Our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits

Gerringong - Kiama - Shellharbour, NSW

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

‘No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.’” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man)

“Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.” (Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)

“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)

“Theology is the content of our prayers.” (Saint Sophrony Sakharov) 

“Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.” (Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook)

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.” (Toni Morrison, Beloved)

For the seeds of both do work within me

My belief in Christ is not dependent on my experiences with others from the community of believers, though for sure faith can be greatly encouraged by saintly souls, and it is certainly not determined by the sanctity or lack thereof of the priesthood. We let each other down and oftentimes we expect too much one from the other. Priests too, are not different to me, subject to the same foibles and temptations. I must decide which road to take when I come across a ‘Judas Iscariot’ or a ‘Saint Peter’, learning from both, for the seeds of both do work within me. Kallistos Ware, the beloved English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church, has summarised this perfectly for me: “There is no greater force within creation than the free will of beings endowed with self-consciousness and spiritual intellect; and so the misuse of this free will can have altogether terrifying consequences.” Remembering that for the greater part the Church is a hospital overflowing with wounded, all seeking to be healed. Ordinary people, just like myself, wanting to be loved, to be forgiven for transgressions both known and unknown. And to be given a chance to flourish and to practise some small charity before it is all over.

The benefit of the doubt is uppermost

C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (1960) his classic contemplation on the nature of love which he divides into four categories (storge; philia; eros; agape), inspired by Aristotle's own examination in the Nicomachean Ethics on the 'friend bond' [Gk. philia], uses striking language to describe one of the foundations of friendship, vulnerability, when he writes: “Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” Why do I speak of friendship so often? I mean true friendship, the kind where you know, best you can, that the other would never consciously discourage or hurt you . “A sweet friendship refreshes the soul” (Prov. 27:9). It is one of the most beautiful dances of all, where giving the ‘benefit of the doubt’ is uppermost when one steps on the other’s foot. Friedrich Schiller, in his poem “Ode to Joy” made famous by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, speaks with experience on friendship given that it was also a central idea in his aesthetics: “If you’ve mastered that great challenge: Giving friendship to a friend.” Few things in life are more hurtful than someone you considered a brother-in-arms, turns to you one day to say: “We never were true friends, anyway”. Almost as hard to walk away when you first hear it, because you refuse to believe it. But maybe they were right. A good peace and a reconciliation can come after such an agreement that this was indeed just an acquaintance after all.

Something wholly immediate to a magical poem

Our great literature, all good writing, can inspire and have an enduring effect on our spirits. Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Goethe, Jane Austen, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, ‘Currer Bell’ Brontë, Stendhal, Mary Shelley, Dickens, Gogol, Melville, Mark Twain, Papadiamantis, Jules Verne, Rabindranath Tagore, Proust, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Lagerlöf, Pessoa, Borges, Hesse, Mann, Lu Xun, Vesaas, James Joyce, E. M. Forster, Kazantzakis, Kahlil Gibran, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Golding, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Beckett, White, Murdoch, Márquez, Llosa, Kundera, V.S. Naipaul, Ellison, Greene, Camus, Bellow, Asimov, Solzhenitsyn, Baldwin, Günter Grass, Saramago, Fuentes, Mahfouz, C.S. Lewis, Lessing, Achebe, George Orwell, Primo Levi, Tasos Leivaditis, Toni Morrison, Roth, Kenzaburō Ōe, Farah, McCarthy, Wole Soyinka, Atwood, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Walker, Astley, Malouf, Octavia E. Butler, Calvino, Vonnegut, McCourt, Assia Djebar, Momo Kapor, Raymond Carver, Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Murakami, Grenville, Banville, Eribon, Ishiguro, Ama Ata Aidoo, Handke, Marilynne Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Karen Tei Yamashita, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Shin Kyung-sook, Yu Hua, Sorokin, Yan Lianke, Franzen, Winton, Kim Scott, Fosse, Yann Martel, Vodolazkin, Zafón, Olga Tokarczuk, Khaled Hosseini, Anita Heiss, Madeleine Thien, Ahmed Saadawi, Yanagihara, Zadie Smith, Thirlwell, Prosser... where to begin and where to end with this breathtaking unrolling of the glow. And this without even mentioning the twin colossi of Homer and Shakespeare. Yet, there is something wholly immediate to a magical poem that can reach our inner core in ways few other things can. Is there a more effective example than Aram Saroyan’s famously or infamously minimalistic [typo intended] single word: “lighght”. “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration”, said Percy Bysshe Shelley in his essay A Defence of Poetry (1821). Compare, for instance, Les Misérables with Cavafy’s Ithaka, or The Brothers Karamazov to Eliot’s Four Quartets. The former rightly take time to be ingested, to get into the skin and minds, as well you can, of the characters and worlds which the words inhabit, but the latter, the poetry, can provide quick respite during moments of need, similarly to a verse from Scripture or like one of our favourite songs. Even if some poems are only good for their ambiguity or their ability to surprise, then that would be enough [1]. Matthew Arnold the 19th century English poet and essayist got it right when he wrote: “Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.”

