I resonate with this so much. I often pine away for a time when Mystery was acknowledged commonly as living amongst us. Thank you for your writing Paul; it really kindles something inside of me and gives me hope in these times.
I have had several experiences similar to this; most, but not all, in traditional pilgrimage places. They do stay with you in some way; you get a brief glimpse of something Beyond and that anchors you somehow. I am in constant admiration of our medieval forebears, who had a much more rounded view of the world than we do.
Thank you for this post this morning, Paul. It would seem that I am one of the first people who has the treat to read it, and that is nice too...why not ?
I share the mixed feelings that you have about wanting to understand, even explain ? and wanting to savor the mystery intact, maybe. I think it is human to feel that way, and it is maybe particularly Western human, to want to understand and explain. Wanting to understand and explain has been a tremendous dynamic force in our civilisation which is currently paying the very heavy price that comes with succeeding at going so far down this road which distances us from... other roads.
On modernity, since we constantly quibble about this, taking God out of the world to make Him into a divine mover goes way back before the industrial revolution, and Aristotle ? and Maimonides were great forces in pushing Western civilisation down this path. Aristotle who is the granddaddy of MODERN science in our world, if I understand correctly. I only dabble in all of this, refusing to become an expert in anything.
On matter... what interests me is that we have a hard time understanding that WE are matter too. We are matter infused with something else that we can't explain, like that weeping, or oozing icon. For strange reasons, that icon speaks to me, as those who read me here can attest how haunted I am by the Gospel account of the woman who anoints Jesus with myrrh before his Passion. In Mark, the anonymous woman breaks a vessel filled with this precious myrrh over Jesus's head and anoints him as priest/king, in preparation for his death, in a gesture of... love. I think that this... liquid is a form of living water, as in John. And that it is definitely related to Woman in the Gospels, although men definitely have their living water too. Great.
Living water... 17 years ago we stopped using the flush toilet because I felt that it was SACRILIGIOUS to flush our shit away with drinking quality water, and I know now that I was inaugurating a new form of... ritual ? (Incidentally, I encourage anybody else who shares this feeling to find a way to use used water to flush their toilet, while informing them that this creates problems... any technology, ANYTHING THAT WE DO NOT USE deteriorates from our not using it, including our hands, minds, souls.)
So, Paul, we continue our journey together, with our differences, and the places that we come together, not always on the same path. The Judeo-Christian God is one who glorifies the Person/ the SUBJECT, I say, as someone who is thrown.. UNDER, to obey, but the Person is still glorified, and maybe that is how he became... an individual in the first place.
....
That myrrh must smell nice. Heady, in a way that makes you happy to be alive and still able to smell, for the better and the worse...
Something I forgot : icons are visible experiences of what you are talking about, but sometimes, the words, spoken can have the same incredible effect, for better and for worse. Spoken words can resonate and burn like candles, even though they don't seem to be matter.
The Gospels are full of examples where Jesus says a phrase, and people are healed...
It would be easier if our experience were uniform, wouldn't it ?
I am a Slovak, and though I am not born and baptised as a Catholic, most of my family is, and most importantly, most of the country is Catholic (with an Orthodox eastern part). Sometimes I wonder whether one could be an agnostic, pagan kinda Catholic, because my worldview would kind of fit this, though it sounds a bit crazy (but my FIVE Mary icons and one random Orthodox St. Xenia don't mind).
But what I want to say is.... I live in a Lutheran country now and I was often wondering why, through all the lovely songs in the church and etc, it still feels rather too pragmatic and dry here, like some kind of a religious Tesco. Now I know, thanks to your essay. The modern Christianity is at home here, with no space for the *oldschool* Catholics and Orthodox with their icons and holy wells and whatnot. How boring! (Luckily, there are Orthodox people here too, and about 5 Catholics as well)
Being Western educated and raised makes for an uneasy path in the Orthodox Church. My own conversion was in 2012. Over the years, I have tried hard to quell the voices whispering ‘superstition’ (or worse). I love the Liturgy (paradoxically there are no Liturgies I can currently attend) but I do struggle with aspects of Orthodox belief which I simply cannot share. It’s a real problem as I have increasingly the sense of being an outsider.
