The Holy Land

Monday 8th February, 2021

I woke to a few inches of snow. The garden looked glorious as did Dundee across the Tay. The Tay looked turbulent and sultry. The sun shone for a while and blue skies opened up. Then as suddenly as a flick of a wrist the sleet came and then the gentle snow and back to sun. A very contrasting day. I feared I would not get a walk. I managed a very short one for the pavements were slippery and twice I nearly fell. So I grabbed some hummus at half price, some brown rolls and returned. I then ran the car to keep the battery charged.

The day has really been a cerebral one. My landlady went to the dentist and returned with the news that she would have to have three fillings at the cost of £55. The dentist will ring with an appointment. While she was out I rang a friend and she spoke of Jordan and a visit there. I was born in that great country 70 years ago and have not returned. She then forwarded a website of the Holy Places to visit within the country. Thus Mount Nebo, Bethany, Machaeus, Umm Qais and Pella. I am deeply thrilled. I believe in pilgrimage, I believe in the Divine touching the Finite, I believe in the numinous and the value of being where great deeds have been done and great people have lived. In fact I believe ultimately in the reality of timelessness, in a dimension and reality beyond all this beauty. Yes the earth is glorious, Creation is many dimensional and all is sacred but let us not get stuck in the mundane but soar with the Grace of Being itself. So exciting.

Then I went to Episode 12 of 'Young Heretics' and amazingly it was on T.S.Eliot's Poem 'The Four Quartets'. Serendipity without a doubt for the poem is about time and the infinite touching the finite and much more. It is about the joy experienced after and through the pain of suffering. As Klavan explained it is seeing through the suffering and chaos to the wonderful and almost musical pattern of Being. Eliot went on that journey and struggled to put it in to words for us to be pilgrims with him.

The snow fell and it was cold and uninviting to go out so I turned to Mingyur Rinpoche and to Brennan Manning's 'The ragamuffin gospel'. There is so much I want to share. As I admire the phenomenal memory and mind and intellect of Klavan and of Eliot so I admire the words of others who seek. They do speak to us.

I will quote Dostoyevsky used by Brennan as a mouth piece for the Ragamuffins. In Crime and Punishment he wrote: " At the last judgement Christ will say to us, 'Come, you also. Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come children of shame! " it is not for the super spiritual, for the muscular Christian, for academicians, for noisy feel good folks, for hooded Mystics, for Alleluias Christians, for the fearless and tearless, for red hot zealots, for the complacent, for legalists....the grace of God, the Good News is free and for all.

Mingyur Rinpoche makes a valid point which hit the target with me. "People everywhere try so hard to make the world better. Their intentions are admirable, yet they seek to change everything but themselves. To make yourself a better person is to make the world a better place." And he quoted Gandhi :' Be the change you wish to see in the world'.

It is all good. I will need a long walk to take this all in and absorb. I will need faith and openness and awareness. I will need courage but most of all I will need God.

I am a pilgrim. I do seek.

I will go to the Holy Land, to Jordan and touch the hem of Christ's garment.