“It has been rediscovered./ What? -Eternity./ It’s the sea fused/ With the sun.” Arthur Rimbaud (Eternity)

“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,/ leaving your room, of which you know every bit;/ your house is the last before the infinite,/ whoever you are.” Rainer Maria Rilke (Initiation)

“As you set out for Ithaka/ hope the voyage is a long one/ full of adventure, full of discovery./ Laistrygonians and Cyclops/ angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:/ you’ll never find things like that on your way/ as long as you keep your thoughts raised high/ as long as a rare excitement/ stirs your spirit and your body.” Constantine Cavafy (Ithaka)

“Beyond time or place I keep the faith./ Follow a path or follow no path,/ never fearing the night, the wind,/ call to me, come to me, now at the end,/ walk with me, life of my life, my friend.” Gabriela Mistral (The Song You Loved)

“Footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden. My words echo/ Thus, in your mind.” T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, 11-15)

“Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas (Do not go gentle into that good night)

"Oh open, apostolic height!/ And tell my humbug how to start/ Bird balance, bleach: make miniature/ Valhalla of my heart.” Gwendolyn Brooks (A Light and Diplomatic Bird)

“Things were invisible and visible/ While what was hidden trembled into sight — /Or was it that I shivered in the cold?” Kevin Hart (A Kindness)

Our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits

Ultimately, “Art” is created from the ‘mud’ and to the ‘mud’ it will return, irrespective of whether we are realists (beauty is a real property) or anti-realists (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) when we respond to the age-long question: “What is Art?” The American abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell who was also trained in philosophy, said something on art which was not only extremely profound but also very confronting: “It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.” Mandalas made of a circle enclosing a square, one of the distinguishing features of Tibetan Buddhist art, is to aid the focus through meditation to follow the path to the central image of the Buddha. Byzantine art with its focus on iconography and Islamic art with its emphasis on patterns and balance, all point to similar conclusions as Motherwell’s discerning observation. This realisation helps put things into their proper perspective and allows for the light to cast its burn into the essential everyday dimensions of our existence. In the end, all art is ephemeral, like sculptures made from sand or blocks of ice. If you have a moment do reflect on Shelley’s sonnet, Ozymandias, this magnificent meditation on the fragility of even the most impressive of our monuments: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!” When, however, there is an acknowledgement of our artistic expression, whether great or small, that in some way we helped to make another’s day brighter and revealed something new, it is to be welcomed. It goes some way to justifying our efforts of trying to bring a little order to the ‘chaos’ and recognises our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits. It was Simone Weil, the French mystic, philosopher and political activist, who memorably said: “Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”

