friarmike

Where are you?

This is the all important question raised by God in serach of his first human companions. However, this couple had tasted a fresh fruit - that of self realisation - and now discovered for themselves self consciousness. First consequence - covering up their embarrassing nakedness.

Years of walking away from the garden has left us lost in selves of our own creation, aided and abetted throughthe various stages of our upbringing by family, peers, church etc. The invitation and the challenge is to stop, take stock and seek to delve into the unconscious to discover our true selves.

TRUE SELF/FALSE SELF

This is not an easy option. Just recognising that there is a false self in no way delivers me from its clutches and control. I have simply rationally and intellectually acknowledged its reality. A change in my informational database is no sign or symbol of any meaningful change in who I am or how I am able to live in the world.

Hence I can rage against the tension I experience in seeking to live in a dynamic transactional world, where my ability to live and survive is directly related to the transactional relationships I successfully generate. If I don't care to play that game, no problem I will sink and disappear - the outcome will most likely be both ugly and painful.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE WAY

However, if I recognise that I am invited to partner the Divine in a discovery - or rediscovery - of my true self, happiness will be my reward. I certainly believe this, yet recognise it is no easy equation. It requires a commitment from me to journey faithfully as a contemplative, and that self discovery in the realm of my unconscious will present some challenging questions to my conscious acceptance of myself. There will of course be the emotional turmoil that such a journey creates in its wake!

Yet I am now about ready, after ten years of preparatory work, to say yes to the invitation to embrace the contemplative life. I do so feeling all the angst and fury that daily life causes to rise within me, yet accepting that the regular rhythm of pursuing God in solitude and silence will mature me in ways that have as yet eluded me.

 

Where are you?

This is the all important question raised by God in serach of his first human companions. However, this couple had tasted a fresh fruit - that of self realisation - and now discovered for themselves self consciousness. First consequence - covering up their embarrassing nakedness.

Years of walking away from the garden has left us lost in selves of our own creation, aided and abetted throughthe various stages of our upbringing by family, peers, church etc. The invitation and the challenge is to stop, take stock and seek to delve into the unconscious to discover our true selves.

TRUE SELF/FALSE SELF

This is not an easy option. Just recognising that there is a false self in no way delivers me from its clutches and control. I have simply rationally and intellectually acknowledged its reality. A change in my informational database is no sign or symbol of any meaningful change in who I am or how I am able to live in the world.

Hence I can rage against the tension I experience in seeking to live in a dynamic transactional world, where my ability to live and survive is directly related to the transactional relationships I successfully generate. If I don't care to play that game, no problem I will sink and disappear - the outcome will most likely be both ugly and painful.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE WAY

However, if I recognise that I am invited to partner the Divine in a discovery - or rediscovery - of my true self, happiness will be my reward. I certainly believe this, yet recognise it is no easy equation. It requires a commitment from me to journey faithfully as a contemplative, and that self discovery in the realm of my unconscious will present some challenging questions to my conscious acceptance of myself. There will of course be the emotional turmoil that such a journey creates in its wake!

Yet I am now about ready, after ten years of preparatory work, to say yes to the invitation to embrace the contemplative life. I do so feeling all the angst and fury that daily life causes to rise within me, yet accepting that the regular rhythm of pursuing God in solitude and silence will mature me in ways that have as yet eluded me.

 

Where in the World?

There are times - increasingly frequent - when I am at a loss to know how to make sense of life. I know I am ageing and perhaps that makes a difference. For the scheme of life seems to be an endless repetition of irrelevant activities. Get up, eat breakfast, try to find enough work to pay for that breakfast - oh! and lunch and dinner as well.

 It matters little what the work is - just so long as one scratches out sufficient income to pay the tyranny of demands that are the price tag of democratic capitalism. 

 What to do? I don’t really have a tremendous appetite for living, working earning. Does that make me a reprobate or worse? Suffice to say I do work, many more hours than many of those I know yet such investment of hours produces little financial return. Perhaps I am simply inept, stupid and naive. Yet I don’t think I am alone.

 I am not that interested in becoming a waiter, bank clerk or company executive. Simply on the basis that I have little commitment to what such businesses deliver. The only purpose would be to keep me in coin so I can maintain the drudgery of the endless plight of humanity; awake, eat commute, work, earn, return home, eat, watch pointless TV & then sleep to generate sufficient strength to do it all again.

