What Tina asked the brothers of St Alcuins about vocation and glad service.

 In the comment section to the last blog post, Tina said: “My question is about vocation. As one ages, there is that space between vigorous service and death. It seems as though in St. Alcuins there is such a wonderful attention to where people would best fit, where their service and their joy come together, like Conradus in the kitchen. I am wondering how to take some of the wisdom of that and apply it to my current season. Of course, I'm not in the more insular world of a monastery, so how to find that appropriate place of service and joy in the broader world at my stage of living? What principles or insights are practiced there that are applicable here?”

She didn’t say who at St Alcuins she wanted to ask about this, so I started off with Abbot John. 

When I finally ran him to earth — he was crossing the abbey court from the guest house to the abbot’s lodging — I have to say he was looking somewhat harassed. I’d written down what Tina had said, and I showed it to him. He scanned it quickly, frowning, then ran his hand over his head as he handed it back to me, saying, “Oh, glory, I don’t know! We just  . . . er . . . just do what we think is best. I mean, basically we just send people where there aren’t enough hands for the work that needs doing.”

He looks at me. Then he says: “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not good enough is it. I expect your friend was hoping for an intelligent answer. It’s just . . . well . . . I’m rather pushed today. I’m sorry. Tell you what — how about you ask Theo?”

This seemed sensible to me; after all, if anyone’s spending time mulling over questions of vocation, it’s likely to be the novice master. So, having been given permission by Father John, I went into the abbey buildings and up the day stairs to the novitiate. I should probably explain that they are used to me being around. There’s quite a big gap between the fourteenth century and the twenty-first, and they don’t exactly see me physically, but they do see me. They call me the little ghost, and it doesn’t surprise them any more when I turn up. When they come here to the twenty-first century, they travel by the Earth paths that join up one layer of time with another. For some of them it’s an effort and they fade out before we finish talking, but some of them can stay here for ages. But on this occasion I was there. Obviously there is no place for a woman roaming around their monastic enclosure, but it’s different with a ghost.

As I reached the top of the day stairs, one of their novices — Brother Ignatius — came out of the room where Brother James makes robes; he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. I don’t think he’s seen me before. He blinked. “Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Is Father Theodore teaching just now?” I asked him. He nodded. He seemed a bit nervous. I don’t know quite how I look to them, but they wouldn’t call me the little ghost if I didn’t look ghostly, would they? 

“Then can you take him this message?” I asked. 

Still rather uncertain, he reached out his hand. I wondered if my piece of paper would even cross into the fourteenth century, but it did. He looked down at my handwriting, and then felt the paper carefully between his first two fingers and his thumb, turned it over and stroked the surface of the paper. Then he said he’d give it to Father Theodore. And I said thank you, and that I didn’t want to disturb their lesson, and I’d come back another time to see what Father Theodore had to say.

Brother Ignatius looked at me as if — well, as if he’d seen a ghost. “He . . . Who shall I say gave me this?” he asked. “Does Father Theodore know you?”

“Yes, he does,” I assured him. “Tell him it was from the little ghost. He’ll know who you mean.”

So he nodded, and went on his way to the novitiate, just looking back once to see if I was still there.

After that I wasn’t sure what to do, especially as I didn’t have the question written down any more. I turned round and went back down the day stairs. But I wanted to go to the infirmary, because I love it there, so I headed in that direction. And sitting on the bench under the cherry tree in the infirmary garden, there was Father William. Now, he didn’t look a bit surprised to see me. “Oh, hello,” he said: “It’s you.” (And how right he was.) “Nice to see you. Did you want something. Were you looking for me?”

So I told him what I could remember about Tina’s question, which was how an older person who doesn’t live in a monastery could slot into place in her own circumstances, finding ways to make a real contribution that would be a glad service at the same time as fulfilling for herself. What would be, I asked him, her equivalent of finding the right obedience?

And he said, “Are you going to sit down?” So I sat beside him on the bench while he thought about it. 

