During ‘the hours’

“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” (Meister Eckhart)

https://flushinghospital.org/newsletter/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ThinkstockPhotos-469850273.jpg

The light drops off their lips like thick honey

From the mouths of bees, and their large eyes

Are like those of the great horned owl.

I listen. I look. During ‘the hours’.

Their words make a knot in the middle of my throat.

Discerning glances burn an amethyst in my heart.

‘In the desert a city’ they say, cells like beehives

On the sides of mountains drenched in starlight

This is to have understood something of electricity

When it is revealed as a flash of white lightning.

Like life itself which brings everything.

MGM, (Gerringong, Jan.24th, 2022)

The Mysterious Little Christmas Tree

Kiama-Gerringong, NSW

For you beautiful heart whoever you might be

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” (Heb. 13:2)

“Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.” (Nikos Kazantzakis)

“There are millions of homeless people in the world because humanity does not have a proper conscience.” (Mehmet Murat ildan)

“Sometimes it's easy to walk by because we know we can't change someone's whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place.” (Mike Yankoski)

There are moments in our lives that have a deeply moving effect on us. They manifest a change in us. We normally remember these moments for the remainder of our lives. They can be sad experiences brought about by some devastating event or they can be joyful happenings which we might normally recollect as anniversaries through the passing of the years. Then there are  those “moments” which can leave us spellbound and spine-tingling with awe. Think back, if you will, to some of those occasions. Perhaps it was at the Louvre in Paris when you first came ‘face-to-face’ with Leonardo da Vinci’s famous ‘Mona Lisa’. Or maybe it was that time in London’s National Gallery when you saw Rembrandt’s ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. Something inside of you is viscerally shifted, your response to such artistic human endeavours touches you to the core. And what of such places which have been flamed by the divine: the Temple Mount; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Blue Mosque; the Bodh Gaya. So then it can become too easy [or habitual] to dismiss those occasions which might fill us with a different sort of awe, and to oftentimes pass them over thinking, yes, quite lovely, but way too mundane.

Source: https://www.kiama.nsw.gov.au/Council/Projects/Hindmarsh-Park-upgrade

Today, on my early morning walk down by Kiama’s scenic harbour in the company of one excitable Mishka, the canine member of our family, we came across a profoundly moving sight. In a rarely used bus shelter on the lower end of Hindmarsh Park,[1] what I saw brought me to tears and what is more, touched me no less than those times when I stood in awe before the sublime artistry of our great masters. What did we see? In the shelter were two suitcases and a blue trolley with an umbrella strapped to its side. Through one of the side glass panels my eye caught a shimmering object on the bench. It was a small plastic silver star. It was placed there with a purpose as the surrounding evidence would show. Below the star itself, was a colourful [but broken] toy windmill. Little pieces of twig were arranged strategically around the windmill’s wooden blades. Attached to the twigs were a variety of shells as ornaments. All this industry was laid out on the top half of the bench. Clearly, this was a Christmas tree. I wondered which sensitive heart was behind such an honest creation. What might have been this person’s story? My eyes welled up as other parables of a similar sort came to me. I thought of the symbolism of what I had just seen and of the significance of such an act by someone who had obviously lost a lot somewhere along the way. I reflected on my comfortable life and my home which lacks nothing. And maybe once or twice before I had felt such raw and brutal proximity to that origin myth and of the implications of the exile from Paradise [if you still believe in such things].[2] There is much I would have liked to have said to this ‘angel’. To have embraced them and for my tears to have spoken to their heart when my words would only have meant something if I was to hold them back anchored to my tongue. I was defeated by the untold grace of this unexpected encounter. This work of angelic inspiration poured from the purest gratitude is reminiscent of the “widow’s offering” who gave all she had from her poverty (Mark 12:41-44). And no less magnificent in its intent than the breathtaking creations we come across in the great museums of the world.  I was dwarfed by this humble little Christmas tree. And religion, at least of the rubric kind, had little to do with it. It was the ‘tremendous mystery’ of the hour.

