Etty Hillesum

Discovering God

Sunday the 8th June: I think I'll do it anyway: I'll turn inward for half an hour each morning before work, and listen to my inner voice. Lose myself. You could also call it meditation. I am still a bit wary of that word. But anyway, why not? A quiet half-hour within yourself... But it's not so simple, that sort of 'quiet hour'. It has to be learned. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside with irrelevant distractions. True, there may be edifying emotions and thoughts, too, but the clutter is ever present. So let this be the aim of meditation: to turn one's innermost being into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous undergrowth to impede the view. So that something of 'God' can enter you, and something of 'Love' too.

Refusing to Hate

... you must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself... you mustn't run away from it, but bear it like an adult. Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek to be avenged on all German mothers, for they too, sorrow for their slain and murdered sons. Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrows will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.

A Woman for Our Time

She interrupts our scepticism about faith,
and she invites us to believe again.
She interrupts our narrow assumptions about religion itself,
and she invites us to pray.
She interrupts our easy hatred of our enemy,
and she invites us to see.
She interrupts our despair about the future,
and she invites us to be courageous.



From: Etty Hillesum, A Life Transformed by Patrick Woodhouse

A Franciscan Grace

For food in a world where many walk in hunger
For faith in a world where many walk in fear
For fellowship in a world where many walk alone
We give you thanks, Oh God.

From Hillfield Friary Update, October 2010

Full Circle

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Quoted by Ellen MacArthur in the opening of her book Full Circle

The Rainbow

Red said to Blue

"My Friend how can this be

you do not pray as joyfully as me?"

Blue said, replying

"Red, you tell me why

you never pray as soulfully as I?"

To Green said Yellow

"Why is it my Friend,

that when you pray you never kneel or bend?"

Green said to Yellow

"Do you call that pray?

I disagree, that's not the proper way."

Then up came Indigo and Orange too

with different ways of praying,

old and new.

Poor Violet went quite pale,

as if afraid.

It was to all a secret how she prayed.

"Oh, colours," then said God.

"Each one of you is mine.

For how, without my light,

could you so shine.

Pray as your colour bids you

Never cease to glow.

I need your differences

They make my bow."

A poem by Jill Slee Blackadder published in Quakerism, a way of life (1982).

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail. 

Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.  

A people sometimes will step back from war, 

elect an honest man, decide they care 

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor. 

Some men become what they were born for.  

Sometimes our best intentions do not go 

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to. 

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow 

that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh 

(selected and read by Jan Gray at Ilminster Meeting for Worship on Sunday 25th July 2010)

The Inner History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

by John O'Donohue

Other

If you want God, then you must be prepared to let go of all - absolutely all - substitute satisfactions, intellectual and emotional. You must recognise that God is so unlike whatever can be thought or pictured that, when you have got beyond the stage of self-indulgent religiosity, there will be nothing you can securely know or feel. You face a blank and any attempt to avoid that or shy away from it is a return to playing comfortable religious games... If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your 'religious' world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of purchase on God, you are still playing games.

From a sermon by Rowan Williams, quoted by John Humphrys in his book 'In God We Doubt' (Part 2 'The Battle Lines').

The Cloister Walk

From the book by Kathleen Norris

The Difference (page 32)

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

But in a consumer culture, monastic people must be vigilant, remaining intentional about areas of life that most of us treat casually, with little awareness of what we're doing. One year at the American Benedictine Academy convention, an abbot, speaking on the subject of 'The Monastic Archetype', suddenly dropped all pretence of objectivity and said he was troubled by the growing number of cereals made available for breakfast in his community. 'How many kinds of cereal do we need', he asked, 'in order to meet genuine health needs without falling into thoughtless consumerism?'

The Revenge of Gaia

Quotations from the book by James Lovelock

A personal View of Environmentalism (page 138)

Important concepts like God or Gaia are not comprehensible in the limited space of our conscious minds, but they do have meaning in the inner part of our minds that is the seat of intuition. Our deep unconscious thoughts are not rationally constructed; they emerge fully formed as our conscience and an instinctive ability to distinguish good from evil. Perhaps that is why the early Quakers knew that the still, small voice within does not come from conscious reckoning.

Beyond the Terminus (page 154)

We belong to the family of Gaia and are like a revolting teenager, intelligent and with great potential, but far too greedy and selfish for our own good.

White River

I consider the River Findhorn a sacred place... I dream of a day when the watershed of the River Findhorn has been reforested, when the howl of wolves can be heard on moonlit winter nights, and when wild salmon return to the river in abundance. Because that day will be a great day. It will be a day when we human beings have come to see our true place in the interconnectedness of the world, and have been moved to act upon that consciousness. It will be a day when we start to inhabit the Earth with a grace. Like a river.

White River, a Journey up and down the River Findhorn
by Jamie Whittle (2007).
Quoted in 'Rekindling Community, Connecting People, Environment and Spirituality'. Schumacher Briefing No. 15
by Alastair McIntosh (2008).