Meditation for St. John's Eve

Meditation for St. John's Eve:

Now, as Vespers sings itself to dusk’s silent sitting.
The beacons begin to burn.
Men watching for the moment
of Moon’s waning
in twilight midsummer sky
of a Sun too lazy to truly set,
to kindle flame for the Forerunner;
John.
He whose element is fire.
Both lamps now hanging in cloth of such deep blue
that the world seems enfolded in the mantle of one
who midwifed his birth,
even as she joined her magnificat
to old Elizabeth’s pangs and doubting Zechariah’s silence
beneath the shining stars of desert sky.

Now, as Matins touches midnight of Monks long vigiling
the herbs are gathered.
Women seeking the helpers and the healers
in wood, and dell, and garden bed
where, blessed by dew and moonlight
and the long warmth of Sun’s summer
the Yarrow and the Bracken,
the Fennel and the Rue,
the Rosemary and the Foxglove and
always the Elder and
the great yellow flower of the Forerunner
willingly give up their essence on the night
that marks the first whisper
of the Word’s healing breath,
breathed through the one who is His herald Voice;
John.
Dried, and hung, and laid upon the Lady Altar
to become more than they are
they will bestow divine healing.
Twice gifted and graced by
Summer’s picking
and Autumn’s
Assumption blessing, they
reveal the medicine present always beneath.

Now, as Lauds’ psalms sun skywards
the pots and pans and ancient drums are beaten.
The children sing the old songs and rhymes
long lost to meaning,
as young men and women harelike
leap heedless across the
dying flames together.
Recalling he who leapt with joy,
filled with fire, even in womb’s waters
so near was the One who first kindled flame
and rendered the rivers holy and made the wells
vessels of new birth.

Now, as Mass bell tolls dawn’s daily resurrection
monks and men, and women, and children all
hear the summons of the Sanctifier and His herald
loud upon morning’s breeze
as embers die down, and herbs are hung up.
Beneath the vaulted stone they gather
to join their voices to praise that vastness veiled
in simple bread and wine,
and hear again the word first spoken by
the herald,
the lamp,
the flame,
the leaper,
the prophet,
the angel,
the voice,
the Baptist
whose birth they have
blessed anew
cry across the ages
“Behold the Lamb of God!”

I wrote this last year to illuminate so many of the customs we have lost that wove the wisdom of the wild and the faith together so beautifully. On St. John's Eve, (The Vigil of the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist), the last official day of the solstice bonfires were set burning to commemorate the fire of the Baptist's faith and the facing into the waning of natural light after the longest day. Couples leaping across the fire was an old betrothal custom. This was also the traditional night for gathering the herbs that would be used as medicine for the year to come. Gathered tonight and dried until Assumption Day they would then be blessed in the Monasteries at the first Mass at Our Lady's Altar... The songs and noise making around the boundaries of the hills and the fields was to frighten away evil and stagnancy so as to refresh the fields and prepare for the Harvest... Our faith was and is both holy and holistic and we must return to such deep knowing again... May the Baptist pray for us!

The Paradox of Presence; a Meditation for Midsummer's Eve

The Paradox of Presence;
a Meditation for Midsummer's Eve

 Here I am Lord;
I am a passing shadow
I am a breath on the edge of being
I am a body of dust and ashes
I am a child of earth
I am from nothing
I am only ever almost
I am a ripple in the pool of life
I am a whisper in the silence
I am lost in time
I am unfulfilled yearning
I am a distorted reflection
I am delusion
I am desire
I am for now
And yet,
Here I am Lord;
I am made in your image
I am growing into your likeness
I am an idea in the Divine mind
I am called forth from nothingness
I am an exhalation of love
I am a child of God
I am an eternal soul
I am a word spoken by the Word
I am the temple of the Divine
I am from Being itself
I am called by name
I am held in being by Love
I am interpenetrated by light
I am sustained by pure attention
I am healed by Divine Compassion
I am redeemed by Mercy
I am for eternity
And so, I answer once again
caught in the pain of paradox,
on this point between the
shortest night
and the longest day:
Here I am Lord;
To be light in the shadows
To be your breath of love
To be the place where Being heals being
To be the moment where time touches Eternity
To be the voice who speaks the word into the silence
To be the torch aflame in the darkness
To be the temple of Divine encounter
To be the emptiness without absence
To be the call to compassion
To be the wound that heals
To be the child of heaven and the child of earth
To be in time and dwell in eternity
To live my I am in the I AM
To lose all so as to find all in you.
So,
Here I am Lord;
journeying from nothing to something
journeying from darkness to light
journeying from emptiness to fullness
by
journeying from something to no-thingness
journeying from light to light so bright it blinds and darkens my still too earthly sight
journeying from fullness to emptiness of being...
Here I am Lord;
a pilgrim on this paradox path
lost and found
and lost again
but with faith in the finding always...
and on this night of edges and shadows and barely there darkness
I surrender to the
silence of the Word
and simply say with open hands and
broken heart,
Here
I
am
Lord

At the centre, the Heart.

