Anniversary

Father,
as Your Son was raised on the cross,
His mother Mary stood by Him, sharing His sufferings.
May Your Church be united with Christ
in His suffering and death
and so come to share in His rising to new life,
where He lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Collect for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Strange as it may seem, it really hadn't dawned on me until now that Dad died on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Sharing in some way in the suffering and death of Christ brings us to Resurrection. That is anything but a comfortable concept because it involves pain. Real personal pain. I can fully understand why people suffer and reject the Christian way because they cannot reconcile a loving God with their painful experience. So why have I not taken that route?

Quite probably because I have also experienced Resurrection after times of grief. I can and have made the jump from Good Friday to Easter morning in my own life, as well as liturgically and theologically. I have seen both the darkness and the dawn. To hold the Good Friday experience alone as the reality would indeed be soul and faith destroying. Perhaps that is why Judas Iscariot went out and hung himself. He never got the Easter message, just the day of sorrow and that was simply too much for his heart and mind to bear.

A pick and mix theology that cherry picks the elements of the Christian narrative and experience that suit us/appeal to us/resonate with our limited experience is a dangerous thing. It too easily makes God in our own image and that God is not one who can bring us to fullness of life. We need the whole picture. The bits of Scripture we find awful, the aspects of the story we find dead. Because we never know when those dark or mysterious bits will burst into life and bring us wisdom and insight and comfort. The Wisdom of God is strange to human eyes, but it is still wisdom and wisdom beyond our understanding. A wisdom for the times we cannot yet know as well as for the times that have been and the now in which we live.

Goals, pies and the Exaltation of the Cross.

A glorious Setterday, with a trip to see Ma and going to watch the Blue Brazil beat Clyde (The Bully Wee - an odd nickname!) 1-0 for our 1st win of the season. We did deserve to win, but I do wish we wouldn't doze off in the 2nd half until the last quarter hour! The catering van with its vile curry sauce and chips has gone and the new caterers at least sell "Killie pies" which are OK, but still it is the Dumbarton pies that get my vote!

Church didn't quite happen today as I stayed on to deal with late breakfasters and make sure the roast veggies were edible - but they self-immolated and I had to start again to ensure Sunday lunch wasn't mainly carnivorous.

Tomorrow is Holy Cross Day, which has been a festival I have always valued, due in no small part to my admiration of the slum priests of the ilk of Alexander Heriot MacConnachie and Charles Fuge Lowder in London, and John Comper in Aberdeen, all of whom were SSC (Societas Sanctae Crucis or Society of the Holy Cross). I was fiercely proud of my own membership of SSC and greatly regretted giving up it up because I could no longer uphold it's line on not taking communion from women priests when I went to work in Falkirk with a female NSM. However I think this quote from St Anselm is worth batting about if you observe it:

"We do not acknowledge you because of the cruelty that godless and foolish ones prepared you to effect upon the most gentle Lord, but because of the wisdom and goodness of him who of his own free will took you up".

In other words, we don't oberve this feast to celebrate an instrument of torture or to dwell on the effects of human sinfullness, but to celebrate the means of grace and the depth of the Divine Love that never stops seeking us out and rescuing us from the consecquences of our personal folly and weakness. So truly we can say:

"We adore you O Christ and we bless you.

Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world"

That'll teach me to drink Pepsi!

Yes, it's late but I had 2 glasses of Pepsi Cola (which spells Episcopal BTW!) after dinner and forgot the stuff is loaded with caffeine! So I'm still up in the wee small hours!

Try this on and see how it fits:

"The purpose of Benedictine spirituality is to gather equally committed adults for a journey through earthen darkness to the dazzling light that already flames in each of us, but in a hidden place left to each of us to find" (Joan Chittister OSB).

There is so much in this. The group of adults (intentional community) can be residential or dispersed or local or all of these things. The dazzling light within can be our soul or personality or essence - call it what you will. But the hidden place? It's within our own hearts and minds to be sure, but this reminds me that community living is but part of what I'm looking for. That inner journey of discovery is something that each of us ultimately takes alone. The monos in Monastic. The religious with their cell may live in a community, but ultimately their pilgrimage is towards God and that is a lonely journey, even as part of a group. And similarly, we only discover happiness and fufillment when we within our selves feel that our light is shining in a proper and fufilling way. Dozens of others can say we are a light to them or a success but unless we have internalised a sense of fufilling a higher purpose and see that this is true in regard to our own situation where we are in the here and now, then we will not feel content or happy. The Benedictine approach is to stay in the one Abbey and find peace there, not to run around seeking grass that is greener (alledgedly!) elsewhere.

I find this discovery of truths from others thinking nicely described in a phrase I heard on Tuesday night: "borrowing wisdom". Hopefully God will let us keep it on long term loan!

The Erection of the Holy Hut of Tollcross

Every one else being out, c'est moi who is letting the workmen in to put up the Garden Shed which is to be the Chapel at Emmaus House (aka the Holy Hut, or, if you want it described a la Sean Connery, the Schacred Sched!). Personally, I think it ought to be dedicated to St Trinian, but then I would! It will in due course be followed by the Sanctification of the HH (feast day TBA) and then will be in regular use.

Last night involved a yummy baked cheesecake for dessert which broadened my dietary experience in a pleasantly American way, plus a bouef bourginon. The herbal teabag that is boquet garni didn't end up on my plate which was a plus. Never quite a dull moment!

Powerful voices

Last night, over my Tuesday evening Tomato juice with the folks from the meeting, a very nice atheist put me on to a speech that he said had turned his life around by a black American woman (a former slave and pal of Abraham Lincoln's) named Sojourner Truth in the days leading up to their Civil War (not that there was anything civil about it if you ask me). I looked her speech up and I see what he means. Here's what she said to a Women's Rights conference Akron Ohio in 1851:

"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Nork, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin''bout?

"Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunders, she asked "And a'n't I a woman? Look at me! Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear de lash a well! And a'n't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'n't I a woman?

"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect," whispered some one near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights or nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.

"Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him." Oh, what a rebuke that was to that little man.

Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting: "If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em." Long-continued cheering greeted this. "Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now old Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."

Certainly it sets off the reading from the Gospel on Sunday nicely. Who're you calling a dog Jesus? Wha daur marginalise us? Damn few, and they're a' deid! In my merrily insular British way, I hadn't heard of this fiesty lady. Wonder if this ought to be nailed to the door of the Shrine at Walsingham?