Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 8383 Fax: 6423 5160
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm – 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is sick or in need of assistance in the Parish please visit them. Then, if they are willing and give permission, could you please pass on their names to the Parish Office. We have a group of parishioners who are part of the Care and Concern Group who are willing and able to provide some backup and support to them. Unfortunately, because of privacy issues, the Parish Office is not able to give out details unless prior permission has been given.
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Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance
as we strive to bear witness
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: - first Friday of each month.
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – meetings will be held on Monday evenings in the Community Room, Ulverstone at 7pm.
Weekday Masses 3rd - 7th April, 2017
Monday: NO Mass
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
3:30pm Tandara
3:30pm Tandara
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone 12noon
Devonport
Next Weekend 8th & 9th April, 2017
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Next Weekend 8th & 9th April, 2017
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 8th & 9th April, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Gaffney, M Gerrand, H Lim
10:30am
F Sly, J Tuxworth
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: B & B
Windebank, T Bird, J Kelly, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M
Sherriff, R Beaton, D & M Barrientos
Cleaners 7th
April: M.W.C. 14th April: P & T Douglas
Piety Shop 8th
April: L Murfet 9th April: D French
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: A & F
Pisano
Ministers of
Communion:
M Murray, J
Pisarskis, C Harvey, P Grech
Cleaners: M Mott Hospitality: K Foster
Penguin:
Greeters: S Ewing, J Garnsey Commentator: Readers: J Barker, J Garnsey
Ministers of
Communion: M
Hiscutt, M Murray Liturgy: S. C. C
Setting Up: F Aichberger Care of Church: M Murray, M Bowles
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, G Duff Ministers
of Communion: B
Lee Clean/Flow/Prepare: B Lee, A Holloway
Readings this week Fifth Sunday of Lent
First reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14
Second Reading: Romans 8:8-11
Gospel: John 11:1-45
Second Reading: Romans 8:8-11
Gospel: John 11:1-45
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
After coming to some stillness in the presence of God, I read this long
gospel passage, perhaps several times, until it is familiar to me.
I notice to which characters in the story I am drawn.
I may take several days to pray with this text, allowing its message to deepen for me each time I revisit it.
I enter into the story, perhaps by seeing in my imagination the places, the people, the sights, sounds and smells that are evoked, or maybe by retelling the story in my own words as if to a child.
Perhaps I accompany and talk with one or more of the people mentioned, or I may become one of the characters in the story.
I do not worry too much about each and every detail, but stay with the parts of the story that touch me most deeply.
In this way the gospel story becomes my own experience through which God speaks to me.
Jesus receives the message about Lazarus whom he loves, and speaks to the disciples about him.
What do I notice?
How do I think and feel about his response to Martha and Mary…. and about his response to my own needs?
I speak with the Lord about whatever is in my mind and heart.
I listen to the exchange between Martha and Jesus, as her faith in Jesus, present and active, grows in the face of great difficulty.
I share with the Lord my own need for faith, for trust, for confidence in him … or whatever grace I most need.
Jesus shares Mary’s grief as she weeps for her brother; he understands her pain.
I share with the Lord my struggles, confident he knows my pain and sorrows too.
Lazarus wakes to find he is shut up in the darkness of the tomb, bound and struggling to move, his face covered, unable to see.
How does he feel as he is brought to life, called out and freed by Jesus?
In what ways do I need to allow Jesus to bring me to life, to unbind and free me?
I share with the Lord.
When I am ready, I end my prayer slowly, taking my time, perhaps with an Our Father or Glory be ...
I notice to which characters in the story I am drawn.
I may take several days to pray with this text, allowing its message to deepen for me each time I revisit it.
I enter into the story, perhaps by seeing in my imagination the places, the people, the sights, sounds and smells that are evoked, or maybe by retelling the story in my own words as if to a child.
Perhaps I accompany and talk with one or more of the people mentioned, or I may become one of the characters in the story.
I do not worry too much about each and every detail, but stay with the parts of the story that touch me most deeply.
In this way the gospel story becomes my own experience through which God speaks to me.
Jesus receives the message about Lazarus whom he loves, and speaks to the disciples about him.
What do I notice?
How do I think and feel about his response to Martha and Mary…. and about his response to my own needs?
I speak with the Lord about whatever is in my mind and heart.
I listen to the exchange between Martha and Jesus, as her faith in Jesus, present and active, grows in the face of great difficulty.
I share with the Lord my own need for faith, for trust, for confidence in him … or whatever grace I most need.
Jesus shares Mary’s grief as she weeps for her brother; he understands her pain.
I share with the Lord my struggles, confident he knows my pain and sorrows too.
Lazarus wakes to find he is shut up in the darkness of the tomb, bound and struggling to move, his face covered, unable to see.
How does he feel as he is brought to life, called out and freed by Jesus?
In what ways do I need to allow Jesus to bring me to life, to unbind and free me?
I share with the Lord.
When I am ready, I end my prayer slowly, taking my time, perhaps with an Our Father or Glory be ...
