PLENI SUNT

 

·      “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that has faith in me, even though he dies, shall live. And all that live and have faith in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)

·      Why are we believers not in a state of perpetual wonder at the magnitude of the gift we have received? Perhaps because we are not often faced with evidence of it in our daily lives. Getting and spending we lay waste our wonder. Worse, infirmities and blows befall us, and worse befalls the Umwelt, the wider world; all of which the Adversary incites us to parse as counter-evidence.

·      Is there, then, a way back, or forward, into recognition and thus renewal? Yes.

·      Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua. We live, move and have our being in an ocean of God’s glory. Oh yeah? say our atheist friends. Yeah.

·      Begin at beginners’ level: an April day in the Southern French countryside. Everything is in flower, from the humble campion via pale irises and roses’ intensity to the pouring gold of laburnums and the Tyrian shout of Judas-trees. Bees crawl over the wistaria in an ecstasy of fulfilment. A cuckoo sounds in the distance. Bright golden sunshine touches your eyelids, and a cool breeze murmurs to your hair. Yes, you say to yourself: this one’s easy. Nature doesn’t get much better. Glory is all about.

·      The Spoiler, though, is only briefly embarrassed. Look, he says. You are walking slowly, with two sticks. You discover a new pain every day. You have prostate cancer. Your neighbour has had much of his intestine removed and carries a stroma. One of your friends ended up, too young, with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Your mother died of a stroke after five interminable years of Alzheimer’s. Glorious?

·      After a brief prayer you reply, Yes. I am here, giving thanks and praise; not only for Thibault the donkey whose nose I just stroked, but for his lookalike, the young radiotherapist who treated my cancer, and the tireless ladies who tended his machine. My neighbour has kept his huge echoing laugh and every scrap of his fighting soul. My friend was cared for with extraordinary love by his wife, a nurse, and his condition brought his friends and colleagues to organise an entire small conference in his honour, in his own remote city, where he was surrounded by honour and affection in his last year. And my mother’s illness brought out in my father a depth of sacrificial love and self-abnegation neither he nor we dreamed he possessed. All conditions of the earth earthy; but that terra was and is plena also of glory.

·      The Contrarian gnashes his teeth, allowing you at last to hear what that sounds like. As we know, he is expert at teleportation; and he whisks you in a whoosh to another part of the country where the houses are experiencing their fifth flooding in two months, women and men are hopelessly piling furniture and working mops and pumps and discovering that their insurance has found an excuse not to pay up even as their walls crack and peel with the absorbed moisture. Aye, he grins. There’s glory for you.

·      But his eyes darken as the Fire Brigade appears. The young men and women are all volunteers, part-timers, the friends and neighbours of the afflicted, They turn up with boats of several kinds, helped by local farmers with tall tractors that brush aside the water; they help the elderly out of their flooded houses, wrap them in blankets and take them to the high-school gym where other volunteers are already preparing hot coffee, tea and cocoa, as well as comforting hugs. Glory creeps in through the windows and swirls invisibly among the rafters. Level Three, and it’s still there: stronger than ever, perhaps.

·      Now the Enemy switches on the television even as he tunes your smartphone to three different social networks simultaneously. As casualty figures from Sudan mingle with Russian atrocities in Ukraine, Islamist decapitations in the Middle East and teenagers kicking other teenagers to death in a Parisian suburb, he grins. Gloria in excelsis? he hisses.

·      Yes, well, this is the graduate course. Were you ever told it was going to be easy? You go back and pray. Time out: need to work on this one. And yet, and yet, something comes tiptoeing out of the wreckage and the gore. Something difficult at first to identify, but call it Horror. You can see it in the faces of the reporters in Boutcha, in the womens’ eyes behind the niqabs, and in the classmates of the French teenagers as well as their parents. It is a strange glory, this: it crawls with agonizing slowness from Fear to No Complicity to Resistance – and it is a glory, perhaps the greatest even: a glory crowned with thorns.  

