THE BREATH YOU BREATHE

•October 13, 2016 • Leave a Comment

“And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31.28)

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“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” (Luke 18.1)

       THERE IS considerable concern among Christians that this is a time of low popularity for the churches. It is true. Attendance across denominations for Sunday worship has gone through massive decline and is still falling. Currently, about 1% of the people in Wales come to worship with the Church in Wales and that figure looks set to decrease unless something changes.

However, this reality need not make us downhearted and it certainly is not a cause to give up. History tells us of many times when the Faith (be it the pre-Christ kind or the Jesus Movement herself) has faded from the centre of things but it never dies. As recently as the Victorian era, the church buildings in Gower had fallen into disuse but they were rebuilt bigger and stronger than before when revival came.

But the messages of Jeremiah and Jesus, quoted above, are not really about buildings or places of worship at all. They are about the people of God living in God. Sometimes this means living in the margins or the cracks between the breaking slabs of “the system” but all that is required is that it is done prayerfully, authentically, faithfully, hopefully. Do not lose heart. Pray continually. Faith is not a Sunday pastime or an occasional hobby. It’s not even a way of life. Faith is every breath you breathe, every step you walk.

It IS LIFE.

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UNCHAINED

•October 7, 2016 • Leave a Comment

  “…the word of God is not chained. Therefore, I endure everything” (2 Tim 2.10). “… whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church: by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ and make us eager to do your will” (Collect 122). “… Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17.19).

     IF THE PEOPLE of the church live in fear of the financial implications of a declining church, then the church might as well lock up the Word of God and throw away the key. But she can’t can she?! The Word of God is not chained. The Spirit of God is wild and free. All else may pass away, even heaven and earth, but the Christ words will not (Luke 21.33 and parallels).

Tuesday last week was the feast of St Francis. When Francis, a wealthy young trader on the world market, heard Jesus’ call, “Go rebuild my church, which is in ruins”, he didn’t respond by scheming how best to use his finances or pile up collateral to raise more through the banks. Francis gave everything he owned away. He understood Christ’s identification with the poor and powerless and chose to live close to the dust, travelling from village to village, teaching that the kingdom of heaven is right here, in the village, on the road, in the hearts of all who are humble enough, broken enough, to open themselves to the freedom of God’s Spirit, to the unchained and unchainable word.unchained

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HARVEST

•September 30, 2016 • Leave a Comment

“(JHWH) brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

(Deut 26.9)

      IF WE LIVE in harmony with the land that God has given us, then we will live in peace and all God’s children will be fed. Stand in the woods between Llethryd and Giant’s Grave, or on the Bryn or out in the Marsh, and you just know the earth lives. She is conscious and she wishes you well. The things she bears for you to eat, she will recycle them for your children and your children’s children and then again and again… So treat her well. Learn her wisdom. Listen. Respect. Step lightly. Stand with your feet on the ground. What rises in you, by the grace of JHWH who brought you there, is Life.

And now, child of God, bring the first fruits of your Life to the One who breathes in you. Lay them down on the altar of Love, and then go teach your children and your children’s children just who they really are. Tell them about the Father and about the Son. Tell them of the Spirit that moves in all things. Tell them they are one with the wind and the sea, and with the trees and fields. Show them how to walk on their mother earth, gently, consciously, that their footprints honour her and don’t make her cry.nature-breathe

 

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REAL LIFE

•September 22, 2016 • Leave a Comment

     …so that they may take hold of the life that really is life (1 Timothy 6.19)

        ST PAUL’S ‘reason’, quoted above, as to why the materially rich ones should put their trust in God and share what they have, could easily be applied to all life. It might be the phrase that bests sums up the entire Bible. In fact I think it contains the essence of what is meant by the term “meaning of life”. The meaning of life is that we give up our life. We give up our hold on everything. Seek no longer to control…anything. Empty ourselves of ourselves. This is what Jesus does. This is what Jesus teaches. If we understand and believe that Jesus is the “Way, the Truth and the Life,” then outpouring is what God is. Human being, according to the Bible, is created in the image of God being. So to be fully human is to participate fully in this outpouring God. To be fully human, then, is to become again fully God. This is our calling. To give our life so that we “may take hold of the life that really is life”. The meaning of life simply put is that we give up our lives and in so doing gain life, but not just any life, true life, the life that Is.

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If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it (Luke 17.33 New Living Translation).

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STOP CLINGING! LET GO

•September 1, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14.25,26)

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         JESUS was not interested in whether or not crowds followed him. Crowds will follow a rock star or a charismatic politician, or counter-politician, for a while, for as long as the “greatest hits” keep coming or the rhetoric suits. But following Christ is not an entertainment, an escape from the mundane or miserable side of life and it is not a spectator sport. Jesus does not do “greatest hits”!