Readings next week Palm Sunday of
the Passion of the Lord
First reading: Isaiah 50: 4-7
Second Reading: Philippians 2:6-11
Gospel: Matthew 26:14 – 27:66
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
George Archer, John Munro, David
Welch & …,
Let us pray
for those who have died recently:
Antonio Sciamanna, Fr Jim McMahon MSC, Adrian (Tom)
Sage, Aurea Magsayo, Bonafacia Claveria, Sr Paul Coad MSS, Gwenda Holliday,
Aurea Magsayo, Lorraine Bowerman, Lola Hutchinson.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time:
29th March – 4th
April
Horace Byrne, Eileen Murfet, Beris McCarthy, Fred Harrison,
Ada Davey, Jane Dutton, Paul Lowry, Duncan Fox, Daphne Wills, Pat & Bill
Grieve. Also Ma.Arah Deiparine, Victoriano & Marciana, Genaro & Jeffrey
Visorro.
May
they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
On Monday a great crowd gathered at Sacred Heart Church for
the Memorial Mass for the late Fr Jim McMahon. It was a special opportunity for
us as a Parish to say our farewells to a great priest and friend to many who
now enjoys the fullness of God’s mercy and love. May he rest in peace.
This week I attended a Council of Priests Meeting and
Pastoral Conference in Hobart and shared some time with my brother priests and
pastoral staff from round the Diocese. Discussion of topics ranged from the
re-establishment of the two Deaneries (North & South), the establishment of
the Safe Communities Protocol for the Archdiocese, the placement of three
Seminarians for Pastoral experience during the 2nd half of 2017, the
arrangements for the internment of Bishop Willson in the crypt at the Cathedral
in May. Some of the fruits of this discussion will be in the next edition of
the Catholic Standard or will be found here in coming weeks so keep tuned.
I also had an opportunity to speak about the Divine
Renovation Conference I attended last year and to speak about the possibility
of another Conference in 2018. I’ve been in contact with the people in Halifax
in the past week and they are almost certain that it will happen but are still
needing some confirmation about possible venues and speakers before they can
confirm dates and venue.
We have two weeks before we enter into the major Feast of
the Church – the Triduum – the celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and
the Easter Vigil and the Resurrection. The details of times and places are
included in the newsletter – I would encourage you to make every effort to be
at these celebrations - they really are the centrepiece of our faith life
because they celebrate God’s great love and mercy for us made real in the death
and Resurrection of Jesus.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
Mersey
Leven Parish Community
welcome and congratulate the following;
Able Banks son of Adam & Emma on
his Baptism this weekend,
Bev & Terry Brakey on their 64th
Wedding Anniversary on 4th April.
The people’s Community Network, supported by Caritas
Australia, is increasing the resilience of the thousands of landless Fijians
living in informal settlements. Communities are advocating together
successfully for better services, education and housing.
Please donate to Project Compassion
2017 and help vulnerable communities in Fiji to undertake training that will
empower them to work towards lasting change in their neighbourhoods.
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION:
Next weekend the St Vincent de Paul collection will be in
Devonport, Ulverstone, Port Sorell, Latrobe and Penguin to assist the work of
the St Vincent de Paul Society.
LENTEN PROGRAM: Our group will be meeting at the
Parish Hall Devonport, Thursday 6th April from 10am - 11:30am.
Contact Clare Kiely-Hoye 6428:2760.
CHOIR
PRACTICE FOR THE EASTER VIGIL MASS – SACRED HEART CHURCH:
All welcome to join the choir for the Easter Vigil Mass.
Practice will take place Thursday 6 April at 7.00pm Sacred Heart
Church.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY:
The Mt St Vincent Auxiliary will be holding a Easter cake and craft stall at the home on Wednesday 12th April starting at 9am.
FOOTY TICKETS:
The Mt St Vincent Auxiliary will be holding a Easter cake and craft stall at the home on Wednesday 12th April starting at 9am.
FOOTY TICKETS:
Round 1 (24th March) footy margin 14 points – winners; Grace Mullet, Ila
Breen, Shingle Shed.
PLEASE
TAKE NOTE: WE NEED YOUR HELP!!
Bingo is our biggest weekly fundraiser for our
Parish.
We desperately need volunteers to help out! Are you able to join our wonderful
volunteers each Thursday evening? It’s a great way to be involved in this
Parish fundraiser, make new and meet old friends and enjoy a great night out,
plus you can play bingo!! Please contact Annie at the Parish Office on
6424:8383. We urgently need help from 20th April – 18th May selling
tickets 6:15pm – 7:30pm.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 6th
April Jon Halley & Rod Clark.
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Walk for refugees: see CAPSA website capsa.org.au Hobart: Parliament Gardens starting
1.00pm Launceston: Princes Park, Elizabeth St 1.45pm.
