Not all who wander are lost

Tolkien said that “not all who wander are lost” and T S Eliot “we shall not cease from exploring and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where started and to know the place for the first time”.

Non-linearity

One interesting signifier of the journey into the second half of life has been my experience of non-linearity. I wonder if – at the risk of over-simplification – the head/mind/ego tend to be more linear and the body/soul/heart more discursive, less directive or directed. I am held in the paradox of living with some degree of intentionality and agency whilst also experiencing the indirectness of life, the reordering of awareness. Thus (again Eliot), “love of a country begins as an attachment to our own field of action and comes to find that action of little importance”.

Gus MacLeod

(Both Eliot quotations are from ‘The four quartets’)

Are you enjoying your life?

Echoes and Proverbs

Some personal headlines and anecdotes arrest us, stopping us in our tracks. Here's one that still echoes through me:

If you're not enjoying your life then you’re not doing it right. (Richard Rohr)

Hmm, that seems a bit sweeping, dismissive of grind and pain. And yet. Shorty and pithy, a bit like a stick that pokes, or the proverb that prods. This does something to me, shakes me a little and sends wee alarm bells through my body! Am I, are you, enjoying your life?

Touch, pause, engage

One among many

I've mentioned personal headlines, memories of lines that grab us from time to time. We get caught in their headlights. We stop and ponder. Selah say the Psalms. Here's another personal one, drawn from scripture and from a film.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

and

"You are part of this world aren’t you?"

Engaged or separate?

This latter quote was said by Merry to Treebeard the Ent in the book Lord of the Rings. The Ents, an ancient race of tree herders, have deliberated over their part in an escalating war. Should they join in? They determine not to act quickly and to let things ride. The exasperated Hobbit Merry blurts out these words to avert their being carried off and away to safety by Treebeard. Am I part of this world or merely visiting, halfheartedly engaged with life on earth? I suspect an overemphasis on being a stranger, on distinction and separation, is part of the picture. Oddly enough the language of the rugby scrum is helping: Touch, pause, engage! Like the ‘cloud of witnesses’ to faith what headlines in your own journey have stopped you and continue to hold and surround you?

Personal headlines that grab us

Photography by Simon Hodge

A wind that blows no ill

I've observed that sometimes scraps of lines come together from the far corners of memory, sit up on their hind legs and beg for attention. They have been a line in a conversation, a phrase in a book or an incident. And when I need them most they seem to blow lightly across my path again, pass through me and stop me. Selah, stop and ponder, says the Psalms. Some headlines are amusing like this photograph. They disarm or soften. Here's something else, a snatch of a conversation from some 5 years ago:

You have a good life.

Surrounded by witnesses?

This was a remark a short-term colleague made to me. It stopped me in my tracks. Its still does. I did not know her well. The kids were young, work was pressing. It was important to me to hear that and some part of me knew it. Selah. Be present to your own life, as it is Andrew. And by the way, it's a good life, and you appear to have not noticed. Like the historical 'cloud of witnesses' to faith what headlines in your own journey, when recalled and reappear, stop you and continue to hold and surround you? * Hebrews 12

There is a world of vast and endless life beneath the surface

Sources

My theological upbringing emphasized the infilling of the Spirit: the notion of God out there, powerful and ready to intervene. That’s good. But slowly recognizing the indwelling nature of the Spirit; the notion that God is just under my skin and shot through my personal history, a God who himself populates the recesses of my inner world (even having a inner world) has been, for me, a revelation. The glorious imagery of Genesis 2 comes to mind: Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Streams came up from the earth

There’s more going on than we think, and it’s not just ‘out there’. The writer Sara Maitland said something like this: If God is not the cleverest most intelligent being in the universe then I’m off. Similarly if God is not the wisest being in the universe then what’s life about? It’s sinking in that God is truly omnipresent, not merely having a finger in every pie, but She is that wisdom that penetrates the world, like a stream coming up from the earth and watering and blessing the whole of life. And it seems we have to take it, the God-world of barely seen galaxies and the depth of an individual soul's, on trust.

