Matthew under the arm 37
Now, I ask you... ! There I was in the early morning, looking forward to the walk over a pass and the great views from the top. Columba and I had said to the Office (Morning Prayer.... which he still insists in calling Matins and Lauds...I'll explain sometime, if anyone's interested!) Ten past eight, I think it was and there was Columba staring at something on the side of the path. I went over to look, thinking it might be a wounded bird. (He's good with wounded birds!) No. It was a broken bottle...a green wine bottle...empty, of course. The early morning sun made it glisten to the point of being uncomfortable to look at. 'Why are you staring at the broken bottle?' All he said was, 'The brokenness and the emptiness of Christ'. 'But broken glass can be dangerous...' I said limply. 'So is Christ.' 'Dangerous?', I asked, slightly offended. 'We are summoned to find Christ in danger, as well as in suffering or delight'. Columba lifted the bottle and carefully broke it into smaller pieces of glass with a little rock. Gingerly, he placed the pieces in a little bag. 'Christ broken up even more...and with a stone!' I added. Columba just nodded.
Matthew 9:27-34….
There is a well known catch-phrase which comes to us from St Igatius of Loyola: 'Finding God in all things.' But, I for one gulp when I am asked: 'Do you Martin, really believe that?' Well..... Mmmmmm... Yyyyyes...! I have a kind of 'dumbness' that lacks the ability to articulate, understand and describe even to myself what I experience of God. Oh for the wit and wisdom of William Blake: 'To see the world in a grain of sand'. 'The Lust of the goat is the Bounty of God'. Wonderful stuff! So is God absent for me? The concentrated inner cry for ‘mercy’ may open a door of perception. And the friend who understands me in my dumbness may open my understanding to a dawn of Christ present in my 'finding'.
I would have the insight to find You and the freedom to serve You.
Look over the past 24 hours and try and remember the sights you have seen and the sounds you heard, no matter how ordinary or disturbing. As always with prayer, do not analyse these experiences – just notice. Strange though it may seem, don’t ask yourself where God might have been in these. Clarity will come in its own time. Just notice and be aware – that’s spiritual enough for most people! Use the sentence and allow the experiences to deepen.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
Matthew 9:27-34….
There is a well known catch-phrase which comes to us from St Igatius of Loyola: 'Finding God in all things.' But, I for one gulp when I am asked: 'Do you Martin, really believe that?' Well..... Mmmmmm... Yyyyyes...! I have a kind of 'dumbness' that lacks the ability to articulate, understand and describe even to myself what I experience of God. Oh for the wit and wisdom of William Blake: 'To see the world in a grain of sand'. 'The Lust of the goat is the Bounty of God'. Wonderful stuff! So is God absent for me? The concentrated inner cry for ‘mercy’ may open a door of perception. And the friend who understands me in my dumbness may open my understanding to a dawn of Christ present in my 'finding'.
I would have the insight to find You and the freedom to serve You.
Look over the past 24 hours and try and remember the sights you have seen and the sounds you heard, no matter how ordinary or disturbing. As always with prayer, do not analyse these experiences – just notice. Strange though it may seem, don’t ask yourself where God might have been in these. Clarity will come in its own time. Just notice and be aware – that’s spiritual enough for most people! Use the sentence and allow the experiences to deepen.
+Martin
Argyll and The Isles
posted by Martin at 11:15 am
2 Comments:
I see Christ in a Christian brother caring for another in less fortunate circumstances. I see Christ in caring for the Tiger nearly extint in the wild, created by God.
Compassion and the beauty of creation could not come from evolution, evolution is just godless evil. Christ is not in evolution.
Wasn't a grain of sand once a mountain, now broken, shaped and polished by water, wind and it's neighbours? Waiting to be washed by the sea into the deep where it will be reformed by burial and earthquake into new mountains in millenia yet to come?
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