They were normal people just like us

We often think of saints as those whose icons we see in church or whose pictures we might find in books, but before we gave them that extraordinary distinction, they were normal people just like us, and from every walk of life… fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, orphans, cooks, cobblers, soldiers, doctors, farmers, artists, clergy and lay, yes, kings and slaves. There is something uniquely powerful about sanctity. It cares nothing for status or gain, does not look unto itself, but the more ego empties of itself, [‘self-centeredness’], the more love is expelled, the greater and more enduring the acts of charity. And this is the place of miracles and wonders. Here is the unfathomable mystery of the ‘kenosis’ [the emptying] of the Godman of His divine glory in putting on flesh (Phil. 2:7). All forms of social activism, however worthy and necessary, when they are compelled by ego and not fuelled by compassionate love, will eventually die out, or worse still, cause great devastation. The inspired words of Saint Francis of Assisi would seem appropriate here: “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”

The true value and meaningfulness of life

The true value and meaningfulness of life strikes us at the heart when we are at our most vulnerable. When both the light and the darkness, as they come and go, are at their most intense levels. When we are seriously ill, or when we grieve for the loss of a loved one, when we are robbed of our most prized possessions, when huge obstacles which seem insurmountable, are put in the way of our dreams and hopes. The celebrated Roman poet Ovid, writes in the Amores: “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” We somehow become more enlivened when tested [as if ‘tried’ in a pot to separate the good metals from the bad], more sensitive to all of those things around us which we might have previously dismissed or merely given a cursory glance. Consider the heartrending beauty of the African-American spiritual and the unmatchable profundity of the survival literature which came out of the Holocaust. If we are people of faith, we understand in some tangible way, the words of the psalmist: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Ps. 23:4). Even if we do not belong to a community of believers, still we share in the mystery of endurance and of that unidentifiable love from some deep place within, which beckons us forward like a magnet pulls on steel.

Beethoven was already profoundly deaf

Amazingly, Beethoven was already profoundly deaf when he wrote the final movement to his celebrated Ninth Symphony which served as we have noted above, the musical setting for Friedrich Schiller's An die Freude. It is said that the famous composer could not hear the wild applause when the symphony premiered in Vienna on May 7th, 1824. It is considered by most critics to be Beethoven’s greatest composition. How is it possible, we might ask, when the man was deaf? Ironically, too, when we think on the poem’s title, that a suffering soul, for that he was at the time, could put down such gloried music to push our hearts to the highest of raptures. Of course, only he could tell what it was that exactly drove him, the source behind his unrelenting passion, the desire to create. Except to say that outside his perfect pitch [and this despite his tinnitus], it was the innate need ‘to be’, to keep ‘the flicker’ in the heart burning placed there when the stars were made. Incredibly, as Beethoven’s hearing became worse, not few critics argued that his music became more and more bizarre. Self-belief and endurance make for the best allies, particularly if we can keep the ‘naysayers’ out.

The delightful joy of gardening

Source: @gabrielj_photography - Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/photos/jin4W1HqgL4

I have discovered later in life the delightful joy of gardening. “If you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete”, wrote the famed Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero in a letter to his friend [though some might say his ‘frenemy’] and fellow scholar, Varro. And just like great libraries, the library of Alexandria for instance, there were also the great gardens in the ancient world, the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. There are many lessons to be learnt from gardening, perhaps more correct to say, there are many truths which are reinforced. A great deal of it comes down to the importance of planting, weeding, and watering. What you plant [and where, of course] will determine your fruits. If you do not weed regularly, these seeds you have painstakingly cultivated will be overrun by all manner of weeds and eventually will be destroyed. And, of course, without water, the source of life, the garden will soon wither and many of its plants die. Not surprisingly then, that Christ’s Parable of the Sower, the allegory of the Kingdom of God (Mk. 4:1-20), strikes at me often when I’m gardening. Simple things, I understand this, yet they point to the greater realities and good disciplines of life.

P.S.

“Silence is death, and you, if you talk, you die, and if you remain silent, you die. So, speak out and die.” (T.D.)

