This wild goose is taking a blogging break.
I'll be back online around 17th June.
Blessings to all and may the Holy Spirit keep you safe.
A trinity of parting gifts to keep you occupied...
First, below is an extract from a transcript of a brilliant interview between Benedictine monk, Dom Mark Patrick Hederman Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, near Limerick, Ireland and Shirley Ward.
I have featured Mark Patrick Hederman several times on my blog.....
I have featured Mark Patrick Hederman several times on my blog.....
Click here for the full interview.
Q. Shirley Ward.....There are many who feel completely betrayed, and have left the institutional church and are seeking their own spirituality elsewhere. Do you have a message for them?
Q. Shirley Ward.....There are many who feel completely betrayed, and have left the institutional church and are seeking their own spirituality elsewhere. Do you have a message for them?
Mark Patrick -This is a difficult question which I
can only answer for myself. I was born into the Catholic Church and I
have had the good fortune of being able to study theology and the
history of that Church for many years. I do believe that this Church,
whatever human beings may do to it, especially those who see themselves
as in charge of it, contains everything we need for allowing us to be
disciples of Jesus Christ, whom I believe to be the Son of God, the
Second Person of the Trinity come on earth.
He gave us His Holy Spirit
and promised that this Holy Spirit would be with us forever until the
end of time, and that not even the gates of Hell should prevail against
us. That is all that matters to me.
I have the Holy Spirit in my heart
and that Person will never desert me. The food and drink, which I need
for the journey through life, is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ
which he gave to us in the Eucharist at the Last Supper. ‘Do this in
memory of me,’ he said. It is a deed that we do, not a dogma, or a book,
or a set of concepts.
Wherever this deed is done, indeed, wherever two
or three of us are gathered in His name, He is there with us. We eat his
body and drink his blood to give ourselves the blood transfusion which
we need to swop our kind of loving for His kind of loving, to transfer
from our own human energy to His Divine Energy.
And this can be done in
many ways. It matters little how we do it; what matters is that the deed
is done in memory of Him and that we participate actively as often as
we want to have the deepest communion with Him.
All the rest is secondary: what clothes we wear, what rules we obey,
what forms of government and structures of community we adopt. If the
whole world were to betray us the Holy Spirit would never do so.
We need
to cultivate direct relationship with the Persons of the Holy Trinity,
first person singular, present tense.
There should be no intermediaries,
no third person, no go-between. Christ gave us the life and love of the
Three Persons of the Trinity flowing in our own hearts, we only have to
drop down there to bathe ourselves in this supernatural splendour.
We
don’t need anyone else or anything else to access this privilege which
is our birthright since the time we were baptised.
Of course it is a
pity beyond all telling that we have been so betrayed by human
institutions, but God never relied on any of these to speak directly to
His chosen people. All we have to do is answer the phone.
Shirley- But you live in a Catholic environment…..
Mark Patrick -I accept that being a male and a monk
in the monastery of Glenstal Abbey make it easier for me to find a
satisfactory life within the Roman Catholic tradition; and I can see
very easily how so many others are feeling alienated by the present
structures of this institution.
However, I believe that everything can
change, and should change if necessary, except one thing which is the
love of God made present to us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
It is up to us to insist on such changes, but for my part, I do not
want to invent a new Church, nor do I feel the need to abandon this one.
And this one, for me, means recognising that Judeochristianity is one
religion stemming from the revelation of the one God; that the break
between Judaism and Christianity is similar to that between
Protestantism and Catholicism, namely a family quarrel; that Jews and
Christians belong to the Catholicism which stems from the God of
Abraham, also recognised by Moslems, and Isaac and Jacob, which in our
view reaches its culmination and fulfilment of revelation in Jesus
Christ, the Messiah that Judaism has announced through its prophets, who
is God incarnate.
The Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic,
must as an organisation, embody the Holy Spirit of Christ. Until it does
so, it remains human, fallible and faulty, not yet having reached its
full potential.
I believe in God and I believe that the Holy Spirit is gradually
improving the mechanisms which might change the Church from being the
fragmented, self- opinionated, thick-headed, sexist, male dominated
organisation that cultural forces in our patriarchal world have allowed
it to become, so that it may eventually struggle towards being the
transparent image of the God it was meant to be serving.
I shall work as
hard as I can to remove such dross and clean these windows, so that all
manner of things may be well, and that all may be one, without that
meaning uniform.
There are many ways of being Christian and our union is
one of love, not of domination.
