Anxiety and fear; Passion and Love

......just a little addition to the section of the journey inwards I am trying to describe. An emotion might be considered to be ephemeral, in that it is a passing experience. However, that would, in my view, be to trivialise what is a real and can be a profound experience. Beyond emotion, nevertheless, is 'feeling'. Now feeling may not have sensation as emotion does. For example, I might (and indeed do, frequently...) experience anxiety. The sensation of that emotion passes after a brief interval. Sometimes, anxiety lingers for a longer period. At a deeper level lies 'fear' which is not so much separate from anxiety, but is distinct from it. So I might be aware of an underlying fear but may not necessarily be feeling anxious. Likewise, I may experience the emotion of sexual arousal or exhileration and warmth in friendship. The feeling, which is so much deeper on the journey, might be described as love. What is more, there might be the feeling of love without the sensation. So on this part of the journey inwards, I become aware of 'feelings' and let them be. I have feelings, but I am not my feelings. So I move onwards or inwards beyond even my feelings, simply by recognising them and letting them be.... without any judgement or analysis... This is the journey 'with' Christ to the Christ of the inner life by means of letting go and as I tried to indicate in my last blog, by wsay of 'unknowing'....

I shall not be able to post a blog for a few days.... But I shall return... Please don't go away.

+Martin
Argyll and The Isles.

Lindisfarne

I have just returned from giving a talk and preaching on Lindisfarne. Recently, I was 'ticked off' recently for being cynical about things Celtic. I described it scathingly as 'fashion' - more about 'Mist', 'Clarsachs' and 'romantic longing across blown sand on the machair', as it were. As a result of my visit to Lindisfarne, I repent! What I am discovering is that both around the Iona and the Lindisfarne phenomena, there is a hunger among those that work in these 'sacred spaces' [?] to have a 'prophetic' role in our culture and a heart-warming honesty that they don't really know what that might be. Each may offer R and R, but those who live and work in the the different Christian 'resources' on each island feel a responsibility to 'disturb' visitors as well as 'comfort' them. To quote John Saxbee the Bishop of Lincoln: 'To comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable'.... perhaps...
Brother Damian, an Anglican Franciscan friar, who is the Vicar of St Mary's Lindisfarne, asked me, given the connections and responsibilities I have on Iona, what Lindisfarne and Iona might learn from each other and what appropriate and enduring connections might be made. After all, it was a Columban community that was set up on Lindisfarne by Ss Aidan and Cuthbert. Aidan was a Bishop who followed the 'way' of Columba and was brought to Lindisfarne for mission to Northumbria. One response, which was very tentative, I did make. I can't help wondering whether it might be possible to have a pilgrimage not to Lindisfarne [walking, of course!], but from Lindisfarne to Iona. However, there might be a mission of a distinctly topical sort.... Would there be any interest and challenge in having a combined Islamic and Christian Pilgrimage from one to the other, ensuring that it was an interfaith venture, particularly as piligrimage is important to both 'traditions'....? Just a little thought....! After all, that relationship might well be considered the one where most alientation, fear and rejection is experienced. Any responses?

...and there's the journey inwards.... Before I move on to the place of feelings in the context of meditation, I want to look a little further at emotions. From the comments I have received, I think I have been remiss in not returning in each 'post' to the reminder that I am describing an approach to Christian meditation. For example, a comment was made about a 'desirable emotion' arising from letting go 'undesirable emotions'. In the context of Christian meditation, the danger of naming a desirable emotion is that that too becomes less than 'being in God'. In other words, as that marvellous English Mysticism text 'The Cloud of Unknowing' has it, we come to 'knowing' God by the way of 'unknowing'. In other words, by acknowledging all the emotions I may have, desirable or undesirable, I learn gently to be detached from them in order to 'be in God'. Being detached is inclined to feel like being aloof or distant - spiritual stand-offishness! No... being detached is being loose - smiling, as it were, on the attachments that hold me from moving into a deeper love for God and therefore for others.

+Martin
Argyll and The Isles.

Exciting AND depressing Holiness!

Yes - I was back on Iona yesterday, working at future plans for Bishop's House. [What a gem, I wish more of our Diocese and indeed the Scottish Episcopal Chuyrch would use it.]The wind and the rain made following anybody and anything an interesting challenge. All kinds of emotions 'flooded' (!) through me as I stepped on to the jetty. I tried to imagine the practical concerns of Columba and the early community on Iona: Travel by boat and foot, taking so much time... patience.... Planning and diary dates would not really be that useful! Making something out of cultivation on the island, the daily chores, [for example....primitive sewage systems not working properly...] writing a little, reading a little and praying.... Oh and who are they arriving in that strange boat? Emotions? Fear, boredom, tiredness, excitement, wonder, anger.... the usual? I suspect so.

