Questions...

Tuesday 30th March, 2021

I am finding it hard to get myself in to the Holy Week mood. Friends have kindly sent me links to talks and rituals such as Stations of the Cross and Reconciliation services and also spiritual podcasts but I need the physicality. I take seriously the incarnation when the Word became Flesh. I am in need of that emotional and physical sense even though I do believe strongly in the numinous and the mystical.

I received three letters today. One was from my spiritual correspondent. We are open and honest about our beliefs, doubts, fears etc and it is good to have someone reply to my thoughts and beliefs and it is good to read and respond to those of another. I am fortunate also to have a deeply committed friend who emails daily about such things. They are not great screeds but rather poignant and personal insights.

I relished the BBC4 television documentary on Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire a few evenings ago. It was so powerful. Based around the fact that the Abbey is trying to survive financially by installing a brewery it also mentioned the lack of vocations. Yet some of the words and thoughts of the monks were so powerful. One monk who was terminally ill spoke of not praying but rather being ever in the presence of God. 'I do not say my prayers but I walk with God and He walks with me as He is so loving'. In the film he did indeed die and we saw his funeral and his actual burial. No coffin but his body in his monastic habit and the earth thrown upon him. Stark and real and true. Then the wonderful other elderly monk who was so realistic and outspoken about God. 'Everything we say of Him such as all loving, all powerful is nonsense. We have absolutely no idea about God, He is ineffable. We have Jesus but all the pious remarks and phrases of God are ridiculous. Just be there, be with Him, just be'.

So good. And again and again I realise we build idols. We call on God to do this and that, we claim He believes this and that, we assume and presume so much and perhaps rightly as we need the physicality but really it is beyond even the imagination of the heart. Yet this week we walk with a man the road to a cross. It is so utterly mysterious and divine.

My first walk was to the Community Centre but no bread. My second was on my more usual path up the hill and with views across Fife and the seas. Grabber in hand I loved it. It was warm but windy, clouds but dry. I went passed the 'help yourself to daffodils' cottage and took three bunches. There were many there. I was going to give them to the librarians but the library was shut so I dropped them off at the house of the lady who cares for the church. She was overwhelmed but I explained the why and wherefore.

Otherwise reading. A BBC video on Amanda Gorman, the lady who read her poem at Biden's Inauguration...a lovely piece. Then a few glances at the idiots in Nottingham meeting in thousands and a short read of the appeal to give vaccines to the World. Covid is still out there. Are we going to be mature, generous and think of others?

Well, lastly but not least a friend has given me his huge fantabulous television for my new to be flat. Now that is generous.

I also remind myself how generous is God in giving me life. Surely I can just walk with him on the Via Crucis?