Shirley -I’m sure many agree with you on this. We
spoke early about Glenstal, what do you believe the future of Glenstal
to be in your vision of the future of the Church?
Mark Patrick-This monastery of ours, Glenstal Abbey
in Limerick, is being offered first refusal – and everything always
depends upon the willingness of those who are approached – on
establishing a three-ringed Community of the Holy Spirit in and around
the present structure of the community here as it now exists.
The outer
rim of the community will comprise professional people, some married,
some not, men and women who are interested in living the liturgical life
of the core community and some who will be involved in the active life
and professional engagements of the Abbey as a whole.
The inmost circle
forms the contemplative liturgical core; those who undertake to live the
full schedule of Trinitarian life here on earth.
In between these two there will be accommodation and space for a
third party who might want to live with us for a certain time, at their
own rhythm and to the extent that they find appropriate.
This last group
might be artists, business people, consultants, doctors, entertainers,
families, general practitioners, historians, iconographers, journalists,
knights of the road, liturgists, musicians, novelists, OAP’s, painters,
quantum physicists, ramblers, scientists, teenagers, university
students, visitors, writers – all whose interest in being in such an
environment might be temporary and even sometimes quite tangential to
the purpose of the whole.
Shirley-What would they do here? What help would they be given?
Mark Patrick -Glenstal would establish a spiritual
centre which would offer initiation into a way of life which aligns the
whole person, body, mind and spirit, with the universe as a whole, with
those who are in it, and with the Three Persons of the Trinity who have
invited each one of us to share in their life.
Taking our cue from
Cluny, Glenstal can provide many people with an element and an
atmosphere allowing them to breathe spiritually. Again poetry describes
this:
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness. There are other places Which are also the world’s end, some at the sea jaws, Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city- But this is the nearest, in place and time.
There are other places, of course. But the Spirit seems to be saying
that at this moment and as things are, Glenstal is the nearest in place
and time.
We do have one of the most beautiful places in the world
imbued with the mysterious time of liturgy.
Shirley -And people coming here would become marinated in this beauty.
Mark Patrick-Most people educated in the 20th
century are blind and deaf to the symbolism of liturgy, the ‘divine
beauty’ of nature, the language of art.
Western European civilisation
has long ago sold its birth right for a mess of pottage.
Our birth right
is the mystery of life hidden in the symbols from the beginning of
time: the mess of pottage is a world constructed by scientific
technology. Not that science and technology are not wonderful and
essential but without the other dimension they are ‘a dry weary land
without water’.
Monks should provide for a world that has become blind, deaf and dumb
to the language of symbolism, the meaning of life.
We should be able to
pour that trickle of water on the palm of the hand which allowed Anne
Sullivan, imaginative, patient and inspired educator, to teach Helen
Keller, born blind, deaf and dumb, how to retrieve her sensibility, her
humanity, her personality, her spirituality.
Shirley-What point are you making from their story?
Mark Patrick -On 3rd March 1887, Anne arrived at the
house in Tuscumbia and for the first time met Helen Keller. Anne
immediately started teaching Helen to finger spell. Although Helen could
repeat these finger movements she could not quite understand what they
meant. Anne and Helen moved into a small cottage on the land of the main
house. After a month of Anne’s teaching, what the people of the time
called a ‘miracle’ happened. Helen had until now not yet fully
understood the meaning of words.
When Anne led her to the water pump on 5th April 1887, all that was about to change. As Anne pumped the water over Helen’s hand, Anne spelled out the word water in the girl’s free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of the words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood.
Helen later explained that she experienced a thrill of returning thought and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to her.
When Anne led her to the water pump on 5th April 1887, all that was about to change. As Anne pumped the water over Helen’s hand, Anne spelled out the word water in the girl’s free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of the words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood.
Helen later explained that she experienced a thrill of returning thought and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to her.
Shirley-How does this fit into a monk’s life?
Mark Patrick-Monks must first of all learn for
themselves the language of symbolism, the language of liturgy, the
language of the saving mysteries of Jesus Christ, made real for us on a
daily basis through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The digitus Dei, or
finger of God, as the Holy Spirit is named, spells out ‘the word’ for
us as the water of life is poured on the other hand.
The Holy Spirit writes on our hands, as blind, deaf and dumb people, also through the medium of sound. ‘I was dumb, silent and still.. He put a new song into my mouth’ which is from Psalm 38 v3; and 39 v4.