 My love for God is increasingly insufficient to enable me to find the will power to care enough to bother any longer. I am lost in this perennial tedium. Even stating it so baldly causes me to feel somewhat ungrateful - so be it. It is what it is and I am tired of manufacturing energy and excitement.

 Life is dreary - the outcome of very many decisions and, in my case, I can only conclude bad decisions. Well here is the challenge: to discover God in these collapsing inner recesses of my own diseased mind. May God have mercy - I know of no-one else to turn towards.

 

Family Christmas

The Challenge

It's a challenge each Christmas. My aged mum comes which is fun. However, I miss the opportunity for real celebration a larger family gathering would offer. Neither of my siblings, no doubt for excellent reasons, appear to want to enjoy an extended family gathering.

Over the years this has made me sad. Yet I am slowly seeking to come to terms with it. My preference is after all only my preference. As a mediator I of all people recognise that there is always 'another story'! My perception is neither the only one nor the right one. I am curious in a contrsuctive way as to my sister's and brother's perceptions.

Heavy Hearted

Of course reacognising the intellectual validity is not the same as addressing the emotions associated with the situation. These emotions can lead to paranoid thoughts that my natural family all hate me through to sub personality 'Mr Angry' getting into a mood and yelling. Such yelling is entirely inconsequential, unless you are in the way of it, but does feel good at the time.

Learning to sit with the heavy heart and refuse to give voice to the disappointment is a skill I am slowly learning to master. After all is it really a family festival? Or is it not an opportunity to take stock and give thanks for the many good experiences in life and show love to others? 

Managing the Disappointment

This year I have found that to sit quietly with the weight of the disappointment has been a good way to manage my own personal pain. Only one brief outburst on Christmas Day - but this has been so much better than before. So what made the difference?

1) Be Prepared. I know what Christmas does. I also know that neither of my siblings will initiate any conversation about Christmas and just hope it will be managed as it has been every year before. If I am ready to accept this state of affairs, I know what to expect and therefore have no reason to react negatively to the situation. I can be prepared for the situation and my emotional responses.

2) Address the Perception. In response to my feelings and perception, I decided this year to write a brief handwritten letter to both my sister and brother expressing the fact that we had not spent any meaningful time together since we all flew the family nest 4 decades ago. Forty years of no real interaction is not going to be overcome in an instant. This is a pattern of behaviour for which we all have to accept equal responsibility. I made the offer to meet up and build friendship. However, I also gave a way out by saying I was cool if that was not what either of them wanted. I had to be sure that I would be cool before I conveyed that message to them. 

3) Imagine the future. I looked at the worst outcome and then imagined myself on a quayside as two ocean going liners set sail for distant countries. On one was my sister on the other my brother. I waved them goodbye recognising that they were emigrating and that communication and meeting will therefore prove difficult. I turned and walked away from the quayside with a deep sadness yet knowing that any future contact, however meagre, will be valuable in itself. I was able to keep my love for both of them alive and accept the minimal contact as sufficient.

4) Managing forward. Of course imagining the worst case and living in the reality of such a scenario are different from each other. I therefore began a process of revisiting that quayside image, of verbally expressing gratitude for the pieces of news and communication I do receive, most often from mum herself, whilst also accepting that once mum passes it is likely communication and contact will diminish still further. 

Living now

Emerging from Christmas many may find they journey into the New Year with disappointments. I am now 'managing forward' in the strength of what I have imagined - which is the worst scenario - so it might improve! However, the improvement will happen in real time and not in the dark recesses of my diseased mind! I am fortunate since I have over the last few years discovered so much as a contemplative follower of Jesus. This has provided critical skills to help live in the midst of the pain experiencing the comfort of the Beloved. This last may not be where you are, and no problems.

Each of us must progress through life and at times we must make the effort to lay aside that which robs us, even though it presents itself as an ideal solution if only we could pull it off. The issue, however, is that we have not pulled it off, and after many unsuccessful attempts there comes a time to say we will respond but can no longer either dream or initiate.

