Floods and things

It's always quite difficult to know what to do in the face of what we now call 'natural' disasters, but which once were traditionally laid at the feet of the Almighty as 'acts of God'.

I observed to my friend who is involved with the Country Fire Service that I have found my self praying through the night for the current round of floods in Queensland as I do pray for him and others when ever I hear the awful sound of the fire siren.

My observation to L is that it seems like a fairly impotent sort of exercise sometimes. Though it needs to be stated that feeling impotent is a powerful act of identification and empathy in the face of flood. Prayer often, it seems to me, is not so much about getting God to wave a magic wand as being engaged in a process of solidarity. This may be too subtle for some.

That is also not to say that we are to do nothing. In our society often all we can do is give money and while that is not without its problems for us nevertheless it is worth doing in order to strengthen the solidarity.

One can only begin to imagine the horror of such a thing

eating..praying... and... loving

I read the populist book by Elizabeth Gilbert.."Eat Pray Love" recently and preached about it at Christmas (here)

Because Christmas is about God in the ordinary stuff of life we do well to remember that it is the ordinary eating together that is so important. One of the sad things about the breakdown of the relationship between S & I is the loss of the daily opportunity to sit down with other people at least once a day. Turn the TV off and, however briefly, often ungratefully, maybe testily to actually have to try and converse.

Christmas Day we try to do this. I was interested that the three travellers spent their day together feasting in London. (They walked to Buckingham Palace in the afternoon...good thing to do!) and cooking for each other. The fruits of their travels. Belgian Chocolates, little French things. Lvely roasts. They also made our favourite dessert Apple Crumble...and they were having trifle and Glühwein. There is a lot of stuff going on here. Recreating childhood Christmas, but sharing time with the blood relatives (even though they drive each other wild... how will K and I go for two weeks in Asia) Making some of their own traditions. Reminiscences of stuff passed down through the generations. Seems quite important.

Great quote on prayer:

Got this good quote from a friend the other day....
I found it helpful in terms of those times when we stop our practice of prayer
:

Prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is. One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.” That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect a sense of the reality of the supernatural of which I speak.
And one should wish for no prayer except precisely the prayer that God gives us
– probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.

On the other hand the only way to pray is to pray. And the only way to pray well is to pray much.

If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray – and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.

As to beginning afresh, or where you left off, I don’t think you have any choice. You simply have to begin wherever you find yourself. Make any acts you want to make and feel ought to make, but do not force yourself into feelings of any kind.

You say very naturally that you do not know what to do if you have a quarter of an hour alone. Yet I suspect the only thing to do is to shut out everything and just give yourself to God and beg for God’s mercy and offer God all your distractions. (Dom John Chapman in Martin Laird's Into the Silent Land)

Short prayer

(a poem of late January 2009)

Some days
it is enough
to pray
for a short time.
This is not the day
when, almost unbearable,
I grit my teeth
and wish it were over.
Those are the days
when I must spend
the impossible hour
knowing
that feeling you are not there.
recognising
that I am barely present
is the surest sign
that this is it.

But some days, like today,
I could sit here
for ever
and shouldn't,
because today
it is OK
you are there.
It has not been too hard.
And so I go
I do not need to struggle.
for that, today.
I can give thanks
whilst also knowing
that it is the days of struggle
of pain
of impossibility
that are what it is all about.
But today is not onesuch
and so I go

The horror

We can only but imagine the horror of the bushfire tragedy in Victoria; South Australians remain tight-lipped because we know that there but for the grace of God are we!

In the awful Ash Wednesday fire of 1983 I remember that from the pulpit of St Michael's Mitcham, I asked the question "Who is to blame?" (there was a lot of focus on this question at the time and for some years afterwards). My naive response was "I am to blame".
I went on to postulate (perhaps pontificate is better) that I had not exercised one prayer for what was well-known to be a dangerous situation. I am some what embarrassed about this even though there is an element of truth in bringing to the congregation's attention the fact that we tend to not take much responsibility for anything beyond the smallness of our own lives.
Augustine suggests that prayer is not about getting God to act in a certain way...ie. it is not about manipulating the deity like some sort of spiritual slot machine...it is about understanding what God is doing, can do and how we can cooperate with that.
In that sense I think my point is worth making. We do need to learn the lessons of the past, and indeed the present. (whether we are spiritual or not).
I imagine that this present tragedy will demand some very, very strident changes. But that debate is yet to happen.

On being boring!

As part of my commitment to being both boastful and boring I do intend to regale you dear reader with pictures of tomatoes. This is not the first, but it's looking to be the best so far. It was almost all I could do to not pick it. Not a hose has been used, in these drought stricken times, in tending to these plants. Perhaps taking the time to do it with a watering can whilst thinking about the day ahead and saying a few prayers is a good way to go about it...and (as it were) bears fruit.