The Holy Spirit writes on our hands, as blind, deaf and dumb people, also through the medium of sound. ‘I was dumb, silent and still.. He put a new song into my mouth’ which is from Psalm 38 v3; and 39 v4.
Shirley-And people would learn this new way?
Mark Patrick-Yes. Gifts of place, time and culture
have been given to us as providential sources from which to provide ‘the
running streams’ for which many, if not every soul is gasping.
And once
we ourselves have learned and are living from this mystery, we too can
provide ‘small cottages on the land of the main house’ which will allow
many people as possible to have, or to gain, access to these mysteries.
This means initiating people, starting with ourselves, to a new culture,
a new alphabet, which is really the very old culture, the very ancient
language of liturgy.
This would be a language and a culture which help
us to become fully alive, with that fullness of life which the Trinity
always wished to share with us; resurrected life, the life of love with
God.
Shirley-Would this mean a new type of community?
Mark Patrick-Glenstal would become like Clonmacnoise
in Seamus Heaney’s poem. This is a place where the abbot and community
help the artist to anchor the altar.
The monastery becomes a place where
artists can hope to tie whatever kite they happen to be flying to a
firm and stable anchor.
The monastery as silent hub of that fireworks
display which art and culture need to scatter with reckless flamboyancy
into the night.
Such revelation is possible only from the ambience and tranquillity
of a monastery where, to quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn; people have the
time, the atmosphere and the opportunity ‘to survey, as from a great
height, the whole tortuous flow of history; and yet at the same time,
like people completely immersed in it, they can see every pebble in its
depths.’ (Solzenitsyn 1971:358).
Providentially, it seems to me, the
Holy Spirit has gathered together in this very beautiful place, the
people and the competences, the genius and the generosity, which could
allow us to provide a well-organised and effective oasis in an
over-expanding spiritual desert.
Shirley - I was in Glenstal some weeks back with our
students of psychotherapy – there were over 200 visitors that day
including another psychotherapy group, a creative writing group, a
retreat day for ladies plus the overseas tourists. What brings people to
Glenstal? What are they seeking?
Mark Patrick -I think you managed to hit the day of
peak population! But, you are right in saying that very many people like
coming to Glenstal Abbey for various reasons.
This ranges from people
who like the grounds and the garden, a place to go for an afternoon
walk, to those who are interested in finding out how monks live. Such an
interest can be passing or it can be serious.
It can be similar to
people who visit the zoo to see how monkeys live, or it can be a genuine
curiosity about an alternative lifestyle from the one most people
adopt. It can also be a prompting from God to someone to go somewhere
that God is more obviously present than elsewhere.
Most people have a
desire to live with God in some way and have a secret part of themselves
that would choose to be a monk.
Shirley-For you the Holy Spirit has a great deal to
do with it! How can people recognise this invisible force in their lives
whatever they choose to call it?
Mark Patrick-There is a place in every person where
God touches us and where we are constantly in contact with God. If I can
reach this place I can touch God.
The Bible gives this interior place
the name ‘heart.’ At a given moment a great withdrawal of all other
faculties must take place, a sort of fast must be imposed on them. We
try to rest before God in reverent and loving attention, while our
interior faculties remain empty.
We must work to create this emptiness,
this space within. This does not normally happen quickly. Perseverance,
humility and patience are needed. If I can arrive at a point where I can
free myself from every other reality and bring the gaze of my spirit to
bear on this point exclusively, I can meet God.
Our desire for God
leads us toward that reality in ourselves which is the deepest and most
divine part of our being. That place where God dwells in me is also the
place of prayer.
Shirley -How do we recognise this place of prayer?
Mark Patrick-Long before I am aware of it or before I
take an interest in it, this prayer is going on ceaselessly within me.
It is important to insist on this: prayer has already begun before I do
anything – Prayer is there; it abides there; it comes before any of my
efforts, any of the techniques I may learn.
At the deepest level I live
in a state of prayer. At the beginning this prayer is entirely
unconscious – so all my efforts will consist in letting the prayer flow
out and spill over into my consciousness. It’s nothing more than that.
From being unconscious, this prayer must become conscious. I must allow
it to take me over from within, so that I can become united with it, and
take direction from it, while allowing myself to be borne up by it.
I hope that all this makes it clear that when we pray we are not
‘doing’ anything, we are not starting from scratch and building
something, or throwing out some kind of lines of communication as a
fisherman might cast flies onto a river.