An afterthought after having revisited the story of the slain Algerian novelist and journalist, Tahar Djaout (1954-1993).[2] Where are our watchdog journalists today? The fourth estate is dying a slow and public death. Let us remember the many brave ones, like Tahar, that we might encourage and inspire a new breed of heroes which I dare to call ‘neo-martyrs’ . Please visit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and spare a thought and a prayer [if you are so inclined].[3] CPJ has been called the ‘Red Cross of Journalism’.[4]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-tahar-djaout-1490353.html

[3]https://cpj.org/data/killed/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&start_year=1992&end_year=2021&group_by=year

[4] http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=1510

The street of my early childhood

January 14th 2011

341 King Street Newtown, Sydney

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Photo: George Michael at the Reno Café in Newtown circa 1950 (Source: MG Michael Family Archives)

It had been a long time since I last walked down the street of my early childhood, King Street, Newtown,[1] where ‘the shoppe’ in its latest incarnation lives on. The Reno Café is presently Linda’s On King Street “giving classic dishes a modern twist”. I remembered many things, both good and bad. Mostly the memories which rushed back at me, one wave after the other, were good. I closed my eyes, if only for a few moments, and found myself transported back to that ancient place. Our ‘shoppe’. The unforgettable ‘cathedral’ of my early childhood. A place alive with readings as if from the Book of Acts. The haunted faces of the ‘congregants’, otherwise known as customers, send a lovely shiver up and down my back: Leo the ‘Cookie’, Mr Ted, Jack, Mr Bill, Molly, Uncle Charlie, Mr Bruce, Les, Ronnie, Mr Williams, Big Bob, Cecil, Mrs Pat, Harry the Boxer, Curly, Mrs Peters, Mustapha ‘the one-legged’, Mr Taylor, Bunny (he was the ‘Rabbit’ on one of those afternoon children’s shows on TV). There was the lady from Playschool, too, she was dressed in furs. Even now, I see her clearly, sitting at her favourite table, a lovely face with big dark eyes, oodles of jewellery. Lots of other famous people, as well, some were more infamous then famous. And many others from every walk of life, in this ‘diaconate’ of serving tables which lasted over half a century, and where sixty cents [the weekly “Special”] would get you a three-course meal and a cuppa. I can’t help thinking that Newtown attracted writers, Henry Lawson, Martin Johnston, John Forbes, David Malouf, Nadia Wheatley, to mention only a few. One of the local institutions Gould’s Bookshop is still there further up the street towards Missenden Road. With each succeeding generation, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Yugoslav, the names might change, sound a little different, but the stories were not too dissimilar and ultimately, they too, those faces, would become “ghosts” in their appointed time. As it has also been determined for us in our own allotted hour, to become the support players in someone else’s story.

My father now old and sick, approaching the ninetieth year of his life, holding the hand of his seven-year-old grand-child, George [they share the same name], points to the shop front with his bent arthritic finger. It is much changed now, ‘the shoppe’, gone are the old steel food counters, the faux wood seating. Linoleum flooring replaced by expensive tiles with fancy sketches. I do however, note in great dismay, that the white drop ceiling from the last refurbishment is still the same. The old man’s forearms are scarred by the scalding oils which burnt ‘stigmata’ into his flesh after five decades of hand-to-hand combat in the kitchen: “The shoppe… look, Georgie. Look, it is still here”, he says with the delight of a long-awaited revelation. I wonder what he was thinking on the inside. How much and what of those fifty-years would he have changed, if given the chance? I ask him. He tells me: none of it. I do not believe him. Maybe I do not want to believe him. I know my mother would have changed a lot. She never really did like the Reno Café. At least not as much as Dad and I did. It is right, isn’t it, memories similarly to truth, are oftentimes what we wish for them to be? Before we moved on, to the other ‘chapters’ down the street,[2] the other ageless ‘shoppies’, I look across the busy road, to where my first school used to be. Father would run over to throw me over his sturdy shoulder, when it was time to go home.