Postscript

The next day, on the afternoon of the 14th, Mishka and I were again out walking down at the harbour, which on our return will take us back past Hindmarsh Park. As we approached the bus shelter which the day before with its mysterious little Christmas tree, had opened up that flood of emotions in my heart, I could see something circular, like a bright large orange ball. Now, I wondered, what could that be? The closer Mishka and I got to the bus shelter, the one which housed this mysterious little Christmas tree, it became clearer that the bright large orange ball was in fact a small furry head. I once again peered through the glass window. It was a teddy bear! I smiled. It was perched on the window’s ledge watching over the Christmas tree with its hands outstretched as if in the orans position, like a ‘platytera’ on a half-dome. At the same time its eyes, which were still intact despite the unmissable signs of age on the body, were also surveying, protecting the bags and blue trolley from the day before. On the way back to the car, Mishka and I paused. We turned to look at that fantastic spot from where only minutes ago we had walked past. I understood the manger, or better still, the creche in the traditional Nativity imagery in yet another light and felt grateful beyond words to this travelling soul. Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Leo Tolstoy, and all the others, and those who came before, the Prophet Isaiah, and after them, Gwendolyn Brooks, were right, of course. Real beauty which is neither artificial, nor affected, is more often hidden, and waiting to be discovered, where you might least expect it. I remember Rembrandt and am struck by that spellbinding awe, but this recall does not comfort my spirit when it is aching. On the other hand, this ‘wandering angel’, already, is comforting my night pains and revealing insights into another, more enduring splendour.

[1] https://library.kiama.nsw.gov.au/History/Explore-Kiamas-Past/Local-history-stories/Hindmarsh-Founding-Orphans

[2] I use the term “myth” here in a similar way to Carl Jung’s conventional interpretation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcogiUUNnM

How many great symphonies have not been written

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer. 29:11)

“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” (Anais Nin)

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.” (Thomas Merton)

“This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.” (Chinua Achebe)

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” (David Viscott)

They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives

The endearing Didi and Gogo meet near a “leafless tree” [already such a marvellous irony] to engage in a series of discussions. They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives. It all appears meaningless. They consider suicide. Perhaps they had read Camus! Whether they are to be taken seriously or not is beside the point. But the problem is neither of these characters actually articulates what they want; or what they are looking for; or who Godot actually is. Or even if he ultimately exists. Ennui is at them. Entropy. Apathy. In existential terms, it is not even knowing what you want. It is, as some critics have said, the most successful literature ever written about “nothing”. Nothingness leads to ‘nothing.’ And to the deepest of despair.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

How many great symphonies have not been written

There are times when we are scared to approach that which we believe to be beyond us, like a great challenge which will push us to our limits, or when we are terrified of speaking our truth for fear of ‘cancellation’, or of declaring our love lest we be rejected. It has been asked how many great symphonies have not been written because composers were reluctant to compose their own Ninth, the ‘curse of the Ninth’ they call it, for the fear of comparison with Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ masterpiece. And yet, is this not the most agreeable of things? To keep climbing the stairs, to follow Jacob onto the “stairway” until we have reached our limits and to have exhausted the depths of our capacity [that which can ‘contain, take or hold’]:

“Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Gen. 28:10-12)

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by  greater and greater things.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Poem)

It was only when I allowed for my heart (extract from a letter) [1]

It was only when I allowed for my heart to become vulnerable again, that is, to love without any fear of reprisal, to not set limits on the geometry of my embrace, that I was permitted some few insights such as these which I am now sharing with you. Similarly to the human eye which is amazingly adaptable and works to correct light deficiencies, the heart also as our ‘spiritual organ’ functions in an analogous way as it filters ‘darkness’ and ‘light’. A contemplative has somewhere said: “In fact, one question is enough. In everything that happens to me, do I remain free enough to love?” In recent times I have been pondering, that sadly, we do not rightly reflect on the actual love of the malefactor crucified next to the Christ, the one who asked to be remembered by Jesus when he came into his “kingdom” (Lk. 23:42f.). This love which he quite literally expressed through his ‘confession’ and ‘compassion’ as he himself was dying, opened up to him the gates of paradise. Father Seraphim Rose has articulated well the question behind this fearsome mystery:

“Why is the truth, it would seem, revealed to some and not to others? Is there a special organ for receiving revelation from God? Yes, though usually we close it and do not let it open up: God’s revelation is given to something called a loving heart.”

