All Shall Be Well

Julian of Norwich, an anchorite and mystic who lived in the fourteenth century, is famous for having said, “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,”.  That saying came to mind when I read a comment on Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation drawing on a quote from another English writer of a later time, G. K. Chesterton:

G. K. Chesterton’s comment, in his wonderful economic critique, The Outline of Sanity, which takes aim at industrial capitalism’s takeover of small shops and farms: “Do anything, however small, that will prevent the completion of the work of capitalist combination. Do anything that will even delay that completion. Save one shop out of a hundred shops…. Keep open one door out of a hundred doors; for so long as one door is open, we are not in prison. Ahab has not his kingdom so long as Naboth has his vineyard [1 Kings 21]. Haman will not be happy in the palace while Mordecai is sitting in the gate.” [Esther 5:9–13]

 

Chesterton was prescient on the inexorable march today of capitalism overwhelming the small, independent business.  All that is small and individual is being consumed by the industrial complex.  This is happening when even large companies are taken over by gigantic ones.  I heard recently that independent veterinary services are being bought out by chains.  Fortunately, this hasn’t happened to our wonderful vet, but it doesn’t bode well for the future.   

I sound rather more left-wing ideological here than usual, however, anyone who has had to deal with a mega conglomerate e.g. Bell or Visa will know that bigger is often not better.  Amazon is devouring its share of the world as the conglomerates divide up the world into bit sized chunks until they are in turn taken over by its neighbour conglomerate.  I think of the revelation about Ticket Master which had a near monopoly on tickets for live performances.  There was a recent court case in the United States with the judgement that Live Nation, the entertainment giant which owns Ticketmaster, has been illegally operating as a monopoly and overcharging fans.  Live Nation was previously allowed by the U.S. government to merge with Ticketmaster to consolidate the control of concert venues (Live Nation) and the ticketing platform (Ticketmaster).  This gives us some hope that it is still possible to provide limits on the trend towards commercial megalomania.   

To draw on another inspired source, W.B. Yates, who knows “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”  It is very easy to believe that the march of rough beasts is inevitable and all we can do is keep our heads down and try to survive.  However, to live in hope, inspired by St. Julian, can and does give us a way forward. 

May we be blessed to believe that all manner of things will truly be well.  

The Cloud of Unknowing Yesterday, Today and Always

I have recently returned to a classic writing on Spiritual Direction - The Cloud of Knowing by Anonymous.  It is a 14^th century classic of Contemplative Spirituality by an unnamed author who was probably a cleric.  It is written to a 24-year-old novice whom he is advising.  It is an early classic in Spiritual Direction and was formative for such people as Julian of Norwich, Friedrick von Hugel, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.  It was also formative in the development of modern Centering Prayer by Thomas Keating. 

In reading it again. What strikes me about it is its modern feel.  This is in part probably due to the masterful translation.  However, it also seems to be dealing with themes that resonate with today’s culture.  Anonymous speaks of the desire by people to solve problems through intellect and advises that this approach is not going to work for spiritual issues and our relationship with God.  He (we know that anonymous was a man) notes, “The self-important, hyper analytical intellect must always and in every way be quashed.  Stomp it under foot, if you want to do the work of contemplation with integrity”.  In this I believe it is a wonderful tonic to the approach today which believes that intellect and the products of intellect can solve all the world’s problems. 

Anonymous has a very dim view of the problems caused by what can be seen today as people being ego-centric, “You’re human, so watch out for that enemy, pride. Never think you're holier or better than anyone else.  Never confuse the worthiness of your calling with who you are”.  The more I experience life and observe what is going on in the world the more convinced I am that ego plays a central role in many of the problems in relationships between individuals and groups.  To overcome our ego-centric position has been the challenge that people have faced ever since humankind was exiled from the Garden.  Anonymous certainly seems to have identified it as a significant block to our relationship to God. 