Ah, yes, and how could I forget Vic! An important person from Qantas who bore an uncanny resemblance to John Newcombe [handlebar moustache besides]. He was a friend of Buzz Aldrin’s he would tell us. I would listen to his stories with awe and wonder. It was as close as I would ever get to the Moon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown,_New_South_Wales

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Street,_Newtown,_Sydney

An Enigmatic Capital

Wednesday, August 10th 2011

Hotel Christiana, Bucharest, Romania

“Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane." (Mircea Eliade)

Source: Mircea Eliade Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierophany

The possibilities of this enigmatic capital “Little Paris” in southern Romania have been providing me with many stories: old women removing their diadems to prepare for death in long narrow alleys; young women with easy ponytails reaching for stars in search of fairy tales; men young and old trading their large feathers for more earthly needs; gypsies dancing between cars selling plastic flowers and USB flash drives; and then there are the dogs of Bucharest so lost and desolate they make you want to cry. The little flower shops, too, which are as ubiquitous as the taxis in this city. They do not fool me. Vlad the Impaler once ruled from here. In the afternoons  I have been reading more of R. D. Precht’s outstanding philosophical survey into the fundamental question of human existence, Who Am I? (2011).[1] There is a marked difference between such ‘kaleidoscopic’ works for example, and the ‘self-help’ genre of the Eckhart Tolle type. I do not wish to trivialize the latter; even these efforts I understand as something within a sociology of knowledge framework. Some of it is certainly helpful, but falls short of understanding that any contentment in “self-realization” outside the passing through and not the going ‘around’ of suffering, is ultimately an excitement of short-lived durations. At its worst it feeds and fuels the appetites themselves it has been trying to collect and adds to the sense of hopelessness. A synthesis between these two approaches, the ‘Precht’ and the ‘Tolle’ I would reckon, is the Psalter in the Old Testament, the book where as one Athonite elder has said, “man speaks to God”.

It is raining lightly after the morning heat with the threat of something heavier to come. It has been pleasant most of the days and I have enjoyed my walks. I am watching a documentary on catastrophic earthquakes “which can happen at any time”, the narrator warns. Like most things I would suppose. It made me remember one of my dreams. It has to do with Istanbul, or as some of my compatriots still prefer Constantinople, and the devastation of this great city which is spread across two continents and between two seas. An awful nightmare. I have been thinking much on faith over the past few months and have been especially reflecting on Hebrews 11. Is not faith, also, to keep going despite the exhaustion; to keep getting up each day letting go of yesterday’s hurts and disappointments. To persevere in the belief that this life too, as it might be revealed to us after the storm, has to be lived? “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). A nice moment a few days back when I dropped by the National Library of Romania. I saw firsthand why some visitors have called this impressive structure with its glass shell ‘gigantic’. Directly to the left as I entered the building was a reading room dedicated to Mircea Eliade, the famous if not controversial for some, Romanian philosopher and historian of religion. [2] His theory of the “eternal return”, the returning back to the “mythical age” in order to interpret religious behaviour, caught my attention early during my undergraduate days in the classrooms of Eric Sharpe, the founding Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. Eliade also wrote stories, long ones, unlike mine which are very short! Last night downloaded Mozart’s “Requiem Mass in D Minor”, conducted by Karl Bohm. The bassoon and basset horn have rarely sounded better. A few hours before I’d been rocking to Cold Chisel’s power ballad “When the War is Over”. Wolfgang Amadeus side by side with Steve Prestwich? We make one of the most terrible and far-reaching mistakes of all [whether as individuals or as nations] when we start out on that dehumanising process of typecasting.

[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Who-Am-Many-Philosophical-Journey/dp/0385531184

[2] https://norse-mythology.org/introduction-mircea-eliade/

Let Him sing to me like the days past

16th August Tuesday, 2011

Bucharest, Romania

Christina Hotel, 9.45 p.m.