MERSEY LEVEN CATHOLIC PARISH
Holy Week & Easter Ceremonies 2017
DEVONPORT: Our Lady of Lourdes Church
Holy Thursday: Mass of the Lord’s Supper 7.30pm
(Adoration till 9pm followed by Evening Prayer of the Church)
Good Friday: Commemoration of the Passion 3.00pm
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 11.00am
PORT SORELL: St Joseph’s Mass Centre
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 10.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 8.00am
LATROBE: St Patrick’s Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday Easter Mass 9.30am
SHEFFIELD: Holy Cross Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 11.00am
ULVERSTONE: Sacred Heart Church
Good Friday: Commemoration of the Passion 3.00pm
Holy Saturday: EASTER VIGIL 7.00pm
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 9.30am
PENGUIN: St Mary’s Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 8.00am
RECONCILIATION
Monday, 10th April - Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Devonport @ 7pm
Wednesday, 12th April - Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone @ 7pm
DOING VIOLENCE IN GOD’S NAME
This article is by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original web address is here
Blaise Pascal once wrote: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” How true! This has been going on since the beginning of time and is showing few signs of disappearing any time soon. We still do violence and evil and justify them in God’s name.
We see countless examples of this in history. From the time that we first gained self-consciousness, we’ve done violence in God name. It began by sacrificing human persons to try to attain God’s favor and it led to everything from actively persecuting others for religious reasons, to waging war in God’s name, to burning people for heresy at the Inquisition, to practicing capital punishment for religious reasons, and, not least, at one point in history, to handing Jesus over to be crucified out of our misguided religious fervor.
These are some salient historical examples; sadly not much has changed. Today, in its most gross form, we see violence done in God’s name by groups like Al-Qaida and Isis who, whatever else might be their motivation, believe that they are serving God and cleansing the world in God’s name by brute terrorism and murder. The death of thousands of innocent people can be justified, they believe, by the fact that this is God’s cause, so sacred and urgent that it allows for the bracketing of all basic standards of humanity, decency, and normal religion. When it’s for God’s cause, outright evil is rationalized.
Happily, it’s impossible for most of us to justify this kind of violence and murder in our minds and hearts, but most of us still justify this kind of sacral violence in more subtle modes. Many of us, for instance, still justify capital punishment in the name of divine justice, believing that God’s purposes demand that we kill someone. Many too justify abortion by an appeal to our God-given freedoms. Not least, virtually all of us justify certain violence in our language and discourse because we feel that our cause is so special and sacred that it gives us the right to bracket some of the fundamentals of Christian charity in our dealings with those who disagree with us, namely, respect and graciousness.
Our language, in both the circles of right and the left, is rife with a violence we justify in God’s name. On the right, issues like abortion and the defense of dogma are deemed so important as to give us permission to demonize others. On the left, issues of economic and ecological injustice, because they so directly affect the poor, similarly give us permission to bracket respect and graciousness. Both sides like to justify themselves with an appeal to God’s righteous anger.
There’s a story in John’s Gospel, delicious in its irony, which helps expose how we are so often blind to the violence we do in God’s name. It’s the famous incident of the woman who is caught in adultery. They bring her to Jesus and tell him that they caught her in the very act of committing adultery and that Moses commanded, in God’s name, that women like this be stoned to death. Jesus, for his part, says nothing. He bends down and writes with his finger, twice, on the ground and then tells them the one among them who’s without sin might cast the first stone. They understand the gesture: why he is writing on the ground, why he is writing twice, and what that means. What does it mean?
Moses went up a mountain and God, with his finger, wrote the Ten Commandments into two tablets of stone. As Moses approached the Israelite camp on his return, carrying the two tablets of stone, he caught the people in the very act of committing idolatry. What did he do? In a fit of religious fervor, he broke the Commandments, literally, physically, over the golden calf and then picked up the fragments and threw those stones at the people.
So here’s the irony from which to draw a lesson: Moses was the first person to break the Ten Commandments. He broke them in God’s name and then took the fragments and stoned the people. He did this violence in all sincerity, caught up in religious fervor. Of course, afterwards, he had to go back up the mountain and have the Commandments written a second time. However before giving Moses the Commandments a second time, God also gave him a lecture: Don’t stone people with the Commandments! Don’t do violence in my name!
We’ve been very slow to grasp this mandate and take it seriously. We still find every sort of moral and religious justification for doing violence in God’s name. We are still, like Moses, smashing the Commandments on what we consider idolatrous and then stoning others with the fragments. This is evident everywhere in our religious and moral discourse, particularly in how we, as Pascal might put it, in God’s name, “completely and cheerfully” bracket charity as it pertains to graciousness and respect.
A WISE AND GENTLE PASTOR
On Thursday the Church saw the passing of one of her greatest sons, William Cardinal Keeler, Archbishop Emeritus of Baltimore. Pope Francis called him a “wise and gentle pastor.” I had the honor of serving as the Cardinal’s first Priest-Secretary in the 1990’s before he appointed me as Pastor of the Church of the Nativity. In recent years, in his retirement, I sort of reprised the role. So, I knew him well.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has put together a memorial website here where you can learn more about his extraordinary life. There is much too much to say about him. Let me just share three insights that have helped guide me since that time.
Reach Out Beyond the Pews
One of Cardinal Keeler’s great achievements was his ecumenical work in bridging divides between Catholics and other Christian and non-Christian religious faiths. He was especially instrumental in sharing conversation and building trust with the Jewish community. The Cardinal cared deeply about this work, which bore much fruit in mutual understanding and cooperation.