I will close today with the prayer that Anonymous uses to close the preface to his book:

Dear spiritual friend in God, examine your life.  Pay careful attention to the way you live your calling.  With all your heart, thank God for your blessings, and his grace will help you stand strong in the face or subtle attacks from within and without, until you win the everlasting crown of life.  Amen

 

 

Giving Thanks In All Things

For the non-Canadians who may read this, today is Canadian Thanksgiving.  I won’t discuss if this is the better Thanksgiving than the other one celebrated south of us.  Giving thanks, whenever you do it, is always a good thing.  The question I pose today is, what do we give thanks for?  There is the usual giving thanks for all the good things in our lives – for health and happiness; for abundant, if expensive, food; for a safe place to live; perhaps, for Canadians, giving thanks that the Liberal’s led by Mark Carney was elected rather than the other one who wanted to eliminate funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – but I won’t go there. 

What I actually want to discuss is, can we give thanks for things that we normally don’t give thanks for?   Drawing on St. Julian of Norwich who said, “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” It is hard to believe that we can give thanks, even in our darkest hour that things shall be well.  It certainly doesn’t look like this these days, and yet this morning there is, if not peace in Gaza, at least a cease fire and a release of hostages and prisoners on both sides.  That is definitely something to give thanks for. 

It may be helpful to draw on another saying, this one by St. Paul, ‘give thanks in all things.’  This is different from giving thanks for all things.  There are things which I cannot give thanks for - so giving thanks in all things does ring true.  As much as I find many things in this modern world frustrating and   annoying and stupid, I can give thanks that I am able to get frustrated by them.  I am part of the modern world with all its challenges and complicated devices, and glad I can benefit from the many modern conveniences in this world that I benefit from.

I do sometimes think that with all the “smart” things I must deal with e.g. smart phones, smart thermostats, smart internet, the only thing in my life that is not smart is me, as they can make me feel really unsmart.  But I shouldn’t rant in a missive about giving thanks.  So, I will remind myself to give thanks in all things – and remember that it is God to whom I am giving thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends - and even to the non-Canadians.  

Hope and Despair

I recently listened to an episode of On Being with host Krista Tippett, which asked the questions: What is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?  These are very good questions for these times.  So, I would like to pose those questions to the readers of this blog, what is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?

Before you consider these questions, let me clarify what I mean by the terms hope and despair.  Generally, despair is defined as being without hope.  However, this is not all that helpful until we define hope.  I believe it is better, for our purposes, to define this as being resigned to the inevitable; to have no possibility (hope) that the current situation will not improve and will lead to the end that is in front of us and there is no possibility that something will intervene to prevent that from happening.

Turning to hope, it is often the case that hope is used synonymously with optimism.  I can be optimistic that some situation or event will turn out okay in the end regardless – regardless of what?  There is nothing that is required of you to bring about the outcome you are wanting.  Hope, on the other hand, is to my mind, the possibility that things will turn out for the best if forces are brought to bear on that issue and work to bring about the desired outcome.

That force is sometimes – perhaps even often – a divine one which will bring about the best of all possible worlds or at least the best of possible outcome in this case.  This is best expressed by the saying of Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."   However, in hope there is also the possibility thahopt the forces will be based here on earth comprised of people working to achieve the desired ends.  Sometimes these forces combine as in the Social Gospel movement to bring about the Kingdom of God which will encompass the ends that are hoped for.  This can be considered faith in action.

It is easy to despair these days with the wildfires raging across many parts of Western Canada, and warfare raging in Ukraine, and the slow-motion destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.  However, we must not give up hope and let despair win. 

So, I will leave you with the questions I began with: What is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?  

  

The Circle Game

 Recently, I have had the new experience of entertaining on Zoom as part of the program for One Care which, of course, is not able to have its usual programs in person because of the Corona Virus.  I have done this three or four times so far and realized that I should try and expand my repertoire.  One of the ‘new’ songs I have been learning is The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell.  This is certainly not a new song and I was very familiar with it but have never learned to play and sing it which is very different than just listening to it or even singing along.