Black absorbs all frequencies of light, but no, not this Light.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements- surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4:7)

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me…” (Dylan Thomas)

“Each person’s journey to God, of course, is unique, even if it takes place within the context of the beliefs and rituals of a religious community. To that extent, the construction of standard mystical itineraries… is to some degree artificial- like reading a map, not actually walking through the terrain. These itineraries are intended to be guide books to help people, usually with the advice of a spiritual director, to gain some sense of where they are and what lies ahead.” (Bernard McGinn)

Let Him sing to me like the days past

Source: Image by dre2uomaha0 from Pixabay

I need to remember that there is no dark place where the Light cannot reach. Black absorbs all frequencies of light, but no, not this Light. Lord, I pray for all those, my brothers and my sisters, who are tonight likewise sharing in this temptation and for the child who is hungry. Catch me. Hold me. Cradle me. There is almost nothing left. “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jer. 20:18) I want to sleep. I want to feel warm and dry. I want this to stop. I want for my ego to dissolve. I want to remember that life is about bigger things than what I see. Let me hear the great murmuring of the Holy Ghost tonight. “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…” (the Nicene Creed). Let Him sing to me like the days past. Let me be set alight that I might become one of “the burnt men” of Christ. Hold onto this gift of life, this precious little moment of existence with all of its strong impulses. You will not be here again. “Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me.” (Ps. 27:7) Get past this dark hour. Hang on for another minute. Neither the presence nor the absence of God are an illusion. I think on Jacques Derrida’s ‘traces’ of presence. We find allies in unexpected places. All will be well. Take it one day at a time. Stop and look into your soul. Think of those you love. Look into their souls. Believe, truly you must believe, that the experience of Love will always outweigh any potential suffering that might return. The pieces to the puzzle will never altogether fall into place, not the way you might want them. Learn to separate the joy from the pain. Be grateful for the joy… it is the pain which will bring you love.  

 Outside my window the mesmerising beauty of a lemon Moon, which hangs over me like the love of a Mother.

The next morning the Sun also rises

I have sometimes wished that I did not believe in prophecy, but I do and from the moment that I did, my life was under the providence of God and in the hands of angels. This did not ‘change’ me as a man nor make me any more special than my neighbour. I mean not in the sense of becoming virtuous or suddenly enlightened like in some of the great transformation stories we might read. No, certainly not in my case. Too often I would go the other way, increasingly becoming aware of my own mortality and depressed at the raw and uncompromising carnality of both my flesh and mind. And the more I wanted to love God, and the more I wanted to approach Him, and the more I felt called to Him, the more cognizant I would become of my fallen state and want to run away from Him. “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” (Ps. 63:1) Whatever else we might try to present to the world, whatever our reputation whether as teachers or charity workers, or priests, concupiscence never completely leaves us.[1] At the same time I am not trying to justify my beliefs, I know too well, what might be true for me, need not be true for you. Divine disclosure similarly to our individual realities resists simple definition and cannot be captured in any net regardless of its size. Yet, paradoxically, the more holes we rip into that net, fewer the holes. What this means is for each soul alone to determine as it goes about its journey. At the end of the day, the most important thing as the British philosopher and logical positivist A. J. Ayer might say, our beliefs survive our discoveries.

Bea has brought me another cup of Romanian coffee. It is around four-thirty in the afternoon. Outside the hotel a light drizzle. Perfect. Where have I been? 

- You remembered. Thank you.

- You have not slept, again?

- No… again.

- What are you writing?