Yes, the 'inner sceptic' is strong in us who've been through the Western educational system. It makes us reject automatically all manifestations of God working in the world, though the Holy Spirit, because we have no reference points with which to 'explain' them.
Additionally, this 'education' and our urban lifestyle has curtailed our roots in Nature: it has to be 'global', 'for the planet' - but never local: who needs to know when hazel catkins are out, pollinating (right now, since you ask!) when people have never learned to look and see what those insignificant little shrubs look like!
And so it is with miracles: we have no reference points and thus we don't look for them, while expecting miracles to be huge, with bells and whistles, but not small, apparently insignificant manifestations for us, for the person. We expect them to happen all the time, not at odd, singular moments which ought to last us for years.
I look very much forward to your next stop in your Sunday Pilgrimage!
I wonder if you Paul or any others in this wonderful online community have had experiences to the contrary of this? I'm in the early stages of what feels like 'coming home' to Christianity and have had some troubling experiences. I will explain briefly, mostly for my own catharsis as I've yet to tell anyone in the fear they'll think I'm mad! The last two occasions I've ventured to our local town (I live rurally) I've met with two men who fill me will the most terrorising feeling. Their clothing is unlike that of everyone around me, their faces a familiar mixture of features belonging to people I've known in the past. They seem to leer at me psycopathically, their energy following me for a second as I pass them to go on my way. It's been really unsettling and more so that there's no one to tell. Like you, my Western mind 'gives out' to me at my ridiculous conclusions yet my heart knows not to listen. It's almost like a force is trying to scare me off making this journey home.
As someone who has been a Christian for years and accepted the worldview of Scripture (as Paul describes in this article), I had a belief in the existence of angels and demons, but no personal experience of them.
Until recently.
I have found that using scripture is efficacious in “cleaning out” (for lack of a better word) the space around me.
The Psalmist writes that the name of the LORD is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. So you might say, “I’m running now, Lord. Protect me by your power and your word.”
Or in a pinch, if I’m suspicious or startled, I simply say, “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude verse 9).
I’m praying that God shows himself strong and faithful to you as you seek Him. After all, we are promised that those who seek will find and that he (or she!) who knocks on the door will have it opened.
Thank you for sharing that with me Renee. It is a comfort that there are ways we can invoke God's help during these experiences. I must say I was compelled to cross myself upon feeling these forces; something I have never really done but am now seeing the power in.
Trust that feeling because it is true. I have had feelings like that and have experienced forces that to a rational .one might seem silly but I know what I felt and saw were true. Prayers to you that God may strengthen you and keep you.
Lovely piece of writing Paul. Reminds me of my own northern Bradford Catholic childhood. We frequently left the Bradford church in the month of Mary against a backdrop of smoking chimmneys and large mills- all my family had full time work from those mills A multi generational money earner for all of them. Everyone knowing eveetyone: weavers spinners, burler and menders - a strong sense of community. This was an alternative to the dark satanic mills we read in the history books. What the books miss out is that full emplyment meant food on the table, stories to share, different cultures under the same roof. British, West Indian, Polish and Irish immigrants worked the machines alongside my parents and grandparents. My Catholuc church had a separate mass on a Sunday for the polish community- the beautiful black Madonna is still here, given in thanks for Bradford welcoming them.
Back to the month of May! We would process through the streets with the church statue of Mary and sing .hymns. Flowers were strewn around and prayers ended the gathering before food in the church hall. The sacred can always be found, even in the darkest, dampest, streets of a city.
“The naggy little voice can be my helpmate sometimes. It is good to keep your reason armed and prepared. If your mind is too open, your brain might fall out. And yet we have to know when to let the unexplained through. Only Western people really think they can explain everything, or will one day be able to. I have come to learn over the years that genuinely strange and inexplicable - but real - things will creep in under the threshold of reason.”
