14 September 2023 A Candle in the Window Peter Millar
Words to encourage us in these times.
To become aware of the sacramental nature of the cosmos, to be open to the sacramental possibilities of each moment, to see the face of Christ in every person, these things are not novel,
but their rediscovery is the beginning of our health.
Ron Ferguson, former leader of the Iona Community
We believe that God will be born again in our land as we prepare the stable of our hearts for the birth of a new people. From the Maryknoll Sisters
The feminine spirit, which is not synonymous with the female person, has a certain familiarity with roots and springs and the basic elements of air and fire: a certain attentiveness to the flow of time and the harvesting of life’s fruits. The feminine spirit waits in readiness for the opportunity to inject breath into the clay of existence and to humanise the daily affairs of life.
From the American writer Sister Joan Puls, 1934-2022. Recommended book Every Bush is Burning, World Council of Churches, 1985. Still available online.
If your eye is pure, there will be sunshine in your soul. Matthew 6:22
I was a neurotic for years. Anxious, depressed, selfish. And every one kept telling me to change. And I resented them, and agreed with them, and wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how I tried. I felt powerless and trapped. One day, God said: “Don’t change, I love you as you are.”
These words were music in my ears. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!
Tony de Mello (1931-1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. A spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker, de Mello wrote several books on spirituality and hosted numerous spiritual retreats and conferences.
Pira Sudham, born in 1942, lives in Bangkok and in his native village, Napo. Over the years he has been involved in several community projects – such as building water reservoirs, giving plants and young trees for village gardens, encouraging fish farming and supporting children. This work reflects how his life was transformed by once reading the line from a book: “poverty, like corruption, is a human condition which can be changed”.
Pira Sudham is an author of Thai descent. He was born in a village in Isan in Northeastern Thailand and as a young man worked with Buddhist monks.
The importance of sharing our stories:
Rigoberty Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, once made this observation: “What hurts our rural Guatemalan people most is that our costumes are considered beautiful but it’s as if the person wearing it didn’t exist”. The amazingly rich life stories of these Guatemalan villagers had not been heard; what mattered to the visitor was the brilliance and variety of their clothes.
It is not only the rural families in Guatemala who feel that their personal stories are of little consequence. Many people in highly technological societies feel the same way. “Who is interested in what I’ve done in with my life”? is a common refrain. “And do I even have a story to tell”? We all have these powerful tapes in our heads telling us that we have really not done anything special with our lives. We have nothing to report: we are ‘ordinary’. In the end of the day, there is basically nothing to say. It’s almost as if we did not exist.
Contemporary culture, quite powerfully, also plays down the telling of our personal stories. We are spectators, watching every movement held within the lives of the famous, the outrageously rich, and the totally corrupt. They sure have stories: we don’t! Millions make these stories their own stories, forgetting that in themselves is carried an amazing history of love and loss, laughter and agony.
Connie was a home-maker who lived on a small farm in a rather remote glen in Angus in Scotland. When we worked in South India her local church was linked with us, and Connie, on their behalf, wrote to us regularly. In these letters she kept saying what wonderful work we were doing in India, but said practically nothing about herself or her family. One day I sent her a note saying that we were not doing particularly special things in India and that we would love to know a little about her own situation.
Almost by return of post Connie replied – pouring out her story page upon page. In that letter she described a life which was filled with triumph and tragedy in equal amounts. Every line revealed glimpses of grief, courage, prayerful awareness, doubt, integrity and of a love which kept shining against all odds. This was no tale of an idyllic life in a beautiful Angus glen, although it was punctuated by laughter and hope. It was a story of hardship and heartbreak, but also of glory in the grey.
The sharing of our stories, of our ‘ordinary’ stories which are in fact ‘extraordinary’, is something which we are slowly recovering in our communities. The One who holds the world in his hands longs for these stories to be told, retold and celebrated; to be laughed over and wept over; to be accepted, honoured and woven into the wider tapestry of our shared humanity. They are sacred stories, revealing in their diversity these moments which enlarge our common heart-beat. In their telling we are offered the possibility of healing; recognising our essential rootedness both in community and in history. It only takes a few personal stories to open the floodgates of joy and anguish in others, for we all yearn to redeem at least some of the scars and amputations that mark our lives – to get a whiff of our own transformation, our own wholeness; to be nourished by the openness and warmth of another person. pm
*We are pilgrims on our journey and companions on the road, we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.
From a longer well-known hymn by Richard Gillard