“The heart governs the entire bodily organism and reigns over it, and when grace possesses the heart, it governs all the members and all thoughts, for it is in the heart that the intellect is found and all the thoughts of the soul as well as its desires; through its intermediary, grace equally penetrates into all the bodily members.” (Saint Macarius of Egypt)

I would take away its trustworthy lessons (extract from a letter)

During the darkest hours of an interminable sense of hopelessness which plagued my spirit and bruised my bones, I thought that all being, all striving, all life was for nothing. It was the temptation to an extreme pessimism; the seduction of nihilism. That it was all animalistic chance, a throw of the dice. Still, even here, in this deathlike existence, when by the grace of God some little shards of light dropped down on me, I would take away its trustworthy lessons. From this place of mournfulness which separates darkness from the light itself, anarchy from order, death from life, and hell from heaven, good things can still pour through. Salvation, however we might understand it, is not to be trifled with. Sometimes outside a good discernment, these polarities may not always be clearly identifiable one from the other. So, we might continue to confuse what is evil for good, and what is unrighteous for righteous, like a hesitant tincture caught between two colours. Yet, like a constantly recurring musical phrase, a leitmotif, which you can’t quite place, the stirring of the Holy Spirit is asking for us to give Him a name. I was on a train in London on my way to the monastery in Tolleshunt Knights,[2] when I first read these overwhelming words from the English writer and lay theologian G. K. Chesterton which I will share with you below. I straightaway copied them into my little notebook which I would carry most anywhere I went. They struck an inherent chord within me. I was comforted in a way I could not explain, other than that an unassailable truth had been disclosed to me:

“Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.”

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.” (Ps. 61:1-3)

It is temperature shock which hardens steel (extract from a letter)

Transformation, sometimes used for the metamorphosis of the life cycle of an animal, will not happen overnight. It will be a long journey and it will demand much spiritual labour and large amounts of patience. It is good to remember when things get difficult, as they undoubtedly do, that it is temperature shock which hardens steel and that it is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Change can hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it will make all the difference. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. Conversion is only the beginning. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his blinding glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.). Allow for the grace of God to fall on you and to make the necessary changes, similarly to new colours which are created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. I know, too well, sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel or smoothing your heart on a piece of pumice stone. Yet how wonderful it is when with every little step forwards, there is an additional revelation.

“Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here…” (Matt. 17:4)

“What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.” (Rabindranath Tagore)

The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’

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”Movement” by Katina Michael

We leave a place never to return, but we spend the rest of our life reflecting over it and going back, often without even realizing it. For me this location is ‘Redfern’, it is both a physical and spiritual place. It is the priesthood and where I was given my new name. We never can wholly escape. It is like Joyce who was desperate to leave Dublin but never could, and Faulkner who thought he could escape Lafayette County, or Armen Melikian in Journey to Virginland who cannot forget Armenia despite his exile from the homeland of his forefathers. These writers like many others, spend a great deal of their lives going back. The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’, to embrace it, to take what is good and to transform the rest. The nostalgia, this longing unto sickness to return, is not all bad and is the central refrain in one of our earliest ‘blockbusters’, the great Homeric epic, the Odyssey. It is bringing back beautiful scents [lavender, vanilla] and sounds [the clickety-clack of trains], and dreams which can still rouse the adrenalin.

“When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.” (James Joyce to Sheehy Skeffington)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” (William Faulkner, Faulkner’s county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county)

[1] These three letter extracts from a recent correspondence with friends have been here modified for their readability.