What do we find at the centre of our faith?
The Cross, uniting earth and Heaven in a communion of Love stronger than death, despair or evil.
What do we find at the centre of that Cross?
A human heart that holds the fullness of Divinity.
What do we find at the centre of this heart?
A burning wound of fire and light wherein our woundedness is healed, our darkness illumined, our sin forgiven, and our existence united with Divine Nature forever.
What do we find at the centre of that wound?
The point where time and eternity meet in that mystery of Divine Love we call Incarnation, we call Jesus.
What do we find at the centre of the Incarnation?
The answer to all the questions of our being:
We have come from Love.
We are now because of Love.
We are called into Love for eternity.
And we are loved so much that God would break His own heart for eternity to prove to us just how much we are loved.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
I place all my trust in thee.

Thoughts about #Thoughts&Prayers

Thoughts about #Thoughts&Prayers

Last night, as the terrible events unfolded yet again, this time in London, social media lit up as it does with tragic familiarity with the chaos of contrary bulletins, appeals for help and offers of assistance, congratulations to the first responders and condemnation of the perpetrators and, following quickly of the politicians too…

And then comes the wave of hashtags: #prayers&thoughts, #PrayforLondon etc… and, as is usual of late, following hard and fast on their heels come the wave of those who do not want the “platitude of prayer” or are frustrated with the offering of “prayers and thoughts” that seem to do nothing but make people feel better about themselves and perhaps even seem to absolve of responsibility…

“Do something!” the crowd roars… “Don’t just stand there thinking and praying do something!”… and then the virtual crowd tears itself apart as it tries to decide just what it is we should be doing… how we should be reacting… and very quickly shock becomes sadness, and sadness becomes frustration, and frustration becomes anger, and anger becomes hate and hate seeks a victim, and violence begets violence and it is all understandable…but lamentably so.

So I wonder… perhaps this hashtag is more important than ever in these days of struggle with fundamentalist forces and knee-jerk reactions to events? After all, the terrorists want to do one thing and one thing only… they want to dictate how you should pray and what you should think. This is the reality of religious fundamentalism. They do not want you to reflect and to choose your reaction as thousands are doing in Manchester and London tonight, choosing love over hate, and even more so in the case of our Coptic brothers and sisters of Egypt, who astound with their long suffering forbearance, and choose forgiveness over hate. The terrorists, indeed the fundamentalists of any sect or group, are always most threatened by a human being choosing to reflect, to think, to pray according to their own conscience. And so they engage in terror, in random acts of violence calculated to disturb, to anger, to disable our rationality so that our knee jerk reactions will simply fulfil their twisted prophecies of hate and spiral out of control into ever decreasing circles of fear, anger, pain, death.

No, instead let us truly offer our thoughts and prayers. Let us, people of all faiths and none, choose the reflective path that looks not at symptoms but causes and then attempts, calmly but unflinchingly, to deal with the symptoms by changing the causes, while consistenly and constantly affirming the rights of all to the freedom of thought, of faith and of prayer that is at the core of what we all believe.

Before we do something let us think, and pray, and reflect. Then we will be more likely to do the right thing. At the very least we will be doing the one thing they do not want us to do; for after all, our thoughts and prayers are exactly what the terrorists want to control.

Peace to London, to Manchester, to Afghanistan, to Egypt, to Syria, to Iraq, to the Philippines… peace to all…

And yes... my thoughts and prayers are with them all tonight.

Blessings +

 

 

Reunion of the Mother and Son: Easter Dawn

It is often asked where the risen Christ was when the women, and later the apostles, got to the garden... Mystics and Mothers (who are often the same thing) have always known the answer.
After all, where would any son go first who had put his mother through so much?
The following lines express this hidden and unknown joy of Mary perfectly...
May it be your meditation this Easter morning.

 Reunion:

The stone rolled off,

And no one saw it.

Her heart was jubilant

And full of ecstasy.

She knew that a sea of joy

Would flow out of the sea of sorrow;

Although it would

Recede to sorrow again

She could remember

Being born in the midst of

God the Father,

And being created

Before creation.

Did She truly watch

Light come out of darkness?