I am last night’s mascara running down your face… I am the little streams of black and blue… I am the two crescent moons beneath your eyes… I am the porous stones on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea…

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/concupiscence

On the improvident judgement of people and full-bodied wines

 “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jer. 17:10)

“If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbour. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbour’s dead.” (Saint Moses the Ethiopian, The Sayings of Abba Moses)

“To laugh often and much;/ to win the respect of intelligent people/ and the affection of children;/ to earn the appreciation of honest critics/ and endure the betrayal of false friends/ to appreciate beauty;/ to find the best in others;/ to leave the world a bit better/ whether by a healthy child,/ a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;/ to know even one life has breathed easier/ because you lived here./ This is to have succeeded.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, To Laugh Often And Much)

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison)

“How does one become a butterfly?' she asked pensively.
'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.'
'You mean to die?' asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.
'Yes and No,' he answered.
'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will still live.” (Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers)

This is about that infinitude of shortcomings we hold together in common

Next to the cold and heartless ‘Machine’, the apparatus, or however else we might define it, I have feared the improvident judgement of people. Those who would make it sport to wipe out another human being. We have seen before how this can happen in any number of terrible ways. To diminish someone, to make the effort to annihilate them for a past failing or mistake, is to effectively shoot down their hopes and dreams. It is a dreadful thing to ‘kill’ someone’s spirit. We are not speaking here of ignoring felonies. No, this is about that infinitude of our shortcomings, frailties and weaknesses, we hold together in common. Other times in the rush to judge our neighbour, to cancel them, we are wanting to avoid looking into our own motivations. The founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, put it simply: “[t]hinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Who has not envied? Who has not fallen victim to lust or has not committed adultery in their hearts? Who has never lied? Who has not borne false witness? Who has not gone after false idols? Who has failed to practise compassion or has walked away from the poor? Who has not been bitter or angry? Who has not used words they have later regretted? Who has not betrayed their creed and has not done so on a daily basis? So before I [one Jeremiah] cast the ‘first stone’…

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23)

Should we be honest enough to admit it

If our most secret thoughts, our hidden fetishes and past misdemeanours, were to be suddenly revealed to the entire planet, as could well happen in the future, how many would survive the ‘shaming’? Many of us, should we be honest enough to admit it, would be ‘cancelled’. How awful is that word in its present context. Nowadays, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837), Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known folktale of vanity and [literal] exposure, has taken on new more frightening dimensions. Propaganda also plays an enormous role in any appropriation of a group of peoples to shape their values and thoughts, “engineering consent”, Edward L. Bernays writes in his ground-breaking study Propaganda (1928). The compelling irony of it all, like most things, ‘cancel culture’ one way or another, has been with us for a long time. As a burgeoning political ideology probably from the late 1940s and 1950s but in practice long before with unspeakable results. And it will manifest anew in a variety of guises every time we refuse to forgive or to act in charity, till that ‘beastly’ hour when the few will determine the fate of the many. You don’t need to be a prophet to know this.

“Horror the state of mind of a person whose participation in speech is threatened. The power which exceeds the capacity of interlocution resembles night.” (Edmund Burke)

If there is any modicum of infallibility in the world

We have all suffered those very bad moments when our vocabulary lagged far behind what our minds and hearts sought to say. In our younger years, when we were “green in judgement”, even our best and most noble ideas could inevitably be held hostage to banality. Our personal beliefs might also have been clumsily and embarrassingly expressed in overused formulaic cliches. There might be some to the manor born, indeed, but none are born unerring. The influential social scientist Joseph Grenny, sums it up wonderfully when he says: “I believe that the measure of my soul is my capacity to love imperfect people.” To  wake up one morning, or worse still to go to bed one evening with revenge planned in the heart against someone who has made a mistake, is bordering on madness when your own life could unexpectedly come to an end during the night. How many ‘perfect’ people do we know? I like what the mischievous Salvador Dali has said: “[h]ave no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.” If there is any modicum of infallibility in the world, it is to be found in the lessons of history. 

