Becoming Water

Madonna del Parto (Piero della Francesca)

The faith community I have been part of during the last few years has been the Religious Society of Friends. I have imaged the Quaker tradition as a trellis supporting the vine of my spirituality. But now the trellis seems to be dissolving…the hard edges, the forms of it are blurring…melting as a block of ice would...though it is not in brilliant sunshine but some darker, cooler place. (How can something both cool and melt at the same time? Yet that is the way it appears).

I am meditating more, finding the space behind, beneath and around things….Content is not so significant..or what there is is loose, allusive, obliquely visioned. I am reading fiction and poetry…Rilke, Thomas Moore and soon to return to Proust…looking at art books.

I use Reiki…gently. In the next few weeks I will receive my Reiki 3 attunement. Actually the dissolution seemed to start with my first attunement. From there the softening and melting began.

In a recent dream I was in a white cathedral. I saw many art works depicting the Annunciation. This gospel story speaks to me of something hidden.…Mary pondering these things in her own heart…Impregnation…receiving…conceiving…all in the dark womb, which welcomes and receives….a powerful metaphor for contemplation…the virginal womb into which the Spirit pours in darkness…a place of watery containment.

Recent intermittent feelings of fatigue have forced me into whole days of inactivity…. I resisted and resisted these but the times I surrendered to them have became a contemplative space where I can be nourished by emptiness…no choice but to be still, to rest, to go down…allow something new to grow in the protective darkness of unknowing.

Of course it is all more fragmentary than this...by its nature it is obscure and lacking in any clarity. Rivers... streams.....rain....oceans....gutters...puddles...the still waters of the evening....harbour and open sea.

Life's Dark Beauty

Religion, too, often avoids the dark by hiding behind platitudes and false assurances. Nothing is more irrelevant than feeble religious piousness in the face of stark, life-threatening darkness. Religion tends to sentimentalize the light and demonize the darkness. If you turn to spirituality to find only a positive and wholesome attitude, you are using spirituality to avoid life's dark beauty. Religion easily becomes a defence and avoidance. Of course this is not the real purpose of religion, full of beautifully stated wisdom, , and the religious traditions of the world are your best source of guidance in the dark. But there is real religion and there is the empty shell of religion. Know the difference. Your life is at stake.....

The spiritual life is both deep and transcendent. It shouldn't whisk you away from your daily challenges but should offer you an intelligent way of dealing with all the complexity involved. It should make you a person of character and discernment, emotionally tough and intellectualy demanding, as well as loving and compassionate. It should give you insight into the deepest of your questions and problems, and give you a vision which extends beyond the everyday issues. Religion often fails to explore the depths and only offers the vision, but then the transcendent possibilities lack depth and in the end hurt more than help.

(Thomas Moore)

Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, "The master's gone alone herb picking,
somewhere on the mount,
cloud hidden,
whereabouts unknown."

(Chin Tao, 777-841)

And if ever you come to this cloud, and make a home there and take up the work of love as I urge you, there is something else you must do as this cloud is above you, and between you and your God, you must put a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and all the creatures that have ever been made.
The cloud of unknowing will perhaps leave you with a feeling that you are far from God. But I assure you, if it is authentic, only the absence of a cloud of forgetting between you and all creatures keeps you from God.

(The Cloud of Unknowing)

Two Serpents

Two Serpents Drinking from the Same Cup 2006

A Luminous Cloud of Maternal Love

I have been reflecting in this last couple of days on angels. During this reflection I came across the following extraordinary passages (from an extraordinary, even unique, book) concerning one's Guardian Angel...

"...and this is the tragic side of Angelic existence-this geniality only shows up when the human being has need of it, when he makes room for the flashing forth of its illumination. The Angel depends on man in his creative activity. If the human being does not ask for it, if he turns away from him, the Angel has no motive for creative activity. He can then fall into a state of consciousness where all his creative geniality remains in potential and does not manifest. It is a state of vegetation or 'twilight existence', comparable to sleep from the human point of view. An Angel who has nothing to exist for is a tragedy in the spiritual world.

Therefore, dear Unknown Friend, think of your guardian Angel, think of him when you have problems, questions to resolve, tasks to accomplish, plans to formulate, cares and fears to appease! Think of him as a luminous cloud of maternal love above you, moved by the sole desire to serve you and to be useful to you.

Meditations on the Tarot (The Unknown Author)

I know from experience that when I ask the Angels for help then extraordinary things happen. It would seem that they long for us to call upon them, that in their unmediated reflection of the Love of God they exist simply to love.

In the psychedelic sci fi film fantasy of the sixties 'Barbarella' ,the Angel says..."An Angel does not love. An Angel IS Love."

Golden Shadows

He follows me
With golden shadows to my secret rooms.

Charles Tennyson Turner (1808 - 1879)

These last few months I have been experiencing and reflecting upon many personal traits which, at first sight I would much rather be without.

But I realise that what appear to be 'shadow' aspects also themselves have 'golden shadows', gifts they bring to me and to others.

My abiding laziness frees me from the cultural obsession with being busy, a life of appointments and schedules, the fear of being alone with nothing to do. I have time for myself, to think and pray and I have time for others. I rarely have to put people off because I have 'more important' things to do.

