A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

December 2019

Recent events have left me feeling helpless and in a dark place.  Our decision, based mainly on lies, to leave the EU, leaves me with a sense of shame at being English. We are letting both ourselves and our European friends down badly.

We have a government which is already underfunding the NHS, our schools, and the social care provision for the poor and needy, as well as undermining the judiciary and making strangers feel unwelcome, while the wealthy prosper. I expect it to get worse.

We have a Prime Minister who lies, runs from difficulties and scrutiny, and lacks empathy & compassion. I wouldn’t trust him with sixpence. 

Meanwhile, the Church of England, in a state of decline, is facing the wrong way and asking the wrong questions, at a national and at a Diocesan level. 

Where is God in all this I ask myself?

So I thank God for Advent. Its proving to be a rich and challenging time, as, in T S ELiot’s words:

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope 

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; 

Wait without love 

For love would be love of the wrong thing; 

There is yet faith 

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. 

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: 

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

So I wait, and I await the Coming of Christ at Christmas. Or more accurately, I wait, daring that I may be brave enough to open myself to receive Him, find room for Him, nourish Him within me, so that my soul may become His dwelling place.  My task then will be to hear His Call, and heed it.  I know that I won’t do that very well. But this Loving God accepts my best endeavours and has other agents in the field, of all faiths and none, so I know that I’m not alone but in good company.  I pray that The Cosmic Christ will be able, through His People who are ready to receive Him, to bring some much needed Love and Light into the current darkness of our world.  Light and Love that also remind us there is a bigger picture than what we see here now.