One afternoon walking by the seashore
/Feast Day Saint Zeno the Righteous
“And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea? I have a heart that is inured to suffering and I shall steel it to endure that too.” (Homer, The Odyssey)
“Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.” (Seneca, Moral Letters, 45.6)
"The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Rom. 8:16)
“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” (Saint Francis of Assisi, 1181- 1226)
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on…” (John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
"Keep Ithaka always in your mind. / Arriving there is what you’re destined for.” (C.P. Cavafy, Ithaka)
“How deep is the weatherfront of time/ that advances, roaring and calm/ unendingly between was and will be? (Les Murray, The Welter)
I recognise the voice a little better now
MG Michael at Werri Beach (Image by Eleni Michael)
I recognise the voice a little better now. I wasn’t sure when I was younger. Zealotry can distort things a lot. But now I know. The voice, it’s mine. It always has been. When God speaks to us, when He stoops down to whisper into our hearts, we hear our own voice. It is fashioned and formed after our own image. It is not a celestial thunder that we hear or some distant rumble. Call it consciousness or revelation. It matters little. Some call it introspective access. A cynical person might call it “playback”. It is the same with evil when it comes to tempt us with its deceptions. It is not a demon tempting me. It is my own voice that I recognise speaking to me. Though many times I have tried to kill this one. It is still there and it will not die. It is that other side of our humanity which most of us try to keep at bay, “the heart of darkness”, as Joseph Conrad has well described it. I will take both of these competing voices deep into my last hour. Dearly hoping that at least, my soul and ear, were much more attentive to ‘the one’ over ‘the other’. “Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture”, says Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica: “[i]f our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”
This does not mean that these voices are not real
This does not mean that these voices are not real. They manifest into discernible acts [like the inspirations of a painter before they are drawn onto the canvas]. Some of these voices may express themselves as works of charity, others given over to self-gratification. The ‘word’ becomes flesh. “It is a common mistake, to think you’re going to go into some kind of spiritual practice and you’re going to be relieved of the human burdens, from human crosses like thought, jealousy, despair – in fact, if anything, these feelings are amplified” (Leonard Cohen). One way or another we are all ‘theologians.’ We do battle with the Creator [or the ‘Great Unknown’] hoping to express a word or two. Good and Evil do ‘speak’ to us. It comes down to a matter of interpretation, like the making sense of our archetypal dreams. What does really matter is discerning the authentic voice, the truth of who we are. This takes time and lots of hard work for it means illuminating the vision of what we have been called to become. For it is only then, if I might paraphrase the well-known researcher of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell, that we come upon our “sacred spaces”. Now this can take time. A lot of time. It is worth the perseverance we are told by those who have undertaken this journey. For a great number of us, when we look back on our lives there will not necessarily be one “transformational moment”, but rather, as Gabor Mate has said, we will look back at “transformational moments”. Solitude and prayer and inviting old souls into our lives helps much in this quest for the discovery of self and things.
Such hours let them be imprinted into my mind
Such hours let them be imprinted into my mind, that they not be wasted or forgotten when they will need to be recalled. Like the great Sun which hangs from the heavens to shower it’s hot light into my skin, my feet sinking into the soft white sand of Werri Beach, the spray of water hitting my flesh to draw me back to the Sea of Marmara, the seashells which bring to mind old stories now said and done. They too [both the seashells and the stories] are looking for salvation. I carry a beautifully knurled ‘shepherd’s staff’ picked off from the flotsam. I imagine these knurls the woven knots of my prayer rope, the one brought back from Athos. One a gift from the “wild Poseidon” and the other from a dying monk. I stand to look at the blue horizon where the defiant waters rise up to pressure the clouds. At night-time the stars will blaze in the firmament as brightly as they do in Jerusalem. Oh! Lord, how can all of this breath-taking beauty come to an end? “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” (2 Pet. 3:13)
When the ineffable can only be sighed
When the ineffable can only be sighed or groaned and in frustration we make scratches on the earth’s surface and on the walls of caves, on the skins of animals and parchments, this, then, is ‘pure art’. The initial expression of what is in the heart then begins to ‘trouble’ the mind. In modern times, there are those that can still tap into this primordial purity. Duane Hanson, the Minnesotan artist and sculptor said it wonderfully: “[a]rt doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.” At the core of religious ritual from the high theatres of Byzantium and Rome to the nocturnal Indigenous corroborees and so much more, is Art of the ‘tremendous mystery’ [mysterium tremendum]. It could oftentimes mean distinguishing between the truth as it pertains to our own lives and the competing cacophonies: “[w]e have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact” spoke that most compassionate of souls Simone Weil, the French social philosopher and mystic. “It is better to say, I am suffering, than to say, This landscape is ugly.”
But this sort of insight does not come cheaply
But this sort of insight does not come cheaply. It cannot be taught at universities, or by the reading of many books, or writing fine poetry, or expounding on philosophy. The essayist philosopher of the French Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne passionately pointed out, knowledge alone does not make us happy or prevent us from suffering. If it did, then the intellectuals of the world would more easily cope with life’s many ills, but they do not. They too suffer. Some even more acutely than the rest of us. “Natural judgement” is to be preferred over erudition. The pragmatist dialectician indebted to Socrates, stresses we must engage in active and participatory learning. Philosophy should be more than just a theoretical science with principles and presuppositions. What is more vital in our lives, Montaigne further argues, are lessons in the category of wisdom [experience and good judgement to begin with]. Lessons from life which can in reality help someone live “happily and morally”. It’s where the soul meets the anvil or the more familiar where 'the rubber meets the road'.
