To be or not to be

"'Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,' said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). 'Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come to me.'

Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words. The nightingale stopped singing as if to listen to it.

Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say. But the moment did not come. The rustling died away. The nightingale resumed its song. Even in the moonlight the wood looked more ordinary again. Yet Lucy had the feeling (as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do) that she had just missed something: as if she had spoken to the trees a split second too soon or a split second too late, or used all the right words except one, or put in one word that was just wrong." CS Lewis - Prince Caspian

It feels like I've been handed some promises; that things are waiting in the wings to change, happen and breakthrough in my life. Yet they never quite seem to. I am not sure if this is because the time is not quite right, or there is something that I need to do to kick them in to touch. I'm wondering if the problem is that I'm looking for a code? Some secret form of words that unlocks God's plan. That tells me what I want to know and gets me to where I want to be.

Every time I enquire or push the answer seems to be the same. It is not my place to be making the big plans. I need to be be faithful in small things and the rest will fall into place. "Live the good that you know and leave the rest up to me". But this feels wrong to me. So passive.

There are questions which I don't have the answer to which I cannot seem to escape from. There are places where my choices are not clear - contradictory paths neither of which has the monopoly on rightness or goodness, but which cannot both be taken.

One of these at least finds me oscilating. Not doing enough in either direction to make any difference - but with no clear guidance as to what I should choose. The echo of my own heart and reflection tells me the more difficult path is right - but will not lead where I want to go. Set against it the guidance of my friends who tell me the path is closed. So I am left with an internal debate. Is it a case of the foolisness of path one against the wisdom of path two (where foolishness is God's path) or the dead past of path one against the living future of path two (where the future is God's path)?

Hamlet's words seem profound at this point. To be, or not to be? That is indeed the question! Yet the middle state of neither being or not being seems to be the hardest place of all.

The sufficiency of grace

An out of the blue comment spurred me to look back at what I've written here. It's been a long time since my last post. That's not because the quest for the kingdom has been abandoned. It is just an increasing realisation that so much of the journey is intensely personal. My energies have been directed more toward private journal than public blog. So what has changed? In many ways not a great deal. I'm still in the same job. My mother still has Alzheimer's - she is now transitioning into full term care. I'm still searching for vision. I'm still shouting at God. He's still being gracious enough to whisper back occasionally. Health, stress and circumstances I don't like (but can't change) still cause me more worry than I believe that they should.

Some things, however, have changed. Just slightly. Perhaps even I've changed a bit. It feels like I've learned lots. My language has changed. It's almost as if I've run out of words. I no longer know what to say to God. That does not stop me going into his presence. If anything it spurs me to spend more time there. I cannot quite unpick whether this lack stems from the noise of the city and the cares of the world pushing them out - or a realisation that so many of my words of old were a futile attempt to control God rather than let him control me. Now when I find my prayers relating to my perception of my needs and the request for my solutions I feel this little voice in the back of my head saying "Do you trust me, Ian?" to which I can but reply "Yes Lord, I trust you. (Or at least I'd like to)". The other phrase which is resounding in my mind is that wonderful promise from 2 Corinthians. "My grace is sufficient for you." The only reply I can frame to that runs roughly thus: "Yes, Lord, but sometimes it really doesn't feel like it."

Travelling days

The last few weeks and months have been both a spiritual and emotional journey, the destinations of which seems as far distant now as they did when I set out. The next month or so I am off on a real journey, and so may be away from this column. In all these journey though I echo the words of this prayer, which a friend pointed me to the other day.

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that my desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

To thine own self be true

"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." William Shakespeare

The last couple of weeks have been quite difficult for me. There are a number of situations in which I am struggling. As I have lain awake and wrestled with them two refrains have been whirling around my brain. The first "what would Jesus do?" and the second "to thine own self be true". The latter I was convinced was Thomas Merton (until I found it to be from Hamlet) - but it is not far from his teachings.