·      So: pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua? Indeed they are; but often unexpectedly. Which brings us back to That Man. Yeshua Meshiach. Who was expected to turn up as a new King David, with an army, to take Jerusalem and then make the Romans an offer they couldn’t refuse; and who instead appeared as a tall, bony itinerant rabbi striding through the North Country, preaching in villages an unlikely message of returning the measureless love of an invisible Father and extending risky affection to troublesome neighbours. A supposed monarch who rode into town on a donkey; a holy man who let himself be put to a hideous death with slaves and killers; a dead man who came back and ate fish on the beach with his friends. From his life to his message to his return, everything about him is unexpected. You can’t make this up. This isn’t a religion: gods don’t act like this. Gods drink nectar on mountaintops and flirt with nymphs.

·      So, this being the case, we may expect gloria sua also not always to be probable either. And it works both ways. If we learn to recognize the glory, from the laburnums all the way to the resistance, then perhaps we can begin to understand the Gift – a Gift which, like the glory, lives below and beside our everyday life, an insistent and reassuring heartbeat. A vita eterna that has already begun, coursing silently but mightily through our days, always only the whistle-thin membrane of a prayer away.

SOME ARE BORN LENTEN, SOME ACHIEVE LENT....

And yes, some have Lent thrust upon them. I have never been good at fasting and generally at self-denial and other outward and visible signs of penitence. The only time I remember having renounced something successfully for Lent, what I had decided to give up was anger. Prayer and sharing come somewhat more easily. But each year the beginning of Lent is a moment of crisis and difficulty. One is told that it must not be like New Year’s resolutions; that the hope of “making a good Lent” is a form of pride; and so what one is left with is a mess of confusing, and confused, thoughts and prayers and the hope that somehow it will all come out right.

This year, though, the general feeling of vernal well-being and bouncing energy that always used to feel so contradictory to a season of penitence and introspection was providentially removed. In the first place I was recovering from surgery, having had a knee replaced and still learning to walk. I can assure those friends who haven’t had this done that the verse “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow” takes on a whole new, and conflicted, meaning. Then, as walking was going better, off on a 3-day birthday trip to Barcelona, I tripped over a suitcase on a station platform, measured my length and broke two ribs. This ensured discomfort if not actual pain for another four weeks. And when that was finally settled, on a conference trip to North America, I contracted what I thought was a particularly vile cold but what turned out (as diagnosed in a New York hospital) to be authentic flu. 

My medical experiences are of no interest; what is curious is the coincidence with Lent. It truly did feel as if one was having Lent thrust upon one. And yes, it made me read more, pray more, and meditate more – most particularly as, returning home, I found among the held-over mail, a present from my daughter that blazingly illuminates each remaing Lenten day: Malcolm Guité’s Words in the Wilderness, a daily companion to Lent and Easter by way of poetry, ranging from his own (remarkable) poems to those of C.S. Lewis, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Tennyson, Donne, and of course the indispensable and durably glorious St George Herbert (as I have heard him invoked in an Anglican litany). With Guité and Benedict XVI’s magnificent Jesus of Nazareth vol. 2 Holy Week, my Lent is moving toward a deeply satisfying close, for which I can only give continuing thanks. Mind you, the fast is still slow……  

OF WATER AND LIGHT

“For with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light.” (Psalm 36)

Coming upon this while reading through the day’s psalms, I always feel a thrill run down my spine: the sure sign of true poetry. The well of life reminds me of Spenser’s characterization of Chaucer as “the well of English undefiled”. The well, of course, is not un puits but une source, a wellspring, a spring in the grass from which water flows unceasingly. God, says the Psalmist, is not the well: the spring is with him. It is near him, in his proximity; it is complicit with him, on his side, part of what God creates and wants us to recognize. 

