26 July 2023 A Candle in the Window Peter Millar
Words to encourage us in these times.
Experiencing blessing:
May the blessings of light be upon you,
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine upon you and warm
your heart,
till it glows like a great peat fire,
so the stranger may come and warm himself at it,
and also a friend.
And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you
like a candle set in two windows of a house,
bidding the wanderer to come out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be upon you,
the soft, sweet rain.
May it fall on your spirit,
so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.
And may the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit, and wash it fair and
clean
and leave there many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
the great, round earth:
may you ever have a kindly greeting for them you pass
as you go along the roads.
May the earth be soft under you,
when you rest out upon it,
tired at the end of the day:
and may it rest easy over you
when at last you lay out under it:
may it rest so lightly over you,
that your soul may be off from under it quickly
and up and off,
and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you all,
and bless you kindly.
An Irish Blessing
Welcoming the provisional:
Jesus said to the crowd that was following him, “this is what I want you to know:
Don’t worry about what you are going to eat
or what clothes you are going to wear;
what you are is more important than what you eat;
what you are is more important than what you wear”. Matthew 6: 25-30
In one of his many commentaries on the New Testament the late professor William Barclay of Glasgow University made an important point. For him, Jesus was not advocating a thoughtless, improvident attitude to life, but was warning against a care-worn, worried, fearful way of living each day. The rabbis taught that one ought to meet life’s complexities with a combination of prudence and serenity. At the same time they said ‘The person who has a loaf in his basket and says: “what shall I eat tomorrow?” has little faith in God’.
In the Gospel, Jesus makes clear that God has given us the wondrous gift of life, surely we can live in a trusting way for lesser things. He reminds his listeners that the wild birds are not constantly anxious about the future, nor do they stock up endless security arrangements, yet they are precious to God. It is the same with the scarlet poppies and anemones on the hillsides of Palestine. In their brief life they are clothed with a beauty which often far surpasses even our imaginations. Yet within a short time, now withered and dried, they may be used in a clay oven in a local bakery.
It is easy to dismiss these poetic words of Christ because they appear to contain only an abstract ideal. We live in the real world, the world of redundancies, cancers, broken relationships and financial hardships. We may be able to believe that the birds and the flowers are taken care of by God, but our concern demands that we take life seriously and do all we can to make ourselves secure. Even at eighteen or nineteen we receive advice from pension companies about the size of investments. Within modern living, there is not much attention paid to the provisional nature of life – we can’t leave things to chance or to God, that would be all to threatening.
These astonishing words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel are more relevant than ever for they are essentially about an inner attitude of ‘trust’, even in the face of our multiple daily concerns and questions. Does God really want us to live day after day in a state of never ending worry? Is it not possible to live more serenely – going along with the various flows which touch into our daily experiences; not constantly battling to arrange life on our own terms; accepting and welcoming the fact that circumstances are never static and that, despite all our attempts to feel ‘secure’, much is provisional.
In welcoming the provisional into our daily living, we are not reckless or other-worldly. Surrendering to the ever wise and tender truth of our soul, and
accepting its meaning, places in a fresh perspective our worries, fears and hesitations. They don’t disappear, but we begin to see them through a different lens and awake to the reality that movement and change accompany every part of our human journey. We begin to live with another and calmer range of internal God-linked securities. We relax because we recognise that endless worrying is actually destructive to the task in hand. Living many years alongside people in India, who were not cushioned in any way by affluence, taught me that millions must live provisionally. I myself, having lived with an incurable but treatable cancer for nearly eight years, understand the word ‘provisional’ more than ever before. Each new day is a precious gift – despite all the prevailing uncertainties. As words from a prayer from Tahiti put it:
O Lord, our palm trees can no longer hide us from the world.
Strengthen our hearts that we may look with confidence to the future.
In all of this I am not trying to turn the clock back; we live within complex often little understood technological structures rich in fragmentations and unknowns pathways. Paradoxically, this reality in itself implies a world imbedded in risk, and uncertain futures. In such a context we are perhaps being called, by technology itself, to welcome the provisional with open arms rather than fighting it at every turn. Many thinkers are inviting us to embrace these flowing movements in life with hope rather than fear. Etty Hillesum in her ‘An Interrupted Life’ made the case for welcoming this provisional nature of our present condition...”I shall evade none of the tempests life has in store for me, I shall try to face it all as best as I can, I shall accept the inevitable tumult and struggle. I delight in warmth and security, but I shall not rebel if I have to suffer cold. I shall try to spread some of my warmth, of my genuine love for others, where ever I go. But we should not boast of our love for others. Maybe I long for the seclusion of a nunnery, but I know I must love and live with deep hope amidst all the unknowns of our world”.
Edited from one of Peter’s earlier reflections in his book “Waymarks”.
We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired. We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair. We give up, we fall down, we let go. We cry. We are empty, we grow calm, we are ready. We wait quietly.
A small, shy truth arrives. Arrives from without and within. Arrives and is born. Simple, steady, clear. Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame. Like rain in summer. A precious truth arrives and is born within us.
We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it. We surrender to our bare truth. We are nourished, we are changed. We are blessed. We rise up.
For this we give thanks.
Michael Leunig, in his book “A Common Prayer” HarperCollins Australia ISBN: 9781863717403. First published in 1990 and still available.
