You didn’t want heaven without us
So Jesus, You brought heaven down
My sin was great, Your love was greater
What could separate us now?
Maybe this song has been overdone a little. But I was really struck tonight by the above words. Yes, Jesus did not want eternity without me and even if my sin is great, Jesus’ love is much bigger.
“The thoughts you think are not a waste of time”. I have often been struck by that line.
I live in my head and often feel life has passed me by. But my thinking has benefited me and others. I am constantly amazed that I make any sense at all because in my head is a crowd of voices arguing and yelling. And, maybe following on from the previous post, that is my vocation – to think with Jesus?! Or, as Paul says, I think “so that the church may be built up”.
I have had somewhat of a hard start to the day but it has improved. A very encouraging message from one of the clergy of the parish has helped. I should not be amazed but I am still struck by how Jesus speaks to me through people at the most appropriate time. And I am always struck by how Jesus moves people and how people who have nothing in common except Jesus gather and support each other. So I am extremely thankful for that today!
I will face tomorrow with Jesus. Every day is a gift, but like Tony Soprano says, “does it have to be a pair of socks?”. I will keep going, I will use my gifts for the “upbuilding of the people of God”, and I will be open to Jesus in whatever way He choses to use me.
I have a very stressful week ahead. A lot happening that I am not ready to face. I have had a headache for three days that I am sure is the stress related to the anxiety that I am feeling.
So my first reaction is to dream about being a hermit – to live alone somewhere without contact or interaction with other people. Recluse would be a better term – or a solitary. The other option is to enter some monastery somewhere and disappear. The problem is that I do not have a vocation to the religious life – either as an individual or within a community. To be honest, I am unsure if I have any vocation or calling. I have tried to wear various masks during my life – masks that often others gave me or that I thought others wanted me to wear. So I think this would just be another version of a mask that has been given to me by someone else.
I know for certain that it would just be a form of escapism. I like to run away from my problems rather than face them. I procrastinate because I cannot face the world. So I would be running from the world rather than to religious life.
I have learned over the last three months and I am extremely grateful for the people who have helped me. I also carry the pain of people who have decided that they cannot bare with me any longer. And that pain is so real at the moment that it colours everything in my life.
In the end I am alone before God. I have to act – no one else can act for me or on my behalf. I have to face my actions and the consequences. Hopefully I will be able to look back on this time and see it as a time of growth. But right now I am anxious and stressed.
So hermitage – yes or no?
Today would be Kierkegaard’s 208th birthday. So to celebrate here is the Ramones:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.5 But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
The first psalm at Evening Prayer was Psalm 13. I thought I would share as it really spoke to me tonight. My life gives context to the words of the psalm. My disappointments and pains is what the psalm is all about – it speaks for me to God. And it speaks for God to me.
I was thinking about how quickly things change in life. Not always in a bad way but for me it appears to always be bad at the moment. When I feel I have reached some form of balance, something happens and I am back at the start. Yes, I am back at the start with new skills and more life experience. But I am back at the start. And it is exhausting!
So the above quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came to mind. Yes just stop! Stop and look around. I feel like everything is rushing past me at the moment, like I am missing life itself.
I try to find Jesus in the darkness – allow Him to carry me. So there is that!
The above is the Icon of Christ and Abbot Mena and is said to date from the 8th century. Jesus is holding the book and Abbot Mena is the one with the grey beard. I like how Jesus has His arm around His friend. There is a sense of intimacy in the icon. A warm welcoming Jesus embracing the Abbot.
I have been thinking about being friends with Jesus – the theme of this week’s gospel (and tonight’s study). What does it mean for me? What does the intimacy that the above icon illustrate mean to my day to day life? Not as a slave but as a friend of Jesus do I love – what does that mean for me now?
I like the image of Jesus as my friend. I like the above icon.
I pray you have a Jesus filled day!
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
John 15:9-17
This week the Bible Study Group will look at John 15:9-17 – a follow on from last week’s reading from John. I have been struck by the idea that I am a friend of Jesus. Most likely because I do not have a lot of friends, real friends, and not the variety that goes by the modern term.
Friendship suggests an intimacy. The readings from the last three Sundays have all spoken of the intimacy between Jesus and the individual. An intimacy beyond ideas – a personal intimacy. The opposite is the servant or slave. The friend is motivated by intimacy while the servant does things out of fear or in a desire for a reward. So the command to love is set within the context of this friendship, this intimacy, between Jesus and the individual. Not because I have to but because I want to, do I love! Just like Jesus who goes willing to the cross for me.
Looking forward to the study!
I wanted to share this quote from Meister Eckhart. It illustrates the paradox and irony of Christian life. In the darkness we find light. For someone who has struggled with “the darkness” for many years, some in silence, it is an insight that is worth considering. When God seems war away, He is so only because He is so close that I cannot see Him.
I think the mystics have a lot to say to us. Modern mystics like Thomas Merton, who is able to share his experience of the Divine, are worth the effort. These mystics sometimes speak in parables and images that are hard for the modern mind to comprehend. And that is the point: it is not for comprehending but for experiencing. These writings do not exist without my response to them: to enter into the experience of Jesus. In that sense they are akin to the Scriptures of the Christian tradition.
So the challenge for me is twofold: to experience Jesus in the darkness, and read more mystics.
I like the version of the Surrender Prayer at the end:
Lord Jesus Christ take all freedom,
Prayer of Abandonment by St. Ignatius of Loyola
my memory, my understanding, and my will.
All that I have and cherish you have given me.
I surrender it all to be guided by your will.
Your Grace and your Love are wealth enough for me.
Give me this Lord Jesus, and I ask for nothing more.
a fool and his prayer book 