This is undeniably true. As educated moderns, we may think we’re meant to turn our rational faculties off in order to allow the divine to speak. No, we need only shut down a certain arrogant dismissiveness in them, and remember that, finally, these rational faculties aren’t the final word. They’re provisional. Helpers, not masters.
If we use our rational, critical faculties thinking they’re capable of debunking all they encounter, then we’re actually being used by them. They sometimes debunk, but sometimes help unveil. Help keep the eyes open. And if they’re really doing good work for us, they will often enough debunk themselves.
Thank you for a thought-provoking piece of writing that comes back to a topic that I continuously puzzle over - what should the Christian's relationship with the physical world be? What did God originally intend with the mandate in Genesis to multiply and manage; were tools, inventing, building to be part of it?
Re: weeping icon... raised Catholic, now attending a Protestant congregation (no particular reason other than just the direction life took...) I believe these things are supernatural events, but I wonder WHY this way... WHY something that needs to be transported from place to place for people to encounter? Is God working supernaturally in more immediate ways in our lives that we ignore or are blind to?
Thank you for this. Beautifully written, it expresses what I, for one, always experience when I receive Communion during a Roman Catholic Mass. I only half believe that I am actually receiving the 'body of Christ' (the rational part of me speaking here), and yet the experience always, always leaves in a state of wonder and awe, and knowing, simply knowing, that there is more to life than the madness of modernity, and that is the holiness of creation.
God is mysterious and unknowable but we can have Faith and marvel at his creation. One day we will know more but will it really "matter" anymore? I think one our purposes is to be witness to the awesome and inexplicable nature of God.
Paul, thank you for this wonderful new series. And for a brilliantly written first chapter. I will be looking forward to each posting as eagerly as I did during the Holy Wells series, which was a highlight of my week. I had a similar experience, only yesterday, re the tug of war between the modern and more ancient parts of my mind. Last night my church, Saint Bartholomew The Great, held a Sarum Mass for Candlemas. This was designed to show modern worshippers how our religion would have been practised in Mediaeval times. The church is all that remains of a Priory founded in 1123, which originally encompassed most of Smithfield and what is now Barts Hospital. The service was packed, which shows the growing modern interest in what our religion once was. But the result for me was bitterly disappointing. I had hoped so much that it would transport me back in time and make me able to understand how the original priory inhabitants had understood religion. But that didn't happen. Instead, I felt increasingly excluded from what was going on. Everything was in Latin of course and no translation was offered. There was a booklet provided, but I couldn't follow the order of service. This was a service for monks practised by monks, so lay participation was in any case limited. No organ of course. No hymns. The absence of the female and the sheer number of officiants were unsettling. Various groups of men chanted and wafted incense over different altars in different parts of the church. I had no idea where to focus. Because I'd got there late, I was stuck behind a pillar and couldn't see much of anything. The sense of exclusion was really troubling because that building has become very special to me. St Barts is a church where the veil between this world and something else feels remarkably thin. I have sat there so many times and felt that peace you speak of. Only the previous week, I took a serious family problem there to think about. Part of it had involved an attack by a family member against me. My instincts had been to lash out and justify myself. I was really angry. After I'd sat there for a while, I felt that peace you speak of coming over me. I was transported somewhere outside myself, observing my own past behaviour through someone else's eyes. For the first time, I understood the wrong I had done. I was filled with regret, but at the same time I had a deep sense of being forgiven. I imagine this is what Catholic confession feels like when properly entered into. A day later the family member and I apologised to one another. I felt closer to him, understanding now how he had felt. So I had high hopes that attending the Sarum Mass would transport me to a place of deeper understanding once again. It didn't. I just felt like I did not belong and would never understand. After 45 minutes, I left and went home. It feels like a real missed opportunity. These things don't always turn out how we expect or feel we deserve. But why should they? We are not in control. I have to trust that what we need will provided when it needs to be and when we are ready for it.
I resonate with this so much. I often pine away for a time when Mystery was acknowledged commonly as living amongst us. Thank you for your writing Paul; it really kindles something inside of me and gives me hope in these times.