Then he said, “It’s not entirely about jobs that need doing — though of course somebody has to, so it might as well be yourself, on any given day. In terms of the context she’s in, I’d say to look for what isn’t there — and keep that not too specific. So, not to ask yourself if someone’s needed to compose music or stitch a set of vestments or make some church incense; because the first thing that would happen is you’d simply say that’s too difficult or you don’t know how. But stay a bit more abstract. Ask yourself, is kindness missing here? Are these people competent but desperate for money? Do they lack someone to take time to listen to them? Is this place cluttered and disorganised because nobody’s taking care of it? And it's enjoyable finding a creative way to bring what's needed into reality. In my case, of course, the question is usually ‘How about the accounts? Are they up to date and properly ordered?’ Usually the answer to that one is, 'No, they’re not’. Other than that, anyway, what I have to offer, and indeed even my actual presence, is as often as not unwelcome. Though Brother Michael was kind in making a place for me here. So you just fill the gap according to whatever skills you have, you do your best. In reality, much of the time people simply need someone to help with the washing up or close the gate so the cows don’t wander off, not very difficult things.

“But if you just leave it at that, looking for gaps to fill, it can all get unbearably tedious quicker than you’d ever thought possible. Everyone else would be fine, but she’d be a drudge and seriously out of pocket. So then the question is, what are you good at? What kindles your heart? And if you look at your life as it’s unfolded, generally there are consistent themes. 

“Sometimes I’ve thought even if I was nearly dead, I’d be able to check the ledgers and leave the accounts in good order, one last time. It pleases me.  Same, even if Theodore had forgotten his own name he’d be able to talk to you about transubstantiation and the theories of the Atonement. It’s in his blood, you know?

“And I would say this, too. If there’s something you don’t like doing — whether that’s cooking or tending the sick or whatever it might be — well, then, do it if the situation absolutely demands it, but otherwise let it go. Life is short, you know? Do what makes your heart sing.”

Then he stopped, and looked at me. “Any use?” he said.

“I can’t be sure,” I said, “but I’ll tell her.”

“This isn’t your friend Rachel who had a hard time imagining me blowing her a kiss?” he asked; and I said, “No, this is someone different. This is Tina. She speaks French and she loves music. She’s very warmhearted, the type of person who makes the house she lives in homely and friendly. She’s full of laughter, but very thoughtful too. An honest person. She sort of gathers people around her without even really meaning to. She’s kind.”

William nodded. “Should be more of those in he world,” he said. “Well, say hello to her from me.”

I told him I’d left the same question with Father Theodore. “Oh yes, that makes sense,” he said. “Good. Anything he has to say will be a lot more elevated than my mundane outlook on life.”

I wanted to tell him that his point of view is always shrewd, always worth hearing — but it’s hard staying in a different dimension. I realised I’d run out of staying power; I just faded out before I could say what I wanted. So that was the end of our conversation.

I’m not quite sure how or when Father Theodore will get back to me, but I’m confident he will. I’ll let you know what he says.

What Rachel wanted to ask Abbot John

 Rachel said, "I would like to ask our beloved Abbot John how his theology has changed over the years in the monastery and how it has changed the way he oversees the abbey."

So I asked him. He thought about it a bit, and then he said, "Look, come and sit by the fire." So we did.

He thought about it a bit more, drew breath to speak and stopped a couple of times, and then he said this —

"I think, maybe, there are two aspects — two sides — to theology. There's the ageless faith and teaching of the gospels . . . well, all the Bible really, but anyway the gospels, the teaching of Jesus . . . and of Holy Church. Our pathway of faith shaped and structured by prayer and study and debate and trying to live it all for hundreds of years. That's one part of it. And it's a well that never runs dry, you know? Every time — and I do mean every time — I go to the gospels or the Rule, looking for inspiration and some kind of guiding light for a Chapter address or a homily for Mass, or anything else really, I find something new. It's a living flame, isn't it? Eternal but not static.

"So there's that. And it always served me well, right until I was made abbot. After that I discovered a second aspect, which . . . well it changed me — I mean, changed the man I am and shaped the choices I made.

"It was because of William, really. Trying to care for him pastorally and see things from his point of view. I think the root of it was that I'd never come across anyone so damaged, struggling so hard to create peace when his instincts all led to chaos by the shortest possible route.

"And the thing is, people responded to who he was and how he conducted himself by wanting to punish him. In all honesty, I think they just misunderstood him, but if that's the case then add me to the list of people who did, because he's not always the easiest man to live with.