Religion in its purest form is our ‘highest language’
Religion in its purest form is our ‘highest language’. For the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher religion answers our deepest needs. Though most sacred languages outside our own might seem unintelligible to us, we quickly recognise them as we might similarly recognise music. Religion has been humanity’s quest for ultimate meaning in its encounter with the “big questions” of existence. It is behind our profoundest truths, collective mythologies and the inspiration of our deepest hopes. When it is used to divide and to cause war, however, it is not religion. Alas, too many examples of this. It is then the ugliest side of politics and the worst manifestation of humankind. “Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes” (Pope John Paul II). Am I religious? Yes, if it means awe at the contemplation of the Creator and understanding creeds not as blueprints to power but as pathways to self-discovery. And no, if it means my way is the only way. As a Christian [and the least of the brethren for it is one thing to confess and another to practise the Gospel daily], I am convicted by Dallas Willard’s prayerful reflection: “[t]rue Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.” Religion in its purest form is to discern God in the other and to believe in a divine providence.
There are many definitions to Love
There are many definitions to Love of which “we are only the pieces” (Rumi). It is the subject of books to fill the libraries of the world. It is the key to every celebrated adventure that we have documented in both our sacred and profane histories. It is the courage which inspires the true heroes. It is the death and resurrection of the Godman Himself. It is the possibility that though we may never have met, one day I could lay down my life for you. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt. 22:39). In Buddhism one of the proofs or elements of love is the capacity to offer joy and happiness to another which is the essence of loving-kindness. These ideals are to be found in most of the world’s religious and cultural traditions. In Islam love cannot be comprehended outside the concept of compassion a recurring motif in the Quran. Indigenous cultures emphasize the ideas of sharing and caring for each other [but also for the land and the animal kingdom]. This is not 'cheap' ecumenism that would be far too easy and condescending. We will one day all be brought to task for love is from the beginning a call to salvation and union. Zora Neal Hurston, the African American anthropologist and ethnographer, author, filmmaker and more, in the middle of all this demanding work and the compressing struggles of her own tumultuous life, defined as memorably as any before or after her: “[l]ove makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” This also means to be able to forgive and to ask to be forgiven. There will be demands made of us. We learn soon enough there is no other way.
And a beautiful poem is now a jumbled line of words
It is only natural for our perception of the world to be blunted during times of a personal crisis which could be the result of a number of tribulations. And things which would normally fill our hearts with inspiration and hope to give us pleasure are now much less vibrant and appear to us to be much out of focus. A heavenly sunrise no longer excites our senses, and a beautiful poem is now a jumbled line of words. There is little meaning and no purpose when things appear to be imploding around us. Sometimes what we feel is Samuel Beckett’s ‘unnameable’: “…a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts...”. Yet, we must not stay here, not in this place of the ‘caged beasts’. It is good to remember that the Sun will rise the next day and that this too, it will pass. I must wait and not rush to any unalterable decisions. Simone Weil, the ‘patron saint of outsiders’, who endured great personal suffering in her lifetime, wrote reflecting on her own experiences: “[w]e must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.” A hard truth which was neither said nor written lightly.
I need to listen best I can
Listening is not only a gift, but also something which is learnt, an art to be cultivated. There are many advantages to being a good listener. The wise old Isocrates, one of the ten Attic orators from Ancient Greece, admonishes in his oration To Demonicus (1:18): “[s]pend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.” At the same time listening makes us more benevolent and empathetic to those around us. Ralph G. Nichols, the American scholar considered the modern pioneer in the study and development of the field of listening, has left us with many marvellous sayings and the following is one of the most discerning: “[t]he most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” I need to listen best I can.
There are some difficult things which we have to live with
“Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.” (Eccl. 3:16-17)
There are some difficult things which we have to live with, where justice will not be afforded to us and it would appear that injustice has triumphed. The odds can be stacked so high up against us and the powerful networks which we face so impossible to defeat that we have to live with the searing pain of knowing that truth is not always rewarded in this life. ‘Cancelling’ a human being like executing them, can take on many forms. Dostoyevsky and Kafka had much earlier interrogated the dehumanising and devastating power of bureaucracies with their unforgettable stories which continue to strongly resonate and prove true even today. And so we have a choice between the two paths: join these devious communities so propagating their wickedness or come to terms with the hard fact that this story is now done. Life is not a movie. Good people have been, and will continue to be destroyed, in many different ways. Real life scenarios do not always end in the manner of the film Rocky (1976) with the underdog defeating the world champion and the world looking on in an impossible finish. Oh! But there is, my dear brother and my dear sister, there is another path to non-surrender… to endure, ‘to remain firm’ and ‘to withstand’, this has always been the greatest victory. Allow for your light to shine bright as it can. We make the difference where we can through our own example whether small or great. Surviving the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust the invincible Eddie Jaku would later title his life-changing memoir, “The Happiest Man on Earth”, (2020). Remember, too, that even justice herself, as that irascible monk Martin Luther said long ago, is only ever temporal, “but the conscience is eternal and will never die.”
I stoop down to write my name
I stoop down to write my name on the sand near the water’s edge: j e r e m i a h. Within a few seconds it is wiped away like the footprints we leave behind. It is difficult to hold back the tears when you remember the very young and tragic Keats: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
My Creator and Father in Heaven, forgive me for ever daring to write such things which I know only very little of, don’t turn Your benevolent countenance away from me, forgive me the great multitude of my transgressions… and this only on account of my small endurance.