Far from relying on any power of my own.
I came among you in great fear and trembling.
If we have faith, it is given to us merely as a loan.
It is a doorway into the light coming and going.

And if faith is not a difficulty be sure there is always another adversity.
St Aidan was at the start beset with difficulties.
But he triumphed against his followers perversity.
He found that every difficulty led to new opportunities.

Those tides at Lindisfarne you never forget.
They sigh and beat against that Holy Island.
The tide rises and falls like our faith lost and reset.
But remember these men whose words laid a foundation stone of England.

And we on that wind swept holy place.
Can find echoes of zeal to help in our own race.

I used to say I will not think about Him, I will not speak His name any more.
Then there seemed to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.
To go to church even to pray can be such a chore.
Sometimes, it is so long and boring, one groans.

Oft times I think of giving up witness.
I certainly think often that faith should not perhaps be talked about.
Not least because of one own’s spiritual fitness.
If you are so weak in faith and good works what right have you to shout.

The effort wearies me.
I would rather lie still.
My goal, or what is true, in truth I cannot tell.
My heart is churning like a mill storm driven.

But there is always another dawn after a dark night.
And on another day I hope I will see the light.

It was to shame the wise that God chose what is foolish by human reckoning.
And to shame what is strong that he chose what is weak.
We think we can discern truth with learning.
But the key lies in other to what we seek.

I was lying awake last night for hours tossing.
My mind churning with worries what I was not, could, should be doing.
I realised there is a simple cure for that lack of dreaming.
To make the mind think not of yourself but of others under death labouring.

So I lay thinking not of this country but of Iraq and Syria’s suffering.
I tried to think not just of my family but the lonely.
Some say, force the mind into mindless mantra numbering.
Perhaps content lies in directing the mind to something else but the one and only.

If only we could appreciate compared to others our good fortune.
We would not be so unhappy about our own supposed misfortune.

St Paul writes, I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise.
And bring to nothing all the learning of the learned.
I have been too wedded to material ties.
I realise now my own spiritual path has meandered.

It’s not through learning.
It’s not by reading.
It’s not achieved by surviving.
You don’t get there by attending.

It’s by imitating.
By one’s own life basing.
On one man’s teaching.
Who two thousand years now was walking.

Imitation is one form of spiritual flattery.
To attempt this imitation is one way to recharge an exhausted spiritual battery.

Stay awake.
Because you do not know when your master is coming.
Can we be happy now and control that worrying nagging ache.
Steady down, cease the rushing.

I look at the night sky, are we are in the grip of a vast machine, a piece of passing dust.
Perhaps we should not worry if paradise or oblivion awaits .
But as I sat watching the Bruderhof community and their simple trust.
Their message, do not wait, practice what Christ teaches, it is his will that dictates.

It’s strange how new insights come, dreams can be kind.
It’s really to commit to live his life.
I do not have their commitment but I can attempt it in the private recesses of the mind.
Perhaps for a moment there is an end of mindless self obsessed ego strife.

So I will try not to worry what awaits in future.
And try to live for just this day with a spot of self aware humour.

I was alone in the village church quietly thinking.
Normally in these churches there is a musty dead air.
But as I sat there the atmosphere started changing.
I felt a great sense of people here.

The old church was no longer empty, here were my brothers and sisters.
They were here pilgrims from one thousand years of history.
A Saxon theign and Norman knight, Catholic priests, and Puritan ministers.
Their voices silent now, their presence felt, their life a mystery.

But one life is remembered.
On a board a tattered photograph is hung.
Great War soldier Private Isaac Killick is certainly remembered.
To him and all the others a little hymn can be sung.

Isaac was only 18 when not in these green fields but in some far away ditch he died.
The atmosphere no longer heavy, the church really did feel empty now and the wind sighed.

You who clean the outside of cup and dish.
And leave the inside full of extortion and incompetence.
We are very keen to cherish.
Anything that appeals to our selfish sense.

We stuff away anything unpleasant in a hidden drawer of the mind.
We leave others to look at our perfect outside.
We think we are being polite and kind.
Really we just bob on fashion’s tide.

It is easy to pay our dues.
To hand over life’s tax.
But we leave after us few clues.
Although nothing we think lacks.

But mercy, faith, justice, and understanding.
That is left far behind, our faith notwithstanding.

He took me to the top of a high mountain and showed me Jerusalem.
It had all the radiant glory.
We can sing to this city a glorious anthem.
Containing our manifold story.

When I fly over the city I gaze down on on the glittering golden Dome of the Rock.
When I sit in the Garden of Gethsemene I see its towering ramparts.
Here Jew, Christian, and Muslim should be in lock.
Praising the same God, uniting our hearts.

Here Jesus walked.
Here the prophets taught.
Home of mosque, church, and temple where the spirit knocked.
Destroyed at least twice, written about in countless lines, here is ultimate truth sought.

Why can we not live together there in peace.
All conflict to cease.