It is important for local church leaders and pastors to find ways to connect with other nearby congregations, which can go a long way toward building trust. We have a lot to learn from other communities of faith. At Nativity we never really started to grow as a healthy church until we were willing to start talking to other churches.
Besides, whatever our faith traditions or worship practices, people of faith in the living God can join together as leaven in our community, as salt and light for our world.
Teach All Nations
All great leaders are great learners. Cardinal Keeler was always learning, reading, gathering experience and insight, gathering people together to share insights and perspectives.
You don’t have to be brilliant to be an effective leader (though it helps and the Cardinal bordered on brilliant). But it does take hard work and commitment; that is something we can and should expect from our leaders.
Our growth as a church has come at the hands of collaboration, a willingness to listen and learn, and an openness to change our mind from time to time.
Build Your People with a Purpose
Cardinal Keeler initiated a massive renovation of the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, the first Catholic Cathedral built in the United States. When it was originally built, it communicated a fresh approach to the faith in a new nation, symbolized in its (then) contemporary architectural style. The external features though were about what happened on the inside. The building had a clear purpose, to make disciples in the new nation.
Cardinal Keeler helped remind us that’s still our purpose. And we’re trying to keep it front and center here at Nativity as we build our new sanctuary. But even if you are not building a church building, the principle still applies when you are building your people. Be clear on your purpose, to be a people on mission.
Hail and farewell to a wise and gentle pastor.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.
THE PERENNIAL WISDOM
This reflection is taken from the Daily email series by Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe to receive the emails here
Universal Wisdom
The Perennial Wisdom Tradition . . . offers ancient wisdom
for contemporary living that is relevant to all of us, not just to a few.
—David G. Benner [1]
The Perennial Tradition encompasses the constantly recurring
themes in all of the world’s religions and philosophies that continue to say:
• There is
a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things;
• There is
in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine
Reality;
• The final
goal of existence is union with this Divine Reality.
The “perennial philosophy” or “perennial tradition” is a
term that has come in and out of popularity in Western and religious history,
but has never been dismissed by the Universal Church. I was trained in Catholic
systematic theology and Franciscan alternative orthodoxy; these and the whole
Judeo-Christian tradition taught me to honor the visibility and revelation of
God in all the world traditions and not just my own.
In many ways, the Perennial Tradition was affirmed at the
Second Vatican Council (1962-65) in forward-looking documents on ecumenism
(Unitatis Redintegratio) and non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate). These
affirm that there are some constant themes, truths, and recurrences in all of
the world religions.
In Nostra Aetate, for example, the Council Fathers begin by
saying that “All peoples comprise a single community and have a single origin
[created by one and the same Creator God]. . . . And one also is their final
goal: God. . . . The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in
these religions.” [2] Then the document goes on to praise Native religions,
Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam as “reflecting a ray of that truth which
enlightens all people.” [3] You have got to realize what courage and brilliance
it took to write that in 1965, when very few people in any religion thought
that way. In fact, most still don’t think that way today.
One early exception was St. Augustine (354-430), a Doctor of
the Church, who wrote: “The very thing which is now called the Christian
religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human
race until Christ came in the flesh. After that time, the true religion, which
had always existed, began to be called ‘Christian.’” [4] St. Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Leo the Great all
held similar understandings before Christianity turned to the later defensive
(and offensive!) modes of heresy hunting, anti-Semitism, and various crusades.
When any religion becomes proud, it also becomes dualistic and oppositional.
In some crucial ways, we have actually gone backward from
the deep thinkers and writings of the Perennial Tradition. As Ken Wilber often
repeats, good religion is made to order to serve as a “conveyor belt” forward
through all the stages of human consciousness. How sad when we get stymied at
one self-serving stage.
References:
[1] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary
Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 24.
[2] Nostra Aetate, Vatican II, 1965, #1, 2.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Augustine of Hippo, Retractions, 1:13.3, emphasis mine.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial
Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 11-12. (This issue of Oneing, a
limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the
eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing
at store.cac.org.)
Whole-Making
The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) stated that seminarians
should “base themselves on a philosophy which is perennially valid,” and it
encouraged the study of the entire history of philosophy and also “recent
scientific progress.” [1] This sent willing Catholics in a new direction that
is still unfolding.
In the authentic search for God, the field keeps expanding
and never tightening. As does the universe itself, we move toward an
ever-greater aliveness, a greater consciousness, a deeper union. The Jesuit
scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), called this a divine
allurement which is drawing the universe forward until a truly cosmic “Christ
comes to full stature” (Ephesians 4:13). [2] For Teilhard, this was the Omega
Point of all history, just as Duns Scotus had seen the Christ as the Alpha
Point or the “first idea in the mind of God.” This made the entire universe and
all of history unified, meaningful, and also hopeful! There is a trajectory and
direction to it all, which is what both Jews and Christians were supposed to
believe.