[2] It was late in 1990 during the First Gulf War when I returned to Europe. My primary intention was to visit the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, England, to spend time with its monastic community especially celebrated for its practise of the Jesus Prayer and for its beloved abbot Elder Sophrony. hhttps://www.thyateira.org.uk/archdiocese/monasteries/monastery-of-st-john-the-baptist/

Fairness is Pleasing to the Sight

“All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.” (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)

“My little Pierre is now nearly five years old. He is quite a big boy. I used to wait with impatience for the time when I could take him with me and talk with him, opening his young mind, instilling into him the love of beauty and truth, and helping fashion for him so lofty a soul that the ugliness of life could not degrade it.” (Alfred Dreyfus, Five Years of My Life)

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now.” (Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees)

“Can you speak, can you hear, can you see and read, where is your higher IQ? - Be bold to the world and say clear, YES or NO. Be free and set free; it is fairness.” (Ehsan Sehgal)

“For God shows no partiality.” (Rom. 2:11)

I fondly remember a soft-spoken monk in one of the monastic communities I have visited who has left a lasting impression on me. He was elderly and wise. He had earnt the right to be considered for the abbot’s position two previous times. On each of these occasions his nomination was dismissed in favour of younger and less experienced monastics. From the outside it was a plainly unfair decision. I asked him if this biased treatment against him wounded him in any way. He smiled and looked at me with the eyes of an owl which are noted for their depth perception. “It is their way of asking me questions,” he serenely said, “it would be unfair if I disappointed them and caused one to stumble.” Such conversations cannot be misplaced. [1] They are as precious as desert wildflowers.  Later that evening during the vespers service:

 “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you.” (Ps. 129:5)

Is there fairness in the world? Or at least in our community? Something “fair” in the olden times was considered “pleasing to the sight”. Today we still say that the weather is fair. There is something attractive to this etymological transmission of the word. Nowadays, by fair we normally understand “free of bias and injustice”. Many people would claim there is more bias and injustice in the world than there is impartiality and justice. Even the shortest survey of recent history would appear to overwhelmingly support this position. “Being good is easy,” wrote Victor Hugo the author of Les Misérables, “what is difficult is being just.” Though surely there is charity and compassion in the world, consider our  selfless frontline workers during the pandemic, we can add to the injustice even in our small neighbourhoods by engaging in practises of bias. Apposite to note the delicate but significant difference between the words ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’: “Justice should be defined as adherence to rules of conduct, whereas fairness should be defined as individuals’ moral evaluations of this conduct.”[2]

To treat someone unfairly, and particularly a young person, can prove terrible in many ways: blunting their dreams; lowering their self-esteem; and diminishing their promise. In what ways might we treat someone unfairly? Of course, there is discrimination bias based on how we look or what we believe in, that is, we can consciously [or sometimes even unconsciously] discriminate by placing people into perceptual stereotypes. This is to ignore the uniqueness and the many different qualities that the ‘other’ possesses in their presence and being. Then there is nepotism as well, the favouring of relatives or friends over others which can  be practised in all strata of our society, but here it can be especially harmful when those discriminated against are our children. Other times, too, we can rob someone of their prospects by overlooking their claims to a promotion or an employment opportunity in favour of another who is less qualified. It is to become a deliberate obstacle in someone else’s ‘capability’. It can be thought of as an act of theft. We rob another of their potential, their ‘power’. Envy, revenge, or another of the passions, can also be a cause for our unfair treatment of another.

This is how I started on this little reflection, but as I was completing the last paragraphs I couldn’t much as I tried, get a recent image out of my mind. The pictures of those seven beautiful children killed in that drone attack gone horribly wrong in Kabul, Afghanistan. Initially described by Pentagon officials as a “righteous strike”.[3] Five of the children were five years or younger. Baby Aya was not yet two. It took me back to another unforgettable image which I also cannot erase from my memory. This was during the first Gulf War (1991). The then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was pictured celebrating his birthday, playing a guitar on the front page of a daily newspaper. Below on the same page was a picture of a young Iraqi boy. He had lost his limbs in another bombing gone ‘wrong’. What to say here on ‘fairness’? There are no adequate responses, but only as most sages have agreed and argued for in their respective works, long processes of reconciliation.