"But then I had to make choices, because he came to me for refuge. Suicide is a mortal sin, and he tried to kill himself, and if he ever apologised for it, it certainly wasn't to me. But then our bishop wanted him brought to account for it, and since he was effectively apostate at the time — it was while he was away from us, with Madeleine — that might have meant they'd have hanged him. Even if they hadn't succeeded with that, because he was in fact still a priest, I shudder to think what other cruelties they might have enacted upon him.

"So I had to think what on earth to do to keep him safe. Which ended up with me being less than candid with our bishop Visitor, concealing William's whereabouts, and altogether being more economical with the facts than my conscience was used to.

"But that wasn't all, was it? Because, yes, what about Madeleine? He was in holy orders, wasn't he? Living under obedience and vowed to a consecrated life of celibacy — but — Madeleine! And yet, as it all unfolded, I saw how healing it was for him. To be held, intimately, to share a bed with someone, to be touched. I mean, for his whole life long, touch had mostly been violent and brutal. He needed what she did for him. 

"But then, what about taking him back? He was never sorry about his time with her, far from it — he treasured its memory.

"So, every step of the way it all took me further and further off the beaten track of orthodox interpretation of, and faithfulness to, everything I'd always thought inherent in our Rule and doctrine and the accepted norms of Holy Church.

"But it was the principle, do you see? Something, maybe about righteousness . . . that it's not about being correct but being true — to yourself, to one another, to love, to what's real in any given set of circumstances. I mean, if you don't start with reality, well, where can you go from there that's any good?

"I've searched my heart over and over about this. I love him for sure, dearly, but I don't think I was indulgent with him. I think — I'm not certain — that I just gave him the help he needed to leave his past behind. But doing that took me off what I'd always seen to be the strait and narrow, leaving the rules and customs behind, just hanging on to the principle and making up the rest as I went along.

"So I came in the end to the second aspect of theology — as you might say, the practice as distinct from the theory. You know how a recipe is made up of two parts, the ingredients and the method? Well, I think the  scriptures and the tradition put the ingredients into my hands, but the method of combining and shaping them came from experience arising from particular circumstances. It was the same ingredients — love and truth and faith and hope and patience and humbling yourself and forgiving, all of that — but once they were all chopped up and mixed together and put through the fire, they looked a lot different from at the start. And not only that, but yes, you can have a recipe and it all looks fine on the page — but sometimes in real life you need to substitute what you actually have, for what the recipe says you should use. Something like that.

"Look, am I . . . does that . . . is any of that any help at all? So I'd say — please pass this on to your friend Rachel with my greetings and my love — that the teaching of Holy Church and the scriptures are abiding, unchanging and universal; but how you apply them can differ startlingly depending on life circumstances.

"I hope I remained faithful, though. I really hope I did. It all proved to be more complex than I ever imagined. I tried to keep it simple. I tried to hold on tight to the foundational principle of love. Is that all right? Does that help?"

That's what he said. 

What the brothers of St Alcuins Abbey have to say

 In the comment thread on the last post I wrote, there's a brief correspondence with beloved Greta, who has been an online friend for years now. We are invisible to each other, but I know she is there and that makes me happy.

But in those comments we were talking about William, and his remarks on something she said. Arising from this, a thought occurred to me.

Now, I know (because they've told me so) that many of my readers take refuge in St Alcuins as a place to be — a bit like a retreat — somewhere to go where people are kind and help one another straighten things out, and believe in the power of prayer and the presence of Jesus. And some readers keep going round the sequence of stories and start again at the beginning, just so they can stay in that place where people know how to lift one another up and listen properly, and help each other get up and start again when they stumble.

I am super-lucky of course, because I can go there every day. I see them and I know them and they get muddled up with my everyday life and comment on my thoughts and choices and what I do. It can be a bit more than I ever imagined at times. If Brother Theodore goes with you to the supermarket, how likely do you think it is he will let you go home without putting something in the Food Bank collection? Yes, you're quite right — no chance. 

So I was wondering if you ever wish you could ask these men something? I wondered if you ever have a question or something bothering you, or even something you wish you knew about the 1400s in north Yorkshire, and you wanted to ask about it. I don't mean ask me, I mean ask them.