Called to be authentic not perfect

Noctilucent clouds, Martin Koimae (wikicommons)

Veiled motivations

Some years back my church split. I was aware of the gathering clouds and felt the impending doom in the pit of my stomach. I prayed with an intensity I had not known before. ‘Fervent’ is I think the old term. Desperate more like! It was not averted. My finger in the dyke, amongst many others, did not stop what engulfed us. This was a watershed for me. I was dumbfounded to realise that my primary motivation for praying was my own comfort. And tracing this thought back I saw a trail of similar instances which underlined this view. Ok, there were other motivations but this key one had hidden behind the more explicitly ‘spiritual’ ones or at the very least was in the mix. And sure it was right to pray yet…

Authentic exchanges

Here, presented before my very eyes, was the drive to avoid inconvenience, emotional, relational intensity and untidiness; for things to look right and not out of place. What stood tall, persisting with its claim, was this embarrassing truth that my own discomfort was the issue. Prayer as a means to control my life and the world around me! I see this is where my relationship with prayer and God changed tack. I read last week that we are called to be authentic not perfect. This was my reminder; the Spirit’s role is to draw me into honest and authentic exchanges with God and my own self. Is it reasonable to hope this might inform all relationships?

Turning around into what we already are

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are.

From The Walk, Rainer Maria Rilke

'It is about turning around in order to be restored to what is deepest in us.'

J.Philip Newell

Portals

I am convinced that the metaphors and symbols offered within scripture act as portals through which another world ^is glimpsed.  Not only that but they are also a means of mediation, they help to reconnect us  to our origins and purpose;  the true self, made in the image of God and filled out in experience.  So I am playing with the notion of an echo of our selves responding to our current self and so the image of God sketched into our body and soul is boldened and coloured by the Holy Spirit.

Catching the echo

This is underlined for me in The Walk by the German poet Rilke.  We are changed into something else, which, hardly, sensing it, we already are.  For me this completes a circle, the indwelling God calling from deep within to the surface self that ducks and dives, protects and defends through day and night, the self that is projected out into the world with its apparent competencies and usefulness.  The end is union and communion, redemption and the harmony of all things.

^ the KIngdom of God?

God is there and is not silent?

The invisibility of God?

This is a flower drawn by a small child and given to Kirsty. Lovely, can you tell me more about it? Yes, it’s a talking flower! And what is it saying? Pause. It’s written in invisible ink! Flowers and landscapes too are silent, having no voice, delivering no words, yet they do ‘speak’ of beauty, grandeur and wildness and have the power to impact me deeply. Thoughts inevitably turn to the rough times, of riots that erupt in our lives, as they have say in the various UK cities of late? What is written, spoken by God? The ‘video’ of rollers breaking across a map of the UK extinguishing city fires appears. Words too, from the title of a book, ‘God is there and is not silent'. Whatever is written may seem to be in invisible ink, more difficult to see perhaps, but there nevertheless I believe.

The silence of God?

I wonder if my faith journey hasn't been a little like Elijah's running back and forth from a desire for the tangible and dramatic (Mount Carmel) to the despair at an inactive God who speaks in and through the apparent nothingness yet depth of silence - the plea to 'rend the heavens' and the retreat to deserts and to silence. Oswald Chambers wrote that God's answers are often silences. Paul wrote that the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men. Perhaps the silence of God is greater than the shouting and raging of wild men? Like waves throwing themselves against a patient cliff. Another prophet Habbakuk when faced with the prospect on the oncoming rapacious Babylonians finally exhales 'I will wait patiently...though the fig tree does not bud'. Is this merely sentimental, wishful thinking, a passive inertness? I ponder. What has my faith looked like and what does my faith look like now?