This is a song about the years going by and how things change in our lives.  The lyrics for one verse caught my attention as particularly applicable to the time we are in these days:

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

This encapsulates the nature of time and how it is not a static concept.  Time is very elastic and can seem to slow down and speed up depending on what is going on in your life.  Have you noticed, as I have, that time in the shut down for the Corona Virus seem to go very slowly at the beginning back in the olden days in March but these days it seems to be getting faster and faster.  I don’t know about you, but I certainly want to drag my feet and slow time down at least a bit.  Some people who know a great deal more than I do about these things maintain that time doesn’t actually exist – it is a construct of our consciousness.  Einstein posited that as speed increases toward the speed of light time does indeed slow down and if someone was on a rocket to a distant heavenly body at a high-speed, time for them would be much slower than time would be for us on earth.  Scientist have actually tested this theory and proven it correct. 

In my experience, if I am doing an activity I enjoy, time can fly by without my being aware of it but if I am focused on time passing, it moves much more slowly – or seems to in any case.  The longest two minutes for me is the two minutes of silence at a Remember Day Service in which I count 120 seconds to ensure the silence is actually two minutes long – which seems to take forever.  I know I should be paying attention to honour those who made the supreme sacrifice but I find that difficult when I have the responsibility to ensure it is actually two minutes. 

The perception that time is speeding up is also a factor of age.  I’m sure those of you who are in the senior citizen category like me will have noted that time seems to be speeding up generally and is going by much more quickly than when we were young as the song poses.  I remember how long a week used to seem when I was growing up but then again, the week-ends did seem to fly by except possibly when I was attending a church service and my fathers sermon seems interminable – not a comment on his preaching as he was actually quite a good preacher. 

Theologians will often speak of God’s time not being our time as an explanation why things don’t happen on the schedule we lay out for events in the world or our lives.  Perhaps God does have an all-knowing view of the big picture and knows that “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” as St. Julian of Norwich said.  After all, eternity is not a long time - it is outside time.  So, may I suggest that we drag our feet and slow down and notice how God is working in our lives and in the world. 

Blessings on your journey which I hope does not go by too quickly

Give Thanks in All Things

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian Friends which we celebrated on Monday.  We jump the gun on the United States in this one and perhaps on other things as well – but I won’t go there today.

It is a time where it is especially appropriate to give thanks and as I have said previously, we can give thanks in all things even when it is hard to give thanks for some things. Lorna and I have had a safe journey home – or I should say to our Ontario home from our Prince Edward Island home.  It was our seventh summer at the cottage – which is shocking.  Both the years and this summer have gone by in no time it seems.  Time must be speeding up – it can’t be that I am getting older – I just won’t look to closely in the mirror.  But it is good to be back here in Parkhill and find that everything was in good order – something to give thanks for indeed.  Our trip home was uneventful except for our effort to find hwy 407 – I do wish that the Ministry of Transportation would install some road signs to get to the 407 (which is a toll road that bypasses Toronto).   The Ontario government sold hwy 407 some years ago to private corporation which I didn’t agree with at the time – talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  Oh well, this is supposed to be about giving thanks and not about griping or complaining. 

Remembering to give thanks – to show gratitude in all things is something that we can all strive for.  I believe that if we are able to do this through practice it will become second nature and will be a way of having joy in our lives.  I have not been able to do that yet and have to remind myself to give thanks for all that God has given me and to give thanks regardless on what is happening in my life - giving thanks in all things.  I find it hard to do when things don’t go the way I expect them to and people don’t live up to my expectations.  I do find that frustrating to find the universe is not set up to meet my needs all the time. 

As someone – I believe it was Julian of Norwich – said, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.  I could add that it often seems just not yet.  However, be thankful in all things.

Blessing on your journey.