Few people put together science, philosophy, mysticism, and
poetry as brilliantly as does Teilhard de Chardin. Ilia Delio, Franciscan
sister and theologian, writes:
Teilhard spent his life trying to show that evolution is not
only the universe coming to be, but it is God who is coming to be. Divine Love,
poured into space-time, rises in consciousness and erupts in the life of Jesus
of Nazareth, becoming the pledge of our future in the risen Christ: “I am with
you always until the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). We can read the history
of our 13.7 billion year old universe as the rising up of Divine Love
incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals Love’s urge
toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus
is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution
toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new
direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness
in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who
follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a
deeper unity in love. [3]
Carl Jung viewed the archetype of God as the instinct toward
wholeness, and I think he is exactly right. I’ve always said that Jesus didn’t
come to create a new or exclusive religion. He came to reform and reinvigorate
the very meaning of all religion—and ground it in human nature and creation
itself—which is universal. Indeed, we are called “to become wholemakers,
uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love.”
References:
[1] Optatam Totius, October 28, 1965, #15.
[2] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York:
Harper & Row, 1965), 107. It is hard to ever be small again after you have
read Teilhard de Chardin.
[3] Ilia Delio, “Love at the Heart of the Universe,” “The
Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 21-22. (This issue of
Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in print;
however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional
issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for
Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 134-135.
What We Are Looking
For Is Doing the Looking
I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves
through, listen to this music. —Hafiz (c. 1320-1389) [1]
Aldous Huxley’s definition of “the perennial philosophy” is
an adequate definition of my own understanding of the same:
The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial
to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the
soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality, and the
ethic that places man’s [sic] final end in the knowledge of the immanent and
transcendent Ground of all being. This is immemorial and universal. [2]
Thus, the Perennial Tradition says that there is a capacity,
a similarity, and a desire for divine reality inside all humans. What we seek
is what we are, which is exactly why Jesus says that we will find it (see
Matthew 7:7-8). The Perennial Tradition invariably concludes that you initially
cannot see what you are looking for because what you are looking for is doing
the looking. The seeker becomes the seen. God is never an object to be found or
possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares our own deepest
subjectivity—or our “self.” Merely physical things can be known subject to
object; spiritual knowing is to know things subject to subject, center to
center (see 1 Corinthians 2:10-13). This is how the soul knows. Not
surprisingly, the soul recognizes soul in whatever it sees: soil, waters,
trees, animals, and fellow humans. Only such a depth of seeing can enter into a
fruitful and mutual exchange with God. To objectify God in any way is not to
know God.
I believe the Christ is the archetypal True Self offered to
history, where matter and spirit finally operate as one, where divine and human
are held in one container, where the psychic and the physical are two sides of
the same coin, and “where there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, slave
and free, male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The Christ Self fully allows and
enjoys the human-divine exchange. The small self thinks about whether it could
be true and usually ends up saying no.
David Benner writes in CAC’s journal Oneing:
The moral of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition is, “Don’t
settle for less than the truth of your Christ-self.” The ego-self, with which
we are all familiar, is a small cramped place when compared with the
spaciousness of our true self-in-Christ. This is the self that is not only at
one within itself; it is at one with the world, and with all others who share
it as their world. It is, therefore, one with Ultimate Reality. [3]
References:
[1] Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, “The Christ’s Breath,” Love
Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, rendered by Daniel
Ladinsky (Penguin Compass: 2002), 153.
[2] Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York:
HarperCollins, 1994), vi.
[3] David G. Benner, “Ancient Wisdom for Contemporary
Living,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 28.
(This issue of Oneing, a limited edition publication, is no longer available in
print; however, the eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore
additional issues of Oneing at store.cac.org.)
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for
Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), xii-xiii.
Unity, Not Uniformity
If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we
discover the distilled wisdom of the human race. —Huston Smith [1]
For those of us living in the 21st century—an age of
globalization, mass migrations, and increasingly multi-religious and
multi-ethnic societies—mutual understanding and respect, based on religious
pluralism rather than religious exclusivism, are extremely critical to our
survival. The insights from the perennial tradition have much to contribute in
developing and strengthening multi-faith relations. Its insights help to combat
religious discrimination and conflicts between and within religious traditions,
and to develop more pluralistic paths of religious spirituality. Today . . . we
see scholars and spiritual teachers forging new, more inclusive spiritual paths
that recognize other religious traditions as sources of insight and wisdom.
They are informed by the teachings and spiritual practices (meditation and
contemplation) of multiple religious traditions. —John L. Esposito [2]
The divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms of the world can
only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal,
relational, social, political, cultural, inter-religious dialogue, and
spirituality in particular. This is the unique and central job of healthy
religion (remember that re-ligio means to re-ligament!).
Many teachers have made the central but oft-missed point
that unity is not the same as uniformity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation
of differences, and those differences must be maintained—and yet overcome! You
must actually distinguish things and separate them before you can spiritually
unite them, but usually at cost to yourself (see Ephesians 2:14-16). And this
is probably the rub! If only Christianity and other religions had made that
simple clarification, so many problems—and overemphasized, separate
identities—could have moved to a much higher level of love and service.