We may imagine – as God always lets us imagine – himself, the Ancient of Days, seated in a meadow of his own creation, perhaps on the Seventh Day, tired but content, contemplating a new and unspoiled planet, and at his foot, in the unimaginably lovely fresh grass, a spring bubbling, its water coursing in rivulets down the hill. The water is life. Which is very insightful of the Psalmist: we now know that the sine qua non for a planet to support life is the presence of water. And the spring of that life is with God.

He created it, after all; but the beauty is that he kept it with him: close to him, never far away. He does not let the bubbling up of life out of his sight. Whatever it becomes later; whatever mud weighs it down, whatever filth pollutes it, whatever cruel droughts dry it up; if we trace it to its source, we shall find God, watching over it.

Life and light, in the good fortune of English, are alliterative twins; and the image of life is followed by an even more puissant one of light. Light allows us to see: to see things, to see the world, to see our neighbours. But what allows us to see light? In one sense, light is invisible; but what the Psalm tells us us that that is only one sense. In another, we see light; but we see it “in thy light”, in the light of God. No easy image of the Ancient of Days here. Can we get our mind round this? “In thy light shall we see light.” Light, the very essence of our consciousness, the primary element that allows us to see everything else, is itself secondary. We see it in, in the context of, as part of, as an emanation of, His light. 

How do we adjust this to our known and felt experience? We think we see light all the time, whether we ‘believe in’ God or not. We live, move and have our being in a world where light is an everyday occurrence. So in what way can it be secondary? Perhaps we should entertain the possibility that only when we see light in His light do we see light pure, light as it was created to be when God said “let there be light.” Any light, then, which we see on our own, without first adjusting our mind’s eye to God, is a polluted light, a light subtly touched by original sin. An uncomfortable thought; but those who have known conversion can tell you that it changes even your way of seeing – i.e. light. Perhaps they, for the first time, are seeing light in His light.

And finally, both life and light together spurred the Psalmist – unknown to us, but he must have existed as a real person, King David or no – to compress them together and so make a flash of pure poetry. Which in itself is always a new way of seeing.

JOYS OF LENT

I used to think it a painful paradox that gloomy old Lent happened just as the almond trees came into bloom, followed by the forsythias, the daffodils, the plum tree, the daisies, the buttercups and all the whole décor of spring. Just as we were all getting over winter and feeling sort of festive, we were told to repent, spiritually at least to put on sackcloth and ashes, to abstain from anything pleasurable or tasty, for forty bloody long days until Easter. One put up with it, one did one’s best, but it was hard to go along with it with any real enthusiasm.

To my surprise, this year is different. Perhaps because of a change of tone in the Church’s teachings on the subject, perhaps because I’ve gone more deeply into the spiritual aspects of it, and perhaps also because I’ve decided to do for, and in, Lent what I would previously have done separately: take care of Brother Ass, as St Francis called our bothersome physical body, at the same time as increasing reading and prayer. As our local priest put it, a thorough spring cleaning.

And to my surprise, as I said, it has so far made for a different Lent. I feel in no way out of tune with Nature; doing (or omitting) some of the things one should have seen to ages ago is cheering; as every old-fashioned housewife knew and knows, spring cleaning is not only useful, it gives a lift to the spirit. I don’t think I’m up to serious fasting, but doing without alcohol and meat is, for an old whisky-dramming carnivore, a real change of speed. It turns out not be particularly hard, and has some pleasant if in no way spiritual side-effects.

I write this here because it may help someone who still thinks of Lent as a gloomy guilt-trip. I do have to remind myself daily of the Cross, and to make some kind of act of contrition, but that fits in perfectly because it was always already there and makes sense. Meanwhile, I glory in the spring around me, in the Southern French countryside where it is the most perfect season of the year; I give thanks for so much beauty, and I praise God for suggesting a spring cleaning to put me into better harmony with His creation.