I hesitated to say this and write it down, for fear of people reading it and thinking it was a silly idea and no, they never wondered and aren't interested. But I asked Abbot John, and he was a bit busy, but shrugged and said he didn't know but if I wanted to give it a try then I have his permission.

So if there is something you wanted to ask, or to say, tell me in the comments and tell me which brother you want me to ask, and I will. I'll find out what he says, and if it's quick I'll put it in the comments, but if he goes off into a long thoughtful ramble, I'll blog it. 

And if nobody at all wants to know anything and it's just a stupid idea, I'll know to just delete this post and keep my questions and conversations with them in my own private world. 

Blessed be.

x Pen

A Path of Serious Happiness — Book 3 in 'The Hawk & the Dove' Series 2

 Thank you so much to everyone who's been messaging me to know when this book would be available — thank you for waiting so patiently.

Finally we are done and it is published. 

You can get it on Amazon UK here in paperback, on Amazon US here, and here (UK) or here (US) in Kindle. If you are in a different country, the Amazon local to you will also have it in stock.

In our new Humilis Hastings edition of The Hawk & the Dove series, the second volume (The Wounds of God) is now available on Amazon, as well as The Hawk & the Dove. We have the paperback out now, and the ebook will follow shortly.

Thinkabout for our regular gathering of the Campfire Church on Facebook, on the last Sunday of the month

This time it was our Grace on the thinkabout. The reading was this.

So here is the thinkabout:

and here's the transcript:

It’s election season. In the UK, in less than a week, we will hold a General Election. In the USA, the campaign is underway for a presidential election this November, which of course affects us globally, American or not. You are probably, like me, surrounded by debate and discussion, and you may not find the decision of who to vote for an easy one to make. I met someone the other day who believes, as many do, that faith and politics should be kept separate; I would direct any Christians among that group to today’s reading (among others). It is incumbent upon us as followers of Christ to put our money where our mouth is, and to show our faith through our actions. Politics is the stuff of our daily lives, and there is no better field for practical witness than the political arena. So, today, I want to think about decision-making and praxis – how we enact our theology. 

In our constituency, we have seven different parties represented at this election. Some of my friends feel overwhelmed by choice, and some feel there are no good choices among them. When the way forward in life is unclear, we can use the ethical principles given to us by our faith to help with decision-making and to hold ourselves to account.

Having rules, counter-intuitively, creates a certain freedom of behaviour. We know that children playing alongside a road can play more freely if their playing-field is fenced; they don’t have to worry about a ball rolling into the road, or minding where they’re running in a game of chase. In creative writing, while the limitless blank page can be paralysing, the introduction of a limitation gives us a direction of travel.

But when it comes to Scripture and a rule for life, you may immediately think – as I did – about Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law, and our release from what St Paul called the Law of sin and death through Christ’s death and resurrection. Our gospel is one of freedom. So we need to understand the difference between a law and a principle. The word ‘rule’ can be used interchangeably for both, but they aren’t the same. A law derives from a principle. For example, if you have the principle that killing people is wrong, you may have a law against murder and another against manslaughter – and you may decide against capital punishment. (Something for the state of Louisiana to consider, perhaps, as they put up the Ten Commandments in their courthouses.) If you live somewhere that doesn’t have these laws, you can still operate the principle that killing people is wrong in your daily choices! So, a principle can guide you and your behaviour, as well as being the source of a law.

Of course, we may need laws where we cannot trust people to apply a principle for themselves. If the law does not require water companies to avoid polluting our waterways with raw sewage, will they do that for themselves? If the law allows non-domiciled status for tax, will a billionaire still contribute tax proportionally to their means? If the law allows wage slavery, will employers pay more than the minimum?

Under the Law of Leviticus, Jews had complex rules around ritual purity and blood sacrifice, requiring expert Teachers of the Law and inspiring the assiduousness of groups such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Following and applying these laws could be a source of considerable anxiety and resource drain. This is the law from which Christ grants us freedom. I remember once, when Mum was a minister in the Bromley circuit, we had cause to get a taxi to church so she could lead the service. One of the ladies at that church, a self-appointed Angel of Wrath, disapproved of our causing the taxi driver to work on the Sabbath, but concluded that it was acceptable, as it constituted “digging our donkey out of a ditch”, which the Scriptures allow. In responding to this, I noted my mother exercised the love, and not judgement, which fulfils the need for any such law to be applied under the New Covenant of the gospel!