Just like the spiritual masters of the East, the American Indians or the Ancient Celts, Jesus knows we have to be taught how to see. Sometimes that means we need to be shocked out of our mind-sleep. “That’s what religion is for” says Richard Rohr, “to help us let go of illusions and pretenses so we can be more and more present to what actually is. That’s why the Buddha and Jesus both say with one voice, ‘Be awake.’ Jesus talks about “staying watchful” (Matthew 25:13, Luke 12:37, Mark 13:33-37), and “Buddha” literally means ‘I am awake’ in Sanskrit” (Daily Reflections 30/08/16).

Of course Jesus does not want us to hate our families and friends, or our lives. It would be ridiculous to think that he does! But there is a startling and jolting reality in what he is saying in the quotation above. However hard we might try to arrange things to the contrary, we are, each one of us, just passing through in this material world. Our lives and loves do not belong to us. One day we will have no choice but leave all that’s still here behind. If we are to be awake in this life, if we are to be able to see, then we have to learn to let go. We have to learn to love and yet not be attached. To cling to someone is not to love them but to restrict and bind them. To love means to let go. To cling to life is not to live but to constrict that life with our own debilitating fear. If we let go the fear, let go all attachment, disengage ourselves from all neediness, then we will be free. We will set others free. We will be free to “travel with Jesus”, free to see that the kingdom of heaven really is upon us.

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DON’T GIVE ME NO FAKE RELIGION!

•August 6, 2016 • Leave a Comment

By faith Abraham obeyed… and he set out, not knowing where he was going.                                                                           (Hebrews 11.8)

 

 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit…You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

                                                                                               (Luke 12.35-40)

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         JACK KEROUAC also wrote, “I have nothing to offer anyone but my own confusion.” This didn’t stop the French Canadian poet from writing ten of the most powerfully influential novels of the mid twentieth century, his spontaneous beat-jazz style in itself an act of faith. His work On the Road, considered to be a defining moment in the literature of the Beat Generation, was written in a three week “stream of consciousness” and typed uncorrected onto a single, uncut roll of paper. The novel ended because the paper ran out. Well that’s the legend at least. Then again, trying to get the same story twice from Kerouac even as to the origin of his own name was a nugatory pursuit. The only constant was that it was in some way Celtic!

Nevertheless, for me there are two ideas of value here in relation to our Bible readings today. First is the notion that Kerouac was indeed prepared to offer whoever would read it his “confusion.” Second is Kerouac’s focus not on defining or aspiring to destination but on the process of travelling itself: “no matter, the road is life.”

Isaiah’s poetic rhetoric leaves little room for doubt what God thinks about the careful religious practices and appeasements for sin of his “chosen” Israelite people. What God asks from his people is lives of faith. Faith is seldom if ever about certainty. It does however often involve travelling about in confusion! Why? Because God wants us to be confused or because God needs our faith? No. It’s because God loves us and God wants us to be free – free to choose love and so to actually love. To be able to love, it is necessary to let go of knowing, of certainty, of control, of projection. In the confusion and sublime clarity of the road, it is possible to lose our grip on self and so discover we have already arrived.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12.32)

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THE WAY OF LOVE

•July 30, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. For he satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things. (Psalm 107.8,9)

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! (Colossians 3.11)

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HAFIZ SAID, “I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.” Or switch it round like Gandhi, if you prefer,: “Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.” Bishop John Shelby Spong, meanwhile, has written, “God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honour my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don’t think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”

It seems to be a universal principle. If you pray a lot, practice being conscious regularly, you will become caught up in the Divine and when you are you will realise that no religion, no humanly conceived idea, no language even, can draw lines around what is experienced. St Paul, Hafiz, Gandhi and Spong have encountered this truth, likewise all mystics through all time.

So why is it that so many apparently religious people have been so destructive in this world? How can killing an old priest while he celebrates Mass in a small Normandy Village possibly be claimed as an act of holy war? How can attacks on people in cafes, at concerts or just walking along a promenade on a public holiday be claimed as a cleansing of infidel cultural habits? Such claims are powerfully emotive. Meanwhile, words like “fundamentalist” and “Islamist” are used so much by Western media that many people are now programmed with the formula Islam = Terrorism.

The programme is false. The claims of the people who murder in the name of Allah are clearly false too. Not one person who truly encounters God could ever want to kill another human being. There is no such thing as holy war. There is only holy love. Pouring the rhetoric of retribution on the fires of hatred that spread across continents in this time will only inflame those fires more. Vengeance can never drive out hate. Only love can do that. If religion is to have anything to say now it must be through Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and all people of faith coming together in prayer and in mutual respect to walk arm in arm the Way of Love.

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Teach us to Pray

•July 27, 2016 • Leave a Comment

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He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray…’      (Luke 11.1)

            “LISTEN UP disciples. I’m going to teach you to pray. Now write this down. It’s called the Lord’s Prayer” and I want you to learn it word for word and recite it every day. Three times. That should do it!” Does this sound like the Master? No. It’s nothing like him and yet religion can sound and behave very much like this.

