In common with suffering, thoughtful millions who, in a warring world of evil and destruction, doubt and wonder about the meaning of a saving God, I too have hard questions now. Can people walk through a children’s hospital ward and still believe in a loving Saviour? David Attenborough asks many questions about a God who will not, or cannot remove the worm that is eating into the baby’s eye. There are massive questions about innocent […]
We are now at the beginning of October. I have always celebrated this week when we honour those special saints Thérèse and Francis of Assisi. They specialised in living the way of unconditional love. They knew spiritual things, as St Paul put it, ‘in a spiritual way’. With Teilhard de Chardin, they regarded love as the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious personal and cosmic force. Teilhard’s wish was that humanity would […]
TEARS OF THINGS’ I cried a lot those late summer days. It may have been due to old age. Today David Attenborough has admitted to crying more than ever before: the most recent reason being the plight of the young penguins dying in the Antartic. Apart from being my first reaction to the news and fear of cancer I’m not sure why I cry now. But that response has spread out into other vulnerable dimensions […]
THE SEAMLESS LOVE-WEB OF THE SPIRIT AND EVOLUTION Much of all this is challenging and confusing, but only because it is different from what we were often (very erroneously) told. It is the heart of our faith but in a new language and imagery. It is worth all the energy and passion we can muster to understand it more profoundly. This theology tries to tell the Christian Story in terms of a deep and endless […]
Occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I will reach for a pen and a page to take my mind off the situation I want to deny. I find a blessed relief in mulling over the love-story of Incarnation, ruminating on the forgotten theological and spiritual teachings, and their implications for our lives and that of our precious world. And so, in the lovely light of these thoughts in many of these pages, […]
Creating a world in need of development, God in some way sought to limit himself in such a way that many of the things we think of as evils, dangers or sources of suffering, are in reality part of the pains of childbirth which he uses to draw us into the act of cooperation with the Creator. God is intimately present to each being, without impinging on the autonomy of his creature and this give […]
The Christmas hype is well and truly over but the meaning of Incarnation has no ending. In January, the month of courageous beginnings, Christians will try to live out in their lives the Feast of Love and Mercy they have just celebrated. In a weeping world they will put love where there was no love and thus continue the human Incarnation of divine love. Life itself, all that it brings, all that we experience, every […]
English poet Christina Rossetti was looking through the lens of Incarnation when she prayed: Lord, purge our eyes to see, Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. God is now fleshed. To perceive the world in Christmas light is to discern the hidden depths of everything, the astonishing possibilities in all that happens, the extraordinary mystery abiding within the ordinary. This Christian revelation of an incarnate […]
In his humanity Jesus scandalised his neighbours; he came eating and drinking and they called him a glutton and a drunkard; he showed his anger, his desires, his need of male and female company; his frustration, his impatience – “Get behind me Satan,” he exploded. And again, “How long have I been with you and yet, you have learned so little!”. He showed his weakness, his doubt, his feelings of abandonment. And yet, this is […]
‘Excitement and joy flow out from Tom and Rhianna whenever they talk about the pregnancy. Their delight is infectious but more striking is their sense of privilege – to be having this baby is wondrous gift. Together they’ve opened up a heightened awareness of the miracle, hope, promise of this one new life, a recognition of the holiness, fragility and wonder of this baby, their baby. There is a new stillness in them, as if […]
The Irish poet and farmer Patrick Kavanagh had an instinctive awareness of the meaning of Incarnation. His was a sacramental imagination. Even in his descriptions of the most common things, his homespun words and wisdom carry in them hints of Heaven, enabling his readers to be open to them too. My father played the melodeon Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east And they danced to his music. In A […]
Too often at Christmas, the real magic is missed. There is nothing infantile about the infant; the innocence of the child is the power of God filling the hearts and souls of all beloved and broken people with hope and light Back in the 1950s, during December days, at around 6 p.m., a small army of boys and girls were collected from the neighbouring villages of Knocknagree, Gneeveguilla and Barraduff, and taken to Rathmore Creamery, […]
We can journey from frailty to freedom in our lives, and that progress is made, necessarily, not only in the mind but also in the body. To reach this goal, like the best dancers, we must ‘swallow fire’ “A flamenco dancer, lurking under the shadow, prepared for the terror of her dance. Somebody has wounded her in words, alluding to the fact that she had no fire or duende. She knows she has to dance […]