Of course, such emblematic instances as the two mentioned above, are too many, particularly from the 20th century. There would be no end to the examples, both before and after the Holocaust (the Shoah). Then there are the cancer wards where other children go. These are sufferings of another unalterable kind. The study of the writings of Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Geoffrey Robertson, Paul Johnson, and Martha Minow are a good place to start to get a visceral image of these ever-present realities.[4] And so the remembrance of these universal and more vital things stopped me from continuing with the original purpose of this upload. It was to be some thoughts on the unfair treatment of a fine young man by a community of people he had once trusted from the times he was a little boy, and the lessons drawn from that heart-rending experience.

Yet here is the difference between the violent and indiscriminate taking away of a life, and in particular a young life which has not yet blossomed, to the ‘normal’ unfairness in the world which we ourselves might have experienced or have seen played out in the lives of others, including oftentimes our children. We are still alive, our young ones have the use of their limbs and the exercise of their imaginations, and if we live in the affluent places of the world, we have a warm bed, a roof over our heads, and in the evenings an excess of food on our tables. We can move on, looking forwards, knowing that doors will inevitably shut, but if we should only endure [sooner or later], others will open. The revered mystic and Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore has described it this way: “If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” Greater things have very often been found on the other side of providence. Persecution of diverse kind has been overcome and restoration has come to the wronged. Ultimately, if we are to measure fairness by any rule, we will all leave the world having experienced unfairness one way or another and lived through its sharp irony and stinging pain. It hurts to feel you have not been valued. It is a basic human need. Yet, it is also a well-known fact, resentment and vengeance only build up anger and bad decision-making. Outside any religious paradigms, numerous studies have found that forgiveness which can be “practised” and “cultivated”, and does not mean to condone the wrongdoing, has a long list of positive effects.[5]

Source: Katina Michael

There is fairness only in death. It cares nothing for our name and accomplishments. Our reputations have nil effect. It has no interest in our religion nor in our creeds. “Death is the fairest thing in the world” writes Svetlana Aleksievich the author of Voices from Chernobyl,[6] “[n]o one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone.” The Book of Ecclesiastes and the ‘eight worldly dharmas’ considered in Buddhism, have a great deal to say on the weight, and the ultimate futility, of putting too much credence into life’s self-centred preoccupations or allowing ourselves to be defined by others. In the meantime without sugar-coating reality, we allow for the excitement of new opportunities. The anticipation of emboldening challenges when we have been “shut out”. Perspective always remains a tremendous help.

Postscript The young man who inspired this post in the first place is doing well. Away from the football field he is enjoying the piano.

[1] This little but telling exchange is from a much longer conversation which took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, one Saturday afternoon and is here paraphrased.
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.1956

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html

[4] Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, (Beacon Press: Boston, 1998).

[5] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/forgiveness/definition

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

On Chance Encounters

Saturday 6th August, 2011

Sydney, NSW

Kingsford Smith International Airport, Montreux Jazz Café

The ritual before take-off

“Thank you. One sugar, please…”

“So where are you off too then?”

“Europe… Bucharest.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Neither…”

“What else is there?” The young waitress asks.

“The great abyss,” I reply.

We both laugh for different reasons.

The young waitress dressed in black from head to toe with a striking gold breastpin of a frog with red glass eyes, retreats and moves speedily back into her own world. And I weep in secretum, reflecting on the infallible revelation of how quickly all things must come to pass.

Source: MG Michael Family Archives

Tuesday 16th August, 2011

Bucharest, Romania

Readers Cafe

Another of those wonderful chance encounters

“I have been watching you write.”

“Yes, it helps.”

“Can I ask what about?”

“I am not sure, probably about climbing mountains. That’s close enough.”

“Are you a monk or something? You look like a monk.”

“No, once, a long time ago, but it is a little complicated.”

“I’m Susanna. My friends call me Vagvadini.”

“I’m Michael. My friends used to call me Jeremiah.”

Remember these conversations my heart to prize them deeply for when you get lost in the years ahead. Precious landmarks along the way. They are not pretend colloquies which bring sickness to the soul.