14 October: Katey Day

I have decided to embrace 14 October each year as katey day. It is the day that she quietly slipped her moorings and set sail on the translucent eternal ocean that is God’s liquid love.

This year I visited Quarr Abbey, enjoying the warmth and sunshine of this St Martin’s Summer. Of course today more fashionably renamed ‘Indian Summer’ thanks to a colonial friends in the USA - a time when the first nation’s were seen to return home for harvest and winter and the colonists could expect all raids to cease until the following spring.

However, before this it was St Martin’s Summer describing any period of unexpected sunshine from the end of September until St Martin’s feast day on November 11.

I can’t say I thought too much about St Martin, although he has been in my thoughts. A good friend of mine moved from Pompey to St Martinsfield in Martinstown in Dorset - neither of us know why it was named after St Martin.

Still my trip to Quarr was made as a pilgrim. I had my scrip (day sack) and staff and walked from my house to the car ferry that carried me to the Isle of Wight. En route I paused and prayed at the roofless Garrison Church. 

This had once served as a hospital named Domus Dei or House of God. It was built in 1212 to offer hospitality to traveling pilgrims on their way to Chichester, Winchester and Canterbury. It was a time to reflect on Katey’s final day on earth when she received such kindness and welcome from a modern day hospital - on her pilgrimage to God’s presence.

I then tipped my hat to the cathedral, dedicated to St Thomas a Becket and as such a reminder that even servants of the Crown can be transformed by the love of God: Dr Fox et al take note!

A gentle crossing, followed by my walk to the Abbey and a day of wonderful reflections in the pilgrim chapel, surveying the ruins of the original abbey and visiting a beautiful Norman parish church in Binstead.

I could not help recalling that as I was able to sit out in the Abbey’s grounds in this unexpected yet welcome autumnal warmth, that Katey herself had burned brightest and radiated such a warmth of welcome, calm and beauty in the early and unexpected autumn of her life. And just as this St Martin’s summer will swiftly disappear so her mortal life quietly faded and was extinguished that fateful autumnal evening. 

On that occasion as we left the hospital we were sprinkled with raindrops - creation’s tears mingled with our own. However, on this the third anniversary I returned across the Solent gazing upon a glorious sunset; a reminder of Katey’s most glorious inheritance. I smiled and went my pilgrim’s way.

 

It is significant that those who lead our nation appear to have more answers than questions. This worries me. I would feel a lot safer with more questioning and the creation of an open space for conversation. The dialogue might more easily be moved away from positional statements to exploring shared interests and then determining creative solutions in light of those interests. Until then I anticipate monologues of persuasive speeches. I shall return to the silence and listen to the Beloved.

A Time to Speak

Following my first week long silent retreat, I knew that I was required to be silent. Hence no blogs for a while. The silent - or directed - retreat took place at the Carmelite Friary in Aylesford in Kent. The retreat was directed in as far as I had up to 30 minutes available with a spiritual director each morning.

This was a wonderful time in which I could chat about what God was talking through with me. My director, a delightful lady, listened, asked questions and placed some useful resources in my hands. As for the rest of the time it was in silence, including meal times. I found it enriching and deeply engaging. I captured the experience as best I could in my journal. I had arrived with an agenda based around what I describe as the fourth chapter of my life. This may sound strange so allow me to enlighten you.

Chapter One was my childhood and education - happy memories soaked in sunshine as though it never rained. Chapter Two was conversion and christian service, a time of great opportunity, fun and remarkable successes. Chapter Three saw me thrust into the role of conflicted carer as I sought to find the means and the grace to care for my wife Katey as she battled her MS. This paralysing disease eventually demanded her life in 2008. And so to the present - Chapter Four entitled ‘Disconnected and Confused’! Here I had stumbled and ground to a halt - writer’s block - not knowing how to fill the first page of this new chapter. Various attempts such as revisiting the substance and acquaintances from Chapter Two had failed to ‘re-launch’ my life. Here was my diet for a week of silence.

Significantly God had his own intentions for our week together. Notably, whilst retainng my agenda inviting me to look at it through a different set of lenses. The struggles I had been experiencing in seeking to resume my past life were cut away from me. I was invited by the Spirit to consider who I had become through the rough and tumble of the previous years, more especially chapter three. I was freed to once more gaze at and embrace the original calling I had experienced when at Oxford and upon first finding God. This was energising and my whole being relaxed. The call to Christian service was restated and reinforced.