My procrastination reminds me that most things aren't that inportant and frees me from the need to be perfect.

My sometimes critical nature connects with witty conversation which makes people laugh, instils a sense of fun into life and punctures pomposity, including my own.

I am greedy but what a love of life that manifests! I encourage others to let go a little and enjoy themselves.

In my spendthrift nature I can 'take little thought for the morrow', be free from the obsession with security and living in the future.

I have struggled with anger but often it relates to a sense of justice and fairness.

In my personal vanity is a love of beauty, self respect, and even a healthy self love. I don't have to shrink from others...and neither do I feel I am more significant than them. Each person is beautiful with many gifts to offer to the world.

There is also a very real darkness in me...which in some ways seems unredeemable. But perhaps in some ultimate sense God can use what is darkest and most despicable as raw material for some new creation. That is my hope anyway.

Cruelty and Mercy

Cruelty has a human heart
And Jealousy a human face
Terror the human form divine
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human face is a fiery forge,
The human face is a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity a human face
And Love the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

Funeral

I have been arranging a funeral this morning. Thankfully not for someone I know. Talking to the undertaker I felt relief that I wasn't there for someone I love...yet I was aware of how many people over the years must have sat there overwhelmed with the terrible pain of grief.

It is a privilige to support a family at this time. The practical arrangements, making sure the funeral takes place in an ordered way is as sacred as the prayers, the hymns, the readings. Isn't it the routines which partly carry us through painful times?

Life is short. How many times do we hear those words during our lives....to the point where it becomes a cliche', hardly noticed, easily ignored?

May I live richly and well. And you also, unknown friends!

Simplicity

Here is a very simple drawing I made yesterday. Some of my drawings (like 'Soul Friends'..see below) are complicated in their design but I also love to make pictures which are simple, naive, primitive, innocent. I am in the process of making a new series of drawings which are simple....maybe contemplative.

Spirit of the Fountain

'The Spirit of the Fountain dies not.
It is called the Mysterious Feminine.
The Doorway of the Mysterious Feminine
Is called the Root of Heaven-and Earth.

Lingering like gossamer, it has only a hint of existence;
And yet when you draw upon it , it is inexhaustible."

Tao Teh Ching (trans. John C. H. Wu)

'Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

from 'Ash Wednesday' by T.S. Eliot

True Godliness

Cell of a Carthusian Monk


Having writen about the hidden, the obscure, the contemplative aspect of spirituality I also want to highlight the 'fruits of the spirit', the outward manifestation in the world of a deeply centered inner life.

'True godliness don't turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavours to mend it...Christians should keep the helm and guide the vessel to its port; not meanly steal out at the stern of the world and leave those who are in it without a pilot to be driven by the fury of evil times upon the rock or sand of ruin.'

Wiliam Penn, 1682

There is much to be said for William Penn's words though I don't share his view that the purely contemplative life is to 'meanly steal out at the stern of the world'. Without time to withdraw, to pray and simply 'be' the life of action becomes fretful, even despairing. Compassionate action flows naturally from a life of prayer. It may be that action and contemplation may not be located in one individual but divided between two persons, each complementing and completing the work of the other. And prayer itself IS action, having effects in the world which may not be immediately obvious but which nevertheless are powerfully transforming.

Even so, to be silent and hidden needs no justification. At its core it is 'useless'. It serves no purpose in the same way that the intimate gaze between lovers has no purpose beyond itself. For something to be of value it need not make the world a better place, nor bring any kind of advancement (including spiritual). It is what it is, no more.....It is useless and in its emptiness the whole world is illuminated.

Indirection and Concealment.

"Monks are experts at doing nothing and tending the culture of that emptiness".

from 'Meditations. On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life.' by Thomas Moore

These words fill me with joy. They give me permission to do nothing, to make haste slowly, to potter and be useless; to have the space for God, for the great world, for others and myself.

I find it difficult to write much on this blog (though I write a lot in my personal journal). But there is a theme which by its nature cannot be shouted but only hinted at.

Thomas Moore in the same book writes...,

"...we might learn this art of indirection and concealment, ultimately a means for preserving one's spiritual integrity. The world should have a difficult time gaining entrance."

Hardly anyone knows this blog is here...I like that. But someone might stumble on it. It doesn't really matter. It is here. Pointless. Useless. A 'rose without why'. Maybe a tiny scrap of something sacred. Maybe not.

Enigma

The artist's function is to love the enigma. All art is this: love which has been poured out over enigmas - and all works of art are enigmas surrounded and adorned by love.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Shaper Of Your Own Being

``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.''

(Oration on the Dignity of Man)

Conversing With Paradise

Soul Friends 2005


Poetry, painting and music, the three powers
in Man of conversing with Paradise,
which the Flood did not sweep away.

(William Blake)

Art is a half effaced recollection of a higher
state from which we have fallen since the
time of Eden.

(Hildegard of Bingen)

To sea for pearls

For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God,

God hath sent me to sea for pearls.

(Christopher Smart 1722 -1771)

Beginning

....'the rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms;

It cares not for itself; asks not if it it's seen.'
Madonna 2005

(Angelus Silesius 1624 -1677)