Lessons in Service

I was looking at a picture of my dad yesterday, 23rd March. I took it just a few months before he died. It’s been about 4 months now and my thoughts frequently drift, not so much to his death or absence, but simply to him. I find myself thinking about him and not in a nostalgic sense but as if he had a presence with me here now. It’s like I’m weighing something up, balancing the events of our lives. There was a long period through childhood where I was never at ease with him, like we didn’t get on. He did some dumb stuff, perhaps not as dumb as the stuff I did later in my life but I know there were moments between us that didn’t work. But when I look at myself, in many respects my dad was a stronger man. Oddly, to the self-picture I have of myself, I think he was a more disciplined man than I, more capable of fulfilling his duties and obligations. He suffered to live and he bore his suffering impeccably, without complaint or any outward show of resentment. He knew death was close yet he was comfortable with the certain fact of his own necessary demise. Seeing him so accepting of his own death taught me a lot. Obviously it said a lot about my dad, but for me I’d not seen that before. He had time to look at death, he had a measure of it and he waited with patience knowing he could do nothing. He was a man, his body made of flesh and bone, vulnerable and weak, and still he was above it all. I never at any earlier point in my life saw my dad as being in any sense a spiritual person. That was always my perception - from my mid teens pretty much up to his death. He was a social animal, an extrovert that liked people and not one to lock himself away with books and prayer. He never revealed any interest in anything spiritual, so far as I could tell, so I think I was always right in that view - he was not a man who ‘worked’ on himself. And yet, there was something in him that had most definitely developed through his long years of daily suffering. I had not seen that at all and only in his last year did I begin to intuit that he did infact possess a level of being which I had not ascribed to him, and watching him die convinced me of this. When I met the vicar with my mother and brother to discuss the funeral arrangements, I was surprised to hear my mum explain that although she was not religious, my dad had spoke of attending church services but being too unwell this had never happened. So I can say two things with certainty:

1. Though a man make no conscious effort to awaken and increase level of being, life events can actually develop something in a man’s being that will prepare him for true conscious awakening. This is something that can only play out through recurrence. It is not necessarily a sad thing to see a man suffer, if what crystalises in him through that suffering goes into essence to form a new man.

2. People are remarkable in simple ways. Despite our collective ugliness and the visible marks of a fallen race, something beautiful rises through the ordinariness of daily life, something quite unvalued, lessons in service.

[I wrote this a while ago. Maybe I would've forgotten it but I still feel this strong presence, if not more now than before. It's unusual to me. I'm just noting some feelings I guess.]

The Prisoner's Lament

I've done a lot of writing offline this year, which is probably how it should be and how it'll most likely continue. What can I say? It is May, the year is passing at some pace. So far it has only shown my weakness and inability to hold to a straight line. I forget things, even the important things. I am a prisoner. So easily devoured. The pressures of the struggle pressing against my being, the limitations of will exposed. We are eaten by mechanical forces which ever seek to lead us away from contact with the presence of that fragment of being that is real and living within the dead husk of personality.

Some time later ...

I completed that third reading of the Holy Bible just an hour ago. It's a strange state to arrive at. It could be that I NEVER read it again and still I will wear it within my heart forever. Some part of my being desires that I launch immediately into a fourth reading, though I'll not do that. It's worth having a break between these lengthy Genesis to Revelation readings.

Three Books

Today I begin to read Revelations, some 22 chapters away from my third complete Genesis to Revelation reading of the Holy Bible, AV1611. After consideration, I'll take a pause before I begin a fourth reading. And that gives me options. I was looking at Moby Dick as a good contender, it has a high page count, it's a classic work that has stood the test of time and is obviously richly symbolic. As a conscious effort I would have more; forces have to be balanced and consolidated. Don Quixote is a mysterious inspired work, again part of the Western canon, and a high word count. Multi-layered, dealing with inconsistency, chaos, disarray, unnatural phenomena, a baroque love affair - airy qualities for sure. The obvious return to earth has to be War and Peace, another classic, a work that looks at history whilst recognizing the inner events of individual lives as being the real events of history. And of course Tolstoy writes in such a grounded manner, his style is in some ways flawless.

That's a proper trilogy! No timescales for any of this yet, although a minimum daily page count will be required. I may, or I may not make notes - but I'll post them here if I do. The only outstanding matter of any significance is that of translation, although I have looked into enough to know who I'll not be approaching, I've still to make a decision.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Islamists

What it is the West doesn't seem able to understand at a level deep enough to muster any serious - which must equate to collective - response is the fact the Islamists are principally involved in a struggle for the (muslim) Umma. Terrorism is a temporary tool, it certainly got them the media attention they so needed to resurrect their cause. Let's not forget al-Quaeda have their own media arm, al-Sahib, which if nothing else tells us they have something we haven't! And, their operational leaders, the likes of Ayman al-Zawahri, talk of this war as a struggle for the Muslim mind. They do not talk of this struggle as being achieved next year or come the next election, nor the next decade, they talk of 50 and 100 years. They see this as a historical struggle, of which they play only a small part in the present revival. It is undoubtedly very difficult to see how all this will pan out through the fullness of time. There is nothing occurring today that offers much to meliorate our confidence - there's no point denying what is obvious, even if there is much we don't see - the West looks weak and vulnerable. And the fact there are people walking our streets who believe the whole thing is the invention of the intelligence services doesn't help much. This all seems utterly Biblical.

A Note

Having played around with googlepages and still feeling that it's all pretty clumsy, I will continue with this and other blogs not only because Blogger is easy to use but because I can access it anywhere and web pages are perhaps more structured and organised and really I do all this for myself primarily.

Just to nail it, to define what purpose this address serves, and I said it in the first post: a tool for spiritual growth.

And I'll define that as I please, literally. It's an obvious point, though the obvious is often in need of re-stating, the way is a strange mysterious experience, different for each and all, yet in the spirit of mystery, a shared experience - not just among individuals, but down through centuries and across cultures. Because no man is free who is not master of himself. Let's not be deceived by foolish imaginations, this is not the first estate, we live in a fallen kingdom - it takes all our energy to weed out vanity from the dark recesses in which it lurks. And that is barely preliminary to engaging the work, such efforts are we bound to endure, or die here to the flesh.

You are responsible for what you have understood.

Paraphrasing Herman Witsius

Adam, in the garden, was in a state of acquiring a right. Only upon fulfilment of the conditions of the covenant, having done constantly and perfectly what was commanded, could he claim and expect what God had promised.

As we know and understand, Adam never acquired that right and the consequences go on unto this day. If you do not know and understand, if you think that it is all a fable then consider, it is the life of positive holiness which Adam had and knew yet lost and which now lies buried in the essence of all God's children. To reclaim the image of God, recognise the majestic purity and divine holiness of our Creator and open your heart to the presence of the Holy Spirit - without contact, without the operation of the Holy Spirit there can be no inner renewal and no conforming to the image of God.