Did she see shores

Come into being?

It seemed you could play

See-saw on a wave!!

She never moved.

Quietly and closed in a room,

She sat behind a door

That no one dared to open,

And looked upon the streets

Of her beloved Jerusalem,

Watching the crowds

Hurrying hither and yon;

Watching, and not seeing at all;

For the sea of sorrow

Was receding

Into the desert

Where seas go;

And she was playing

See-saw on a wave

Made by God.

She knew the Pieta was Piety.

The sorrow in her face

Was sorrow of the past.

Upon it lingered still

The shadow of the cross

And Him upon it;

But when her hands

Had touched His face,

Which the disciples thought was

Dead,

She felt the warmth

Pulsating through it.

How could God die?

He touched death

For an instant –

Abolished it forever,

And it became

An angel of surpassing beauty;

For whom men of faith

Would wait with bated breath;

Death hasn’t icy fingers at all

They are warm –

The fingers of the angel of love.

The ice, the cold, the decay

That is for men of earth to see;

For their eyes are not conditioned

To the resplendent state of the

Soul.

She knew

He was not dead forever;

Not one bone would decay.

He slept, quietly, obediently,

In the tomb;

For He was obedient

Even after death.

But when they rolled

The stone before the tomb

He was free to roam;

To come, to go

To be

Where all those years

He could not be

Or could show Himself.

Out of the tomb

To hell,

To bring joyous news;

Then, like a man

Would visit

In a pilgrimage of love,

The places that made His heart

Beat faster

As a man.

When She had held His cold-warm

Body

She trembled

With the joy of it –

Knowing He would come

To visit Her first

The Magdalene would be the next

To see Him.

So She sat alone

With the door closed –

They thought to grieve

But no! To wait.

Who was there to see

Or hear what passed?

Who was there to know

The glory

Of music born in that room?

The Music of His voice and Hers

Mingling as voices

Never did before.

“Tonight is the night

Of my first unknown joy.”

“It is just as well

That men count them as seven;

For how else could they count

My joys or sorrows?

There are not enough stars

In heaven

To add them up –

Seven will do nicely.”

“Come

Share in one of my unknown joys.”

“He came to Me

In my chamber,

My Son!

My Lover!

And overflowing rapture

Condensed in utter ecstasy

Filled Me again.

“It was as if

I had conceived anew,

For all my being

Felt His coming.

The room pulsated

With the beat

Of angels’ wings

But even the seraph’s eyes

Were sealed.

Not even they

Could look then

Upon the Mother and the Son

And so they chanted

Alleluias.

“Did you know that I,

The first stigmatic,

Had the wounds?

It happened simply,

Perhaps He was two or three,

Perhaps, I am not sure.

It is hard

for one who encompasses

eternity

to think in time.

One day He was playing

At My feet,

And suddenly

Like a little swallow

He kissed each foot.

The wounds began to throb.

“At seven or eight

He kissed each palm,

Lingeringly.

And I knew

The feel of nails.

“He came once

In early spring,

On a shiny sunny day.

His hands were full of flowers.

He sat on a small stool

And wove a crown for Me.

I knew the weight

Of thorns

Upon my head.

“In May, in your land,

Children repeat His gesture.

It brings back the memory

Of thorns, sweet, deep, sharp.

“He was a suckling at My breast.

One night,

Somehow, His face fell

From My nipples;

And His warm mouth touched my side.

Was it a kiss?

Was it a lance?

From that blest night

The pain was there

Never to go.

“So you must know

My unknown joy,

The rendezvous We hels –

My Son and I –

The night they thought

They had sealed His tomb

So tight.

Where do you think

He went?

He went to the place

He loves most in Palestine –

The room of His Mother.

“Wonders will never cease!!

The room was aflame;

For where My Son is,

There is My spouse,

The Crimson Dove

Who holds Me tight.

The angels’ wings

Made melody of strings

As they chanted their

Alleluias

In a circle of bliss,

And He sat at My feet

And I looked into His eyes –

Above to below.

“The Crimson Dove

Brought the flame of love;

And the Father was there

Unseen, jubilant, joyous,

Taking delight in His Son.

And as He did,

The Crimson Dove grew,

And a flame covered the earth.

Alleluia

Alleluia

Alleluia.

“The stone was still tight

On the tomb of My child

Who was with Me.

“I give you the Paschal gift.

Put out your hands

And take it to your heart

This is the night of joy!

Alleluia!

I am an

Alleluia

In the flesh

Tonight.”

(Lines from Catherine deHueck Doherty's epic poem: "Our Lady's Unknown Mysteries.)

