Beloved, whose heart is heaven
Hallowed be thy pain
Our kingdom come
As will is one
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us today a body bred
From shriven trespasses forgiven
Surprising lilacs out of dead land
Redeeming deserts of isolation
Delivering us from evil.
Thy love is the kingdom, the power and our glory
Now and for ever
..
“We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
TS Eliot. East Coker
When I was a small blonde child I had a nightmare about the void. Utter non existence. Dylan Thomas’ poem about his fathers death, “..rage against the dying of the light” holds that place for and to me.
In February this year, sixty years later I had a cycle accident. The “I”, that is to say – me.. well, it just blinked out. I was rebooted in an ambulance some hours later. I remember nothing of the time or even how the accident happened. Where did I go? Was I meanwhile in that void? I believe my ego simply ceased – being a confection of the brain. But that something – an essence continued. (As do our atoms and our effect also). It seems to me that we fade to white, not to black. That we rejoin our real life which is co-rooted in some different way, place and dimension. This after the separations loneliness and pains of this materialistic world. Indeed that this, here and now is the nightmare, not the return beyond death to our intermingling.
Something like “Life’s a bitch but then you die”.
The purpose of this moment of lonely and fragmented consciousness? Maybe simply to witness the glory of the universe in some way – then to help bring the whole to consciousness of the love the underlies all that is.
My answer to Dylan Thomas’ poem about death? ..
Rather than “ Do not go gentle into that good night..” it should be
“Let us go gentle into that good light, Old age should turn to brave the close of day; Courage guag’d against the flighting of its wight”
Written by Dyami Millarson Oerfoarm is a Frisian word that is integral to my father’s artistic philosophy. Its Dutch equivalent is oervorm. Oerfoarm/…
My Father’s Philosophy of ‘Oerfoarmen’
The Cathedral in Edinburgh has come alive again; and not just post COVID, but also with a spiritual power that touched me at least. Here are the opening words of today’s service..
Christ the King. You became poor, that many might become rich. You emptied yourself of all power. That we might be empowered to choose. You show us Gods kingdom in our midst. And invite us to kneel with you. To humble ourselves, to serve those in need. And to find you here with us now.
We are here to serve, and in that way to find connection to all that is. (My words).
Boy it’s tough though to stop thinking of ourselves even for a minute of grace. At least for me
Lord, help me this night and tomorrow to serve justice and generosity and the love that animates and unites all of us.
A love letter
G and U and I my dear, I and G and thee,
He made you and I my dear, together to be we,
He and She is God my dear, one and one is three,
Who made the M and E my dear, and the timely C
Entangled N and T my dear, an angled entity,
you are all my world my dear, For God made you for me
Apparently a GUI is a General User Interface. Strikes me that’s our purpose, to be each a user interface, to reveal the rich love that is a God.
You, my sweet darlings are all, every one of you – my GodsUserInterface x
A love letter
G and U and I my dear, I and G and thee,
He made you and I my dear, together to be we,
He and She is God my dear, one and one is three,
Who made the M and E my dear, and the timely C
Entangled N and T my dear, an angled entity,
you are all my world my dear, For God made you for me
Apparently a GUI is a General User Interface. Strikes me that’s our purpose, to be each a user interface, to reveal the rich love that is a God.
You, my sweet darlings are all, every one of you – my GodsUserInterface x
Now we seek to destroy Him…
I was reading a passage by Donald Winnicott about the development of self. How the infant initially believes they are omnipotent and needs to seek to destroy their mother, as a test of their capacity to be held.
Isn’t it probable that God is not male, or parental at all? Hindus have a far older belief system and think about spirituality entire differently. We – Christians, Muslims and Jews alike – have created an archetypal father figure; which many now revile. But maybe it is necessary for us on this journey that we try to destroy God, and it is in the ever-loving survival of our destruction – that we finally perceive His (or Her) loving reality? Perhaps revealed as something different from the father figure we set up?