So the next little stage on the journey inwards is about the emotions. Remember, I don't call them 'my' emotions, but the emotions that I experience within me. Of course, I take responsibility for them. The difficult emotions are sometimes hard to handle. The temptation is then to shift them on to someone else. Taking responsibility for myself - is the key. In fact, I can't really take resposibility for anyone else at all! Yes, I can be careful and creative with you as a process of loving you and serving you. I can't however, take responsibility for you - just me! So I spend time in the silence being aware of the emotions that course through me; not identifying with them, just watching and and accepting even the difficult ones. If I feel good about you, then the feelings I have are within me, not you! If I feel negative towards you, its not you that has the feelings, it's me....! Difficult? Of course. That's why paying attention to these feelings is essential work in prayer. In Christian terms, it is the Spirit that enables the discernment to happen within me so that can respond more truthfully... out of love and not of possession, or out of resentment...
Big subject this....! Just notice your emotions and Christ presence will be in the noticing.

+Martin
Argyll and The Isles.

Thinking makes it so?

My brother Michael and I, from early years, were taught how to fly-fish by my father, Jimmie Shaw. We both grew to be rather fond of salmon-fishing, with which I have now a rather ambivalent relationship: enjoying it on the few occasions I have the chance to fish, but questioning myself about fishing as a sport and in particular fishing for such a majestic creature as a salmon, with all the question marks being raised by salmon farming. So I put my questions aside, when my brother, [who is a Trustee of the Findhorn Community] and I went to fish the River Awe recently. There was that voice on my shoulder saying: 'And where did you get the time to be doing this, Martin Shaw?' 'Should you be doing this, that and the other thing...?' The little boy in short trowsers inside me replied with all the pointless justifications under the sun, for example: 'Oh. I haven't had a day off for a wee while...' Etc. etc. You'll recognise the routine! Anyway, I caught a 5lb grilse which was a thrill, until later in the evening, I gutted the fish. I had caught a female fish full of beautiful and delicate salmon roe....! I leave you to guess the conversations between my shoulder and my inside as a result of that discovery....! Perhaps, I ought to stick to that other experience I love in times 'off' - the movies...!

Anyway, back to the following...
After the attention to the breathing, comes the thinking processes. On a retreat once, I asked a rather blunt spiritual director what I should do about my thinking which constantly intrudes into what I imagined to be my (note the possessive again!) praying. He suggested that I waited until I was dead before stopping thinking! Mmmm. Thank you for that! There is, however, a serious issue here. What I am doing when I meditate in prayer is not stopping thoughts, but not allowing them to possess me, any more than I possess them. The thoughts that I have are not 'my' thoughts. They are happening within me, certainly. So once I recongise that, i can smile and let them be.... I move even deeper into the silence, environment, physical considerations, breathing and thinking - not so dominating...

Oh and a challenging piece of music for you which deepens the silence: 'Quartet for the End of Time' by Olivier Messiaen.

+Martin
Argyll and The Isles

An echo

By the way, this breathing meditation is a powerful way for smokers to be aware of their breathing. Someone pointed out to me, that when you smoke, you only take breath in (as well as other problematic substances!) at the top of the lungs. The breathing is not then properly exercised and becomes shallow... Oh!...and singing is a powerful way to exercise the breath and use 'outwardly' what the 'inward' jounrey is gaining.
+M

Don't take a deep breath

A little experience yesterday... Providential? What are the roots of co-incidence, I wonder? I was asked to return to St Oswald's Episcopal Church, King's Park in Glasgow to preside and preach. Currently, St Oswald's is celebrating their 75th anniversary. From 1968 to 1970, I was a curate there, with leslie Green as the Rector (RIP). Several of the good folk, still there, loved reminding my of some of idiocies! (And... I haven't changed!) Here's the wistful nature of the experience.... Last week, I was on Iona, from where in the 7th Century Aidan had been summoned to intiate and enable mission in Northumbria, by the King of Northumbria, none other than King Oswald! Of course, the Columbas Christian community was then 'rooted' in Lindisfarne, where I am going to preside and preach next Sunday... Following Columba indeed! (I'll be going either by train or car!)

So, to the next 'station' on the spiritual 'following'.... Being 'where I am' - still and reasonably centred, and having noticed, observed 'The Body' which I occupy... or if you don't like that - which is mine only to let go (!), now I notice and be careful about breathing. Don't take a deep breath. Be easy and gentle and rhythmic about it.... Breathing is, of course, of vital importance! So the exercise of observing an action that we take for granted is simply about 'loving' it....
Christ is loving me as I breathe. 'Christ in me (you)... the hope of glory....' If that 'Christian' language is problematic, then don't waste mental or spiritual energy by thinking about it. Just enjoy your gentle breathing... the journey inwards to the basis of the self. In Buddhism, an approach to meditation and awareness is simply exercised in noticing the breathing....

