ADVICE FROM A BUSY ADMINISTRATOR

"Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there....Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere - in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be." 

Meister Eckhart, alias Eckhart von Hochheim (ca. 1260-1328), Dominican theologian, mystic and monastic supervisor from Thuringia.




Hat tip: "Mid-Week from St Matthias", St Matthias's RC Church, Somerset, NJ.

PERHAPS TO SING

HYMN

(tune: Melcombe)

The daily round, the common task

Are not enough for what we ask:

No Martha chose to cook the meal;

The hours of thought are what we steal.

The world is too much with us yet:

We little give and little get;

We lean to keep an even keel;

The hours of thought are what we steal.

Images swirl and whorl and sway

And tempt our eye to fill our day;

We see the world behind the wheel --

The hours of thought are what we steal.

The shouted words of angry men

Pretend that hell is come again

And order us to think them real;

The hours of thought are what we steal.

In hush of waking, barely heard,

Comes murmuring the living Word;

Rich thieves, in gratitude we kneel:

The hours of prayer are what we steal.

R.K.

(with a hat tip to John Keble and William Wordsworth)

LATE AND SOON

In a time when many are shaken; in the winter season when sunshine is rare; at moments when ways ahead are unclear or menacing; one aid -- never easy, but always there -- is the existence of the Carthusians. Above is their symbol: the seven stars are St Bruno and the six companions with whom he founded the Order; the motto explains the image: "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" -- "the Cross stands, while the world turns". To their writings, always anonymous, we can turn when the world is too much with us. And from one of their books,  The Wound of Love: a Carthusian Miscellany (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), I share this magnificent passage of consolation.

           The encounter that love desires, between God and me, involves my whole being. Its rendezvous will be the truth, communion between my true self and the true God. But who am I? I enter into the deep caverns of my spirit in order to discover myself and then to be able to give myself. I encounter my demons, the dark forces that dwell in me. I name some of them, but they are legion. I try to determine my interior face, but it dissolves into a thousand changing masks. I want to offer my heart, but my freedom shows itself host to innumerable determinisms, the majority of which elude me. So, am I only the ephemeral confluence of impersonal and obscure forces?

            No, even if all the ‘matter’ of my being were such, my spirit can look at it from outside and say yes or no to it. Seeing what little light I have, I can trust in the light that comes from God and receive from his word the ultimate knowledge of myself. So I know, in faith, that I am made in the image of God, a subject endowed with freedom, called by God to a communion of love, son of the Father in the Son, by the gift of the Spirit. It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am. My chastity is humble attention before the mystery that dwells in me, that transcends me.

'It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am.'