Trinity

The Trinity is really a very simple practical teaching.

The aim of religion is to point by its rituals beyond them to the truth that the universe is a gratuitous gift (Father/Creator), showing us how we should best respond to it with gratitude (Son), which manifests in changed lives (Spirit).

(thoughts on retreat)

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More from Julian of Norwich

Like many keen Christians, Mother Julian says she desires a supernatural revelation of God, and so she asks for three things:
1) a 'memory' of the Passion, as if she were actually a witness of the crucifixion
2) (bizarrely) she desires a life-threatening illness, so that afterwards she might be more grateful.

Both of these desires fade away (although she does receive them).
It is the third that remains:
"I conceived a mighty desire to receive three wounds...
the wound of true contrition
the wound of natural compassion, and
the wound of earnest longing for God...
This desire dwelled with me constantly".

How curious - when we naturally seek wholeness and independence, Julian asks to be lamed by God, so that she might become helplessly open to loving herself appropriately, loving others and loving God.

(Revelations, ch. 2)

Reading Julian of Norwich

A lovely description here from the fourteenth century English mystic Julian of Norwich describing the way from day to day our experience of life includes both positive and negative things:

'the seventh showing is a frequent experience of well and woe - the experience of 'well' is grace-filled touching and enlightening, with true certainty of endless joy;

the experience of 'woe' is temptation by sadness and annoyance of our fleshly life...

Even so we are protected safely in love - in woe as in well - by the goodness of God.'

(taken from John-Julian's 2009 translation, ch. 1)

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Conflict and the tongue

One of the most difficult things in life I find is dealing with conflict.

I wonder if anyone else finds that they have an argument with someone, and then spends the next few days re-running it in their head, rekindling the anger and emotions?

Sometimes I really do wish I had a better control on my temper and my tongue. It was with some recognition that I read this morning 'How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And the tongue is a fire' (James 3.5). Yes quite! How easily the 'tinder' of life can catch and blaze.

My mind wandered to another passage in the Bible about 'tongues' and 'fire' imagery: Pentecost (indeed last Sunday was Pentecost).

When the 'gift of tongues' is spoken of it is usually in a charismatic sense (or with very naughty risqué humour...). But I was rather taken with the idea of the work of the Spirit being about giving us better ways of communicating, less destructive ways...

Well, I wish I knew how that happened, but I can't see any other way than the daily offering of oneself to God in prayerful humility asking to be changed. And then, doing one's best: biting the tongue, taking a few breaths before replying to the challenging statement, letting go of the argument.

Ah, yes, and humour too: a sense that may be it doesn't really matter as much as we think it does, and we're not all that important after all.

'All of us make many mistakes' writes James (3.2). What a relief to be reminded, and how fortunate that God is so forgiving.

Friend of God

How does an acquiantance become a friend? What changes in this process?

In the Letter of James, during a discussion of the importance of 'action' accompaniying 'having beliefs' about God, James states that Abraham combined these two elements and thus became a 'friend of God'.

There seem to be plenty of people who hold opinions (beliefs) about God, but fewer who practice a faith. Might good evangelism thus have something to do with helping people move from acquiantance with (the idea of) God, to becoming friends with God?

Friendship of course involves matters such as noticing an initial commonality between me and another (beer-making, a love of art...); it them builds upon this by making time to discover more about the other (both the differences to me as well as the similarities). Finally it grows into common goals and decisions (small or large) about sharing a future, journeying together.

This final stage is essential. An aquaintance may have much in common with me, but unless our stories are somehow voluntarily allowed to interact with each other, such that we are mutuallly changed, then I think genuine friendship has not yet come to fruition.

If James is correct all of this would be transferable by analogy to the growing of relationships with God, too.

The Letter to James is, of course, not the only place in scripture when friendship with God is mooted. Famously John's Gospel describes Jesus as saying 'I do not consider you servants, but friends'.

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In the desert

There are times when things are going swimmingly...and then there are times when they are not. I notice that fairly often these 'not so well' times correspond to things being taken away from me:

Perhaps my work seems less interesting, and consequently this 'lack' has a knock-on effect on my identity: I become bored or listless.

Perhaps something I have been doing has finished or (even worse) been taken out of my hands by someone else. My resulting frustration is only matched by my sense of failure and loss.

Perhaps a friendship has ended in an argument, or maybe it has just slowly evaporated. And so I am left with a sense of hollowness, anger and disappointment.

These 'loses' take various shapes, but they all result in my diminution, my becoming smaller.

The natural tendency is (I suspect) to interpret these loses as weakness and failure on our part; something we could have avoided if we had been stronger.

However there is a different way to view these moments. These are the 'desert' times; times of stripping-away. They leave us emotionally naked and vulnerable, yearning for protection. And yet perhaps these are the very times when we might come closer to God, when we cast ourselves upon God because there is really nothing else we can do.

It may be that these ‘desert’ times provide for us surprising springs of grace. The weak and lonely times become the times of strength and solitude. A time of loss might just become the moment for growth in God.

“And the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness and he was tempted for forty days ... He was with the wild beasts and the angels looked after him”. (Mark 1 12:13)

Feminism

I keep coming across people who refuse to call themselves feminists as if the term were some dirty word. I even know a number of younger women who will roll their eyes at the sound of the word and claim it has nothing to offer them, that they are equal and need no 'special treatment'.
And yet day on day much of my ministry is among women mistreated by men.
Certainly I see men, too, but their needs are in most cases rather different: not the result of being 'used' or abused, but about their failure to find their place in the power-struggle of life's rat-race. Their suffering is often the quiter one of isolation; for many of the women though the problem is more obvious. It is still about bearing the brunt of harsh treatment at the hands of brutal men.

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