and seek - bastions of the soul that hide us from the reality of our mortality and other’s suffering. Our dreams, a cinema of pop corn with beginnings and ends, plastic tears and merriment. God’s dreams, a galaxy canvas breathing reality into hearts that touch fire air and water – making a pulse.

Shared property

“The movement from loneliness to solitude is a movement by which we reach out to our innermost being to find there our great healing powers, not as unique property to be defended but as a gift to be shared with all human beings.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

Our inner search is not a solitary delving to separate us from the world around us. Within our struggling with identity, our place in God’s world, and our prayers with the worlds pains and issues we find the gifts of healing that are there to be shared with others.

At peace with others

“Without solitude of heart, our relationships with others easily becomes needy and greedy, sticky and clinging, dependent and sentimental, exploitative and parasitic, because without solitude of heart we cannot experience the others as different from ourselves but only as people who can be used for the fulfillment of our own, often hidden, needs.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

We speak about being at “peace” with ourselves. I think the often painful experience of being faced with who we are in moments of solitude is the matrix of reality that instructs and teaches the soul. That place of being at peace with God alone, is the source of complete fulfillment that transforms how we live our lives out with others. We approach others in unselfish ways, ready to receive them for who they are and not what we want them to be for our sake.

Paths of Solitude

“Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into a fruitful solitude. To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.

There is a depth of thought in Henri Nouwen’s books that resonates with the truth. You cannot deny his tug at the very fabric of ones soul. The human makeup is a complex thing and it takes the spiritual genius to simplify it and reach down with poignant precision and mark off the parts that need repair. We are keen to find the solutions for our soul from without and the impression Nouwen makes is that the answer lies buried in the desert of our loneliness. If we are able to confront the pains of our heart in solitude we will unravel the many paths we have taken to substitute loneliness with temporary solutions.

The inward face

It is not often I have a chance to sit and reflect on a Sunday morning. I am preaching tonight and Ian Webster is preaching in the morning service. There is no rush to get the sermon inside my head. I am at the moment feeling rather dry inside. Not much going on down there. The emotions are not all revved up. I don’t feel like jumping on tables and dancing. The method of prayer is vague and I am wanting opportunities to distract my soul. The core is so important in our spiritual development. When the inside is not in communion with life it starts to rot. The purpose of things become superfluous and void when attention to the core is left to waste. The outside luster, its pressure and texture are determined by the inward pressure, its nutrients and water. That place we cannot see, but when we stop we hear it speak. The inner sanctum that bursts out in tear or flame if pressed too hard. That place we cannot avoid even though we do with one hundred and one things to hide its presence. The deeper one that speaks our heart, our reality, lies buried either a bomb to surprise or if discovered an honest resting place. The joy of connecting from time to time is to know oneself in every day. How important it is to learn the strings of the inward face.

Sacrament of the moment

The ‘sacrament of the moment’ a concept coined by de Caussade an eighteenth century writer has important meaning for our perception of the Christian journey. It focuses on the now of our lives and not the has been or should be thought avenues. Everything that is happening at the moment in our lives has either been allowed by God to happen or has been purposively instituted by God. This seems all fine when the things going on in our lives are great but not so when they are traumatic and bloody. We possibly have to get out of our comfortable cocoon created by our longing for the comfortable and realize that we are to respond to God even in the dirty parts of our lives. Those moments that look plain may have meaning, the time when you are in grief, you are lonely, you are feeling rejection, those moments can be converted into a sacrament if we allow them to. If we recognize that God is in every moment and has not vacated the premises.

Making space

Sacred space takes on new meaning in the light of the reading by Hawkings in the Guide to Prayer for all God's people (Upper Room books) pg 239. When we spend all our energies on ourselves there is no space for God. When we spend our energy in others we leave space for God to move in and work in our hearts. The closer we are to people, the closer we are to God, the further away from God we are the further we are away from people. This sacred space is often sought for in the quite places of our ‘quite times’ but maybe the sacred space is found as we are spent for others.