Jesus never meant to teach us how to do religion. He came to show us that the kingdom of heaven is here, all around us, breaking in on us. It is within each one of us. The Christ came to show us what God is like so that we can know God as God lives in us and in all creation, cosmically and personally, within time and without time, all the time and through All Time.

Jesus of Nazareth lived his faith, so much so that he was Christ and is Christ. The same Christ is in the letters on this page, in the words and in the white spaces between the words. This Christ is alive in your heart as you read and as you fall into prayer looking at the picture or contemplating the words. He came to show you who you are and he is still showing it to you now. The student Apostles saw the way Jesus was, how he behaved when the crowds pressed in on him, demanding attention from him, just wanting to be in his presence, jostling him, sometimes assaulting him. They saw how he handled everything, how he poured out the light and love of God, how he healed and quenched the thirst of the people with living water. They saw how he went out on the mountain or down by the sea alone to pray. So the Apostles began to make the connection between Jesus’ action life and his prayer life. Jesus just did his prayer life, kept the spiritual rhythm of it, and they noticed and wanted to know his secret, his art of prayer. And Jesus told them.

It is good that we use the Lord’s Prayer a lot and I find it helpful to my own spirituality. But I don’t really think Jesus was literally giving us a formula at all. I think he was saying, “Look. Just keep it simple. You don’t need a lot of words. God knows what’s in your heart but it will help you to put the God who loves you, like your daddy or mummy, first. Trust God. Give thanks and praise to God and just know that if you make God’s will your will, then you are already alive to the kingdom of heaven here and in all eternity. You have eternal life”

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JUST ONE THING

•July 20, 2016 • Leave a Comment

       Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying…

But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’        (Luke 10. 39,40)

 

Higher-Consciousness

Christ Consciousness

         “ONE thing is necessary.” Christ calls us to meet him in our interior life. It is a call to each of us and it is something of which we are all capable. Our interior life is natural to us in fact. Our earthly life begins with it in the womb and we will undoubtedly return to it as we die.

Ironically, since the Age of Enlightenment, Western lifestyles have led the people away from interior space and from spiritual depth. Sadly, the churches have been complicit in this, however unwittingly. A moral Christ has been taught really since the Roman Empire decided to bring Christianity to its centre. This Christ of morality was then adopted by successive empires and used as a means of social education and of control. This Christ is a metaphor for a moral code which the people strive to live up to, inevitably falling short and so are compelled to do things to either make up for their failures or to feel and show that they are in fact on the road to being good Christians. Perhaps this has been an unavoidable trade-off due to Christianity’s acceptance as state religion by governments and maybe it has even been a necessary stage in church history.

However, this moral Christ is not the Jesus of history and not the Christ of the New Testament nor of the recorded experiences of mystics.

Jesus is not a Christ of morality. He is the Christ of consciousness. The story of Mary and Martha is but one of the many illustrations of this in the New Testament. The teachings and miracles of Jesus are about opening the consciousness of people to the Living God. God is not some abstract being out there in space or on a cloud but the indwelling Real in all people and all things, in the microcosm and in macrocosmic reality, what some religions call The Is or Ultimate Reality.

There is I sense an awakening in the world right now. The materialist narratives of capitalism and elitist government are collapsing before our eyes. The social models of the past few hundred years are becoming obsolete. Let’s pray the churches will now help reconnect the awakening ones and those still sleeping to the Christ who says, “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part…”

 

Tangnefedd nawr, i bob un.

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SAMARITANO

•July 9, 2016 • Leave a Comment

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’                                               (Luke 10.27)                                                                               

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”                                                                (Twitter feed, Friday after Dallas shootings)

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Christ the Spiritual Master

TEACHER…what must I do to inherit eternal life?

 

Child, there is no being or non-being. There is only transformation. That is all. Look at nature. Everything that fades changes and becomes again, sometimes similar, sometimes different. But nothing that is becomes not is. The kingdom of heaven is closer to you than your own breath. Stop calculating for the safety or the comfort or the security or the worthfulness of this “I” you keep thinking about. Love is All. Let love consume you. Don’t be afraid. You don’t need to define yourself to know that you are alive. Breathe and know that you are breathing. God is Love. Love is All. Trust God. Love God as God loves you. Give over control. You don’t need it anyway. Truly, I tell you, it gets in your way. Don’t be afraid of the other, the one you call different. She is you and you are she. Love her, just as much as you love yourself. And she will love you too. She is you neighbour.

 

    TEACHER…what does my neighbour look like, so I can know when she comes her and love her?

 

There you go again with this “I” you hold so close! Ha ha. I can see your knuckles, burning white. The kingdom of heaven is upon you yet you put up your walls to defend your “I”. Why are you so afraid? Your neighbour is the one closest to you, the one furthest away and everyone else in between. Most of them can’t see you, just as you can’t see them. But love God, I mean really let go of “I”, and LOVE GOD. And you will see.

And

when you see,

you will let down the walls between your neighbour and you

and God’s love will flow,

and you will know eternal life.

 

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