Music of Eternity - Day 7 - Advent Waiting

Advent Waiting - waiting for me to begin to catch up? This is the chapter for Saturday 4th December, and it is now the 14th.

But this is not just learning to 'possess ourselves in patience' while waiting for our turn in some queue. I learned that skill in the dinner queue at primary school, standing in line, only allowed to talk with the people in front or behind, shuffling forward one pace at a time.

I heard that back in 'the old days', in grand houses, footmen were stationed in the corridors outside the main rooms, so that the family need only open the door to summon a servant. 

In some of the smartest restaurants I have ever been to, there are waiters standing around the room apparently doing nothing, but in fact ready to respond to the slightest gesture from one of the diners to fetch some water, another bottle of wine, replace a dropped fork (how embarrassing).

This kind of waiting, as in Psalm 123 v2

Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.    KJV

is about being still, but alert, attentive, ready to see or hear, and respond.  

Definitely a learned skill.

Footman sleeping
Charles Brague 1871
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435603

Thursday 2nd December - Music of Eternity Day 5

 Chapter Heading; 'Father, hallowed be Your Name'

If Advent is about awakening to God's Eternal Action - around us and within us - our natural response after encountering God will be to worship. Christ taught us the Lord's Prayer to recognise our privileged relationship with the God who is our Father. So our prayers open not with petition but with praise and adoration as we seek to enter into the deepest meaning of much-loved and familiar words. Evelyn [Underhill - check the subtitle of the book!] reminds us that self-interest dries up adoration and we need to guard against the poison of 'spiritual egoism'

Tricky, this - I can start off with praise and adoration, but it always seems to me that I praise God, and thanking Him and adoring Him not because 'He Is', but because of what He has done, and is doing, for us - everyone, me, my friends and my family - oops, I seem to have arrived upon the scene already, before the first sentence of this paragraph has ended, and before I reach the finish I will have started asking Him to intervene on behalf of everyone, my family and friends, and, of course, not forgetting, Me!

OK, back to the start - God the Creator of all things, who inspires, loves us (careful...) who makes all these colours I see around me, loves us, no, here I are again....

If you have only as little as half an hour to give each morning to your private prayer...spend half that time in such adoration... its neglect is responsible for much lack of spiritual depth... we must become, and keep, spiritually fit.

Half an hour! But if I don't get a move on I won't have time for a bath and I need to be ready by such and such a time because....

Perhaps, if I can only manage to do the 'praise and adoration' bit for a minute or two at a time, would it be ok if I split this into about ten really short 'Hi Intensity 'spiritual workouts' a day? That's actually doable - there is so much to see, taste, hear, pause over, before moving on to the next thing.

R S Thomas has a suggestion along these lines;

A Day in Autumn

It will not always be like this,

The air windless, a few last

Leaves adding their decoration

To the trees’ shoulders, braiding the cuffs

Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening

 

In the lawn’s mirror. Having looked up

From the day’s chores, pause a minute,

Let the mind take its photograph

Of the bright scene, something to wear

Against the heart in the long cold

Thursday 2nd December - Music of Eternity Day - Day 4

 'Wakening to God's Eternal Action' is the chapter heading.

The moment when we become aware of God's creative action, able to respond or resist, is when our conscious spiritual life begins.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this book is so full, so rich, so.... so much to take on board that it is getting beyond me. Like reading one of Paul's epistles when he starts getting all convoluted. 

I could spend fifteen minutes unpacking one of these sentences, and taking on several pages of them is a day's work. I don't have the stamina - concentration - focus - call it what you will, to read complex sentences full of Deep and Significant Words. 

However I found the 'fast food take-away', to carry around with me as I charge through the day;

The lesson of Christianity is what can be done with suffering, when it's met with self-oblivious courage and love.    

This reminds me of the heroism of the Catholic priest, Maximillian Kolbe in Second World War, when he took the place of someone else, a stranger, condemned to death in one of the infamous concentration camps.

Finally,

The true splendour and heart-searching beauty of the Divine Charity is not seen in those cosmic energies that dazzle and confound us; but in the transcendent power that stoops to an intimate, cherishing love - the grave, steadfast Divine action, sometimes painful, sometimes gentle, on the small unfinished soul.

From Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5; 

'Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father which is in heaven is perfect' (King James Version)  I am reminded of Kathleen Norris in 'Amazing Grace' unpacking the Hebrew word translated as 'perfect' also having the meaning of 'mature', 'ripe' - which soften and round out the more uncompromising sound of 'perfect'. 