I have had several experiences similar to this; most, but not all, in traditional pilgrimage places. They do stay with you in some way; you get a brief glimpse of something Beyond and that anchors you somehow. I am in constant admiration of our medieval forebears, who had a much more rounded view of the world than we do.
Thank you for this post this morning, Paul. It would seem that I am one of the first people who has the treat to read it, and that is nice too...why not ?
I share the mixed feelings that you have about wanting to understand, even explain ? and wanting to savor the mystery intact, maybe. I think it is human to feel that way, and it is maybe particularly Western human, to want to understand and explain. Wanting to understand and explain has been a tremendous dynamic force in our civilisation which is currently paying the very heavy price that comes with succeeding at going so far down this road which distances us from... other roads.
On modernity, since we constantly quibble about this, taking God out of the world to make Him into a divine mover goes way back before the industrial revolution, and Aristotle ? and Maimonides were great forces in pushing Western civilisation down this path. Aristotle who is the granddaddy of MODERN science in our world, if I understand correctly. I only dabble in all of this, refusing to become an expert in anything.
On matter... what interests me is that we have a hard time understanding that WE are matter too. We are matter infused with something else that we can't explain, like that weeping, or oozing icon. For strange reasons, that icon speaks to me, as those who read me here can attest how haunted I am by the Gospel account of the woman who anoints Jesus with myrrh before his Passion. In Mark, the anonymous woman breaks a vessel filled with this precious myrrh over Jesus's head and anoints him as priest/king, in preparation for his death, in a gesture of... love. I think that this... liquid is a form of living water, as in John. And that it is definitely related to Woman in the Gospels, although men definitely have their living water too. Great.
Living water... 17 years ago we stopped using the flush toilet because I felt that it was SACRILIGIOUS to flush our shit away with drinking quality water, and I know now that I was inaugurating a new form of... ritual ? (Incidentally, I encourage anybody else who shares this feeling to find a way to use used water to flush their toilet, while informing them that this creates problems... any technology, ANYTHING THAT WE DO NOT USE deteriorates from our not using it, including our hands, minds, souls.)
So, Paul, we continue our journey together, with our differences, and the places that we come together, not always on the same path. The Judeo-Christian God is one who glorifies the Person/ the SUBJECT, I say, as someone who is thrown.. UNDER, to obey, but the Person is still glorified, and maybe that is how he became... an individual in the first place.
....
That myrrh must smell nice. Heady, in a way that makes you happy to be alive and still able to smell, for the better and the worse...
Something I forgot : icons are visible experiences of what you are talking about, but sometimes, the words, spoken can have the same incredible effect, for better and for worse. Spoken words can resonate and burn like candles, even though they don't seem to be matter.
The Gospels are full of examples where Jesus says a phrase, and people are healed...
It would be easier if our experience were uniform, wouldn't it ?
I am a Slovak, and though I am not born and baptised as a Catholic, most of my family is, and most importantly, most of the country is Catholic (with an Orthodox eastern part). Sometimes I wonder whether one could be an agnostic, pagan kinda Catholic, because my worldview would kind of fit this, though it sounds a bit crazy (but my FIVE Mary icons and one random Orthodox St. Xenia don't mind).
But what I want to say is.... I live in a Lutheran country now and I was often wondering why, through all the lovely songs in the church and etc, it still feels rather too pragmatic and dry here, like some kind of a religious Tesco. Now I know, thanks to your essay. The modern Christianity is at home here, with no space for the *oldschool* Catholics and Orthodox with their icons and holy wells and whatnot. How boring! (Luckily, there are Orthodox people here too, and about 5 Catholics as well)
Being Western educated and raised makes for an uneasy path in the Orthodox Church. My own conversion was in 2012. Over the years, I have tried hard to quell the voices whispering ‘superstition’ (or worse). I love the Liturgy (paradoxically there are no Liturgies I can currently attend) but I do struggle with aspects of Orthodox belief which I simply cannot share. It’s a real problem as I have increasingly the sense of being an outsider.
Kathy I pray that the outsider feelings subside and that you are able to find a way to attend a Liturgy.