+Martin
Argyll and The isles

An echo

It's rather a lost cause trying to stop saying, let alone feeling that something or someone is 'mine'. As long as I am aware of that with which I am identifying. I might say that this or that, he or she is 'mine', but it they end they are not... Can I let them go?
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles

'This body of mine!'

Well, there is a little 'journey' I am on. As you might have gathered, if you seen the first two of my blog postings, the title is 'Following Columba'. To be honest, I am experimenting with this medium of blogging to see if it is useful, reflective etc.... (?)
After a time, the journey is going to be one one on which he might say: 'Well. I'm stopping now. You get on with YOUR pilgrimage!'. [Perhaps he might have moved ahead of us and is creating a sacred space somewhere else...?] Of course, there will always be our 'doves' sent back to check things out with him. However, I'll stick with Columba for the time being. On his journey, he was, I assume, only too aware of his body. The tiredness, the hunger and all the other desires and needs either he expressed or didn't!
So after having spent sometime being aware of 'where I am'.... noticing/observing the environment around me. I realise, of course, that none of this environment is 'mine'. This laptop is not 'mine'. Certainly, I have it for my use. If I say it is mine, I am over-identifying with it. That applies to people as well. To say that someone is 'mine' is to recognise that person only through my own desires and possessiveness, which eventually distorts that persons individuality; that person's 'personhood'. So I am in this context, but I am not the context....
Likewise, when I become aware of my body, gently and carefully, I am inclined to call it 'mine'. Yes, I have a body, but 'I' am not my body... There is much more to me than that....
So spend sometime just being aware of 'your' (woops!) body.... Surprisingly, you might find that stillness naturally becomes part of that noticing... It's essential NOT to analyse, criticise, quantify or qualify... Just notice, watch....
Christ is in the watching....
+Martin
Argyll and The Iles.

An echo

The title of the book I menioned in the last 'post' was wrong... Its should read: 'SELF-ABANDONMENT TO DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
+Martin
Bishop of Argyll and The Isles

Where I am

Columba was, according to Adomnan, his biographer (hagiographer?), particularly conscious of where he was at any given moment. The place where he was, was where God was to be found. That included the places where he found himself longing for a past he had lost and a place he would rather be. Somehow, he had a practice that brought him back to the 'present moment'...
A great book and a classic of spiritual literature, with what seems to be me a rather off-putting title, is SELF-ABANDONMENT TO DIVINE LOVE. It's by Jean-Pierre de Caussade... He talks about the 'sacrament' of the present moment. This moment I am now in, including writing this blog now, is 'holy' ; it is where God is.... It is even 'revelation', if I would only look and observe and 'take in', or better... 'allow in' what is happening around me - now.
So a possible 'practice' is to sit, stand, kneel or walk.... and spend the time [- it needs no less than 10 minutes -] just being aware; attentive to where you are.... This is simple but not without its difficulties. Straight away, I am confronted with vthe reality not only of where I am, but also with myself! Christ being the presence of God in this moment is there - or better - here!
Any reactions? Responses?

An echo

I have always felt the urge to make pilgrimage - to go somewhere where there is a story of someone or several people whose lives still echo around a holy place - a sacred space.... Perhaps I might catch a rumour just heard and no more on the wind or in some corner...
Does anyone share that longing...?
+Martin
Bishop of Argyll and The Isles.

Starting somewhere

There is considerable dispute as to the reasons for Columba's exile which eventually brought him to Iona. Conjecture, of course, is rampant. What matters is that there was risk, there was heroism coupled with reluctance. That is as good a way to introduce a spirituality which might be appropriate even for our own time. To enter into anything like a disciplined prayer life calls for risk and courage, while acknowledging reluctance, not to mention uncertainty.
'Following Columba' is about getting into the 'slip-stream' of someone who for over 1400 years has been seen as, in himself, a follower of Christ. That's where Columba pointed his followers and that's where we are pointed now.
The inner life, however, is where this following begins and it is the inner life that this blog is about.
The 'inner' life is not separate from the 'outer' life. However, it is simply a way of focusing on the 'work' that might be done to develop a basic spirituality that engages with the realities, as Columba faced the realities of uncertain weather, uncertain people and uncertain political times...
So are there are there any questions at this stage....?
+Martin. Bishop of Argyll and The Isles.
Thursday 14th September 2006. Holy Cross Day. (Not a bad day to start this blog)