Christ has set us free by showing us a new, living way of connection with God through grace, and giving us a new covenant in this. Through relationship with God by the Spirit, we can learn to understand the principle of love, and apply that as our guide in every situation. We have no need of a complex law, because the one law from which all the others stem will do the same job, and better. Instead of being bound by ritual purity, we are bound by our relationship with God as new creations in Her grace, and our knowledge of Her mercy. The ability to follow the principle instead of the law that stems from it assumes a connection with the heart of God.

Jesus makes it clear, in the passage we heard today from his sermon, that if our actions do not reflect our principles, then our lip service to those principles is meaningless. By their fruits shall ye know them. If we do not enact the word, it is as though we have never heard it. Jesus, as the Word of God, is defined within the Trinity by physically existing in time and space – he is God clothed in flesh. The Word is also the Action of God: it comes to be with us; it teaches, commands and heals; it confronts the powerful, liberates the oppressed and saves the sinner; it creates life; it dies and harrows Hell and is re-spoken in the resurrection and again and again in the life of every believer. Christ is the Word in Action.

Faith without works is dead (James 2:14). If I speak without love, I am like a sounding brass (1 Corinthians 13:1). Saying, “Lord, Lord!” won’t get you into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:21). But this isn’t a threat; it’s simple truth. When we rely on God’s Word – Christ – to guide us, he becomes the cornerstone of the building we make of our life. Following the law of love will guide us to safety, justice and peace.

At times how to do this may be obvious, and at others may require discernment. Before the Gospel passage we heard, Jesus gave his teaching about judgement, and paying mind to the plank in our own eye before the speck in our brother’s. Because we use the word judgement in more than one way, that can feel confusing. We do exercise our judgement in choosing how to act, but we don’t sit as judge over others, deciding whether or not they’re OK with God. Prudence, yes, but condemnation, no; and remember that the only person you truly have governance over is yourself.

I think following the law of love can also be difficult to do, and even scary sometimes. That’s why the way into the Kingdom is a strait and narrow one. (By the way, it’s strait without a gh – as in a closely bound and compressing passage, perhaps without any possibility of changing path once you’ve committed to it.) Good News to the poor is great if you are poor, but probably scary if you’re rich; because you are being asked to give up the stability of money and rely on the invisible foundation of God, who seems to be OK with us suffering in the ways that a nice cushion of money prevents. Of course, money can run away like sand.

The actor Michael Sheen, among the many things he does, is heavily involved in an endeavour called the Homeless World Cup. It’s a football tournament for homeless people, that restores self-belief and purpose, creates human connection and acts as a relief to the hard lives of homeless people and, for some, perhaps an eventual route out of homelessness. One year, funding suddenly fell through, and the event faced cancellation; so Michael Sheen sold his properties and put all his £2 million into the charity so that the event could continue. He has since declared himself a not-for-profit actor, and continues to feed his earnings into his local community and the charities he supports. That is a powerful level of commitment to what he believes in.

I don’t have £2 million, and I don’t imagine you do either. More and more of us are finding ourselves moved steadily further into the category of the financially poor. But we are rich in other ways. The love of God cannot be taken from us; and its power to transform, heal and save cannot be removed. We are called to enact the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven, and one of the ways we can do that is to cast our vote according to its principles.

There is no law telling us that God wants us to vote for a certain party. So we must look at their manifestos, how their members have voted, what they have done when in power, what sort of environment they have created in government and in the country. Have they helped the poor, improved the lives of disabled people, supported women and children, created ways for prisoners to become functional members of society, educated the ignorant, housed the homeless? When I vote, rather than considering what will get me the most money, or who sounds clever and who the establishment approves of, let me look at who is speaking for the minorities, the disabled, the oppressed, the children, the earth and its creatures. And let me see who pays more than lip service: who has policies that outline how they will act to reflect these Gospel concerns, not just statements that they will look into it? 