It is Well

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  

I was reminded this morning of this quote from Julian of Norwich, the 14^th century anchorite and mystic as I was reflecting on what to write in this edition.  Is progress inevitable?  Is the world actually getting better?  Or are is the world actually heading in the opposite direction?  I have heard arguments on both sides of that position by people who seem to know what they are talking about. 

Did Dame Julian get it wrong?  There seems to be many signs that the world is going to hell in the proverbial hand basket.  Populist governments are rising up and the king - Western Democracy - seems to have feet of clay.  It is hard to see how all shall be well and especially that all manner of things shall be well.

Writing this I am reminded of another quote by Martin Luther King, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”   It certainly seems to be a very long arc indeed these days with the far end well beyond the horizon.  However, there is hope and (hopefully) truth in that.  People (and I include myself in this much of the time) seem to have a very limited horizon in their view of what is happening in their lives and their worlds.  We are guilty of tunnel vision whether it is in our personal lives or our vision of the world which is filtered to a great extent through social media whatever the silos that we usually turn to; currently the extremes seem to be Fox News on one end and CNN on the other, 

Counter to the rise of populism in the United States and Russia and even closer to home in Ontario, we have the reality that the world has been vastly improved for many people.  Poverty has been greatly reduced world wide, likewise infant mortality and hunger.  Much of that has come through scientific breakthroughs.  Countering this is the denial of the science of global warming.  In all this we have to have faith; faith that God’s time is not our time.  We can only glimpse a very small part of the bigger picture on where that arc of history, moral or otherwise, will take us.  If we are fortunate we will get a true glimpse of what that arc is pointing to. 

For those of us who have a belief that God not only spoke the Word that brought about the beginning of this universe but is still at work in this world, we can have faith that it is love that was the creative force which is all that binds the atoms together and is moving to fulfill God’s will for God’s creation.

I began with a medieval mystic and will end with a modern mystic, Richard Rohr, “Love, the attraction of all things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy that keeps showing itself despite our best efforts to resist it.”  Our part in this is to move beyond the prison of our self centeredness and to reach out in ways that seem to be small and insignificant but will cooperate with the divine plan which we can only see through a glass darkly. 

Blessings on your journey

Be Careful For Nothing

Last weekend – actually Friday and Saturday, Lorna and I adventured into the urban wilderness of Toronto.  We traveled by VIA rail going business class which, I discovered, is well worth the extra cost.  You and pampered and plied with drinks and good food and all in all was a very pleasant experience.

We were in Toronto primarily to see ‘Come From Away’ which is the dramatization of true events when planes were diverted to the small community of Gander Newfoundland on 9-11.  Gander is a small community with, ironically and opportunistically, a large now much unused airport.  We also had a visit with family which made the experience extra pleasant.  I found Come From Away to be a wonderfully moving experience.  It made the story of those unintended refugees in commercial airlines, which most of the world heard about at the time, come alive and gave, what was to me a true experience of the challenges and triumphs of the people involved in dealing with a completely unexpected experience.  There were, unbelievably, about nine thousand passengers and crews for planes from many different countries which were diverted to the airport in Gander NFLD which had a population of a similar number.  The magnitude of the challenge was very dramatically represented in the play. 

The drama and anxiety and boredom of those passengers who had no idea what was happening as they landed in an unknown land and sat on the tarmac for up to twenty-eight hours without being told what was happening was made crystal clear to the audience.  The challenge of a relatively small community to meet the demands of the situation and response by the Newfoundlanders who are legendary for their hospitality made it also crystal clear that those planes were in the best place in the world.  A larger centre such as Toronto might have had more resources to respond to the emergency but the warmth and welcome and ingenuity of the Newfoundlanders could not have been duplicated elsewhere. 