You are the Christ, the son of the living God.
It was not flesh that revealed this to you but my Father.
I struggle on carrying the weight of doubt on my back in a heavy hod.
Nagging scepticism I cannot put to the slaughter.

But belief soaks in like warm gentle rain on a summer’s day.
It arises not from within but inspired from him.
Barely noticed it is fashioned by the supreme potter’s clay.
I need just to surrender to the spark from that distant lighthouse out of darkness glim.

True we will never be a rock.
Nothing will ever be built on us.
More like a shifting tide coursed sandbank we are something to mock.
Our journey’s end is unknown, we ride a directionless bus.

But as long as we know that alone we can make no progress.
At least there is hope that we may not regress.

Do not be guided by what they do since they do not practice what they preach.
Everything they do is done to attract attention.
To practice what is preached is so often out of our reach.
It’s easier to mumble a few words full of condensation.

But would it be wise to hide our faith in a corner.
To never admit to any interest in religion or the life of the spirit.
We could sit tight like Little Jack Horner.
Anything better than be called hypocrite.

Let’s just do our social duty and go to church at Christmas and Easter, a done chore.
Let’s polite Agnosticism court.
People, they say, who talk about religion are such a bore.
And they’re asking for an almighty fall aren’t they when their actions fall short.

But are we not called to witness.
However inadequate our own fitness.

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
The second commandment is that you must love your neighbour as yourself.
We love our children and grandchildren so much, that we can never unwind.
But our neighbours, that is something not part of our ruling self.

I as dreaming again, I had taken my granddaughter out and everything was right.
On a bus in a strange city, we were hurried.
Then how I do not know how, she vanished into the night.
I was distraught, horribly upset and worried.

Mercifully I was suddenly awake.
What a blessing it is when the dream ends with an end to grief.
The emotion and the fear is so intense, enough to quake.
To return to this world of reason, what a relief.

A saint like Pius X has this trick of loving all equally thankfully.
I merely, an ordinary bloke love my family.

So these servants went out onto the road and collected together every one they could find.
Bad and good alike.
But it is to ourselves first that we need to be kind.
It is us ourselves that we need to like.

It is not money that is the root of all evil, it is our own suffering.
It is not wealth that makes us happy or poverty disconsolate.
It is the mind that is our happiness smothering.
Sadly it is always another moment not this one that we all await.

It does not matter if we own ten homes or one or none.
At this moment we are only in one chamber, that of our mind.
It is in this moment in time that our happiness should be found and our fate spun.
Then in our last hour of sickness we can be resigned.

We need to focus on the present and ignore the past regretted and feared future groan.
But remember that under his care we are never alone.

Why be envious because I am generous.
Thus the last will be first and the last first.
St John Eudes taught that to judge is dangerous.
He rejected Jansenism’s purified thirst.

His essence is about love not condemnation.
The emotional heart is the key not any outward act.
Let people live their lives without recrimination.
Do not require peoples’ lives to be intact.

Should we like him pray to the sacred heart.
Should we invoke the immaculate heart of Mary.
Is this just emotion to relieve hurt.
A device to bury our head in the sand and avoid anything scary.

But even if we give nothing and live without merit.
Arriving last we will be welcomed like the first into his spirit.

Your wealth has continued to increase.
And with this heart has grown more arrogant.
We imagine we are in control but it is the Lord who deals out life and our decease.
So everything else, all gains and losses are mere cant.

How then are we going to pass through that elusive eye of the needle.
It is of course impossible to do so.
We are so feeble.
But with his help we we can rise even if we are so low.

There is richness in poverty.
There is soulless poverty in riches.
What counts is not quantity.
But our searches.

At present we are in seemingly a never ending maze.
But one day in glory, we will at the end of our days be ablaze.

If you wish to be perfect
Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor.
We ask ourselves what is correct.
Is possession of money a running sore.

I was watching a programme about the Bruderhof Christian community.
Unlike them I could never give up every possession.
Are you a lesser Christian in not obtaining through that route some immunity.
Is money the root of all evil or is that the wrong question.

Own what you like.
Don’t attach too much importance to it.
If it goes up in smoke there is always the bike.
If it accrues well you won’t have after all to quit.

So that journey to the Kingdom of Heaven will have to be postponed.
I just hope my chances are not blown and that I won’t be disowned.

Of all women you are the most blessed.
And blessed is the fruit of your womb.
Above all men and women she is feted.
Her son liberated us from our silent tomb.

Almost rejected by her husband to be.
Witness to her son’s death by cruel execution.
A lady of sorrows, yet to her we plea.
Timeless witness to her son’s resurrection.

But doubt lingers as with stigmata.
Did she really rise to heavenly glory, body, and soul.
Can we always accept dogma.
Can we take the word of one man sole.

I do not know, I’m not sure I care.
But when I pray, I think she is there.

The fathers have eaten unripe grapes.
And the children’s teeth are set on edge.
Our life and what we do falls on our children like gentle or bitter flakes.
What we cast overboard they will surely dredge.