We are called to a pathway of witness. The light that we have received should shine from us, so that other people can also see. We are called to commit to the law of love, to act accordingly and so bring good with us wherever there is suffering. In following Jesus, we strive to do like Jesus, and to prioritise his concerns. Then, we can rest free and easy, however hard life might be: because Christ is our cornerstone, the Gospel our handbook to right living, and the Kingdom of Heaven our home.

Our Lantern Group meeting for June

We started off as usual by everyone in our circle sharing what's been on their mind lately — with the usual diverse and interesting answers.

Then we sang together. Our songs this time were:

Blessed assurance

Who would true valour see

Will your anchor hold

My faith it is an oaken staff (slightly different words)

I am weak but thou art strong (equally delightful here)

After that we watched this video together.

Then we discussed the questions on this handout sheet.

At the end we finished with this vesper.

We had such a happy, interesting, inspiring evening.

Our mantra to take away this time was the graphic (by Kayleigh W) from the handout sheet that says "Everything is going to be okay".

I got this graphic from the excellent online store Redbubble, as stickers and postcards, so people could choose either or both, depending where they wanted to put it at home so they would keep coming across it and remind them to say it as a mantra.

I wish you'd been with us, but I hope this helps you share something of what we did.  x Pen

Thinkabout from the Parish Mass from St John's, Pevensey Road on Sunday June 23rd

Rather than record separately at home, I'm giving you the full service from our parish Mass, because the text of the readings and the song we had before the thinkabout was very much part of the thought here.

The thinkabout starts almost exactly 20 minutes in.

Here follows the text of the thinkabout.

This word, noumenon, is brought to our attention by the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant.

The word is originally classical Greek, and expresses the concept of a thing in itself, something of reality unsullied by anyone’s take on it or views about it   projected onto it. It’s a reality that lies behind or beyond the world of the senses. As soon as we think about it or try to get our heads round it or say what it is, we lose part of it, we muddy the water by getting mixed up in it ourselves.

In Kant’s philosophy, he makes a distinction between noumena and phenomena — both are realities, but phenomena are real in the sense that a red umbrella is real; yes, it’s there, you can touch it and use it, but it’s boundaried by the limitations of time and space and definition, and anyway everyone sees a different shade of red.

A noumenon is not like that. The noumenon has not been, and cannot be, limited by definition and perception. It can be encountered, we can be aware of it, but it is what it is, we cannot appropriate it. The noumenon can lie behind phenomena that we can see and touch, but it cannot be reduced to a phenomenon.

In Taoist thought, it seems to me that this is exactly what the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu meant when he wrote:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth. 

In Judaeo-Christian thought, I think we encounter something similar when God says to Moses, “I Am that I Am”.  So, God can be met, one can be in the presence of God — in fact you can’t get out of the presence of God, try as you might — but you cannot annex or define or encapsulate God. Your best bet is to start with reality, because that’s what God is. God, like a noumenon, is unbounded by our projected opinions. As C.S. Lewis put it, Aslan is not a tame lion.

In its classical Greek origin, the etymology of the word noumenon shows a root connection with the word my Yorkshire family always pronounced as nous.

“Oh, use your nous!” somebody would say in a circumstance where some practical common sense was what was required. It’s the innate, intuitive, appropriate feeling your way to what is needed in the moment. I love it that this earthy common sense, this instinctive informal knowing, is linguistically related to the being of a thing-in-itself that cannot be grasped or defined or pinned down. Common sense can touch what eludes definition.

Now, today, as every week, we had three readings — Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel.

Let’s see if we can discern the presence of the noumenon. So, use your nous, and let’s look at them.

The Old Testament lesson most likely makes you feel a bit uneasy. Poor old Job, eh?

He’s just lost everything. His property, his children, his health — everything. He is distraught. He’s driven mad by his friends trying to make sense of it with the religious and moral wisdom that under normal circumstances make absolute sense but in this instance totally fail to meet the case. And his wife, living with the same loss and grief, seeing her husband sitting in the dust, scraping his sores silently, says bitterly, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die”

Then, in the passage we heard today, the Bible says God spoke to Job out of the storm.