STRANGE RISING

Fra Angelico, 'The Resurrection'

A strange and unusual Triduum paschale – Good Friday without Bach’s St Matthew Passion for once, but also without computer, tablet or screen of any kind, doing physical things in house and garden, meditating and praying while doing them, rather like Brother Lawrence. A halt at 3 pm for a special prayer as the Temple veil tears and the new Temple is inaugurated, bloodstained, hanging on the Cross.

Holy Saturday, a glorious Spring day, again full of busy-ness but full of prayer also – the strange emptyness of that day filled with blossoms and sunshine, yet always the knowledge of the open, empty Tabernacle that always fills me with wordless anguish.

That evening an invitation to supper, accepted because the veillée paschale at the Cathedral last year had left us cold in every sense, and an Easter morning service seemed preferable. The adorable, generous and appreciative hosts overdid the hospitality with groaning platters of seafood and Gewürtztraminer, and kept us talking – about the Church, amongst other things – till midnight. During the deep, still night a sudden wind sprang up, blew open the windows and died down, as if the Resurrection were taking place at that very moment. Then it rained, the gutters gurgling happily with the new life. And in the morning there was no energy of any kind, and once again the tradition had to be abandoned for care to Brother Ass. And yet this Easter has been one of the most profound I can remember.

The reason I post this very personal note is because there may be a lesson in it. For those of us who love traditions, rituals, ceremony and solemnity, it may upon occasion be very salutary to see what remains when one removes them. (Normally, my struggle goes the other way, as our world is removing them or eviscerating them at an alarming rate in any case.) In my case, what remained, I found, was prayer and a quietly penetrating sense of love.

In the course of this two thoughts occurred to me which I will share here. One: in all the prayers I have heard and joined in for the victims of the recent terrorist attacks, I have not once in any Church or Christian context heard a single prayer for the attackers. And yet we are expected, are we not, to pray for our enemies? Two: in every Mass, after the Institution, the priest prays for the Church; invariably he prays for Pope Francis, then goes on to the bishop and clergy; but not once have I heard Pope Benedict included in this prayer. He is still alive, he is still Pope. If I work at it, I can perhaps imagine a reasoning behind it; but I find it shameful.

And finally, I have said it before but will say it again: the finest accompaniment to Holy Week for an educated lay person that I know is that same Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, volume 2: Holy Week, from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. He is a great man, ending his life gently in a saintly manner; and I pray for him, and give thanks for him, daily.

PURE JOY

Psalm 96. Cantate Domino

O SING unto the Lord a new song : sing unto the Lord, all the whole earth.
2. Sing unto the Lord, and praise his Name : be telling of his salvation from day to day.
3. Declare his honour unto the heathen : and his wonders unto all people.
4. For the Lord is great, and cannot worthily be praised : he is more to be feared than all gods.
5. As for all the gods of the heathen, they are but idols : but it is the Lord that made the heavens.
6. Glory and worship are before him : power and honour are in his sanctuary.
7. Ascribe unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people : ascribe unto the Lord worship and power.
8. Ascribe unto the Lord the honour due unto his Name : bring presents, and come into his courts.
9. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness : let the whole earth stand in awe of him.
10. Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King : and that it is he who hath made the round world so fast that it cannot be moved; and how that he shall judge the people righteously.
11. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad : let the sea make a noise, and all that therein is.
12. Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it : then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord.
13. For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth : and with righteousness to judge the world, and the people with his truth.


This morning's Psalm. The trees rejoice before the Lord.

HAPPY LENT?

For much of my life, Lent has found me feeling rebellious. The fruit trees are in bloom, the forsythia glows golden, the Japanese quinces are patches of Oriental red, you wake to a dawn chorus of newly-joyful birds. You feel like Swinburne’s chorus:

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins; 

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remember'd is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 

And then you are put to school to grief and repentance, you are told to remember what a general misery you are and to acknowledge and bewail your manifold sins and wickedness, in flagrant contradiction of the season. So you half-heartedly try to give up chocolate, occasionally feel, and fight, a twinge of guilt, and roll on Easter.