Paul made this universal principle very clear in several of
his letters. For example, “There is a variety of gifts, but it is always the
same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same
Lord, working in all sorts of different ways in different people. It is the
same God working in all of them” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). The community at
Ephesus was taught in Paul’s tradition: “There is one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all,
and each one of us has been given our own share of grace” (Ephesians 4:5-7).
Even our central template of Trinity maintains the clear
distinction of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” while at the same time
insisting they are One. Divine Unity absolutely maintains and yet radically
overcomes seeming distinctions. How different history could have been if we had
only believed that at ever broader levels. I will develop this important theme
more tomorrow.
References:
[1] Huston Smith, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, PBS
television series in 5 parts (1996; New York: WNET), DVD. This phrase
introduced each episode.
[2] John L. Esposito, PhD, “The Perennial Tradition in an
Age of Globalization,” “The Perennial Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC:
2013), 34.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial
Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 12-13. (This issue of Oneing, a
limited edition publication, is no longer available in print; however, the
eBook is available from Amazon and iTunes. Explore additional issues of Oneing
at store.cac.org.)
Oneing
We must finally go back to the ultimate Christian source for
our principle—the central doctrine of the Trinity itself. Yes, God is “One,”
just as our Jewish ancestors taught us (Deuteronomy 6:4), and yet the further,
more subtle level of meaning is that this oneness is actually the radical love
union between three completely distinct “persons” of the Trinity. The basic
principle and problem of “the one and the many” has been overcome in God’s very
nature. God is a mystery of relationship, and in its deepest form this
relationship is called love. The three are not uniform at all—but quite
distinct—and yet completely oned in mutual self-emptying and infinite
outpouring. God, and all of creation, is a mystery of relationship!
We humans are not autonomous beings either; though we are
seemingly separate, we are radically one, too, just as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are one. We really are created in God’s “image and likeness” (Genesis
1:26f), much more than we ever imagined. Trinity is our universal template for
the nature of reality and for how to reconcile unity and diversity at every
level.
We are not seeking some naïve “everything is one”; rather,
we seek much more: the deeper “unity of the Spirit which was given us all to
drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). We must study, pray, wait, reconcile, and work to
achieve true unity—not an impossible uniformity, which was the tragic mistake
of both the early notion of Christendom and a later notion of Communism.
Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such
a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from
another person,” [1] and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one
person is all people and all people are in one person.” [2]
This is not some 21st century flabby fabrication. This is
not pantheism or mere New Age optimism. This is the whole point; it was,
indeed, supposed to usher in a “new age” (Matthew 19:28)—and it still can, and
will. This is the Perennial Tradition. Our job is not to discover it, but only
to retrieve what has been discovered—and lost—and rediscovered again and again,
in the mystics and seers, and prophets of all religions.
References:
[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, 65.
[2] Ibid., 51.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial
Tradition,” Oneing, Vol. 1, No. 1 (CAC: 2013), 13-14.
'The thousand forms that move': Alice Oswald as a poet of Lent
One of Alice Oswald’s poems is called ‘For Many Hours there’s been an Old Couple Standing at that Window’ (Woods etc., 23)[1]. The couple are waiting together for sunrise, twitching with anticipation. But when the sun rises they are dead to all the beauty and uniqueness that unfolds around them. Maybe they are weary, or have seen it all before, or have not found the revelation they were hoping for.
After all, they have only their accustomed answers.
They hardly know who they are
This couple remind me of what I’ve often thought to be the design flaw at the heart of Lent: an invitation for renewal, rejuvenation and freshness, that arrives at its preordained time, with its predictable patterns and answers. I know I’ll put in a few weeks of spiritual effort, maybe sacrifice something; I know what sins I’ll confess, what the priest will say. Here I go again, pushing my sin up the hill, taking up where I left off. There is nothing new under the sun.
This can be the experience of a desert: sameness everywhere you look, an unchanging, barren, place. But in the desert there are oases. Reading Alice Oswald’s poetry in the middle days of Lent feels like stopping in a place of spiritual lushness. It’s apt to talk of her work in this way: she is a gardener as well as a poet, and her poems offer the patterns of a garden, of change within repetition, of newness within sameness – the seeds that produce flowers that every year have never been seen before. The old couple who are unreceptive to the amazement around them are an anomaly in her poems. Her poetry invites us to anticipate and desire renewal; to recall what refreshment and healing feel like; to recognise how it has happened before in our lives and how it is happening again.
For all the beauty that it creates, there is not much room for sentimentality in gardening, nor in our spiritual lives. Oswald’s poems are teeming with tiny things that are only perceived by the best observers: specks, seeds, thin sounds, nuances that are only noticed by those who have been watching for years, angles and perspectives only achieved through contortions.
we are seeking
to be slightly more precise than is possible,
whizzing around, trying to unconceal things
(‘Five Fables of a Length of Flesh’, Woods etc., 32)
At its best, Lent is a time for unconcealing things – stripping away the layers of distractions that have hidden the real. This only happens through careful looking, through attentiveness and attention to detail, to spotting patterns. This aim is very particular to poetry. As W.S. Graham has it:
the appearance of things
Must not be made to mean another
Thing. It is a kind of triumph
To see them and to put them down
As what they are.