Yes, the 'inner sceptic' is strong in us who've been through the Western educational system. It makes us reject automatically all manifestations of God working in the world, though the Holy Spirit, because we have no reference points with which to 'explain' them.
Additionally, this 'education' and our urban lifestyle has curtailed our roots in Nature: it has to be 'global', 'for the planet' - but never local: who needs to know when hazel catkins are out, pollinating (right now, since you ask!) when people have never learned to look and see what those insignificant little shrubs look like!
And so it is with miracles: we have no reference points and thus we don't look for them, while expecting miracles to be huge, with bells and whistles, but not small, apparently insignificant manifestations for us, for the person. We expect them to happen all the time, not at odd, singular moments which ought to last us for years.
I look very much forward to your next stop in your Sunday Pilgrimage!
I wonder if you Paul or any others in this wonderful online community have had experiences to the contrary of this? I'm in the early stages of what feels like 'coming home' to Christianity and have had some troubling experiences. I will explain briefly, mostly for my own catharsis as I've yet to tell anyone in the fear they'll think I'm mad! The last two occasions I've ventured to our local town (I live rurally) I've met with two men who fill me will the most terrorising feeling. Their clothing is unlike that of everyone around me, their faces a familiar mixture of features belonging to people I've known in the past. They seem to leer at me psycopathically, their energy following me for a second as I pass them to go on my way. It's been really unsettling and more so that there's no one to tell. Like you, my Western mind 'gives out' to me at my ridiculous conclusions yet my heart knows not to listen. It's almost like a force is trying to scare me off making this journey home.
As someone who has been a Christian for years and accepted the worldview of Scripture (as Paul describes in this article), I had a belief in the existence of angels and demons, but no personal experience of them.
Until recently.
I have found that using scripture is efficacious in “cleaning out” (for lack of a better word) the space around me.
The Psalmist writes that the name of the LORD is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe. So you might say, “I’m running now, Lord. Protect me by your power and your word.”
Or in a pinch, if I’m suspicious or startled, I simply say, “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude verse 9).
I’m praying that God shows himself strong and faithful to you as you seek Him. After all, we are promised that those who seek will find and that he (or she!) who knocks on the door will have it opened.
Thank you for sharing that with me Renee. It is a comfort that there are ways we can invoke God's help during these experiences. I must say I was compelled to cross myself upon feeling these forces; something I have never really done but am now seeing the power in.
Trust that feeling because it is true. I have had feelings like that and have experienced forces that to a rational .one might seem silly but I know what I felt and saw were true. Prayers to you that God may strengthen you and keep you.
Thank you PJ, your prayers are much appreciated.
Wonderful story, thank you and I am curious: how did your daughter feel about it?
Lovely piece of writing Paul. Reminds me of my own northern Bradford Catholic childhood. We frequently left the Bradford church in the month of Mary against a backdrop of smoking chimmneys and large mills- all my family had full time work from those mills A multi generational money earner for all of them. Everyone knowing eveetyone: weavers spinners, burler and menders - a strong sense of community. This was an alternative to the dark satanic mills we read in the history books. What the books miss out is that full emplyment meant food on the table, stories to share, different cultures under the same roof. British, West Indian, Polish and Irish immigrants worked the machines alongside my parents and grandparents. My Catholuc church had a separate mass on a Sunday for the polish community- the beautiful black Madonna is still here, given in thanks for Bradford welcoming them.
Back to the month of May! We would process through the streets with the church statue of Mary and sing .hymns. Flowers were strewn around and prayers ended the gathering before food in the church hall. The sacred can always be found, even in the darkest, dampest, streets of a city.
Wonderful thought on what the books miss (on purpose?) about the value of the community employer.
“The naggy little voice can be my helpmate sometimes. It is good to keep your reason armed and prepared. If your mind is too open, your brain might fall out. And yet we have to know when to let the unexplained through. Only Western people really think they can explain everything, or will one day be able to. I have come to learn over the years that genuinely strange and inexplicable - but real - things will creep in under the threshold of reason.”
