A Right Rammy.

 Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

I am not inclined to jump into an ongoing public stooshie too often, but it strikes me that my local RC Heirach has gone off rather loudly in public on the subject of Same Sex Marriage. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9122961/Gay-marriage-is-like-slavery-Catholic-leader-says.html for further details  My objections are not to his saying what he said - after all, it's a free country and he is an RC Archbishop, so was scarcely likely to give it anything like a ringing endorsement, as that isn't the line RC theology or ethics take.  No, it's more that I find his allegory with the re-introduction of slavery singularly inappropriate - the proposal is to give freedom to LGBT people to wed their best beloveds, not to deprive those who want to marry a person of the other gender of their freedom to marry.  I also find his intemperate language frankly offensive.  But it seems odd to me that this is the same Archbishop who back in 2000 appointed an RC chaplain to the Scotland 2000 Conference on Christianity and LGBT issues and sent a fairly supportive message to encourage it's dialogue.  I seem to recall that I was on the the steering committee at the time!  Either he's radically changed his mind through some spiritual or intellectual epiphany or reflection (which could perhaps say in public - closer contact with Pope Benedict and his thinking might have had this effect) or that Red Hat he got has  radically changed his sense of what it is to be a Bishop of the RC Church and made him more Ultramontane in his pronouncements than in days of yore.  Archbishop Nichols in Westminster seems to be rather more efficient at communicating the Party Line without gratuitously offending a heck of a lot of people.  As this shows http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/02/28/archbishop-nichols-reaffirms-soho-masses-after-criticism/  Mind you, the comments column suggest there are a fair pochle of bigoted and viciously homophobic RC laity and clergy who read the Catholic herald.  Is it the Daily Mail for the Pope's 1st XI?

A spiritual Spring clean.

Here's an apposite quote from that old pagan Horace for anyone thinking about going (or not going to confession) during Lent this year: "Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?"

Thanks Quintus Horatius Flaccus - time to get on with it methinks.

Back from the Quiet place.

I went away for a retreat this weekend.  A short one at the Jesuit Centre near Liverpool, Loyola Hall (pictured above).  I had a a very faint connection with it, in as much as my great mentor Donald Nicholson made his Ignatian 30 day retreat there in the 1970's.  However I was drawn in by their provision of a 12 step retreat.  All the participants were in some sort of 12 step programme (AA, NA, Al-Anon etc).  It's a 1st for me (in  agood way) to have the priest start his addresses with the words "I'm X and I'm an alcoholic" but it was good.  Basically I got the chance to go on a 48 hour meeting with Mass and meditation and it helped me to see how much progress I've made (very nearly 3 years sober) and how little (fear and denial still just under the surface).  It gave me a chance to go down into the depths of my emotions and come back with hope and peace.  And to see that I may have turned my life over to god but I'm still struggling with handing over my will.  Oddly enough,  the spiritual gift I was "gifted" in one meditation (by picking up an inscribed ribbon - which begs the question Holy Spirit or Lucky Dip?  I'll go for God working in mysterious ways) was "humility - seeking God's will".  I do try, I suppose, but I'm very bad at it.  Underneath the low-ish self-esteem there is a thundering great, Centre Stage hogging Ego.  but hey, maybe it's what I need right now and this was me being told to cultivate it.

Back to that prayer of St Ignatius:

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will.
All that I am and all that I possess You have given me:
I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace; 
with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more. 

Ash Wednesday poem.

Here's a chunk of appropriate poetry by the sublime T S Eliot for today:

Ash-Wednesday
by T S Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow,    for there is nothing again                          Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained  In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? Shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping: Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness.                                 And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.  It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping With the burden of the grasshopper, saying Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other, Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broad backed figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the may time with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.
Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

'Ash-Wednesday', from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T S Eliot, © T S Eliot 1963, Faber & Faber Limited

Worth reflecting on.

Touristy Pleasures!

It was off to the Castle today.  Rachel hasn't been round it, so we hit it on the Historic Scotland/English Heritage memberships.  Sadly St Margaret's lovely wee 12 century Chapel was closed for renovations so we had to make do with the stunning Scottish National War Memorial (see below) designed by Sir Robert Lorimer.  We looked up the 2 uncles I never met due to WW2 ending their lives and discovered that Uncle Willie wasn't in the RAF and lost over the Ruhr in 1943 - he was in the Black Watch and it was Sicily.  Uncle Andrew was Caen 1944 also with the Watch.



We also saw the Royal Scots and Scottish National War Museums instead.  Plus the Great Hall and the Royal Apartments.  Oh yes, and the Scottish Crown Jewels.  The cafe is rather expensive and is called  "The Redcoat" which causes mild Jacobite indigestion! But the soup was nice and didn't!

Our meet up with an old friend was supposed to be at Peckham's in Bruntsfield but it has closed so we had to cross the road to find coffee and chocolate cake!  Hopefully that solves the Best man conundrum in plenty of time.

Less pleasantly, my wee brother has been carted off to the local Infirmary for tests after passing out.  He's been struggling with stomach pains for a while and has been dosed with assorted remedies which ain't working.  He's in overnight whilst they wait for a radiographer and results back tomorrow so hold him in your prayers please.