something to ponder a bit

does the ox muse before it fords the stream








I do run away from people who know everything.  One of the most powerful things you can say in life is ‘I don’t know’.  And I think Oxford taught me that. A degree is just that a degree of knowledge. Oxford taught us how much we do not know. I come back to the Church – the Church of England and the Church of Rome tearing themselves apart over the sexuality issue and I’m waiting for someone to have the honesty and courage to get up and say ‘we don’t know, we’re dealing with a mystery’.  Instead all I’m hearing is prelates getting up and making pronouncements as if they knew the mind of God and to me that’s a form almost of idolatry.  Control freaks who know everything bother me.  It’s a lack of humanity as well as humility. The churches need a long moratorium on pronouncing on sex. We’ve lost the value of silence and of listening to it in our church institutions. The constant ‘noise’ of the liturgy reflects this malaise.






john fox or laura evans take your pick












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some prose made into a poem

all hail the return of romantic love 




   rooted in the intuition of the divine                           

To be in love is to be in love with someone.

To be in love without qualifications or conditions
or reservations or limits

is to be in love with someone transcendent.

When someone transcendent is my beloved,

he is in my heart, real to me from within me.

When that love is the fulfillment
 of my unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence

through intelligence and truth and responsibility,

the one that fulfills that thrust must be supreme
 in intelligence, truth, goodness.

Since he chooses to come to me by a gift of love for him,

he himself must be love.

Since loving him is my transcending myself,

it also is a denial of the self to be transcended.

Since loving him means loving attention to him,

it is prayer, meditation, contemplation.

Since love of him is fruitful,

it overflows into love
of all those that he loves or might love.

Finally, from an experience of love focused on mystery

 there wells forth a longing for knowledge,

while love itself is a longing for union;

so for the lover of the unknown beloved the concept of bliss

 is knowledge of him and union with him,

 however they may be achieved.

--Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology
















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summer sonnet

summer summer summertime sunshine sun
beams with burning brilliance- my skin turns brown
the dither of life buzzes and light beams down
and everything seems to run run run


a certain verdancy becomes the earth
a certain cacophony becomes air
where birds flit and sing their inherent care
yes we're poised again between death and birth


in every summer day there is a way
to see life as a thing eternal:  held
suspended in a summer poem,  held
in bated breath inspiring  a whole day
          until the sun goes down i'll sit and look
           and read the summer like  I read a book






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i couldn't help but publish this

In righteous repose, tucked into the heart, call upon your stareta, and begin to speak of these things, be wholly in these things, in a mystery that is hidden. Complete your diakonima on the God-trodden mountain that has led you into solitude, and take up the neptic work, be wholly in nepsis as of now, struggling with your own nous in the kellia’s wrestling-school. It may be at last you will see the reward for your work, having written your theoretikos on other God-friendly souls, as it has been written upon you. Take part in the glorifying parade, and do not let your face be like those who are darkened. Give praise to the man-befriending, life-creating Trinity, for these alone are gracious and love mankind. Make it your aim to be counted among the myrrh-streamers and those whose utterances are God-breathed, and let not your speech emit a foul stench. Rather, be God-speaking, for the vehicle of our salvation is no longer far-distant. The fold of rational sheep will soon be departing, yet not through any other way than the gate, the sky-way, to their protecting mountain, led by their co-suffering shepherd. The one who killed the Nourisher will remain behind, however, trying to get in some other way. But he will not be able to, for he put a value on the spice and therefore must be sorrowful in his own field he has bought, until he repents. He shall be silent in darkness there, singing not hymns but never-silent lamentations day and night, over the woe of his sin-slain soul. He will ponder in great grief those who will be renowned for their life-quickening deadness that was taken as a curse, (for the age hastens to an end). He will behold them in their glory, for they have been regenerated because they stood far from the kakodoxy that comforted many falsely during this age. Even so their own doctrinal fruit basket was kicked over scornfully very often as though containing some rationally acting black hand, and not nourishment pure enough for God. Yet it is these who were indwelt by the triadic monad, and have escaped at last the murk-mantled prison of the decaying earth. They refrained from ointments, and now they gush forth healing myrrh. They dwelt in darkness, with no man passing through, and now they abide in never-declining light forever. Yet because of our lowliness and miserable orientation to truth we have not been deemed worthy of a word from them, for what is holy can not be given to dogs, and we always ignored or destroyed whatever we were given. We thought we were rich, lacking nothing, but we are sore-beset and our hope is bedimmed. We ponder them in their heavenly dove houses, their inner freedom, and our outward slavery. We know that although they spoke, even their words were silence-loving and enacted the triadic liturgy for us to partake in during the age of grace. Yet we hear these hymns no more, and only now do we see that we were hearers only, and doers not. Only now do we see that they are loved, and come to worship at their feet which have departed the wrath to come. In this tribulation we see that our righteousness did not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, and all day and night we fed the swine of the citizens, giving our power to the Officer of Darkness, for he seemed stronger than their Executed Leader. Exhausted from their struggle with envy and hatred, God has taken them. They were not talkative, yet their mental activity was great and constant. Though they often stooped to help us, we did not consider worthwhile their offer to separate from the flesh-pleasers and the all-wicked, soul-harming offenders. Their struggles earned them undeceiving peace, and they have flown like spiritual eagles to the living corpse. They lived all their lives for the Guiltless Great Sufferer, while now only our suffering is beyond description. We mourn them, and beckon them to have mercy on us and save us. Spiritual blossoms of the meadows of Russia, pray for us! IC/XC NI/KA










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this seemed like the right blog for it












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