This is undeniably true. As educated moderns, we may think we’re meant to turn our rational faculties off in order to allow the divine to speak. No, we need only shut down a certain arrogant dismissiveness in them, and remember that, finally, these rational faculties aren’t the final word. They’re provisional. Helpers, not masters.
If we use our rational, critical faculties thinking they’re capable of debunking all they encounter, then we’re actually being used by them. They sometimes debunk, but sometimes help unveil. Help keep the eyes open. And if they’re really doing good work for us, they will often enough debunk themselves.
Thank you for a thought-provoking piece of writing that comes back to a topic that I continuously puzzle over - what should the Christian's relationship with the physical world be? What did God originally intend with the mandate in Genesis to multiply and manage; were tools, inventing, building to be part of it?
Re: weeping icon... raised Catholic, now attending a Protestant congregation (no particular reason other than just the direction life took...) I believe these things are supernatural events, but I wonder WHY this way... WHY something that needs to be transported from place to place for people to encounter? Is God working supernaturally in more immediate ways in our lives that we ignore or are blind to?
Hi Patrick. Yes, I think... like giving us our next breath. Every bit as miraculous as the myrrh streaming icon.
Thank you for this. Beautifully written, it expresses what I, for one, always experience when I receive Communion during a Roman Catholic Mass. I only half believe that I am actually receiving the 'body of Christ' (the rational part of me speaking here), and yet the experience always, always leaves in a state of wonder and awe, and knowing, simply knowing, that there is more to life than the madness of modernity, and that is the holiness of creation.
God is mysterious and unknowable but we can have Faith and marvel at his creation. One day we will know more but will it really "matter" anymore? I think one our purposes is to be witness to the awesome and inexplicable nature of God.
Paul, thank you for this wonderful new series. And for a brilliantly written first chapter. I will be looking forward to each posting as eagerly as I did during the Holy Wells series, which was a highlight of my week. I had a similar experience, only yesterday, re the tug of war between the modern and more ancient parts of my mind. Last night my church, Saint Bartholomew The Great, held a Sarum Mass for Candlemas. This was designed to show modern worshippers how our religion would have been practised in Mediaeval times. The church is all that remains of a Priory founded in 1123, which originally encompassed most of Smithfield and what is now Barts Hospital. The service was packed, which shows the growing modern interest in what our religion once was. But the result for me was bitterly disappointing. I had hoped so much that it would transport me back in time and make me able to understand how the original priory inhabitants had understood religion. But that didn't happen. Instead, I felt increasingly excluded from what was going on. Everything was in Latin of course and no translation was offered. There was a booklet provided, but I couldn't follow the order of service. This was a service for monks practised by monks, so lay participation was in any case limited. No organ of course. No hymns. The absence of the female and the sheer number of officiants were unsettling. Various groups of men chanted and wafted incense over different altars in different parts of the church. I had no idea where to focus. Because I'd got there late, I was stuck behind a pillar and couldn't see much of anything. The sense of exclusion was really troubling because that building has become very special to me. St Barts is a church where the veil between this world and something else feels remarkably thin. I have sat there so many times and felt that peace you speak of. Only the previous week, I took a serious family problem there to think about. Part of it had involved an attack by a family member against me. My instincts had been to lash out and justify myself. I was really angry. After I'd sat there for a while, I felt that peace you speak of coming over me. I was transported somewhere outside myself, observing my own past behaviour through someone else's eyes. For the first time, I understood the wrong I had done. I was filled with regret, but at the same time I had a deep sense of being forgiven. I imagine this is what Catholic confession feels like when properly entered into. A day later the family member and I apologised to one another. I felt closer to him, understanding now how he had felt. So I had high hopes that attending the Sarum Mass would transport me to a place of deeper understanding once again. It didn't. I just felt like I did not belong and would never understand. After 45 minutes, I left and went home. It feels like a real missed opportunity. These things don't always turn out how we expect or feel we deserve. But why should they? We are not in control. I have to trust that what we need will provided when it needs to be and when we are ready for it.
Yes - I am still curious…
Which is why I am here…
Thanks for this curious story…
All good stories lead to Jesus…
Amen