We are praying

I grew up in a tradition that placed the ‘quite time’ as a paramount part of ones spiritual routine. If you weren’t having your ‘quite time’ you weren’t in touch with God or self. The ‘quite time’ was an ubiquitous term that necessarily implied the reading of scriptures and prayer. The power of the ‘quite time’ was the ability to prioritize the other activities of life in order of importance. The time alone with God was regarded as the crucial element that should precede all other. It was that moment that would streamline and guide ones focus and direction for the day. The ‘quite time’ was very much a ‘me and God’ thing. It was about my ‘personal relationship’ with the Maker. One left the time alone with God with a sense of awkwardness at times, realizing that whatever happened there would now have to be applied in real life. It was the moment where you could dream you dreams, have your say and sense in your hear that it was all possible. The place of refuge is always a necessary place to find in the hurly burly existence of contemporary humanity. Others have grown up in a world of corporate prayer - The Morning Prayer and Evening prayer regimen. Up to chapel twice a day for prayers as a community is still practiced in numerous quarters of the Church. The bells will toll at many a monastery today, bringing the faithful to their knees in quite and communal prayer. Collective song, prayer, quietness and recitation will affirm their ‘community relationship’ with God. To be just to all, the incorporation of both means of worship is important for our spiritual make-up. The sense of being unique as an individual is bound up within the uniqueness of the Godly community. God is me and us focused.

Morning prayer

We gather this morning as Your community. Our hearts are ready to receive your Word and accept the challenge that brings into our lives. We seek not to be proud or arrogant about our faith but we long for you to wash our feet and help us understand the principles of Your Kingdom. Your ways are not our ways. Your power is not our power. We come this morning to learn that this life of ours is not so much about us, but about You and Your purpose for us. We thank you today that You have been faithful to us and have not let us forget the joy of worshiping You. We raise our hearts today, despite us feeling weary or sad. We raise our hearts despite us feeling happy or filled with the joys of life. We dutifully pronounce that You are God of this creation. That Jesus is Lord and Saviour, and that the Spirit of God is at work in our hearts, this Church and the World. We are humbled by our sinfulness and our perpetual need of You. Our minds are distracted at every turn, and we often find it difficult to accept that You Love us with such a degree of forgiveness and mercy. We are at pains to find such forgiveness amongst ourselves. We thank you God for setting us free from the agony of our sin, its twisted lying self and its ability to steal life from under our very nose. We accept and receive Your Forgiveness even though we find it so hard to be forgiven. We accept Your voice of comfort even though we find such peace a foreign concept in our world.
You have shown us such mercy in the giving of Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. He died and rose again in victory, and to those who have believed You have forgiven us our sin and freed us to live lives that are a healing ointment to this world. Amen.

Simple pleasures

Evil is around me and within me. The casual denial of human evil and the evil that compounds when humans agree to evil is a terrible mistake. The exposure and light that Christ brings sets these things back to where they came from. Help me realize that these dark forces are perpetually at my door, waiting their return. Let me walk this life of mine with the freedom that Christ brings but always aware that the trap of evil is ever near. Christ wills and has brought me to freedom. The light of Christ is my stronghold. The simplest of things in life I treasure, the beauty of life that is so often numbed by selfishness. The smallest and innocent of pleasures made waste by sin, but in Christ the pure nature of things unfold. The crippled child is honoured, the fragile senior is upheld, the repentant murderer is released, the spouse is loved for who they are and the world rejoices and sings once more. In Christ we live - simply.

A Silent Voice

I cannot lie and say I hear God’s voice directly but I hear a voice in the world that sounds life giving. I hear a voice amongst the Christian’s that is liberating and comforting. The voice is amongst us and not ethereal. God calls me through the testimony of the Church and the Jewish nation. A voice written and shared from one to another. A testimony so thick it lies within my deepest conscience, being taught to me as early as I could comprehend. The voice of God in the voice of my mother as she nursed me to bed. The voices within my head are the voices of the community long dead, but live again in my genetics, my generation.

His Master's Voice

Thank you for the response Linda. Linda is an old friend who writes a response to yesterdays blog. I asked her if I could share it...

"When I say that I hear God, its not that I hear an audible voice in my head, but rather in the workings of my life, in the fabric and tapestry of the people that surround me.