 (I'm not ready for this badge yet!)

Tuesday 30th November - Music of Eternity Day 3

Day 3; Eternal love brooding over creation

That sounds more ominous than it needs to. Maybe 'brooding' is better thought of as 'watching', or 'mulling over', or even just providing warmth and safety like a hen sitting on her eggs?

For me the real nugget comes at the end, in these paragraphs on prayer, how to respond to this Eternal Love;

In prayer, my soul and God draw near – His fullness to my emptiness. If I realise a little of His Spirit working in my deeps, His action is most directly felt. All my prayer must be penetrated by this sense of my helpless imperfection, quiet abandonment of my formless soul to the Spirit brooding on the waters, bringing order, if I yield to His action. Without God’s grace I’m chaos. With that grace I’m a tiny bit of the Spiritual World being organised for His service. Come! Creator Spirit! Fill with grace the hearts You’ve created. 

So, what matters most in my prayer is not my desires, feelings, asking, efforts – not even my poor little bit of worship: but God, Who calls forth these stirrings of life. God, the Master of the Tides, changing and creating me, bringing, out of my unpromising depths, surprises of His wisdom and love; because my tiny will has made a slight response to His Mighty Will. ‘You have fashioned me behind and before and laid Your hands on me’ (Psalm 139.5). 

Now we turn to souls with whom we’re linked, for whom we must pray. We see them, too, without form, void; they often seem empty of love, trust and adoration; turbulent, uneasy, lacking meaning and loveliness – given over to ceaseless activity; at the mercy of every wind and current; and in their restlessness, so unpromising, so recalcitrant to God. Such easy subjects for our pessimistic indifference, but they too are part of Your raw material. Infinite possibilities are hidden in their deeps. There, too, Your Holy Spirit is brooding with cherishing power, bringing forth unrealised possibilities of life. Keep in my mind Your invisible action and Presence, where it’s most difficult to see – in the callous, greedy, earthly minded, flippant, cocksure; check my arrogance, intolerance, lack of patient, confident love. 

Keep in my mind the boundless possibilities of life, power and beauty hidden in every soul: and Your untiring, loving patience. I’m ignorant of these restless lives surrounding me. You’ve taken the turbulent, unharmonious, sinful, rebellious; and have created Your saints. Teach me to await Your creative action on other souls, and especially in those I’m tempted to dislike or neglect. Teach me reverence for all that unformed human nature on which Your Holy Spirit rests, which You can penetrate, transform, make holy, and in which You did deign to be incarnate, and showed us the Father’s glory.

Tuesday 30th November - The Music of Eternity 2

 

Day 2; Mighty Symphony of the Triune God

And once again there is so much in the Chapter that I've ended up skim-reading, just waiting for the phrase that will 'ping out'...

Or phrases - and here they are;

Right at the beginning;

Welcoming God will involve shifting focus from 'Mine' to 'Ours', for we're all linked as we respond in worship to our Triune God'..... We are drifting towards a religion which consciously or unconsciously keeps its eye on humanity rather than on Deity - which lays all the stress on service, and hardly any of the stress on awe: and that is a type of religion, which in practice does not wear well...in those awful moments when the pain and mystery of life are most deeply felt...It does not lead to sanctity. 

  and later;

We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have and to Do... forgetting that none of these verbs has any ultimate significance, except so far as it's transcended by., and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing is the essence of a spiritual life.

Furthermore;

Dante says that directly a soul ceases to say 'Mine', and says 'Ours', it makes the transition from the narrow, constricted, individual life to the truly free, personal, creative, spiritual life; in which all are linked together in one single response to the Father of all spirit, God. 

At this point I stopped highlighting the text... quite soon the whole chapter would be turning yellow. 

At first sight I might think that I was being asked to simply focus on our awesome God, whose power and capacity to create, save, forgive is constantly rehearsed in the Psalms.

However the emphasis on 'Mine' becoming 'Ours' as a response to this worship speaks of a mirroring of the Three Persons in the Trinity being combined together as 'Ours', not completely separated individuals each with their own 'Mine'.

Creative Commons
image of the Holy Trinity from and Antiphonary

  

 

Monday 29th November - The Music of Eternity 1

This one of the two Advent books I will be reading between now and Christmas.

The Music of Eternity - Meditations on the writings of Evelyn Underhill, by Robyn Wrigley-Carr. It is the choice of the Advent Facebook group I joined several years ago.    

It is fascinating to see what the other members 'find' in each chapter. I plan to put my 'take-aways' here, if I remember. We don't all post everyday.