One scene which stood out for me was the response to the challenge of the many different languages spoken by the refugees.  It could have been a scene out of the Tower of Babel.  However, those people had something the people of Babel didn’t.   The initial response was a true epiphany as one of the residents realized that many of the people had bibles in their languages and was inspired to find a verse which would help in availing their fears.  It was Philippians 4:6-8.  In the play it was translated “Be anxious for nothing.”  I prefer the translation from the King James version, “Be careful for nothing”.  The whole verse sums up the beauty of the response:

⁶ Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

⁷ And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

In this case I must concede that “anxious” was more appropriate in the circumstances. 

There was much for those refugees to be anxious and afraid about.  Some of these things were lived out as revealed in the play but in the end the care and hospitality and, yes, love shown by the Newfoundlanders and the response by the refugees gave the truth to the wisdom of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

I cannot help be compare the welcome received by those refugees on 9-11 to the fear that is being Trumped up (pun intended) in response to the ‘caravan’ of refugees currently making its way o the southern border of the United States.  I will close with a quoted from a source that I often turn to, the lyrics for Leonard Cohen which seem to be an appropriate response:

I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary
"do you hate mankind for what they done to you? "
He said, "talk of love not hate, things to do - it's getting late.
I've so little time and I'm only passing through."

Passing through, passing through.
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that we all are passing through.

Let our response to the refugees in our lives be one of love and not hate.  Time does seem to be short and it seems to be getting late these days. 

Blessings on your journey.

The Laughter at the Heart of Things

Recently I wrote a couple of News and Views about control.  I want to follow up with my thoughts and reflections on humility and humour.  Now it may not be obvious that there is a connection between these three things i.e. control, humour and humility. However, I would like to explore the relationship that I see.The first connection was when I heard a commentator on TV talk about his time observing Donald Trump, the “so called” President of the United Sates.  Now as an aside, Mr. Trump is of course the President having won the Electoral College vote, if not the popular vote.  In any case, the commentator noted than in his extensive observation of Mr. Trump he had never seem him laugh.  I wondered, on hearing this, why that would be?  My initial reflection was that Mr. Trump, at heart, if he has one (which of course he does in the physical sense), was a very insecure person who needs to have his ego constantly stroked. 

At the time, I had been reading a book of essays by Helen Luke which is entitled, The Laughter at the Heart of Things.  It is a wonderful collection that deals insightfully and widely of many subjects.    The essay from which the title is drawn delves into the attribute or gift which she quotes Schopenhauer as stating, “a sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.”  In the essay she expounds that, “ But the individual may tragically remain obsessed into adult years with his or her superiority or inferiority as the case may be.  Nothing more quickly kills the ability to laugh at oneself which is the mark of a sense of humour.”  I cannot imagine Donald Trump ever laughing at himself.  However, I can imagine Barrack Obama do that and I am sure f I investigate I would find examples of just that―not to say that Obama was a perfect president, but I know it would annoy Donald Trump to be compared unfavourably to Barack Obama if he were to read this―which he won’t,

What, then, does this have to do with humility?  Well, the best statements about humility is that someone who is truly humble cannot be humiliated.  They are too humble to take themselves seriously and therefore cannot be humiliated.  Following on that thought is another quote by Helen Luke, “to be humble is to see things clearly.”  When we see ourselves clearly, we will be humbled by what we see—our warts and imperfections; our shadow; our desire to be perfect despite our imperfections. 

Okay, so there is a connection of all this to the need to be in control.  If we are insecure and at heart, if we have one at that sense, are not truly humble enough to see how we are in relation to the world that God has created, there is no way that we can laugh at the ideocracies and foibles and incongruities of life and most importantly, at ourselves. 

What is at the heart of the matter, according to Helen Luke, is a sense of proportion.  Luke quotes T.S. Eliot and notes that, “Eliot is expressing here (in the quote) the identity of a sense of humour with the sense of proportion and the humility that this engenders”.  What is at the heart of things the joy of seeing disproportion restored to proportion. 

Finally, when we have a sense of restored proportion as Julian of Norwich is credited with saying, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

May you be blessed on your journey with a sense of the laughter at the heart of things.