Lest you think (too) that this is a total fluke, there is also plenteous basil of three types, parsley, rocket and lettuce.
There are eggplants coming along, and silver beet and bok choy.
So it will just get more boring (for you) from now on!!! But be assured it is enlivening for me!

Michael Leunig wrote this excellent prayer about the tomato phenomenon

It is time to plant tomatoes.
Dear God, we praise this fruit and give thanks for its life and evolution.
We salute the tomato,
cheery,fragrant morsel, beloved provider,
survivor and thriver and giver of life.
Giving and giving and giving.


Plump with summer's joy.
The scent of its stem is summers' joy, its promise and rapture.
Its branches breathe perfume fo promise and rapture.
Giving and giving and giving.

Dear God, give strength to the wings and knees of pollinating bees,
give protection from hailstorms, gales and frosts,
give warm days and quenching rains.
Refresh and adorn our gardens and our tables.
Refresh us with tomatoes.

Rejoice and rejoice!
Celebrate the scarlet soul of winter sauces.
Behold the delicious flavour!
Behold the oiled vermillion moons
that ride and dive in olive-bobbing seas of vinegared lettuce.
Let us rejoice!
Let this rejoicing be our thanks for tomatoes.

Amen.

Leunig - 'A Common prayer'.

Capital time

The strange tale is told of Dr Jung advising someone who was in deep poo to spend an hour a day just doing nothing. They reluctantly agreed to do this.
When Jung talked to them about it next, it appeared to have had no effect. If anything thing were rather worse.
"What have you been doing?" asks Jung, and the client says, "Well I really looked forward to this hour off each day, and I chose half a dozen of my favourite CDs and went through them methodically. And I decided not to read, but got a couple of good art books out the library and just looked carefully at some of the pictures."
Of course (we can see where this is going) Jung said
"But I told you to do NOTHING!"
Inactivity frightens the pants off us. Mostly because it is one of the most significant things we can do.

The other day a colleague told us how a 'coach' had advised him to spend some time each day as 'capital time'. By this he meant that it was important to allocate time in intellectual and spiritual capital. Thinking about issues, life, and processing the important stuff.
Not quite the absolute 'nothing' that Herr Docktor Jung was on about, but in the same ball park.
I have also been convinced in the last few weeks of the primacy of another 'nothing'...prayer...and of making sure that I do that particular form of nothing. At times it is hard. Always it is essential, improving, and 'value adding'.
I can but commend it. We neglect it at our peril

Strange idea

A well meaning man rang yesterday to tell me about someone who was sick, but that was not really why he rang (so he said)...he was inviting me to go and pray silently on the steps of the SA Parliament this evening.
As he painstakingly explained the rationale he told me this was about praying for rain. This is not an easy idea at the best of times, but his rationale was that today was the 38th anniversary of liberalising abortion laws in South Australia, and such and such a person had developed a belief that the current drought might be connected with that.
This is a difficult view of God, don't you think? A God who visits drought upon a nation because of political policy...to be sure it has a certain Old Testament quality but it seems difficult to sustain.
I think the real problem with this sort of thing is not that God is not capable of this or that, but that we want extraordinarily simple solutions to what are obviously complex situations.
Drought is much more complex (it seems to me) than God just being a bit ticked off at how wayward this or that government is, and we are being invited to much more profound repentance than just turning round the abortion laws...as unsatisfactory as they might be.
To be fair to this humble sort of chap he was struggling about how to give this some sort of rationale, and he did touch me when he said that the problem with abortion was that "This was all we had to offer people in deep distress." which seems to me a fairly important reflection on a lot of social policy....."This was all we had to offer...."

Intervention

Each day I try to listen to a daily meditation (see here for today) and today's urges us to pray for our rulers and leaders.

Which raises the question about what we expect this sort of prayer to do. The other day at lunch (see the post here) with some of my colleagues from the district, we were talking about (well 'talking' is a rather lame word to describe what wasreally going on as we laughed, screamed and joked with each other)...we were noting what different theological positions we had on a whole range of things. One of which was whether God actually 'intervenes' in our lives, as a result of our prayers or, indeed, at all.

The new bright young thing (who is pretty theologically advanced) made the observation that as soon as we bring God into the equation at all then there had been intervention. We then discussed what we meant by 'intervention' you see it was just a hilarious conversation!

What I am pretty sure of is that there is a strong view of God that sees him as a sort of slot machine. If you put the right coins in and say the right words, pull the handle then God will deliver. Indeed, prospperity theology (which I despise) would say that God is just waiting to give us the jackpot.

As nice as a 'jackpot' might be, it is not my experience of how God intervenes at all. It is almost always never the answer.

I would generally agree with the idea that as soon as you bring God in then everything changes; God won't always move to fix things. Indeed God doesn't seem to fix the stuff that we should fix up ourselves.