            It is only since, at 70, I decided that it was time for a new adventure and that the one befitting my age was faith, that I have begun (and only begun) to understand the meaning, and the richness of Lent. As a French clergyman put it recently, one might look at it as an athlete’s training period. Or, to quote an American Benedictine, see it as an annual opportunity to concentrate on what needs doing to become a better recipient of all the grace that stands ready to be poured into one.

            Does anyone still do spring cleaning? I remember it from my youth. The house gets turned upside down, one room at a time, and cleaned to within an inch of its life. (And no one thought that contradicted the season.)

            You are not meant to go around feeling guilt and gloom. But on the other hand, you are encouraged to face up to yourself. Like alcoholics in AA, you are meant to take this opportunity of looking your whole self in the face, including those things that weigh upon you in the night time, those things you wish you had or hadn’t done or said or even thought, those things you’d much rather ignore but which, as any psychologist will tell you, come back through the kitchen door after being chased out the front.

            Faith isn’t psychology, and – again as in AA – you are not expected to deal with all this by yourself. The house to be cleaned is yours, but not only yours; and the Master of the house is ready to lend a hand. So where to begin?

            Like many good things, I learned, Lent is divided into three parts: prayer, fasting, and giving. The big difference with the old days of giving up chocolate is prayer. It’s the joyful basis of the whole thing. Because in conversation with a loving Father, you can look at yourself with complete honesty and see what needs changing and what needs forgiving.

            Fasting I am terrible at, perhaps because we went through a period of famine near the end of WW II when I was 3. Explanation, not excuse. But perhaps there are ways, even for a 21^st-century far-from-monk, to learn. In the first place, it helps to know what it’s for. I only learnt how to give up smoking when there was something I wanted more – rock-climbing – that was incompatible with 16 cigarettes a day. Fasting, or in any case selective abstinence, helps to remind you on a daily basis of the spring cleaning that is going on. As when cleaning house, you are reminded of all the stuff you don’t really need. And it also shows you how much you still have to learn. Christian fasting isn’t Ramadan; but when I see Muslims keeping Ramadan faithfully even in the scorching days of summer, I feel a kind of rueful respect for them, and I’m not proud of myself or most of my supposed co-religionists.

            So to learn fasting, you turn to prayer, again. Prayer is the basis of Lent, I’m finding. Prayer, and reading. This Lent, I’m reading the Psalms in Coverdale’s Prayer Book version (often inaccurate, but delightful: ‘Why hop ye so, ye high hills?”) as the BCP prescribes, morning and evening daily. Also the brief daily readings in a little French Lent booklet; and occasional forays into some Benedictine and Carthusian texts. For one usually more given to James Lee Burke, Robert Harris or Reginald Hill, this is refreshing, and provides far more profound insights into this Lenten business than one would normally have.

            The third pillar of Lent is almsgiving. The etymology of “alms” is from Greek eleos, meaning mercy or compassion. Alms are the material aspect of mercy and compassion, of a fellow-feeling with those who lack. Apart from the fact that it is always good to show solidarity with the needy, you can see how this fits into the Lenten process of spring cleaning. Prayer and reading connect us to God, thus helping us fulfil the First Commandment; almsgiving connects us to our neighbour, thus helping us with the Second.

           And both remind us that Lent is not just about Me, about Becoming a Better Person, like New Year’s resolutions: it is about something far deeper. A Carthusian letter about God’s nature as Love puts the whole thing in a vertiginous perspective: God is Love, and thus has only one desire: to give. To give Himself completely, to us. Too often he finds our houses closed: doors shut, shutters tight. So he knocks. Do we hear? Only if we have taken off our skull candy headphones. Only if we aren’t texting. Only if we are in a condition to hear, and to open ourselves. That’s what Lent is about: getting into condition to be helpless, humble, receptive, and open. So that we can receive the huge joy He can’t wait to give.