Still small voice

Last night I decided to go and see the Pope. The last time a pope visited was about thirty years ago so I thought I may never get the chance again. I had heard him on the radio and found him wise and gentle.

I got to Hyde Park Corner and there was a reasonable crowd and I thought I should be able to see him. My ears, however, were assailed by a discordant noise. A group of Moslem protesters, cordoned off by the police were in full voice. One man had a microphone. He was attacking the visit, my faith and my country among other things. He was condemning all who did not turn to Islam to hell. His voice spoke of God but it was a voice full of anger and hate.

I wandered away to be out of earshot. I got chatting to a nice guy who was taking photos. He pointed out some snipers up on the monument at the corner of Hyde Park. I had not noticed them.

I asked him if he was Catholic and why he was attending. He said that he went to church as a child but had not been since. He said that some kind of inexplicable yearning had brought him to see the Holy Father.

This, I thought, is how God communicates. I thought of the still small voice that spoke to Elijah. I compared it to the ranting man on the microphone.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.

1 Cor. 13.4

Taste and see

How often do we long for something or wait expectantly only to find we tire of the thing after a while? We will sometimes jump through hoops to get something material but put off seeking a spiritual pleasure.

St Gregory has it about right.

There is a great difference, dearly beloved brethren, between corporal and spiritual delights in that the former, when we are without them, enkindle in the soul a strong desire to possess them, but once they are are attained, they quickly satiate us. Spiritual pleasures, on the contrary, when unattained, produce a certain aversion; but once we taste them the taste awakens desire, and our hunger for them increases the more we taste them..so we see that, if we do not taste these delights,we cannot desire them, because their flavour is unknown to us...so that the psalmist says ’Taste and see that the Lord is sweet’ ( Psalm 33.9 )

A Thing Of Beauty

Have you ever gazed upon something lovely like these altar flowers or spent a day in the countryside and felt your spirit lift? St Paul talks about the joys of thinking on worthy things in Phillipians 4.8. St Theodorus takes up this theme.

To be concerned with the nature of created things has a very purifying effect. It frees us from passionate attachment to them and delusion about them; and it is the surest means for raising our soul to the Source of all. For all beauty, miracle, magnificence reflects what is supremely beautiful, miraculous and magnificent-reflects, rather, the Source that is above beauty, miracle and magnificence. Theoretikon. The Philokalia.

You don't miss the water...

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is not a believer and he was talking about his brother who tends to isolate himself. ‘We are social animals,’ he said. He is right.

However, I have just spent two weeks with hardly any time on my own. I was on holiday. On the last day I my cousin and I had to kill a long time in an airport together. I always thought airports had chapels and eventually I found a meditation room. It was called this so it could function as multi faith prayer room. No problems. After two weeks without much privacy and being almost exclusively with people of no faith, finding this room was like a drink of cold water in the desert if you will allow a bit of hyperbole.

I just wallowed in the quiet and sanctity of this plain room. Next to me a Moslem was at his devotions.

My friend is right, we are social animals, but we are also spiritual animals as well.

You don’t miss the water, the old saying says, till the well runs dry.

Making an ass of yourself

The BBC recently ran a very interesting radio programme on the philosophy of science. It sounds deadly dull but it was not. The presenter interviewed researchers who spend most of their time in a cubicle peering down a microscope or amassing seemingly never to be used data. The researchers were asked whether they lost their sense of self in this situation and could they still see the bigger picture of what they were working towards, in this case, finding cures for various medicines.

I was taken by one interviewee. He spends much of his time in a wood doing research into the biology of trees or somesuch. He said how fortunate he was. When we are amongst people, he said, we are always stressed to a certain degree as they are demanding something of us. When he is in his wood there is nothing demanded of him and he finds himself blissfully peaceful.

Recently I spent a week in semi rural part of Hertfordshire. I had to be part of a team and also minister ( well, sort of ) a small group of people. I did not sleep well at first and found the demands of a new routine, new people and new challenges a bit wearing. However, I had the days mostly free and found walks along a canal bank with birdsong, greenery and the company of a pair of donkeys that I found in a field nearby restored whatever the demands of the week took away. This is not the first time I have found these chaps therapeutic.