I've still not quite resolved this. I'm created to be me - and who I am is very different to who Christ was. I believe that my life's agenda is governed by God - and that Christ's example should guide me in all I do. Ultimately, however, I find that "what would Jesus do" offers little guidance and less comfort. Why? Because I can't help thinking that Jesus would not be in my current situation. That does not necessarily mean my situation is wrong - it is just different. I suppose I have to make the best decisions I can in the light of his example and accept his word provides no step by step solution.

I am reminded of a vicar I once knew who talked of looking at his decisions and despairing at the many mixed motives behind them. Eventually he could do no more than say to God, "please accept what I have done in the light of my best intentions and forgive me for my worst".

Thinking is the best way to travel...

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think." James McCosh.

I have always been a reasonably quick reader. It's a habit born out of an impatient nature and a diet of fiction. The need to race for the end just to find out what happens. But reading a book slowly has its advantages. Not least it delays that slight feeling of bereavement one feels when finishing a really good book.

When I started Finding Sanctuary I read nearly half of it the space of a few short hours. The problem was, although I knew it was deep, I took almost none of it in. So I returned to the beginning and started again more slowly. Taking time to reflect on what I was reading.

Today I concluded the chapter on obedience. Here I find that Jamieson presents an answer to the conundrum I posed at the weekend. A resolution to the issue arising from the section on Thomas Merton. It is an answer not dissimilar to the one that I had independently arrived at.

Let's now look at the powerful question about who sets the agenda in your life. As you 'pray for your own discovery', the agenda of your life is set neither by other people nor by yourself; it is set by God. Life becomes the search for God's agenda in your life. When you find it, then you have found your true self. You have found the ultimate obedient freedom.

It's good to read Jamieson's take on the paradox - but I'm glad I took the time to wrestle with it. It's far easier to remember a lesson learned through struggle than one passed on as a complete package.

As an interesting aside, the McCosh quotation above was on the bag provided when I bought Out of Solitude. A quick Google brings up many references to it. Most of which omit (as did my bag) a second sentence from the quotation:

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that."

The search for self

I've been in a bit of a head-spin this weekend. My thoughts circling like fighting cats. I'm still not quite sure which tail to pull to unravel the mess. I'm not even sure I can adequately frame the issue.

It started with the section on Thomas Merton in Finding Sanctuary by Christoper Jamieson. He writes this:

The real task of being true to oneself is as slow and profound work; it is not a fixed way but involves search and change. And in the end being true to oneself can only be achieved by listening to God. Keeping busy is a way of avoiding being true to oneself. 'In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.'"

The question which this raised in my head runs something like this: is the search for one's true self diametrically opposed to the concept of self-sacrifice and self-denial? Is it not self-indulgent to commit vast amounts of time to that search? In a sense this is purely an intellectual challenge. My instinct says otherwise. In giving my life wholeheartedly to God it seems fitting that I will be released to be all that God intended. God did not create me a certain way just so he could ask me to painfully become something else entirely. So maybe it is just the emphasis of the statement that I find hard to accept.

When I was at university I knew a guy who was very hot on self-sacrifice. He had given up a whole raft of things which he knew to be wrong, in order to be a better Christian. The thing was, he wasn't very happy. To an outsider it was pretty clear that he regretted the sacrifice. He'd placed a whole load of things on the altar, not because he wanted to, but because he thought he had to. As a consequence they weren't really dead, but they followed him around, snapping at his heels.

The Christians who I have most admired have always struck me as very humble, centred people. Their focus is on God. He is the core of iron that runs though their gentle lives. It's never really occurred to me to ask them about self-sacrifice and it is not something that they have talked about. Yet I bet if I did ask I would find that there had been sacrifice there. Silent, under the surface sacrifice; undertaken willingly, not regretted and not returned to.

I know it's jumping forward, but the picture I have in my mind comes from the two-sentence parable in Matthew 9: 44. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." It brings me back to what I wrote a few days ago. Love does not spring from obedience, but rather the other way around. If there is no joy in the sacrifice, then maybe the real treasure is still to be found.