Our comings and our goings

The Lord will guard your coming and your going both now and forever. 2 Corinthians 3:18

Faith is not so much a noun as a verb.

The in-between places

On looking at faith transitions we are considering the in-between places in our journey of faith. It’s where there is some form of crossing over or passing on and through some identity, understanding or way of being. It may be a step, a fall, a wrestle into a stage of faith. We may picture it as diving through air into water, entering into and out of cloud or crossing some threshold, maybe shedding a skin.

From what to? To what?

A vast array of feelings may be experienced: anxiety, exhilaration; a sense of having arrived or having exited the familiar. What on earth is actually happening and why and to what end, we wonder. We may discover what helps and what obstructs transition: places, love, imagery, suffering. There are the dynamics of choice: denial, indecision, letting go and grasping onto. Biblical metaphors abound of deserts, of light and dark, of exile and homecoming, of ascent and descent. There is also the role that archetypes and sacraments play in our journey with and towards Jesus. What transition am I currently experiencing? Are any biblical characters currently journeying with you?

Salvation

Untraced photograph

Saved, daily

During one Easter holiday I recall walking with the family in Sandyhills clutching a scrap of paper with this particular sentiment of trees saving me. We were walking beside a line of trees, quiet and attentive yet also indifferent, content with their creation and place in the world and that was what I needed then. On another break, this time in Morar on the North West coast, more Mary Oliver lines, this time from Wild Geese: 'You do not have to be good/You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert repenting'. This washed me for a fortnight. I don't imagine on either occasion I knew what I needed, but nevertheless this is what came.

Grace and perspective

We are about to go on holiday at the end of this week and I'm musing on the poems that have 'saved me', over holidays in particular. How has it come to this that out of nowhere poetry has been a primary vehicle for the grace of God in my life? Beats me! It seems to enable the leaving behind of things, of getting the perspective that is necessary.

One day it will be otherwise

Finally, a summer holiday in Plockton and the evenhandedness of Jane Kenyon’s poem Otherwisewhich pulled me out of a hole. I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. And as I'm writing this blog I wonder what poem, if any, will heal me this holiday.

Andrew Hook

Alone?

Hidden desert, Australia

Life lines

For various reasons I was making one of these life line charts. Along the x axis you write your age (0 – 40?) in 5 year increments. Above the y axis you write the times you have felt supported. Below the line you write the times you felt alone. After feeling gloomy and affronted about those times I depicted as 'below the line' I began to notice that those times were usually the times I have experienced a real seismic change in my understanding of God.

Confrontations

What am I saying? Do I want to feel lonely or deserted? No, I don’t! But there is something about desert or wilderness experiences, isolating though they may be, that can confront us with realities that bring us closer to truth. Is it because being alone with our selves brings space for God to come closer? Maybe the Benedictine Christopher Jamison of Worth Abbey is saying something similar when he says "Silence (loneliness?) is a gateway to the soul, and the soul is the gateway to God."

Kirsty Hook

Being undermined, graciously

I’m just noticing that the primary, front-of-house, questions that have been surfacing and which I’m toying with are being stealthily flipped over. It’s as if, whilst not looking, someone has switched meal plates. I feel like I’m in the middle of a Clouseau/Pink Panther film. So, to what shall I put my shoulder? is altered to What’s knocking on my door? Am I equal to this task in the week ahead? is morphed into What or who carries me; the image of a river before and behind is invoked. What can we expect, of resurrection life? is re-formed into What degree of harmony exists between me and God, between his good and perfect will and my intentions and desires?

What's the subject?

In each of the first questions I’m on the front foot, I am the subject. In the second question of each pair I am on the backfoot the pressure lifted and the question is more open and also Other centred. It reminds me of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s lines: What we fight is so small, what wrestles with us is so great. Is this indicative of one of the manoeuvres of God, to flip us over into a more gracious space than we might initially and automatically assume? And into a more God-centred than a me-centred outlook?