So although I am not the slave of any man.
I have made myself the slave of everyone.
This race we have ran.
We owe to father and son.

The autumn sun was glinting on the water.
The wind gentle on my cheek.
With the sails and lines pulling all worries put to slaughter.
I was just in the now with no need to seek.

I did not need to consider my fate.
I had just this job to do to go about.
I might be early or I might be late.
But past and future are in this moment put to rout.

So I will seek to be no one’s slave or master.
No one asks me, save perhaps this gentle breeze if I pass muster.

Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
The name of St Ambrose Barlow lives down the centuries.
For being gentle and loyal they him slew.

This Benedictine monk of Douai now Downside.
Paralysed by stroke, of no threat taken at Morley’s Hall by the Vicar of Leigh.
After twenty four years ministering in secret, against him turned the tide.
Executed with no chance of a clemency plea.

At his death he blessed those who cursed his stoicism.
He loved those who hated his religion.
Devoid of all egotism.
Content with his own vision.

Perhaps now we should learn not to judge.
Hoping that others against us will hold no grudge.

Happy you who are hungry now, you shall be satisfied.
Alas for you who have your fill now you shall go hungry.
When disaster struck us, how we cried.
When we did not get our way, how we were angry.

We never will accept trial and tribulation as a good lure.
We never accept that if we mourn now we will be rewarded.
We never will be a saint, we want success not failure.
But we should accept our success in that regard not being awarded.

It is not whether you succeed,
Or if you fail.
It is your attitude that counts in your hour of need.
We do not ask from our judgement a kind of celestial bail.

So if you don’t mind, I would rather be happy in this life .
I can only apologise and hope not to be punished if I have avoided strife.

Let us celebrate with joy the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
For from her arose the son of justice Christ our God.
The priest at mass today was so sure of her divinity, I can’t help being contrary.
Always there is a nagging doubt, is that so odd.

I had a dream last night, I was staying in a monastery and asked to do the laundry.
It was hard work, I would rather have been with the monks singing and praying.
In the way of weird dreams I was doing as well the cooking which put me in a quandary.
But despite no skill, I felt fulfilment in working .

My doubts are the same.
I listen, I question my faith, I refuse to be blinded.
I admire the conviction of others, their hearts aflame.
But I remain open minded.

And then during Mass of a sudden the clouds lift.
It is true and swift comes belief’s gift.

Pharisees were watching to see if He would cure man on the Sabbath, He read their thought.
He said to the man with a withered leg, Stand Up.
Rules are made for man not man made for rules, or free will is put to naught.
We should lap this cup of freedom up.

Last night I dreamt I lost my granddaughter in a crowd.
How distraught I was, how joyous when she reappeared to see her much loved impish face.
I realised then, position, money, reputation, long life are not important, love sing aloud.
Enjoy the slow pace, forget the race.

Don’t worry about what the others say about you.
Love everyone as you love your fiends and family.
You are great too.
You can get on just as you are quite happily.

Forget the Pharisees.
Praise the individualities.

In a small Midlands market town stands an Old Hall.
It might be placed in a rural part of a quiet shire.
But exactly four centuries ago it answered the separatists’ call.
They sought freedom from state religion and authoritarian mire.

Shielded by the Hickman family, heeding John Smyth’s preaching.
They made their way to Boston Stump, for they were staunch.
And then the Pilgrim Fathers to the new world sailing.
The small leaky Mayflower was their launch.

It may seem a far cry from the Old Hall to that September day on Cape Cod.
From Tudor Manor House to Thanksgiving’s first plantation.
From royal visits by Richard the third and Henry the eighth, hardly roughshod.
To aid from Wampanoag native Americans.
Who then were cursed to damnation.

But freedom was the call.
And their story can still enthral.

If your brother does something wrong,
Go and have it out with him alone.
How do we curb earth’s temptation song?
Does not Judgement have its own self-righteous tone?

So does heaven echo with what we do?
Is there anyone out there who hears?
Does retribution come on cue?
Or are these groundless fears?

If heaven is not there,
Life is value free.
Only on this earth will we shed a tear.
And the wind of wrath only here will ruffle judgement tree’s lea.

But I prefer to think that what you bind here will be bound there.
So if you don’t mind, I will have a care .

It is not for you so full of your own importance to go on taking sides.
Has anyone given you any special rights, what do you have that was not given to you.
He who accuses is he who self derides.
If we do not judge our faith we can ourselves renew.

The Pharisees said, why are you doing something forbidden on the Sabbath day.
He said the son of man is master of the Sabbath.
We should make our own judgements on own conscience not on what others say.
Duties can appear to lie on us like a crushing mammoth.

Who we are.
Why we exist.
We cannot shed a tear.
We cannot resist.

Anything good in us is given us.
Anything bad is up to us, it has always been thus.

Non angli sed angeli.
They are not Angles but Angels.
Si furent Christiani.
Did he mean if they were Christian would they be archangels?

Theirs was the sounds of silence.
Oppressed in that slave market.
But Gregory by his pun launched St Augustine into the wilderness.
To open to the world this island’s casket.

Panis Angelicus.
This angelic bread.
Bringing thus hope Catholicus.
Katholou, making us universal, many parts but one head.

And from those Northern mists.
Emerged new hope and gifts.

Leaning over her He rebuked the fever.
Laying His hands on them he cured them.
Is it the spirit which is a universal lever.
How do we search now for the hidden gem.

We could view all this as history.
We could say that this healing is interesting yet in the past.
Or we could ask him to heal us now rather than just think this a mystery.
We could think of him listening to us from the first to the last.

Asking.
Requesting.
Praying.
Receiving.

He is here.
We are in His care.

An uninspired person is one who does not accept anything of the spirit.
He sees it all as nonsense.
In truth in all things material or spiritual there is merit.
The value of things is in themselves and in their own sense.

You cannot understand spiritual things rationally.
The spirit is something both intensely nebulous and firmly concrete.
The spirit resides in our mind only conditionally.
Acceptance by the mind is the secret.

Deep down.
Is your spirit.
Only you can find this, others in doubt will drown.
But whatever and however you seek has merit.

You must value everything.
Reject nothing.

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.