The vehicle I had travelled in and somehow either tumbled or been tipped out of - evangelicalism - could be safely abandoned. My purpose and my call remained intact. My God still beckoned me forward. I might choose the vehicle for the future to realise all God had invested into me. Hence upon returning home I embraced a further period of silence and reflection to better clarify all my Beloved had entrusted to me. I am the richer for that time and shall again begin to write. However, write from a fresh, if not a new place. 

I am grateful for the road I have travelled, and those who proved to be companions along the way. However, my road has now branched off and I will explore alone or until joined by fresh companions for this next chapter. I shall continue to explore Formation and share all I see, feel and discover with fellow pilgrims in search of the heart of God and willing to build the solidarity that is at the heart of all true Christian community. This feels good, if challenging. I also feel alone yet at peace within, secure in the knowledge of God’s call and confident that as I have found grace sufficient for Chapters 1 through 3, there will be sufficient grace for the whole of Chapter 4 as it unfolds.

I have no need of tomorrow’s grace, today!

In Search of Saints

One wonders where the avalanche which is the Murdoch meltdown will end. The very media that Murdoch has championed and fed himself from has now perhaps turned to strike him back. 24/7 reporting has created a voracious appetite amongst news junkies whilst commentators have to find continuous new angles to fill the airwaves.

It is worth reflecting that the series of high profile resignations may be a direct result of this incessant clamour for news print or broadcast material. Is it appropriate that senior police officers in the Met. should resign so suddenly? Especially before the results of a full and frank public enquiry reports! Even the Prime Minister looks vulnerable. It will be left to historians to wrestle with the necessity or wisdom of some of these immediate decisions. News can it appears create the news.

Certainly the instant nature of news and the reach that media has via TV and the internet has created a culture requiring instant reaction and response. The news junkie wants an update or fresh angle each time s/he tunes in; the journalist needs to keep the story developing both to justify their existence and to contrast the present news hour with the last.

The global nature of networked news has immediate effect upon the financial value on News International with their share price having lost 20% of its pre crisis value as of this morning. Indeed this may present the greatest challenge to Mr Murdoch’s continuing control. Shareholders will not be happy!

We can all witness the reach and the power of new media - how best to enhance this remains a critical challenge. The whole of the UK seems to be swift to decry the evil of the Murdoch community - and by inference assume people in responsible positions are somehow, by virtue of that position, moral and ethical by default. Sadly this is not the case - humanity reflects its perennial fracture in every field of human endeavour. The disappointing fact is that no one seems to tire of the consistent failure of the humanist, secular experiment. Christianity remains in many ways ‘out of bounds’ yet offers a positive alternative to all that confronts us.

The church most surely has its faults, but tarnished saints are preferable to no saints at all. 

 

The Lost Discipline of Forgetfulness

I was unwinding in the hot and heavily scented water of my bath the other evening. I literally felt the stress flowing out of my muscles. It was sheer delight and wanton luxury. However, lest I offend a hapless reader let me pause there! The bath is really incidental.

It had started with the normal frustration of realising I had forgotten to remove my spectacles. I only remembered when lifting cupped hands of hot water to me face I collided with my glasses frame, now precariously perched upon my nose. No damage done. However, the frustration was less the fact that I had left them on than the fact that, once again, I had neglected to remove them.

Again somewhat of an unreasonable emotional reaction to something so insignificant. Yet here I was ‘stressing out’ over my lapse of memory,'stressing' over an irrelevance and only increasing the number of reasons I was taking a relaxing bath in the first place.

Now if the very action embraced to reduce stress becomes in and of itself a source for further muscle tension what’s the point?

Well this is not the point. I got to thinking as I was soaking. Why are we so harsh upon ourselves when we are forgetful? I notice it in older people all the time, forgetting names, locations, TV programne details and the like. All of no real import save in the eye of the oublieux. Yet often creating quite an acute and negative personal reaction within them. So here I was getting older and more forgetful and more stressed, fulfilling the stereotype - now that is not a good idea!