The book starts on the first day of Advent, which was Sunday. I hadn't realised this, so already I am one day behind! Never mind, the other book runs from the first to the twenty-fourth of December so I have a day to catch up.

Day 1 - God's Perpetual Coming

There is so much packed into each day's reflection that it is hard to know where to start...

I'm still reeling from this;

'Attention to God is the primary religious act.....If we put His worship last and our needs first, all proportion goes'.

But I have the attention span of a goldfish...

Creative Commons

Sunday 13th December - Advent at Home 3

 This post is part of the 'Advent at Home' group, hosted by Angela Almond at Tracing Rainbows 

The theme for this coming week in my Advent book is 'Journeying' (the first theme was 'waiting', the second was 'accepting')

and today's poem by R S Thomas is 'Wrong?' I need to maybe apologise if this looks more like an analysis of a poem; I never studied poetry at school, so this is all a new exploration for me!

Wrong?

Where is that place apart
you summon us to? Noisily
we seek it and have no time
to stay. Stars are distant;
is it more distant still,
out in the dark in the shadow
of thought itself? No wonder
it recedes as we calculate
its proximity in light years.

Maybe we were mistaken
at the beginning or took later
a wrong turning. In curved space
one can travel for ever and not recognise
one’s arrivals. I feel rather
you are at our shoulder, whispering
of the still pool we could sit down
by; of the tree of quietness
that is at hand; cautioning us
to prepare not for the breathless journeys
into confusion, but for the stepping
aside through the invisible
veil that is about us into a state
not place of innocence and delight.

I am still trying to work out how R S Thomas shapes his sentences into a poem. It definitely reads differently to me according to which format I read. 

As prose, the sentences arranged into two paragraphs, the word orders are 'odd', the sudden changes of 'topic' are disorientating and it is harder to get to the meaning of each sentence. 

As separate sentences, the words lose meaning and power. Each sentence seemed fairly ordinary, until I reached the last one, which sprawls over ten lines, pausing at four commas and semi-colons (and a couple more would be helpful!). Each pause gave me time to create a picture, of the still pool I could sit by, the tree of quietness I could share space with, and then the headlong rush of words to finish with after the phrase 'breathless journeys into confusion'. 

Is this the message of Advent... that breathless hurry to get ready for Christmas will sabotage any hope of reaching that state, not place, of innocence and delight?

And would I have discovered this message if I had not paused by the still pool and the tree of quiet in my journey through the poem instead of reading at my usual pace of hurry?

Wednesday 2nd December

 Today's Advent Calendar tea;

So who thought tea should be cherry bakewell flavoured? I tried it; it tasted as though it would do me some good. However not a flavour I shall be seeking out!

I am way behind with daily drawings; here are a few from November pages, although the artwork was done yesterday or the day before. 

News of my father;

My brother is visiting my father as I am typing this blog post; he is making a steady improvement, but will be staying in for the rest of this week and over the weekend.

That is giving us time to get our heads round how to set up whatever arrangements may be needed.

Today's RS Thomas poem is this;

Kneeling

Moments of great calm,

Kneeling before an altar

Of wood in a stone church

In summer, waiting for the God

To speak; the air a staircase

For silence; the sun’s light

Ringing me, as though I acted

A great rôle. And the audiences

Still; all that close throng

Of spirits waiting, as I,

For the message.

Prompt me, God;

But not yet. When I speak,

Though it be you who speak

Through me, something is lost.

The meaning is in the waiting.

I find is extraordinary how the poem shifts focus according to how I read it; rather like how a phrase in music is transformed by how it is articulated (the combination of smooth and detached notes, or where you place the emphasis)

I have read this poem line by line, as it appears on the page, and also shifting the reading following the punctuation;

 

the air a staircase for silence

the sun's light ringing me

as though I acted a great role

And the audiences still

all that close throng of spirits waiting

Fascinating.

 

Tuesday 10th December - Advent Book Club 10

Winter Rain                                                      Memories


Every valley drinks,                                       and suddenly the music from 
        Every dell and hollow:                           'Messiah' is filling my head, as
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,            Isaiah is one of the other things
        Green of Spring will follow.                   I am reading in Advent

Yet a lapse of weeks                                     As I drive along the lanes to the
        Buds will burst their edges,                  various village schools I visit 
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,     I notice the hedges and trees.
        In the woods and hedges;                                                                                                                                                               
Weave a bower of love                                I look for the first leaves in the   
        For birds to meet each other,                hedges, the first daffodils and 
Weave a canopy above                                primroses. 
        Nest and egg and mother.                    I watch the rooks rebuilding 
                                                                                     their nests, sitting on their eggs
But for fattening rain                                    
        We should have no flowers,                   
Never a bud or leaf again                           And there's a particular chestnut 
        But for soaking showers;                    tree by the road that I look for 
                                                                     to see the leaves explode from  
Never a mated bird                                   the buds, and the candle-flowers
        In the rocking tree-tops,                       growing tall.    
Never indeed a flock or herd
        To graze upon the lea-crops.

