A Thought for today.

A thought for today from the Office of Readings:

From the Instructions of St Columbanus

You, God, are everything to us

 

"My brethren, let us follow this call. We are called to the source and fountain of life, by the Life who is not just the fountain of living water but also the fountain of eternal life, the fountain of light, the fountain and source of glory. From this Life comes everything: wisdom, life, eternal light. The Creator of life is the fountain from which life springs; the Creator of light is the fountain of light. So let us leave this world of visible things. Let us leave this world of time and head for the heavens. Like fish seeking water, like wise and rational fish let us seek the fountain of light, the fountain of life, the fountain of living water. Let us swim in, let us drink from the water of the spring welling up into eternal life.

 

  Merciful God, righteous Lord, grant that I may reach that fountain. There let me join the others who thirst for you, drinking living water from the living stream that flows from the fountain of life. Overwhelmed by its sweetness let me cling close to it and say “How sweet is the spring of living water that never runs dry, the spring that wells up into eternal life!.”"

Not sure there are "wise and rational fish", but poetic licence is Soo Irish!

Thank Crunchie it's Friday!

Yep. Definitely. I arrived at work to the crash of flying crockery and after a day of medical intervention's am glad to be off for the weekend. Thanks be to God for the guy who discovered diazepam! Not a chemical cosh used properly but a very handy tool for relieving anxiety.

Last night I took myself to the pictures to see "American" a documentary about the American comic Bill Hicks. Surprise surprise, he did his best work after kicking the booze and joining AA. A brilliant sometimes scabrous wit who died way too young of pancreatic cancer at 32. Tonight I shall go and anoint at NiteKirk and play spot the General Assembly escapees! I have no idea what to do tomorrow but offer this little God shaped bit from the Tao Te Ching as a thought for tonight:

"Be content with what you have
Rejoice in the way things are
When you realise there is nothing lacking
The whole world belongs to you."

Quote of the day.

"Homosexuality does not need the "approval"
of the state: nor does photosynthesis, gravity
or the speed of light." Anon.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if the hyper-pious realised that quote was true and then ceased to do what the cartoon shows them doing? Then they might stop campaigning against legal rights for GLBT people!

St Hilda of Whitby.

Right, a wee blast of devotion for youse!

Hilda was born in 614 of the royal house of Northumbria. Baptised in York at the age of twelve by the Roman missionary Paulinus, she was later an influential lay leader of the Church. She was encouraged by Aidan of Lindisfarne to become a Religious, and subsequently established a monastery at Streanaeshalch (Whitby). This house became a great centre of learning and was the meeting-place for the important Synod of Whitby in the year 664 at which Hilda's role was that of a reconciler between the Roman and the Celtic traditions. She is remembered as a great educator, exemplified in her nurturing of Caedmon's gift of vernacular song. She died on 17 November in the year 680.

Collect

Eternal God,
who made the abbess Hilda to shine like a jewel in our land
and through her holiness and leadership
blessed your Church with new life and unity:
help us, like her, to yearn for the gospel of Christ
and to reconcile those who are divided;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

It seems mindful to point out that Hilda was one of the great reconcilers of the Romanising and Celtic strains of English Christianity. She (probably rightly) saw that the great Celtic tradition had had its day of being the driving force of English Christianity and that the new energy of Augustine's Roman mission was what was needed to take things forward. And it did, gradually melding into the potent English school of spirituality of the Middle Ages (Dame Julian, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe et al). There is a case that can be made that the waning power of English Establishment Anglicanism means that the new drive of more popular and acceptable RC-ism is what England needs just now (thanks to Basil Hume in no small part). That said it is also probably true that what the Church of England needs to rediscover its impact is freedom from the internal strife of trying to hold Anglo-Papalist, Evangelical and Liberal streams together at all costs. If FiF go to Rome, then the C of E can square the circle more easily between Evangelical and liberal (perhaps saying Ta Ta to the Puritans) and recover its nerve and strength. Perhaps the Scottish Church can help best by genuinely being itself and giving an example of good, generous and principled liberality of spirit to keep the Church of Englandshire alert to best practice!

Wisdom from the Monastery which made me smile.

"Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light"

A nifty one-liner from one of the monks at Worth Abbey. I'm sure Newman would have smiled too! For we all have cracks and at our best that is how we let in the light which is God and which transforms and redeems and sanctifies.