(‘Approaches to How They Behave’, Selected Poems)
To look in this way requires us to stay still and quiet, to have our gaze directed by God. But what is there to be seen once the seeing begins? Oswald’s poems offer us a universe of textures and sizes, protuberances and gaps, fragrances and music. They stretch from the cosmos down to the spores of fungi and,
the thick reissuing starlike shapes
of cells and pores and water-rods
(‘Leaf’, Woods etc., 8)
and run their fingers along both petal and razor:
is my heart a rose? how unspeakable
is my heart a rose? how unspeakable
…this is my tense touch-sensitive heart
this is its mass made springy by the rain
(‘Walking past a Rose this June Morning’, Woods etc., 20)
why do you chop yourself away
piece by piece, to that final trace
of an outline of ice
on a cupful of space?
(‘Moon Hymn’, Woods etc., 48)
This multiplicity of the natural world acts like a dissolving agent on the limits we have put on what we see and notice. Its spiritual counterpart is a reacquaintance with wonderment and awe.
For all their bounty, Oswald’s poems are often deserted, or when humans appear they are often distanced through myth or archetypes. Oswald rarely writes in confessional mode. It gives her poems a disconcerting coolness – the emotions and the experiences in her poems aren’t always easy to identify with: it is less like reading Hugo Williams or Philip Larkin and more like reading Emily Dickinson or Rainer Maria Rilke. The warm hearth of ‘human experience’ has been replaced by a structure that is cosmic and mathematical. We are certainly not at the centre of the universe. This humility is another Lenten, desert, experience.
Shifting perspective like this reacquaints us with mystery and the discomfort of not-knowing. A poem in The Thing…, called ‘Mountains’ (34) is full of undefined ‘somethings’. Something is different; something has gone; something is moving along the edge of a leaf; something changes. These silences – definitions withheld – occur throughout her poems, side by side with that desire to be ‘more precise than is possible’. Close looking and attentiveness only unfold more complexity, more layers, more things that are unknowable. The culmination of all those ‘somethings’ in ‘Mountains’ results in a conclusion that is not quite a conclusion:
and you can feel by instinct in the distance
the bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
like intentions among suggestions.
Intentions hiding among suggestions: looking precisely in Lent involves all of our spiritual antennae being primed to receive messages in all forms and disguises – hints, intuition, instinct. These often aren’t easy to articulate either to ourselves or to other people, and this kind of knowledge is generally less valued than the kind that can be structured and categorised. But Oswald’s poems give us a sense of the revelations to which we are more open when we have a Lenten attentiveness to detail, an awareness of the variety of the world, an acceptance of our smallness and of mystery.
The experience of unceasing flux is one of those truths whose power has been diminished by the cliché we have formed around it: ‘change is the only constant’. Good poetry shreds that dead chrysalis of language and gives the truth new words with which to clothe itself:
and whoops I found a mustard field
exploding into flowers;
and I slowly came to sense again
the thousand forms that move
(‘Woman in a Mustard Field’, The Thing…,16)
If change is always going on, then it’s always there to seen. The caricature of a Damascene renewal is a 180-degree change in direction, precipitated by a blinding light, fanfare, easy-to-interpret divine instructions. I’ve approached Lent demanding such a renewal – it’s about time that I get the holiness that I’ve been promised! We hope for change as though we are not actually changing right now, as if we have somehow stepped outside of this writhing, evolving garden.
This constant flux is not random, but patterned. The metaphor of the seasons is useful. Spring comes around yet again and the processes are always the same: soil, warmth, water, light. Oswald has written an astonishing poem that tells the story of Tithonus, a character from Greek mythology whom Zeus made immortal following a request from the dawn, Tithonus’s lover.[2] In the poem Tithonus is a decrepit old man, ‘having recently turned five / thousand’ who has seen so many dawns that he knows exactly what to expect – ‘and then another thing and then another / and then another thing and then another’ (FA, 45). In another poem, the narrator whilst weeding notices flowers
covering first one place
and then another
and after a while another place
and then another place
and another
and another
(‘Alongside Beans’, FA, 26)
This is a risky thing to do in poetry – the language could so easily dry up. But in the context of her poems these repetitions become a life-giving thing, a home for all the flux and change. Repeated uniqueness – someone is always making all things new, time and time again. This shifts the way we should expect to see change – not always as a sudden reversal of direction, but returning to the same place where we were a month, a year ago, and noticing the variation, the shifts in tone and emphasis.
The repetition of the seasons, the days and the Church’s year creates a pattern, and beneath the pattern, a meaning. The sheer variety of events in our lives can give the feeling of randomness; the bigger picture escapes us. But these cycles in the Church’s year (the design flaw I thought I saw in Lent) remind us to search for the meaning even when it seems hidden:
you are so bodiless, so barely there
that I can only see you through starlings
whom you try this way and that like an uncomfortable coat
(‘Sz’, FA, 40)
This is a poem addressed to a breeze, imperceptible except through the molecules that it carries with it, and the starlings whose flights are affected by its currents. This is a way of understanding something not by looking directly at it, but by seeing the consequences it causes, however tiny: seeing the workings of grace even when the hand is invisible.
