Catalyst for Renewal

Seeking truth and renewal through conversation

With our present anxieties about the global economy it may help us to keep Christmas spiritual by reflecting on what poverty means…..

The birth of Jesus is set in poverty (no room at the inn, the shepherds) and marginality (exile, the flight into Egypt ). From the beginning Jesus, the Word made flesh, illustrates, humanly, the divine self-emptying that is the mystery of the Incarnation.

Extreme, degrading physical poverty is no virtue. It is usually the result of oppression and injustice.

But poverty is the privileged metaphor for the quality of soul we need to cultivate if we are to enter the Kingdom, to know the God who knows us with such passionate compassion.

Economically poverty is relative. But poverty of spirit is absolute and universal. Rich and poor, black and white, poverty of spirit is the primary beatitude.

To calculate our degree of poverty of spirit we have only to evaluate our desire:

What are we desiring, and how are we desiring it?

Usually the more we desire the less poor in spirit we are. Heightened desire leads to a discontentedness and self-centredness that blocks the natural flow of compassion that is the life of the spirit and the authenticating brightness of our enlightenment in Christ.

A desire to give of ourselves can be our particular vocation for this New Year.

Adapted from Christmas message 2008 Laurence Freeman OSB The International Centre, The World Community for Christian Meditation

A Blessing of Angels

 May the Angels in their beauty bless you

May they run towards you streams of blessings

May the Angel of awakening stir your heart

To come alive to the eternal within you,

To all the invitations that quietly surround you.

May the Angel of healing turn your wounds

Into sources of refreshment.

May the Angel of the imagination enable you

to stand on the true thresholds;

At ease with your ambivalence

And drawn into new directions

Through the glow of your contradictions

May the Angel of compassion open your eyes,

To the unseen suffering around you.

May the Angel of wildness disturb the places

Where your life is domesticated and safe

Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm.

May the Angel of Eros introduce you to the beauty of your senses

To celebrate your inheritance

As a temple of the Holy Spirit

May the angel of Justice disturb you

To take the side of the poor and wronged.

May the Angel of encouragement confirm you

In worth and self respect,

That you may live with the dignity

That presides in your soul.

May the Angel of death arrive only

When your life is complete

And you have brought every given gift

To the threshold where its infinity can shine.

May all the Angels be your sheltering and joyful guardians.

                                                                                                O’Donohue, Benedictus, 2008

From Benedictus- A book of Blessings by John O’Donohue Bantam Press, 2007

 I recommend this book which lists Blessings under headings of :

 For you today I have chosen from To Retrieve the Art of Blessing:

  .. “Who has the power to bless? What do you bless with? Where do you bless from?

When you bless another, you first gather yourself; you reach below your surface mind and personality, 

down to the deeper sources within you, your soul. Blessing is from the soul. ….Blessing strengthens 

       The Eyes of Jesus

I imagine the eyes of Jesus

Were harvest- brown

The light of their gazing

Suffused with the seasons:

The shadow of winter

The mind of Spring

The blues of summer

The amber of harvest.

A gaze that is perfect sister

The kindness that dwells

in his beautiful hands

The eyes of Jesus gaze on us

Stirring in the heart’s clay

The confidence of seasons

That never lose their way to harvest.

The gaze knows the signature

Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer

From the dawn that dreamed our minds,

The crevices where thoughts grow

Long before the longing in the bone

Sends them towards the minds eye,

The artistry of the emptiness

That knows to slow the hunger

Of outside things until they weave

Into the twilight side of the heart,

A gaze full of all that is still future

Looking out for us to glimpse

The jeweled light in the winter stone,

Quickening the eyes that look at us

To see through to where words

Are blind to say what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces

His gaze plies the soul with light,

Laying down a luminous layer

Beneath our brief and brittle days

Until the appointed dawn comes

Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot

And we are back home in the house

That we have never left.

Paradox Regained

The experience of the subjective self is the reconciliation of paradox. It is in the faith experience of a subjective self that the individual is born.

There is a sort of continuity between God and the infinite within the human being.  The infinite within us is the "point of contact" between the self and... God." As far as the infinite within us is concerned the paradox is that one is in the temporal realm. So, there is a tension between one's essential eternity and one's staying in the temporal realm. By coming to be in the temporal world one has forgotten one's eternal essential nature and the essential relationship between God and man. However, one has, within oneself, the possibility of remembering one's eternal nature by establishing one's relationship to God. The bond between the human being and the Eternal, or God, is  there to be discovered. 

God 'constitutes' the self – a human was intended to become himself or herself in relationship to God.

In short, a synthesis: God is not regarded as an objective reality existing independently of human consciousness, but is in some way constituted by subjectivity.

The importance of the inexplicable in such a moment of apprehension is that the individual standing before God alone is born.

Such a solitary journey will yield the individual the authority of the Self. 

The fullness of revelation that Selfhood brings, brings also the requirement for action.

The individual’s choice for faith requires a way of life, and an imitation of Christ.  As such   'Christ the pattern' invites radical discipleship.

Genuine Christian community emerges when the egoism of individuals has been transformed into unselfish benevolence.

Romans 5:11  (New International Version)

11 ….. “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Here’s a paradox-

The ultimate humbling experience is to realize that

we were created-

that we have no ownership of our deep self,

no control and

no origin that we can organize, manipulate or put in order

Paradoxically

The ultimate elevating experience is to realize that we were created out of a love similarly over which we have no ownership and that we cannot organize, manipulate or control

and therefore:

the conclusion can be reached that thereby we are truly loved because we had no part in being created-

we did not, could not organize, manipulate or control it

and that indeed we were created out of being loved, 

a Being that loved.

God is indirectly experienced as Love in the experience of the absolute dependency of our own existence

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
God has not created me for naught... Therefore I will trust him.
Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.
God does nothing in vain.

He knows what he is about.

                        ~

I rise before dawn and cry for help,
I hope in your word.
My eyes watch through the night
to ponder your promise. [Psalm 119]

                         ~

 "I cry aloud to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy hill.
I lie down and sleep;
I awake again, for the Lord sustains me." [Psalm 3, 4-5]

                                     ~

Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long. [Psalm 25:4-5]

                                    ~