I get frustrated from time to time, especially in traffic when I inevitably get stuck behind a learner driver. At the peak of frustration, its as if there's a gentle tap on my shoulder as if to say, once upon a time, that was you. Equally, when coming upon an accident, I'm grateful for the driver who for some unknown reason, was driving slowly in front of me that particular day.

Throughout my life there have been moments when things could have gone very badly (a rapist had been terrorising the area we lived in when I was in my teens. His MO was to open the transam window and using some contraption hook the keys out the door. When we woke up in the morning the windows (which we'd closed the night before) were wide open and the keys were missing from the door, but we were unharmed. Other victims were not so lucky. The good news is that he was finally apprehended), but something has stepped inbetween. I see God and hear Him through my friends and see the effect He has on their lives.

God has a way of speaking to us each in a way that we can individually comprehend. Those that need an audible voice will hear Him, those that are able to read between the lines will see hear in their bible readings and see Him in the fabric of the lives as the pattern unfolds before them. It is for us to be patient, to open our hearts, minds and souls, before the message becomes clear."

God said to us

How do I cope with people who tell me that "God said this and God said that to them?"
I talk to God as if God is listening to me but I am not that bold to claim that God spoke directly to me. It is a frightful thing to claim such high revelation, as if irrefutable. Somehow and somewhere in the reflections of my life I see the thread of the divine interlaced in the fabric of my doings. In the grandeur of those moments before lakes, trees, and high calling birds, there I sense the peace of something beyond. In my reading of what I deem inspired, I hear the movement of God between each page. The collect wisdom of many who pen their God given hopes to the archives of history, a distant voice that moves through the ages. The call to belong to the community that draws on something higher than itself. The realization that even if I am not the privileged one who hears God direct, that I will be satisfied with the testimony of the many. To rejoice amidst God’s faithful who share God’s voice collect. May I be content in my own holiness and my own dealings with God and this world. Let me not be discouraged if God has not "spoken" directly to me, let me rejoice rather that God has spoken to "us". Those of you reading this blog I challenge to leave a comment of how you hear the voice of God in your life. I may even use it in this weeks sermon (with your permission of course).

Prayer - Let me care

My prayer today is a prayer for my soul to find love in the avenues and byways of all my relationships. To find a heart that cares when people hurt and eyes that are prepared to cry when people leave me. A prayer that I may see in the eyes of each person I know the glimpses of something I can treasure and care for as if it were the most exciting part of my life. As much as I long for the freedom of open spaces, mountain vistas, and silent spaces, may I too long for the joy of sharing my life with the lives of others. May I find peace not only in my own quietness but peace when in the company of strangers and those I know so well. My prayer today is that you will help me to become less satisfied in my own desire and self achievement and better fulfilled in the service of others.

Balance

The rush of life has overtaken the sensible, quieter path of balanced ministry. The old fears, selfish ambitions, and immature thoughts of the past creep in like cockroaches returning at night. The kitchen, scullery and dining room have been dark for a few weeks and the inevitable crawling pests return. The joy of switching on the light and seeing things run. The happiness of sitting with my God and declaring nothing else. The wonder and mystery of walking with Christ alone. Nothing seems to crawl when you are humbly at the feet of your Creator, expressing the need alone to follow your God who is all and sufficient enough for every need, for fellowship, for reward, and every ounce of approval. The 'ifs and buts' fade with the sound of a worshiping heart, the weakness of soul is swallowed up by the presence and consistent mothering of God. To be accepted by God is all in all.

Ghost busters

Ghost busters we are. The call to expose the works of darkness is found in Ephesians 5.8-14. Not only are we to illuminate our lives with the loving light of our faith in Christ and watch the bugs scamper into dark corners but we are to bring that light to others. This is a wonderful image to highlight what happens when the children of God take up their call to meditate and pray with their God. The light gets that much brighter, the obvious bugs that fled long ago have now been replaced by stains unnoticed as the lights radiance brightens. At times there needs to be a spring clean of our soul to remove the persistent dark marks that taint our personality from many years of conscious and unconscious sin. The New Year is upon us and time on earth is once again the subject of discussion. Time is like a broken tap running, its water rushes down into the ground unstopped. May we take every opportunity to catch as much life as we can.