There’s something full of meaning happening all the time, and renewal and refreshment are always there. How are these meanings delivered to us? The ends of poems are usually a good place to look for them. There’s something about the white space looming below the final line that heightens the anticipation and tempts the poet to step up to the pulpit – think of Auden’s ‘We must love one another or die’ (a line that he later called trash, and swapped the ‘or’ for ‘and’), or Larkin’s ‘What will survive of us is love’.[3] But Oswald’s revelations are revelations with the sound off. Something big is going on, for certain:
a sudden entering elsewhere.
(‘Sonnet’, Woods etc., 21)
– comprehension burst its container
twice
(‘Owl Village’, The Thing, 30)
– and again, a ‘something…inslides itself between moments / and spills the heart from its circumference’ (‘Mountains’, The Thing…, 34). A revelation happens, but the content is hidden from us. A poem titled ‘Gardeners at the Resurrection’ is a good example – here are two gardeners complaining about the weather, hoicking heavy bags on their backs, all this everyday work going on whilst salvation is happening just behind them in real time. Another poet would yoke the divine and the ordinary together in a final couplet, allowing the light from one to shine on the dirt of the other. Oswald’s poem delays and delays – clouds, birds, peat, cabbage, mud, and the end of the poem beckons with surely what must be a big final chord – but instead the gardeners
saw two men talking intently
and whistled softly and went on steadily.
(‘Gardeners at the Resurrection, The Thing…, 35)
The silence (enlivened by that soft whistle) invites us to provide the meaning. It’s a space for our imagination to enter in and to complete the scene – the meaning isn’t presented to us a static or completed work, but requires our participation in it. Elsewhere the revelation comes after the change has already happened, but even then the poems don’t make it explicit what has gone on. Instead the experience is simply that of realising that a change has taken place, without saying exactly what the change was:
Tell me
what have our souls been growing all these years
of time taken and rendered back as apples?
(‘The Apple Shed’, The Thing…, 37)
This is the feeling that comes after a long period of inattentiveness, of realising that something has shifted – grace has been at work and the change it has made has finally caught our dull attention.
Oswald’s poems brim with water – rain, rivers, seas, estuaries, pools – acting in all the ways that water does. One action of water that comes through repeatedly is that of water as a bringer of newness, washing away what has been there for a long time. Sometimes we can see a change clearly, in a different behaviour or a different reaction, but sometimes all we are able to articulate is that we have returned to the same place or circumstance but the way that we see something has changed – it is our vision that has freshened, or been renewed. The first poem in Falling Awake, ‘A Short Story of Falling’ is the story of rain falling onto seeds and leaves:
water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along
drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song
(FA, 1)
Drawn by an invisible force, water fills, refreshes, rejuvenates.
Reading Alice Oswald’s poems in Lent is an unusual experience. They offer an eroticism of change – what it feels like to anticipate change, to desire it, the tantalising way it has of being grasped and then ungraspable, unique but repetitive, that heady feeling of being out of your depth, of not being in control – of realising that grace has worked something in you. For all the fear and disappointment that change can bring, it is worthwhile especially in Lent to be reminded of the sensual thrill of it.
I began this essay by quoting lines from the poem about the old couple who are living in what looks like a tedious, dried-up Lent. They are blind to the transformation going on around them. If they are a symbol then they are surely a warning of what happens when we stop exercising our attentiveness and receptiveness. But I only quoted half of that final verse. The full ending offers a promise: that regardless of how blind or dull or tired with our sin we feel, the grace that is happening within us has not stopped its work of renewal:
After all, they have only their accustomed answers.
They hardly know who they are, they feel like twists
of jointed grass, going on growing and growing.
(‘For Many Hours there’s been an Old Couple Standing at that Window’, Woods etc., 23)
Nathan Koblintz is a former member of the Thinking Faith Editorial Board.
[1] References to Alice Oswald’s poems come from three of her books: The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (Oxford, 1996; republished London, 2007); Woods etc. (London, 2005); Falling Awake (London, 2016). Quotations for this essay have been limited to small extracts, and for the whole experience I recommend reading the full poems, and those in her other books: Dart, A Sleepwalk on the Severn, Weeds and Wild Flowers, and Memorial.
[2] The poem, from her latest book Falling Awake, takes 46 minutes to read if read properly (its subtitle is ’46 minutes in the life of the dawn’). The words are accompanied by dots and dashes running vertically down the page and each short stanza is separated by at least an inch of white space (though the dots and dashes continue throughout). The dots and dashes act like a metronome to a piece of music. My first reaction was that this was a novelty, a slightly impressive visual trick; but on reading there is a definite pull and counterpull between wanting to read quickly on, and the drag created by the metronome. It not only forces a slower, more attentive reading, but it mirrors the experience of Tithonus too – impatient to see the dawn, but unable to make it arrive any faster.
[3] W.H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’, Another Time (1940). Philip Larkin, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