“I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for ‘history’. The closest word for it is memory.” (David Miliband)

“Night Shepherd” (Image by Eleni Michael)

We are especially drawn to the ocean

I have in recent years learnt to love to take long walks. Especially on the shorelines of the Pacific Ocean and the loaded-with-stories streets of unfamiliar cities. We are all inspired by different landscapes, in the same way to painters and architects. There is, however, something unique when it comes to water. Who doesn’t find at least some momentary peace looking out on the deep-sea or walking along its beaches. I remember reading that we are especially drawn to the ocean for the reason that the “watery” environment takes us back to our mother’s womb [human foetuses still have “gill-slit” structures in their early stages of development]. The fact, too, that our bodies even as we age are made of a high percentage of water plays its own part. This might be the reason why we are also drawn to the stars given that many elements in the human body were made in a star and even in supernovas. But I have digressed. On these walks by the sea I have preached my ‘finest’ sermons to myself [to the wind, that is], or to the rocks, or to the driftwood, and there are the mutts, as well, which go after my ‘walking stick’. Sometimes we do our best work, we are at the peak of the mountain, when nobody is looking. We must not become overly sad that we won’t be seen or heard when we have been on fire. How many saw Saint John of the Cross writing the Spiritual Canticle? “The murmuring solitude,/ The supper which revives, and enkindles love.” Few things in the world can compare to the power and rapture of a ‘yielded’ invisibility. And what is more, for the astonishing audience it might draw. 

“Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.” (Job 4:15)

“Everything is visible to, The Invisible.” (Syed Sharukh)

Guilt can cause a huge number of problems

We will come against lots of adversaries in our life. One of the greatest of these, next to our ego, will be guilt. Above all when it is left untreated. Shakespeare would use graphic images of blood, literal and metaphorical, to represent guilt in his chilling Macbeth recognising it here and in other places of his canon, as a negative, annihilating, and ultimately destructive force. Guilt can cause a huge number of problems. One of these being inaction, similarly to fear it can paralyse. Our perspective of truth is at the same time blocked. “It becomes a device to protect ignorance”, writes Audre Lorde the poet and civil rights activist, “and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” What is more, unresolved guilt [which we should remember to distinguish from conviction of sin which can be sweetly redemptive] can quickly lead to self-hate, which is also exhausting and isolating, as a result diminishing our ability to love. This is why it is a glorious thing to release someone from their ‘guilt burden’ by practising forgiveness. Let us not be a heavy chain of accusation around another human’s spirit. Jesus Christ spoke on the inexhaustible character of love and on the requirement of forgiveness if we are to make any spiritual progress in our lives: "[i]f your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying 'I repent,' you must forgive them" (Lk. 17:3-4). I know, too well, from personal experience, [and this from both sides of the ledger], that oftentimes this is not easy. Most acts of transfiguration, a change of “form” or “shape”, are demanding and ask for humility and the grace of heartfelt action. 

“Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.” (Carl Jung)

Those “transformational moments”

There are things, the deeper truths of our lives, that no one will ever know. Those “transformational moments”, which have in deeply profound ways, changed our lives. In my case it was ordination into the Eastern Orthodox priesthood, and then the agonising decision when I would later ask to be relieved of my holy orders. The reasons do not matter here, but they are those ‘existential’ type decisions that no matter how events might later turn out, will not ever be entirely resolved. Whole restoration, that being, to “return to its former condition”, is forever one step away. For those who are trying to let go of some of the heavy weight of their past and attempting to live a more peaceful or contemplative life, even in the world, the words of Saint Sophrony Sakharov are directly relevant here: “God’s revelation is not visions, but the advent of divine grace, which comes in stages.” We all suffer pain and loss. It is one of the normal processes of life and it needs to be lived through. It doesn’t really cost too much to be kind to each other. I paraphrase here the Coloradan counsellor Craig. D. Lounsbrough; we can decide to live in the “pieces” of our broken lives or determine to put them back together. Sometimes the cracks might still be obvious, but that doesn’t matter, they are the proof of our endurance and the marks of our battles. These are the things which make our souls beautiful like the full-bodied wines with all of their complex and rich flavours.

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Dear Lord, do help me to not rush to judgement, and that before I am tempted to look into my neighbour’s heart and motivations, I first pause to examine my own life and to be reminded of the unfathomable grace and unplumbed mercy poured out upon me, Jeremiah, the least of Your servants. “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” (Ps. 51:3)