On the contrary, we are trying
to slow down, stop all our active faculties from racing around madly
trying to achieve something, and allowing ourselves to sink back slowly
into that cave within our hearts where the prayer of the three persons
of the Trinity is already flowing through us like a murmuring stream.
We
have to incline the ear of our heart to hear what they are saying to
each other and to me who has been invited to be part of their communion
as the greatest honour and privilege that can be imagined.
So, rather
than saying anything or doing anything, I have to stop doing anything,
stop saying things, and allow myself to enter the diving-bell of prayer
which will carry me to the depths of myself where I can freely enter
this conversation.
Shirley-What sort of image would you give this?
Mark Patrick-An image which I find useful is this:
How do you get seaweed lying on a beach, hard, brittle and sundried and
crackling under foot, to become lithe, supple, flowing, velvet?
Not by
crushing it, kicking it, stamping on it, lifting it up; rather by
putting it back in the water and holding it there until the ocean seeps
through it and after a while caresses it into its underwater softness,
so much more natural to it than its hard, wrinkled, tetchiness on the
shore.
Shirley-How do we melt the anger in us that trauma in life has caused us to experience?
Mark Patrick- You are asking, how do we achieve a
similar softness in ourselves, causing the heart of stone to become a
heart of flesh by allowing it to be bathed in its natural element of
prayer?
The answer is that we do whatever is necessary for us to sink
daily into this element which beckons to us, as the waters of the ocean
beckon to the holiday makers on the shore.
Every advertised exercise of
prayer: yoga, transcendental meditation, rosaries, which are digital
labyrinths to hypnotise the fleeting mind, are simply tried and tested
ways of holding us down in the area of the heart where the agitated body
and even more agitated mind won’t carry us off into other areas of
distraction.
None of these are foolproof or guaranteed to achieve their
purpose. Their only goal is to push you into position so that the Holy
Spirit can pray for you and through you to the Father and you can be
aware of that breath of life moving through you.
There is really only one prayer: that taught by God come among us
when he was asked to teach us how to pray: Our Father.
This prayer
contains everything we need to know and everything we need to say. But,
as we go about our business and as we live through each day we can teach
ourselves some shorthand version, some prayer of the heart which then
continues to murmur through us even while we are sleeping: Come Lord
Jesus, Maranatha, The Spirit and the Bride say Come – you choose your
own and, more often, your heart chooses for you.
These days, when I am
out walking in the beautiful sunshine in the splendour of nature, I
bless myself and say Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or I say a prayer that
came to me in the Icon Chapel at Glenstal in front of the Healing Icon
of Christ: ‘Drive away the darkness which surrounds me, shed around me
the mantle of your light; help me to know your will and give me the
courage to do it.’
Shirley-All of us need this light and guidance, and
may be struggling to find ways to find this light. Have you some last
words for our readers?
Mark Patrick-I think we all need certain times and
special places to help us reach this cave of the heart each day. But
this place can be the car as we drive to work; and the icon which
reminds us of our place in the depths of the heart of the Trinity can be
a stone, a picture, a piece of music, a prayer.
None of these are
vitally important in themselves, but any one of them can become for us
the element which allows us at any moment and in any circumstance to
change ourselves, like the seaweed, into the body and blood of Christ.
This allows the Holy Spirit of God to breathe through us and become the
source of everything that we do or say. This morning [Sunday 25th July, 2010] the Gospel at Mass provided the answer [The Holy Spirit] Luke 11, 9-13:
”So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ”Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Shirley- Mark Patrick, thank you so much for sharing
your life journey with us. I hear your message of hope coming from your
deep convictions which is inspiring in the present climate. There is so
much more we could share – but I thank you for your generosity of time,
words of wisdom and your vision of hope for the future.
Mark Patrick Hederman is Abbot of Glenstal Abbey.
Formerly, headmaster of the school, he has lectured in philosophy and
literature in America and Nigeria, as well as in Ireland. A founding
editor of the cultural journal The Crane Bag, he is also author of a number of books including The Haunted Inkwell, Kissing the Dark, Symbolism and the recent best seller Underground Cathedrals.
The second is from John O'Donohue for the traveler in all of us, whether you are on an imaginary or a real journey or perhaps both...............
For the
Traveler
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O'Donohue ~
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O'Donohue ~
(To Bless the Space Between
Us)
and finally a lovely song I have not listened to for many years
The Travelling People by The Dubliners
