Rev elations

Sometimes you come across something which cuts through life and gives you a fresh way of seeing. For me, recently, it was whilst reading Esther de Waal’s, Living with Contradiction (pg.67-68) in which she quoted John Austin Baker, who said: The way to find fulfilment of the personality is not to escape from pain by refusing to love (which is suicide) or to love and possess what we love (which is self-centredness) but to love passionately with mind, heart and soul and then to endure the pain of letting go. This pulled me up short. Such sentiments appear to be inhuman, surely union of those who are in love is what God has ordained in nature? Love seeks out the beloved, seeks out their presence, delights in it. What does it look like to let go of what we love? And why would God want that from us? One of the most obvious ways is when someone we love dies. Their absence is forced upon us of course, but somewhere in the grieving process there is inevitably a need to let th...

Ash Wednesday- Reconciliation Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and     make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen Division and separation are a normal part of creation, a fluctuation between unity and separation is part of what it means to be created – we cannot escape it. Two people come together ‘are one’ and a new life is made. The foetus is part of its mother when it is in the womb – but its full identity is generated through separation from the mother.  The life of God, the Trinity, is a perfect and mysterious performance of the interplay between independence and unity – the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit experience both unity and separation, both communality o...

Climbing mountains has always been to me something of a mystical experience, from walking through and above the clouds on Ben More on the Isle of Mull, to the palpable sense that the atmosphere has changed, to the altered perspective that one inevitably gains, accompanied by the sheer effort and (if one is lucky) the mysterious isolation of the mountains, are all suggestive of ‘the other’. I remember climbing Schiehallion in Perth and Kinross as a teenager, having left my parents behind, gaining height and breaking out in spontaneous singing. It is sheer delight, after the effort, to see and gaze upon the world below. The Feast of the Transfiguration is on the 5 th August, but between the end of the Epiphany Season and the wait for the start of Lent we are treated to the story of the Transfiguration in the lectionary. The story is accompanied by a corresponding story from Exodus – the story of Moses receiving the 10 commandments from God, with a mysterious change in his appearan...