Let the little children alone and do not stop them coming.
For it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.
It is their faith unquestioning.
To which we aspire, this faith is an echo in the mind like long forgotten songs.

It is our example
They follow.
We make the temple.
In which lies their faith growing or fallow.

But we should relax our sway.
They will always anyway make their own way.

THE DEATH CAMP

Whatever you did for one of the least of my brethren,
You did it for me.
Roll call at Auschwitz, a priest to the death pit is taken.
He steps into the place of a man condemned to death, to the guards a human fee.

I am reading the life of Witold Pilecki an Auschwitz escapee.
His mission to tell the world of the camp’s horrors.
Such courage, such self denial, for humanity such a plea.
Such sacrifice emerging from the mind’s darkest corners.

Is man intrinsically cruel.
How could people be tortured and killed merely for their race.
Never again we said, we will emerge from this dark pool.
What does it matter surely who you are or what is your birthplace.

But the World learns little or nothing.
Hate comes with every unwitting casual despising something.

How often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me?
Not seven times I tell you but seventy-seven times.
Of course all this we can clearly agree with and see.
Except that we don’t do it, we ignore the mind’s resentful signs.

How much of our life is spent in resentment.
He or she is not pulling their weight.
Something they shouldn’t have has them been lent.
Why are they always late.

And so the mind circles, it is never happy.
Why can’t others be more like I .
It’s all kind of scrappy.
And of course it’s all a lie.

So I will settle down and not worry about others.
And five minutes later my promise is in tatters.

This was the creature that I had seen supporting the God of Israel.
Beside the river Chebar.
Now where had I heard something like this name in a tale.
Singing this song, a bold hippopotamus was standing one day on the banks of the cool Shalimar.

My granddaughter joined in, mud, mud,
Glorious mud.
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So follow me, follow down to the hollow and there let us wallow in glorious mud .

So what was the River Chebar, what has it taught.
Apparently in Ezekiel it’s a canal East of Babylon.
But the mind skips from unbidden thought to thought.
So was this something theological to act on.

No, just a pointless meandering of the mind.
But do not be cross, please be kind.

A baking day in August hoping to encounter life’s purest.
The car parked with difficulty.
The hot walk as a tourist.
The air car fumed and gritty.

Then through the doorway, now no longer rushed.
Into the cool of the Basilica Di Santa Chiara.
Now all is hushed.
To seek sainthood’s tiara.

We descended the stairs into the church’s cavity.
To pause awhile before the tomb.
To wonder at this radical attachment to poverty.
Here now, but not in life was she in gloom.

We emerge again in not too much haste.
And join the tourists in a welcome gelato taste.

Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies.
It remains only a single grain but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.
If we proclaim the truth about death there are no lies.
We simply do not know what will happen with our eternal rest.

But this we know, we have to die to move forward.
So death of this body is no frightening thing.
But it frightens me, I’m sorry, I’m just a coward.
The clock moves forwards remorselessly, the hours time hourly. Ting, ting.

Will this body pass into total annihilation.
Will my essence be reborn in another human body’s soul.
Will it come to heavenly resurrection.
But anyway, that’s the end for this frail body of all toil.

I wish I had the courage of St Laurence.
But I do not, I remain a man of too little sense.

My sorrow is so great.
My mental anguish so endless.
Endless indeed is our battle to escape fate.
Sometimes our sadness seems friendless.

Watching a film about the monks of St Bernard in Leicestershire.
One monk saying he did not pray, his whole life was a prayer.
Emotions play on our life as on a lyre.
But we can offer them up to him as a fanfare.

The word is in the wind.
His touch can be gentle or strong or even still.
But if we remain outside the city in our search we can find.
We are like a child trying to look at the world out of a high window sill.

But if we do not see him, if him we refuse to discuss.
He is definitely looking at us.

This vision is for its own time only.
Eager for its own fulfilment it does not deceive.
We are impatient but all will come right slowly.
We should wait patiently for what flows through time’s sieve.

We imagine he will come in a moment.
Him or joy or Sadhana.
But pause and think, revelation may come as a trickle not a torrent .
Instant victory may be sudden but not lasting as at Cannae.

You come slowly without reason or rhyme.
Or if you prefer you come by degrees.
The truth or your truth will come in their own good time..
It can come in a rush or as a tease.

But what you are or what you believe depends on your own sight.
And all is equally right.

Woe to the city soaked in blood.
Whose plundering know no end.
I was reading this from the prophet Nahum out aloud.
How they did Nineveh rend?

Once, years ago, I stood at the prophet’s tomb.
It lies in the villlage of Alqosh, fifty kilometres South of Mosul.
Already we could see the shadow of violence loom.
All the villages south witnessed of Yazidis and Christians a fatal cull .

It is said there are ten times more stars in the Universe than every grain of sand on earth .
With countless different views of religion and truth can we not learn respect for each other.
My views wander constantly seeking but being denied any single berth.
I even wonder if even the one could have created so many stars or why we cannot love our brother.

It is not logic or teaching or law that convinces me more or less.
It is that indefinable sense of something else.