Of course all this is something our Lord knew all to well. Retreating to the quiet of the hills was how he coped with the demands of the people he was ministering to as in Mark 6.46. As Christians we have all been given ministries and a responsibility to others. However, we have all, I believe, been given a responsibility to preserve ourselves. Incidentally, this is why donkeys are so ‘stubborn’ sometimes and will not go where they are led. It is because apparently they have an acute awareness of situations that might endanger them eg they see the danger of the mountain ledge they are asked to travel along. We humans, however, go blithely on putting ourselves under more and more stress, taking on punishing schedules until sometimes we crack. In the light of this I am not sure why we use the word donkey as a simile for stupidity!! I rather like the fact that donkey was our Lord’s preferred means of transport apart from Shanky’s pony of course.

Bit part player

I was in the actors' church in Covent Garden, the atmosphere of which I find very prayerful, and was looking at the plaques of all the famous actors who are remembered here. I came across this sign. How rarely I thought do you hear of people especially in the arts, where big egos can be the norm, who are willing to be well down the cast list. It is election week and on Monday I went to the hustings and I listened to three men, Brown, Cameron and Clegg, who want to take on the biggest part in UK.

I then thought of Ananias who has pretty much a walk on part in Acts ( 9.10 to 17) to anoint Saul to his ministry as Paul. After that he just gets a commendation from Paul and that is it as least as 'reviews' go. What I like is that Ananias who is called via a vision is immediately up for the work though he does show a bit of nerves at the part he is asked to play. Who wouldn't considering Saul's reputation for repression of Christians?

What I have found important in life is that we do not take on situations beyond our ability. I work with a woman who every year takes on a role that is wrong for her. She flaps, panics and makes life for herself and those around her difficult. When she takes on or is given a lesser role she is relaxed and good company but in the harder role she is stressed and not good company.

Basically, she goes beyond herself.

God knows what Ananias and Paul are capable of. The small role he plays is important. It is possible that Ananias was the only one brave enough or worthy enough to go and see Paul and he has the honour of anointing one of the greats of Christendom. Also he gets his name in the billing. Not at the top but he is there for sure as an enthusiastic player of small parts.

Snapping

One of my hobbies is photography. What I like about it is that it gives me an end product to spending a day in the country. The other week I went to the London Harness Horse Parade. I have a great fondness for horses especially the humbler beasts of burden rather than the pampered race horses.

A rather posh horse carriage stopped and when we 'snappers' started photographing a man on the top of the carriage started berating one of our number in a rather self important, pompous manner. His gist was that he only wanted bona fide photographers snapping his rig so that it would be seen in a quality newspaper or magazine. If he was trying to be humorous he certainly did not pull it off. He seemed to be trying to humiliate the photographer.

I saw red and was all for pulling this man off the carriage and giving him a humbling experience at the end of my boot. Later I talked to the photographer that had been targeted and reminded him of the incident. He told me his name and it being double barreled I joked that he was probably posher than the carriage driver. He was in fact an old Harrovian. That evening I went to his website and I could see that he was a photographer of great talent having travelled the world capturing horses on film. His name is Rupert Sagar Musgrave. I had seen one of his photos in a quality daily paper. I personally would have created a scene but he showed composure and with this and his talent rose above the situation. I do not know the carriage driver’s name. I did not even keep the pictures of his carriage.

A friend knowing my rather mercurial nature lent me a book by Daniel O’Leary.

Even if it is only for a split second, you will discover that there is an instant when you have the chance to choose- between the immediate, negative, thoughtless reaction or the aware response that changes the personal, hurtful charge into a mutually life giving moment. This is the only loving and wise thing to do. from Travelling Light

My reading that night was.

Be friendly with everyone. don’t be proud and feel that you are cleverer than others, make friends with ordinary people. Romans 12.16