One of the topics I am interested in is the Anglican expression of the monastic tradition. Part of this is trying to keep up to date, and support in prayer, various religious communties throughout the world. So I follow Vocational Stories into Anglican Religious Life.
Today there is a post, Pictures of Alnmouth friary, that has some spectacular pictures. I will share only one:
I like the simplicity and the focus on the Pascal Candle. I love the icon in the corner! And the monastic stalls are a great way for a community to prayer.
I like the tradition of prayer the Prayer Book gives to me. The rhyme of prayer – morning and evening – is central to the Anglican expression of the “catholic faith”. I have always appreciated that the psalms are part of this daily cycle of prayer. The psalms, more than any other part of Scripture, embody how the individual feels before God. Maybe because the psalms, unlike the rest of the Bible, do not have a particular context. Yes, they were used in the temple but often my life sets the context for the psalm, sets the context for my prayer using the psalms.
So this morning Psalm 143 was one of the psalms. I was struck by these verses, especially in the light of my previous post:
For the enemy has pursued me, crushing my life to the ground, making me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled. I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.
Psalm 143:3-6
I identify with the darkness about which the psalmist speaks. I know that feeling of my heart dropping. And my spirit faints within me – I am overwhelmed and have no more energy to go on.
This psalm is my prayer today. Like the psalmist I am sitting in darkness crushed to the ground. And, like the psalmist, I look for the Lord to come to me and refresh me like the rain does to a parched land. I remember the mighty acts of God in Jesus and how He is my Helper now.
I feel very overwhelmed. I am facing a hurdle that is not of my making but for which I feel responsible. The very thought of it brings me to tears. I am trying to not engage with the overthinking, trying to let it pass through me, but it is harder than normal this morning. My counsellor helped me yesterday but I feel like I have regressed in regard to my anxiety and depression. I know what I should be doing (in my head) but my heart just does not agree and is actually holding me back.
I have tried this journey on my own for almost 50 years. I have “toughed out” the darkness and just kept going. I have lived with the anxiety and have just hidden the screaming voice inside of me. I have worn a mask that has been handed to me by other people. A mask I convinced myself was the right thing to do, the Godly thing to wear.
So someone sent me the above song this morning. I am extremely thankful for the people God has placed in my life: some by blood, and some by a common faith and Lord. I still feel the disappointment of past failures and I really like to overthink those and what they say about me. But God speaks through people! People that draw me back to Jesus and to His community. People that literally hold my hand when it gets difficult and dark.
Today I am hoping to go for a walk, maybe record a podcast, and finish The Young Pope. And have a nice cup of tea. I am hoping to get some time to pray and just sit silently in God’s presence. And in the silence to hear God speak to me rather than listening to the voices that hold me back.
I admit it makes me laugh – the grandioseness of Pope Pius XIII and his view of religion. There is a sense of absurdity about Pope Pius XIII. And also a very deep sadness and confusion. This scene, I think, represents best what I mean:
The whole is a little like Kierkegaard’s Abraham in Fear and Trembling. The question of the nature of faith, and the nature of a calling from God, is very much at the front of many conversations in the show.
And I found someone who agrees with me, Kierkegaard’s Pope! This quote puts it well:
The Knight of Faith transcends the universal for the prison of the particular.
All of this has made me look at Fear and Trembling again. As with all Kierkegaard’s books, it is not easy or straight forward. There is always a sense that one needs a decoder ring along with any Kierkegaard book. I am far from the person to guide another through Kierkegaard. The simple act of reading a book can change a person and I think that is the aim that I read Kierkegaard – the very act makes me someone different.
Faith is exactly this paradox, that the single individual is higher than the universal, but in such a way, mind you, that the movement is repeated, so that after having been in the universal he now as the particular keeps to himself as higher than the universal.
Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 47.
For the movement of faith must constantly be made by virtue of the absurd, yet in such a way, mind you, that one does not lose the finite but gains it entire.
Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 31.
I think myself into the hero; I cannot think myself into Abraham.
Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 27
The tragic hero resigns [themlseves] in order to express the universal; the knight of faith resigns the universal in order to become the single individual.
Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 66
I wanted to share this series of post as I think they are really interesting: Existentialism and Christianity (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). One little quote from The Totalitarianism of “Reason” (Part 3):
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was a dissenter from the new totalitarianism of “reason” and the gnosticism of Enlightenment philosophy. For him, as for the ancient Christian mystics, God was grasped intuitively, by a love that is beyond mere reason, since caritas is greater than even the greatest human knowledge. Such a view is redolent of the “cloud of unknowing” or the via negationis – the doctrine of divine simplicity espoused by the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas. According to this “eliminative method” one can define God by what he is not, since it is so difficult for us to truly appreciate what he is.
One of the things I have learned from existentialism (read: Kierkegaard) is that every person carries their story into everything they do and say. We each have an individual view of everything but it is always nice when one story meets another. The author is maybe a Roman Catholic and hence the return to Aquinas.
I like the opening: Kierkegaard stands solidly within the mystical tradition of Christianity. Maybe even the neo-Platonism of Augustine and Anselm! But, as with all modern philosophers of note, he takes it one step further – he speaks to a modern context. And to make the point: Kierkegaard is not an existentialist as he both predates it and is solidly a writer within the Christian tradition. Kierkegaard is not part of any school of thought and that is why he is so interesting – he is the “single individual” of philosophy.
But I have gotten off-topic. David R. Law has written a number of books on Kierkegaard as a negative theologian and kenotic Christology. Law’s article on the Chirstology of Practice in Christianity is a very interesting read. I think Kierkegaard’s Christology, “who is Jesus for Søren?”, would be a very interesting topic to explore especially in light of his later writings, that is, the Communion Discourses. Also how pietism played a role in Kierkegaard’s thought.
Just some of the lyrics that really struck me this morning:
In the darkness we were waiting Without hope, without light ‘Til from Heaven You came running There was mercy in Your eyes … In His freedom I am free For the love of Jesus Christ Who has resurrected me.
After writing the last post I was thinking about life and this quote from The Sopranos came to mind. Tony is maybe not the greatest moral example. Yet the series does show a person trying to be “real” in an extraordinary context. And it is seriously funny in parts! Yes, there is no cure for life.
All of that reminded me of another quote that is often ascribed to Kierkegaard but more likely to be a slightly reworded version of a quote by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw:
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
To live in the moment with Jesus – that is as much as I can hope for now. Maybe that sounds a little defeatist? Allow life to unfold, allow God to love, and simply to experience that reality. Allow myself to experience Jesus in the present. Surrender control, surrender myself, and “abide” in Jesus.
I have been feeling really jittery. I have tried all the normal things but nothing is working. I guess it is just life that makes me like this. My anxiety has increased over the last couple of days and I am wondering if I am on the way down in my darkness cycle.
I remember hearing a sermon on “anxiety” once. The preacher defined anxiety has having a “big fear” and offered an answer – “put it all on the Lord”. I often think back on that sermon. My experience of anxiety has been anything but a “big fear”. Fear is focused on an object. My experience of anxiety is more of an unfocused foreboding – something bad is always just around the corner. And then the overthinking starts – the spiral down. “What will I do?”, “Who can help me?”, “What will other people think?” I know (with my head) that it is just my anxiety speaking but often my heart does not follow. There is a debate happening inside me and it is really draining. It takes all my energy just to do the normal things in my day without any room for doing extra. And then I feel guilty for not doing extra and the spiral moved down.
My psychologist says that anxiety left untreated will develop into depression. I often wonder if the darkness brings my anxiety or my anxiety my darkness. Either way I know they are life-partners!
I have found this Instagram page very helpful. It often says the things that I am feeling or just brings words of encouragement. I know I have to learn to be honest with people I trust (which is a very small group). And to reach out when I am not well – when I see the signs. I simply do not want to be a burden to anyone.
So I have a couple of things to do today – and a few that I have already done. I am putting my faith in the rhyme that I have established in my life to carry me to tomorrow. And then start again!
This week’s text for our online Bible Study is John 15:1-8, “I am the vine”. So here is the text:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
I had a dream last night that made me quite anxious. It is not unusual for me. There are lots of things going on in my head at the moment and I am trying to put them in some order. Change is on the way but I am not sure I am ready for it.
I am trying to hide in some creative work. I am doing some planning and writing for the Bible Study. Also some research on social media platforms for a report I am trying to write. But sometimes I feel like Indiana Jones – barely holding on before life catches up.
a fool and his prayer book 