What Winnicott said
Donald Winnicott (paediatrician and psychoanalyst) studied the development of the Self within the child. He found that an infant is reliant on a “good-enough” mother (he was writing in the ’40’s, ’50s and ’60’s) to reveal to the infant that their feelings are real. Initially an infant believes he/she is omnipotent. He/she does not know there is a Not-Me. The reality of the loving mother as an “external object” is established by her survival of the child’s attempt to destroy her – and doing this whilst continuing to love. It is a parent’s fundamental role in allowing their child to develop a sense of the their reality in relation to all-else that they provide a “holding” environment within which the child can develop. In Winnicott’s words.. “The self is first made real through recognition, the object is first made real through aggressive destruction; and this of course, makes experience of the object feel real to the self. The object is placed outside omnipotent control by being destroyed while, in fact surviving the destruction”. In an illustrative dialogue about the process “The subject says to the object: ‘I have destroyed you’, and the object is there to receive the communication. From now on the subject says: ‘Hullo, object!’ ‘ I destroyed you.’ ‘ I love you. You have value for me because of your survival of my destruction of you. While I am loving you I am all the time destroying you in (unconscious) fantasy’ ” (The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications 1969). “Shall I say that, for a child to be brought up so that he can discover the deepest part of his nature, someone has to be defied, and even at times hated, without there being a danger of a complete break in the relationship” (Home Again 1945).
Intimacy can be a nightmare. Or dreamy. Which is it to be? It’s within our gift. To ourselves.
They want to take. Do I give?
Maybe. Probably, but do they understand that you are giving, and what they’re taking? It shouldn’t just be giving in. Just It seems to me that this is how it works. I have my own image of who I am. You, my beloved, have your idea of what is “me”; it’s quite different from mine. When we started out on our journey together – you needed me to be that person. Remember all of the friction back then? It was all around my idea of me and your idea of me. (Oh, and the versa of course. In fact probably more so!. So many years later our ideas and images of me have jostled toward each other. Giving and taking.
Mirror, mirror, you’re my all
It was a bit gritty sometimes, but looking back; thank you. Without your idea of me – I wouldn’t have become this facet of me-ness. You have been my mirror; which seemed to be distorted at first. Not so much giving and taking; more pushing and pulling; cajoling, believing, shining a light.
Here’s what I think. All the versions of self – are all dreams. Stories.. There is no real thing called me. Except perhaps the sum total of everyone’s idea of me. So can I change? As easily as changing channels. I can become how you see me, or how I’d like to be – just by thinking it.
Four in a bed
Really there are (at least) four people in our relationship. Me (according to me). Me (as you imagine me). You (who you are, to you). You (as I need and imagine you to be).
And we dance, don’t we. So many steps and pirouettes and sore toes.; but it’s the stuff that’s kept us going through the years. Holding our our gaze. An emergent quartet. That’s us.
We have trodden on each others toes quite often; but thank you for staying on the floor with me.
Think of all the fabulous stories that could be told. If we stuck, rather than twisted – when our dream of ourself is confronted. We’ve all walked out from friendships and marriages; all to preserve a fantasy of one particular me-ness or you-ness. Give, but don’t give in. Take, but not to cause heart ache.
Doesn’t it feel like everyone is trying to sell you something on this one? As if they “need it”, that they gain if they convert you. There are so many evangelists. The worst in my view are the atheist humanist materialists – because they pretend that their beliefs are backed by science. Non. Sense. There is no unarguable rational line.
So where can you get to, using common sense?
First. What do we mean by the terms in the question. Leaving “life” and “death” till tomorrow – let’s start with “after”.
You can’t have an after unless you have time; and what we know from Einstein is that space and time are one thing. (So is matter and energy). So really the question should be phrased “is there life outside space time”. Suddenly there’s a new complexion – and a whole explosions of thoughts. My only point is this. It would be brilliant surely for each of us to set aside our entrenched positions, reach out and explore all of this together.
.. and in that exploration – David Bohm’s “Dialoguing” – we might just find love and joy in the connecting.
(I don’t know if anyone reads this stuff, but I’ll ramble on tomorrow about why (I think) we don’t die anyway.)