And the reading we heard makes it sound as if God absolutely gave Job what for. Told him off in no uncertain terms. It reads like the most excoriating and unreasonable mother of all divine rants. 

But we must be wary of turning the noumenon into a phenomenon, of projecting onto the great I Am That I Am   the tone of voice and attitude of mind that this looks like to us at first sight.    I’ll come back to that.

Then we come to our epistle. The most glorious translation for this, in my opinion, is that of the New English Bible: 

“As God’s servants, we try to recommend ourselves in all circumstances by our steadfast endurance: in hardships and dire straits; flogged, imprisoned, mobbed; over-worked, sleepless, starving. …  we are the imposters who seek the truth, the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on; disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we always have cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless we own the world.”

This is the way the prophet Zechariah recommended when he said, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” 

It’s about reaching beyond the world of phenomena to touch the noumenon, the steadfast, unchanging, causal reality from which life proceeds. It’s about having the insight and the audacity to see that behind and beneath anything and everything life can throw at us is a tremendous and creative mystery, more real than anything found in this world.

Talking this through with Grace the other day, I remarked that it reminds me of Kirsty Allsop in Love it or List It, if you’ve ever seen that on the telly, where she comes into a family’s house with grand plans for renovation. There’s that moment when their kitchen has been ripped out and their sitting room wall is in rubble and the ceiling is held up by acrow props, and she stands in the middle of complete demolition in a cloud of cement dust, seized by excitement at what is coming into being.

And Grace said, “Yes! It’s about holding the vision! About seeing beyond the present devastation to the new reality that will emerge from it!”

I don’t suppose the apostles enjoyed being flogged and derided any more than the rest of us would, but they had enough of Kirsty Allsop in their inner make-up to hold the vision of the way life could be, conditioned by the undefined but unconquerable absolute reality of the I Am That I Am, the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead.

And then we come to the Gospel. Jesus, as the storm raged about them: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he spoke  into the phenomenon of the storm   the intrinsic reality, the I Am That I Am, that he brought into their circumstances — “Peace, be still.”

There’s a teacher called Helen Hamilton, who said, “We can notice that we are not using our mind or our senses to tune into the Noumenon. We must check and check again until it is obvious. When we come to know we are already looking FROM the Noumenon it will begin to dissolve the idea that we were ever a separate being.”

Jesus is looking, acting, responding from the Noumenon. He is aligned with, held by, within the Father. Think of it like a joey surveying the world from the context of the mother kangaroo’s pouch. He is held by God. That is his outlook. 

And the Gospel reading — only Mark’s gospel puts it like this — says “They took Jesus into the boat just as he was.”

That’s the key. It is the grace to involve ourselves with the whole, unadulterated, unrefined power and presence of God. It is when, instead of projecting onto Jesus all the churchy things he’s supposed to be, “gentle Jesus meek and mild” — and macho Jesus setting up an exclusive club — when we leave all that behind and take him into the boat just as he is, then all heaven is let loose.

Now look back at the Old Testament reading and God’s words to Job. What if God, the ground of our being, the I Am That I Am, is not scolding or lecturing Job, but bringing him absolute affirmation and reassurance, a kangaroo pouch to climb into, a Kirsty Allsop view on the world?

What if God’s saying, “I am bigger than your circumstances. I was here at the foundation of the world, before any of this. I can bring hope and magnificence out of Ground Zero. From this present devastation you can absolutely trust me to bring life and hope and a new beginning. Everything is going to be okay. We’ve got this.”

What the apostles in our epistle were doing, what Jesus in the storm on Galilee was doing, what God is showing Job how to do, is looking from the Noumenon, the determinant reality, at the changing circumstances of life with all its sorrow and disintegration and loss. When the phenomena of life are beyond discouraging, like those in our readings — massive bereavement, punishing sickness, cruel persecution, wild weather — of course we’re going to feel rough, that was true of even Jesus; but if we learn how to look from the Noumenon, the I Am That I Am, the steady determining reality that stands while the world revolves, then we attain mastery.

It’s when we locate ourselves in the I Am That I Am, when we hold the vision and act not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God, that we find:

“You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains

You raise me up to walk on stormy seas

And I am strong when I am on your shoulders

You raise me up to more than I can be.”