Homily for the Easter Vigil 2017

Homily for the Easter Vigil: 

We have kept vigil… we  have waited with hope… we vigil with all of Christianity…with all of the cosmos who since that first Good Friday have entered into the Divine Space where these sacred events always exist, at once both human and divine, in time and in eternity.

We have walked their ancient paths, worn by countless generations of faith-filled ancestors all over the world, and we have arrived at that upper room where the Disciples and Apostles gather to wait… For what they do not know… they are simply called to wait… sustained by a silent Mother in their midst who believes as only a mother can believe that the story of her broken boy is not yet over…cannot yet be over… must not yet be over… She a single, silent point of illumined faith in a world of darkness and pain… a star shining in the night dark in despair…

Let us go to that place now and be with them a while, entering in spirit that room of darkened windows and locked doors… where, since yesterday afternoon, they have descended into that quiet that enters the human heart when, hoping against hope, we wait…

We wait…

We wait… when waiting itself seems a vain act, a hopeless effort of a heart and mind too broken to take in the awful reality of what has just happened…

The world would call it denial… it would see in it a people who are broken by their own betrayal of the One they claimed they loved and who now cannot accept the consequences of that betrayal…and so they leave us alone… their work is done… our work is done…we betrayed Him… they crucified Him… no matter who did what… who held the nails… who held the scourge… who placed the crown of thorns upon His head… He is dead… That is all… And so they leave them at the tomb… leave them to crawl back to the upper room of vigiling… of waiting… of silence…

We look around the room… and remember…Can it really be only a few days since He was here, speaking, teaching, loving? We see the bowl of water, the towel, we see the empty plate and cup, we remember His call to love and we remember his prediction of betrayal and how, just for a moment, almost none of them, none of us, could meet His eyes…

We try and stop remembering…instead we wait with them… not really sure of what we are waiting for… there is simply a silent insistence to be here… to gather… to wait… and sometimes… when we think no-one is watching or listening to weep… to weep for what we saw… those of us who stayed and walked behind Him in the crowd; to weep for what we didn’t see, those of us who fled to rooms and hills and hidden places where, though we did not see it all we felt it all… heard it all…

Sometimes it is harder to feel and to hear than it is to see… especially when the mocking voice arises from the silence of our hearts and sneeringly delivers us to the edge of despair as we look back and watch our brave words crumble into cowardice…

And so we wait… we wait as people have always waited at sickbeds and deathbeds, at moments of birth and moments of breaking, at moments of making and unmaking, we wait with the Earth our mother, and the sun and the stars our elder sisters and brothers; those powers who stopped in their tracks and hid their faces and broke open in horror at what their human brothers and sisters had done… at what we had done…

We wait as armies await the dawn hoping for the cry of a new day and a new hope… and slowly, hesitatingly, we remember…

Did He not say that this would happen? Did He not speak to us of a handing over… of a death that had to be faced… of an hour that had to come… Did He not berate us for not understanding… for not believing… Did He not in this very room…only a few hours ago tell us, as He broke the bread and blessed the Cup, that He would be taken from us but that He would return… and that then He would always be with us…

We hear His words in our hearts…

At first… they are weak sounding… against the so new and so near sight of blood, and nails, and spear, and… blood… so much blood, poured out upon the earth They are weak against the memory of His groans and words in the midst of agony upon the Cross…

But the words sound themselves in our hearts and with each one we shudder at the remembrance…

“Father forgive them they know not what they do”…

“Today you will be with me in paradise”…

“Mother behold your son”…

“Son behold your mother”…

“My God, My God Why have you forsaken me”…

“I thirst”…  

“Father…Into your hands I commend my spirit”…

And as they sound we remember that last groan… that almost silent word… more of a breath… a gasp, fighting its way to the surface to be heard…

“Kaaaah laaahhh”… “It is accomplished!”…

and somewhere deep in our memory awakens the knowing that this is the word the High Priest utters in the temple as the last Passover Lamb is slaughtered… Kahlah… it is accomplished…

and we are stilled…

and we think…

the lamb…

the blood of the Passover Lamb…

the blood daubed on door post and lintel that says in this place death has no power…

And we remember a man… John…worn thin and brown by prayer and desert sun both, and his arm, wiry and long, as it pointed across the river and his voice crying aloud, “Behold the Lamb!”… and we, they, all of us through all time begin to hope…begin to yearn… begin to pray… begin to think… maybe…just maybe…

For yes, He was truly the long-awaited Lamb and the true High Priest and even the Altar of Sacrifice itself and in that whispered moan of Kahlah as He yielded up His spirit He accomplished all that He had been sent to do, all that He had freely chosen…