Lambs so woolly white,                                                 
        Sheep the sun-bright leas on,                      
They could have no grass to bite                 Today was a grey and dank and
        But for rain in season.                            wet and cold. So I didn't do 
                                                                     any 'nature appreciation'.
We should find no moss                              I had my head tucked into my 
        In the shadiest places,                           collar and my eyes half-closed
Find no waving meadow-grass                     against the horrible weather.   
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies;               I wonder what I missed seeing?

But miles of barren sand,                           When I was a teenager, my
        With never a son or daughter,            parents lived in Indonesia.
Not a lily on the land,                                  I remember the long haul flights
        Or lily on the water.                             (we used to stop in Bahrain back
                                                                    then!) across hours and hours
We should find no moss                              of what seemed like an
        In the shadiest places,                        un-ending desert - brown,
Find no waving meadow-grass                   sandy, red, grey... no greens,
        Pied with broad-eyed daisies;             apparently feature-less; 
                                                                                            nothing but
But miles of barren sand,                                     miles of barren sand
        With never a son or daughter,
Not a lily on the land,
        Or lily on the water.

Tuesday 10th December - Advent Book Club 9

The poem for Monday was utterly depressing; 

Vanity of Vanities

Sonnet

Ah, woe is me for pleasure that is vain,
Ah, woe is me for glory that is past:
Pleasure that bringeth sorrow at the last,
Glory that at the last bringeth no gain!
So saith the sinking heart; and so again
It shall say till the mighty angel-blast
Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast
And showering down the stars like sudden rain.
And evermore men shall go fearfully
Bending beneath their weight of heaviness;
And ancient men shall lie down wearily,
And strong men shall rise up in weariness;
Yea, even the young shall answer sighingly
Saying one to another: How vain it is!

and I really wasn't in the mood to accept an invitation to sink into despondency and nihilism.

Today - Tuesday evening - I'm also tired. These last few teaching days of term are going to be an endurance test, and meditating on negativity isn't going to be an encouragement.

Suddenly, just now, this came into mind;

's-o-o-lid joy and la-a-sting treasure' - you have to imagine me singing it to the tune 'Abbotts Leigh' while trying to work out how the verse starts... got it...it's the last verse of 'Glorious things of thee are spoken' by John Newton.

Saviour, if of Zion's city

I through grace a member am,

let the world deride or pity,

I will glory in thy name.Fading is the worldling's pleasure,

all his boasted pomp and show;

solid joys, and lasting treasure

none but Zion's children know.

Yes! Enough of that 'woe' and 'vain' and 'sighingly' stuff. Rise up! Look; the colours of the sunrise and the sunset proclaim the glory of the Lord and the promise of solid joys and lasting pleasure!

No pictures today - I'm having a problem uploading them, and although my technical advisor is right beside me, he is watching a favourite TV program and I don't want to disturb him until afterwards! 

UPDATE - my Technical Expert had a moment and worked his magic!

;

Advent Book Club 6 - 'Sweet Death'

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Up_Flower_Meadow_Mineral_King.jpg

The 'four last things' to meditate upon during the four weeks of Advent, in the traditional 'keeping of Advent' are Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. So next week -Judgement - is likely to be as challenging as hard-hitting as this one... 

I'm looking forward to the 'Heaven' week, but then, 'Hell'? Give me strength!

Anyway, today's poem;
 

Sweet Death

The sweetest blossoms die.
And so it was that, going day by day
Unto the church to praise and pray,
And crossing the green churchyard thoughtfully,
I saw how on the graves the flowers
Shed their fresh leaves in showers,
And how their perfume rose up to the sky
Before it passed away.

The youngest blossoms die.
They die, and fall and nourish the rich earth
From which they lately had their birth;
Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by
And is as though it had not been:—
All colours turn to green:
The bright hues vanish, and the odours fly,
The grass hath lasting worth.