God does (it seems to me) make us aware of what needs to be done, and how we might do it. Usually by leading us along, sometimes fast and sometimesslow, so that we deal with the complexity of life rather than pretending it is as simple as right formulas, right coins and pulling the handle.

And, for the sake of anonymity, a person who I shall refer to as W...did warn the participants in last week's lunch that what they say would be taken down in evidence!

Worth asking

Prayers in the Parliament

This all rather makes the debate about prayers in Australian chambers of governmnet seem rather maudlin

Waste of space

There is a fluttering question going on about Parliamentary prayers at the moment. The local paper's question of the day is "Are prayers before Parliament a waste of time?"
This question has many interesting dimensions.
The three Vox Pops were interesting: One said...If you believe it then it is not a waste of time, I'm a Catholic so that's OK...another said...If you don't believe there is not much point, I do so that would be OK for me...and the final one said...People believe a lot of different things, so if you have prayers for Christians you should have other prayers as well
These points are true enough on a naive level, though I find it interesting that people in praying to God think that it matters that they believe, as if God might be powerless to act unless we beleive that it is so.
Research shows that though remarkably few Australians are regular church goers any more, a surpisingly high number still pray and believe in God. Recently I noted that our beloved PM had exhorted us all to pray for rain (here...and by the way it seems to have worked!!) and some of the questions that that raises.
My recent peregrinations have caused me to reflect quite a bit on the way religious practice conveys not only spiritual value but also cultural identity. (This is sooooooo Sociology IA)
In Italy there is not a moment when you escape overt religionism, and yet the culture is remarkably untroubled by it. In France to be religious is to be different, it was best characterised by the 400 or so people who were at Mass at the Sacre Coeur at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, a quiet mysterious event which contrasted markedly with the drunken busking that was going on on the steps outside...the two crowds remarkably similar in social makeup.
In England there was the driest of the dry Eucharist at the Abbey, which although it was tres Anglican, seemed to connect little with the spiritual.
This latter aspect best typifies what happens in the Australian Parliaments, prayers rattled off correctly but without any passion. The words are often those of the past from which the Church has moved on decades ago and are filled with anachronisms (thee and thy) and gender bias (assuming the masculine includes the feminine) . Often it seems that the saying of these prayers is about asserting the Parliament's continuation with tradition rather than the Parliament's reliance on God's grace. This is less than satisfactory to me.
Personally, I think there needs to be something about prayer that is a waste of time.
Whether it be Parliamentary or personal.
When we pray, however badly or well, there should seem to be some sense of the fact that we are relying on God, not that we are manipulating God through our belief or unbelief. This is more than just saying well "It doesn't do any harm!" It is an attitude about a cultural value that says not everything is or can be under our control.
But it's a pretty brave thing to say or do.

In the midst of life

A colleague writes today that their teenage son who is fighting for his life after intrusive medical treatment, bone marrow transplant, tissue rejection, all sorts of horrible reaction....I could go on but it is all too horrible for them...says now that "He had been doing a lot of thinking and he told us that he knows that he is dying. He has made the decision to not be put on life support and while we will maintain active treatment, it will only be a matter of time before his body finally cannot go on fighting this disease."
I have said in reply to them that I am sorry that the only thing I can do is pray hard and often, and yet I also know that this is the best thing I can do.
Without going into the ins and outs of it, or teezing out any of the subtleties of what this is all about; can those of you know how to pray (and perhaps even some of you who don't) : pray for Chris, for Steve and Judy his parents and Michael his brother.

Reflecting the world

My daily reflection time today (listen here)invites me to pay attention to the world rather than my own concerns.
This was a bit disturbing for me. I feel, sometimes, that the list of things about my personal life that I need God to pay attention to is long and complex enough without having to think about Palestine or Iraq!!
This is of course always the problem in terms of getting one's issues into perspective, we are all part of a larger whole.
I well rememeber my spiritual director saying to me "Only you could say that." After a particular time of difficulty we had been talking through various issues and I simply sighed and said "Well it's not as if I'm in Auschwitz!" He laughed, and shook me out of my self-indulgence a bit.
It's not that personal issues aren't important, most of us can only deal with the small stuff on our plate and are not going to be key players on the bigger stage.
So there is a bit of a challenge to be more expansive, to look beyond the back yard and (I suspect) that gives the back yard some proper perspective!

Trust

My morning reflection and prayers today ask me the question "What things have I been entrusted with?"
It 's not a rocket science question in many ways and I can arrive quickly at the conclusion that I have been entrusted with a great human treasure. Wife, children, family, parish, friends.
I have a lot of material resources at my finger tips, and, in whole world terms although as a priest I am not in any way wealthy, I do not really want for anything.
The meditation goes on as the scripture says...being faithful in small things you will be entrusted with big things. Have I been faithful with the small things entrusted to me?
There is a a sort of 'mixed economy' I have been quite diligent about some things and slack about others.
It is, any way, a thought to keep me going during the day. What sort of a go have I made of what has been given to me?