In emptying Himself of Glory He descended into the darkness of a sin conquered world and became its liberator, its conqueror, its saviour, its light. And we who know that darkness, who know its pull and hear its siren call daily, know also that we are made for that light, long for that light, long for that love, long in the deepest places of our hearts for new beginning and the grace of an inward dawn that never yields to the night of self or death or sin again…

And this is what we vigil for… this is how we can endure the memory of the scourge, the crown, the nails, the cross, the spear… because we know how the story ended! Not in the dark despair of a Friday night, at the sealed dry rock of a tomb, but in the dawn light of a Spring garden on a Sunday morning where resurrection was announced by birds greeting the new day in song…

For in that divine breathing forth, that cry of Kahlah…

Life itself went forth to meet death,

Light itself went forth to meet darkness,

Love itself went forth to meet hate, and…

death was made the door of life,

darkness was dispelled and illumined, and

hate was defeated and cast down by Love

and breath born creation was in-spired again, created anew as in the Saviour’s expiration it received the breath of God…the Divine kiss of life saving a sin drowned cosmos and so could begin to breathe anew…

And this happened…this happened… and it is happening now… here in this place… not again, but always!

For in the eternal now of God this waiting in the darkness of sorrow, always becomes, when transcended with faith, a vigil of light and hope, always becomes a resurrection moment as we touch the power of the Risen One and His grace…

And this is how by Fire, and Story, and Water, and Bread, and Wine we pass through thousands of years of waiting and longing in a single night, and with hearts made new and candles kindled, we become who we really are: the anointed sons and daughters of God who know that the despair of the upper room on that Saturday will surely, surely, yield to Easter joy and light.

This is why we are able to not just tell the story but to become the story for a world that longs to hear it, needs to hear it, was made to hear it… and when we become that story in the Risen One, when we allow Him to once more be the Word made Flesh in us then, only then, does the marvel of Easter take place:

Christ will rise in your heart, in my heart.

Christ will work in us and through us.

Christ will pour out His blood upon us and breathe His Spirit into us and illumine us with His light and with His love…

And, when the moment comes for us to enter into His Kingdom, we will hear Him say, as He looks upon us all, “Kahlah!” “It is accomplished!”, and we will know ourselves to truly be His New Creation, His Victory Song, His Easter People who sing His Alleluia Cry…

This is why we vigil and this will be why we vigil to the end of time…

Yes…we have touched darkness…and will touch it again… earthly and fallible and fallen as we are…

We have seen how quickly our “Hosannas!” turn to cries of “Crucify!” and we know our sin, but we know our Saviour too and know that no darkness, however powerful it seems will stand against His Resurrection light!

No need for shame, or guilt, or fear, this Holiest of Nights, for they are the fruits of Adam’s turning away…now the new Adam appears, and with Him who is both God and Man we are returned not merely to Eden, but to Heaven itself, there to gaze upon the face of God forever and to hear our names called as children of the Most High…

Yesterday we kissed the Cross,

This evening we have vigilled from darkness to light

Tomorrow and forever…we are an Easter people for we know that above all, beyond all, behind all:

Christ has died,

Christ is risen,

Christ will come again!

May the Lord bless you and yours this Easter Night: The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Spy Wednesday: a meditation

Spy Wednesday:

We feel it once again
approach,
the annual reminder,
the telling of the
true tale;
of the betrayal
of love,
of light,
of God
that exists
not just then
but
always;
an option in each
moment.
Beguiled by shadows
of desire,
always appearing
bigger and better
than the that whose
shape
they,
in their smoke selves
flickeringly take
falsely;
we tell ourselves
the story
as old as eden
"It is for our good,
for their good,
for goodness sake,
for eventual good."
But we
know,
always,
deep down we
know,
as inch by inch,
step by step,
we turn our back on
Him,
on Love,
and allow
the callous clinking of
coin
to fall upon the
floor
of a once clean
sanctuary,
our fairy gold that
disappears
in morning light,
yet we,
knowing that good is
hard,
too often
take the eden easy
way,
and
descend the
steps of
desire
until despair
beckons...
Hold!
He is looking at
you,
always,
in this moment,
meet His eyes,
who saw you
first in
eternal
gaze of Love
from everlasting,
and hear Him call
your true
name!
Give Him
your
judas shrunken self,
lost in egoic agony,
and let
His betrayed and bought
blood
purchase for you
instead
Peter's
true tears,
crystalising
into repentant
rock
beneath
Easter's
thrice told
benediction.