We are called into the deep by God’s dream for us. Recently, I took a walk along the prom here at Blundellsands. The crisp dry November evening brought families out, to stroll, fly kites and generally enjoy this beautiful Sunday, here was I, among my new neighbours. It felt good. However, as time went on, in the far distance, my attention was drawn to what seemed to be a stately vessel resting on the deeps, […]
Where, then, shall we begin? Begin with the heart. Any effort to grow that by-passes the heart is in danger of losing its way. To try to circumnavigate the heart is not the way of incarnation. To search for God apart from the centre of human emotion is to seriously misunderstand what little we know of the Christian mystery. To place God’s heart over against the human heart is to get it wrong from the […]
Our concern is not so much about getting to heaven but in discovering and revealing its incarnate presence here and now. The light of a radical shift in theological perspectives and at time of daily revelations regarding cosmic mysteries – our world views, our faith perspectives are undergoing a radical transformation. When we understand the love-energy of evolution to be the very grace of the Holy Spirit, then our understanding of almost everything has to […]
Even if we wished we would be hard put to avoid the experience of God. The experience of God is practically inescapable. We cannot help coming into the embrace of divine compassion whenever we experience anything. Michael Skelley writes, ‘We do not sometimes have experiences of love, fear, ourselves, or anything else and then also have experiences of God. The basic, original experience of God, on the contrary, is the ultimate depth and radical essence […]
Beauty is a pillar of faith, alongside goodness and truth. In an often dark world, we struggle to ensure that its importance and sacramental quality are not lost, for at the deepest level of our being we already know beauty and resonate sympathetically with it. Across the ward, a man is struggling. His body is writhing on the chair near the bed. His right leg, arthritic and misshapen, is kicking against the cubicle curtain. Sweat […]
During the second half of my life, I am learning to grow by subtraction. These are the decades of the inner work. We move into another place, the afternoon of our life, which cannot be lived by the drives and energies of life’s morning. ‘What is a normal goal to a young person, becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age,’ wrote Carl Jung. At this time of life, one learns that to be transparent and […]
Much of all this is challenging and confusing, but only because it is different from what we were often (very erroneously) told. It is the heart of our faith but in a new language and imagery. It is worth all the energy and passion we can muster to understand it more profoundly. This theology tries to tell the Christian Story in terms of a deep and endless love: always flowing from within, the work of […]
Occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I will reach for a pen and a page to take my mind off the situation I want to deny. I find a blessed relief in mulling over the love-story of Incarnation, ruminating on the forgotten theological and spiritual teachings, and their implications for our lives and that of our precious world. And so, in the lovely light of these thoughts in many of these pages, […]
ONLY CONNECT! Our wisest people keep insisting on the healing power of connecting things in our minds, of trying to complete some fragments of life’s mystery as we experience it. You may have noticed this connecting dimension of my illness as expressed in these pages. How to see my personal pain as part of the universal and incarnate, beloved and broken presence of the Risen Christ, or of the free Holy Spirit at work and […]
What have Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin in common? All three scientists suffered some bruising encounters with the Church authorities of their time. Each of them experienced extreme difficulties in having their scientific discoveries accepted. In 1988, conscious of this past ‘failure in dialogue’, Pope St John Paul II asked the participants of a conference in Rome this question: ‘Does an evolutionary perspective bring any light to bear upon theology, the meaning of the human person […]
Summer days and childhood memories! When they come together, they twist our hearts without warning. Like a high-octane cocktail, they hit us suddenly and mercilessly with emotions. The smells, the sights, and the feel of summer so often strike, with painful intensity, at the tender, forgotten and sleeping magic of those special years. There is a pathos, a poignancy and the strangest sadness in those moments of memories ‘that bless and burn’, as my mother […]
I’m alone for a moment, on the ferry home, half-way between Calais and Dover. It is Sunday morning and the sun is shining on the green-blue sea. As spring turns to summer, millions travel to Lourdes. Our own parish pilgrimage is almost over. Our hearts are full of stories of pain and joy, of some dark moments and many bright ones, of shared secrets, and glimpses of the mystery and paradox of the human spirit. […]
Wet and weary we entered the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. The 100 km Camino walk was over and our bones ached during Mass. As we got up to leave, a huge thurible (the botafumiero) was let down on a thick rope on to the sanctuary floor. A tangible frisson of anticipation stirred throughout the packed pews. The censer weighed 80 kilos and stood 1.60 metres tall. The Camino de Santiago, the Way of St […]