A Gaelic Prayer

O Trinity of Love,
you have been with us at the world's beginning; 
be with us till the world's end.
You have been with us at our life's shaping;
be with us at our life's end.
You have been with us at the sun's rising;
be with us till the day's end. 

In Christ All Things Hold Together

George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, wrote many wonderful prayers. This is one:

Invisible we see you,
Christ beneath us.

With earthly eyes
we see beneath us
stones and dust
and dross,

fit subjects
for the analyst's table.

But
with the eye of faith
we know you uphold.

In you
all things consist
and hold together:

the very atom is high energy,
the grass is vibrant,
the rocks pulsate.

All is in flux;
turn but a stone
and
an angel moves.

- George F. MacLeod, The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory

Barren Times - Or . . . ?

The desert waits -
ready for those who come,
who come obedient for the Spirit's leading;
or who are driven,
because they will not come any other way.

The desert always waits,
ready to let us know who we are -
the place of self-discovery.

And whilst we fear, and rightly,
the loneliness and emptiness and harshness,
we forget the angels,
whom we cannot see for blindness,
but who come when God decides
that we need their help;
when we are ready
for what they can give us.

                      - Ruth Burgess, Bread of Tomorrow

 

Attentiveness

Listening is the highest form of love.
                                                         - Paul Tillich

Icons and Images

The following is from Vaux- a sometime and erstwhile UK experiment and exploration in the arts, liturgy and culture, and a positive(?) critique of the culture of the West's empty or emptying churches . . .

The use of icons in worship, particularly the image of Christ, has caused much theological debate and controversy down the centuries. In his book 'God's Human face' Schonborn outlines the various threads of debate, especially surrounding the iconoclastic controversy of the 8th century AD [Schonborn, 1994]. Interestingly, he states that the heart of the debate was about the incarnation - 'He who rejects the icon also rejects the Incarnation: this is the common conviction of all defenders of images.' Whereas 'contempt for matter is one of the most striking traits of iconoclasm'. The rules for painting icons are very tightly controlled in the tradition. In large part this is because the icons are primarily seen as 'theology in colour' in contrast with much Western art which is seen as romantic and an individual's interpretation.

Popular culture is heavily image oriented and iconographic. 'The icon is the common currency of our popular culture' [Beaudoin, 1998]. Edward Robinson has written a book entitled 'Icons of the present' [Robinson, 1993]. In this he argues that the arts have always had a crucial role to play in evoking the presence of the holy, functioning as 'windows on eternity'. This is particularly the case when in a well established religious tradition the conventional language of the sacred has become over familiar - art opens up perception in new ways, enabling us to see the world with new eyes. He argues that a spiritual tradition needs to be continually renewing itself if it is to be faithful to its own tradition. 'Every revelation is initially culture bound: it speaks the language, it uses the image of its own time and society. If it did not, communication would be impossible. Every tradition if it is to live has continually to be breaking that mould, and every succeeding mould.'

So what are needed are icons of the present, that keep revelation alive by representing that mystery in the language of the here and now . . . When any iconographic style ceases to be earthed in the present, whilst its images may still exert a powerful grip on the mind and heart, the dangers both of nostalgia and otherworldliness become very real.

The Great Reversal

Walking with the crowds

Carried along by the pressing forward,

Each one eager to get ahead

But each one starting the same;

Born as a baby, and from then on, struggling towards

meaning, power and influence.

Be someone

Be remembered

Make a big impression.

Leave some indelible mark in your 3 score years and 10.

From birth, a struggle to find eternity, to burst through life

with such dazzling intensity, that everyone will remember

forever.

But walking the other way, picking out a route against the

crowds, a soltary figure passes me . . . passes all of us -

all straining away innocence, to be someone, and he

passes us, a quiet chaos in the crowd.

Christ, eternal, omniscient, creator, beyond time, source of

wisdom and beyond petty claims of influence. . . in very

nature God, slips into reverse and walks back past us -

away from Kingship, away from power, away from influence,

away from eternity, away from wisdom . . . towards infancy.

Calmly stepping into the body of a tiny child.

And even as this baby grows, figuring out how to control
the body he himself designed, he still walks the other way,

realizing that life cannot be found in the struggle for permanence,

but in giving it up.

The great reversal subverts me. Tired of pressing forward, I realize I need to turn, for what I have been searching for has just past by me the other way.

- From VX35 (see http://www.vaux.net/)