Then the moment of realisation. This art of forgetting is in fact not a curse but a sign of emerging spiritual maturity. It is in fact what I have now named the ‘Lost Discipline of Forgetfulness’. And before I receive too many criticisms it is quite evident as such.

Those followers in the way of Jesus will be familiar with the fact that God both forgives and forgets our shameful acts of disobedience. Hebrews 8:12 is explicit in this regard - ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more’. 

If this is the practice of the triune God than I guess it is something I too must master. Both forgive and forget my momentary lapses of memory and travel on celebrating the forgetfulness as a sign of spiritual growth.

Forgetfulness as a spiritual discipline is something I shall now practice vigorously! I shall celebrate each memory loss and respond with a smile.

Now where did I put those glasses? I do believe I am beginning to laugh!!

Silence & Solitude

I have safely and recently arrived back from the USA. A trip with various objectives. Principal amongst these was to participate in a Silence and Solitude retreat led by a very dear friend, Jeff Pratt. As many will know, I am a part of Axiom global monastic community, which was founded by Jeff. My own journey in community living and embracing the life of a Friar over the last several years has landed itself alongside Jeff in seeking to give both support and leadership to Axiom. Hence I am a member of Axiom, and the Friary here in Southsea an Axiom House.

The retreat was an opportunity to participate with others in what Jeff facilitates so well. Describing himself as a ‘contemplative activist’, Jeff has plumbed the depths of God’s presence over the years and offers retreats birthed from his long and rich experience of walking with God.

For me, this retreat arrived at a good time. I have, as many people are aware, been applying for jobs in the years since Katey passed away, yet without success. Over sixty applications with a handful of interviews have failed to secure any opening through which I could comfortably deploy my call and my gifts.

However, in April this year I closed the door on further applications believing that I was invited by God to continue to pursue the contemplative road more intentionally and work with Peaceworks in mediation and Peacebuilding - this latter for three days a week. 

The retreat therefore came at a time when I had agreed this way ahead with God and  wanted to commit myself and all I am to this new road of faith and adventure. It was an enriching time with a wonderful group of fellow pilgrims - about 17 of us in all.

Jeff’s leading - a light touch with honest illustration and wealth of rich experience - provided an outline enabling us all gently to pursue a path of encountering self before encountering God. The scene set during a brief Friday night session located in the context of a comfortable, candlelit room before the Saturday journey to a retreat centre on Enders Island. Here we had the run of the grounds, surrounded by the ocean, to pursue our journey in solitude and silence. This challenge supported by a focussed article to initiate our time through a private reading and the opportunity to meet together in groups at the end of our time to reflect together on all we had discovered - and for everyone in my group this was positive.

Saturday ended with a splendid dinner at Mystic Pizza altogether (the restaurant famous for the launch of Julia Roberts acting career) and then on the Sunday one final session enabled us to reflect together on where God would take us next with all that we had discovered.

For me the lessons of the retreat were again the value of participation alongside others whilst having the space for self reflection and engagement. It was wonderful to take the time to examine who I was and how I showed up - to note significant changes even over the last few months - to confront my own fractured ego again where it still fought to fill my space without the true me. Again the sense of the freedom we enjoy in Christ overwhelmed me, whilst I saw just how wedded I remained to certain rules and conventions - some social, some religious - that offered neither hope nor redemption. 

There is also the recognition that each of us must accept the person who we are - warts and all - rather than seeking to suppress that part of ourselves WE deem ungodly or inappropriate for public show. No matter what the dressing, this remains basically who we are and we need to remind ourselves that this is who God accepts. Loving self is not about some idealised saint coiffured by bible verses and designer church. No! Loving self is accepting the warped and wicked person I am and knowing that grace suffices and through relaxing in and considering God I can find the rhythm to grow into the maturity and fulness God offers. This is a work of the years only accomplished through personal encounter in contemplative prayer and action.

So rested in this reflection it was good to confirm with God that I am willing ready and able to offer quiet days and retreats in the Friary in Southsea, travel to provide support and encouragement to those on the journey or requiring a contemplative journey within their own space - alone or with others - and to join in facilitating pilgrimages. Nothing is more satisfying than knowing where one begins and ends and what therefore one can contribute. A time of joyful contemplation marked the start to my USA journey and I remain today the richer for it.