And youth and beauty die.
So be it, O my God, Thou God of truth:
Better than beauty and than youth
Are Saints and Angels, a glad company;
And Thou, O Lord, our Rest and Ease,
Are better far than these.
Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why
Prefer to glean with Ruth?

Christina Georgina Rossetti

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sweet-death-5/

My reaction is not as I thought it would be. I don't find this poem depressing, or sad, or troublesome.

Maybe this is because I have just come back from visiting my god-mother, who is 91 years old, and was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. Altjough she is well enough at the moment, she says she is 'fed up with being alive' and has had a few health incidents this year which have been exhausting for all concerned. 

Maybe this is because twenty years ago I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder, which in most cases does its stuff within five years 'you have been coming to us for maybe the longest of any of our patients', said the consultants last time I was there; that made me a pause for thought!). So,  Death, and possible ways of dying, have been a part of my Life for a long, long time.  

Maybe this because I think my mother, in her eighties, found death to be a release from fours years of living after a painful and incapacitating stroke which robbed her of her freedom of movement, her skill of painting, and left her in a good deal of pain and discomfort. I should add that her courage in staying gracious and positive and alert and as active as she could be, was a tremendous example. 

Maybe because my grandmother, born in 1891, once spoke briefly of her second (third?) child, who died shortly after birth. 'She was a 'blue' baby - I knew she wouldn't live,' she said. As one of the early women doctors, back in the 1930s, she would have known at once. Her faith and trust carried her through.

In Victorian times, as we all know, death was a common event, and life precarious. Old age could be uncomfortable, hard, painful; maybe, for many, it was better to die before old age overcame all comfort. 

I have given a lot of thought to Life and Death, and become reconciled to the idea that Life may be sweet, but cannot be relied upon to remain so indefinitely. Like flowers, we have our season of colour and growth and beauty - but it is a season, unlike grass which remains forever. 

Why are we so reluctant to face death? Why have we held on to its sting? Why are we so sure that there is a right time, and a wrong time to die?

Advent Book Club day 5

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rainbow

Another tough poem today - indeed a series of three poems;

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45001/the-three-enemies

The Three Enemies

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

THE FLESH

"Sweet, thou art pale."

"More pale to see,

Christ hung upon the cruel tree

And bore His Father's wrath for me."

"Sweet, thou art sad."

"Beneath a rod

More heavy, Christ for my sake trod

The winepress of the wrath of God."

"Sweet, thou art weary."

"Not so Christ:

Whose mighty love of me suffic'd

For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist."

"Sweet, thou art footsore."

"If I bleed,

His feet have bled; yea in my need

His Heart once bled for mine indeed."

THE WORLD

"Sweet, thou art young."

"So He was young

Who for my sake in silence hung

Upon the Cross with Passion wrung."

"Look, thou art fair."

"He was more fair

Than men, Who deign'd for me to wear

A visage marr'd beyond compare."

"And thou hast riches."

"Daily bread:

All else is His: Who, living, dead,

For me lack'd where to lay His Head."

"And life is sweet."

"It was not so

To Him, Whose Cup did overflow

With mine unutterable woe."

THE DEVIL

"Thou drinkest deep."

"When Christ would sup

He drain'd the dregs from out my cup:

So how should I be lifted up?"

"Thou shalt win Glory."

"In the skies,

Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes

Lest they should look on vanities."

"Thou shalt have Knowledge."

"Helpless dust!

In Thee, O Lord, I put my trust:

Answer Thou for me, Wise and Just."

"And Might."—

"Get thee behind me. Lord,

Who hast redeem'd and not abhorr'd

My soul, oh keep it by Thy Word."

They remind me of promises made at Baptism, to renounce Sin, the World and the Devil.

'The Flesh' - yes, well, I'm good at finding excuses for not doing what I ought - 

not feeling well, 

don't feel up to it,

too tired, 

it's been a long day

'The World' - yes, well, it's easy to be distracted by 

appearance, good looks

 clothes, style

 the good life, 

shopping, buying what you want

'The Devil'- yes, well, who doesn't want to be admired for their

skill,

cleverness,

power...

'Get thee behind me.'

Read that line carefully - it's not 'Get thee behind me Lord'!

No, that last verse is a plea to the Lord to keep my soul, all the souls, safe by They Word - another double meaning - Thy Word as in the Bible, and Thy Word as in the promise made to everyone.

  AdventBookClub is raising money for the Trussell Trust at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/adventbookclub2019, and is even in a group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1220319721395793/?ref=share. We are running from Advent Sunday Dec 1st to Candlemas in January, and using Rachel Mann’s “In the Bleak Midwinter“