The Pale Rider

There are four horsemen in the apocalypse. One on a white horse for dominion and stability, one on a red horse for war, one on a black horse for justice, and one on a pale horse for death. We know them all well, the four riders. They shadow us all as do the angels. But whereas the angels represent eternal power and solace, these four represent the power of mortal mind and all that is transient. 

The four horsemen have no power save the power we bestow on them. Not that we can avoid them. Someday the pale rider will take you and I. But he has no true power unless we give him power over us. 

"God bless my enemies; make them Thy friends; give them to know the joy and the peace of love" - so said Mary Baker Eddy. 

I cannot say I like any of the four horsemen particularly, not even justice for justice is so often cruel and arbitrary. They are enemies, but enemies with whom I am familiar and so they are my friends. I can live with them and they cannot touch the eternal me that stands in power and at peace with the angels. Nor can they touch you. Not if you are unafraid of them. Fear is evil. "You can conquer almost any fear if you will make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind" - Dale Carnegie.

A New Year's Resolution?

Eric Gill's sculpture of Prospero and Ariel on the front of Broadcasting House.

The artist Eric Gill was a much flawed creature, obsessed with both sex and with God. But he had an interesting idea. He felt it important to create a "cell of good-living". Which is what we should all do. But the approach is parochial. The truth is we are obliged to create a cell of good-living that embraces the entire brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind. What then is a cell of good-living? To my way of thinking it is embodied by the military expression made famous by the novels of Dumas: "All for one and one for all". The expression goes beyond selflessness and love to a kind of camaraderie.  A genuine basis for the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. And unattainable writ large in the short term. But step by step, little by little, it is indeed, perhaps, achievable.

Repentance or Remorse

We all know remorse. It may or may not involve guilt or shame. That sadness at the consequence of our own actions; that sense that were we to be in that self-same situation again, we would try and manage things differently.

My sister reminds me that when she was naughty as a child, I'd reprimand her, not for being naughty, but for being found out.

I expected her remorse but not her repentance.

Repentance means starting again.

We often make the mistake of assuming repentance means remorse, a not liking of what we have done. Maybe sometimes it does. But sometimes it does not.

The real point of repentance is not to want to do it again.

Remorse may or may not induce a heart that is in some degree broken.

Repentance requires a heart that is renewed.

Renewed, not perfect. When a flame burns bright it is the impurities in the air that give it that brilliant yellow hue.

When we place the pure blue flame of the Holy Spirit on the altar of our hearts it burns yellow-orange-red hot in the broken vessel within which it is contained.

But none the less it burns bright and strong and wondrous.

So bright that no storm can ever extinguish it. You alone can damp it down.

Dancing with the Devil

The Arabs have a name for temptation, which is "Bint Iblis" which mean's "Satan's daughter". Which thought begs the question - Which is the issue really. Can you be half evil? Or do you cleave to the light or nothing? I notice that if you give sin a little edge, let it in just a little, it hammers in like a steam train and slams right through the core of you.

Evil can very effectively be kept at bay by keeping yourself inordinately busy. That works.

For a while. And then everything goes pear shaped just because at one point in time you were distracted and - Wham. There you go.

And then you become possessed; selfish, even to the point of being cruel. Or with you maybe it's something different. Maybe you manipulate and exploit. Or perhaps you become obsessed with selfish fear (fear is almost always selfish and therefore almost always evil). Or maybe it's just a small thing like cowardice. Seeming small of course. Cowardice is such evil, don't you think? One of the worst sins is that of the moral coward, unable to stand up for truth - or worse still unable to take a decision that involves personal emotional risk or vulnerability. But there's sin that's worse, still worse again - like pride - by which I mean the hubris that creeps up from behind. The "I am better than her" or "He's no good compared to me" pride that was the sin that led to Satan's fall like a lone dark star tumbling down forever down from the Kingdom of Heaven.

It comes in so many shapes and sizes, evil that is, but for me there are two main dynamics; but then everyone is different. For me first there is fear, perhaps fear of debt or ill health, that gnaws and numbs and disables. Then in creeps a powerful predator, feeding on fear perhaps, or responding to the vulnerability fear creates, manifesting itself as a sort of cruel selfishness, as if predatory anger could ever cure the pain. You've not got that problem? Lucky you. But you have others.

Or are you perfect? Perhaps you are. We are all potentially perfect and can be, for a while. There are moments of perfect love in which fear can take no hold and in which we are therefore incorruptible. Until the next time that is. There's always the next time.

THE REAL BURNING

In which context, note how little talk of hell there is in the New Testament (or indeed anywhere in the bible). But there are some pretty strange things said. Read First Corithians 3. I'm going to paraphrase a section from verse eleven - but if you're a stickler you should read the thing in full rather than my bowdlerised edit which is based on the revised King James version. It goes:

"No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are."

The point being that though Paul is addressing teachers here, there seems to be an underlying theme according to which all the dross will be burnt from us at the resurrection. If we are men of straw, God help us in this all consuming fire. Nothing will be left. But if we are pure gold then we will survive, intact, bright shining as the sun.

A daunting sort of afterlife wouldn't you say?

Not so good

Truth is, I could be better than I am - But I could not be worse than I am. Now there's a curiosity eh? Here's some music for you:

Death, the Big Goodbye

God doesn't grieve over the dead, because God doesn't understand death

There's a curious paradox in the attitude of mind of those who object to death only to lay the blame for death at God's door. If there's no God then blaming him is irrelevant. However if there is a God then that God cannot believe in death in human terms because almost any conceivable God believes you can't kill the spirit. God believes in eternal life. That's why it's so hard to pray in order to save someone from death. God doesn't think of things in those terms so we're talking at cross purposes. The way God sees it, one day we wake up and the world is no longer there. But we don't stop. And in that there's tragedy of sorts as well as blessing.

All of us

The universe is alive, the sum of its parts. It is born. It lives. It will die. And at the moment it is very, very, very young.

Think of creation as all that is that is not the Great Unknown. Creation is not unique in so much as this is not the one and only universe. Others exist. Those others in the cosmos that is itself a bubble bath of universes are each unique in so much as they are each different from the other, just as one person differs from the next.

None the less, this universe is constructed along basic lines, a framework that is mirrored in all creation. That part of the material universe that we - for want of a better word - call inanimate, is the body. The animate (both sentient and non-sentient) is the spirit, or life force. Whereas that which is sentient is, or has the potential to be, the mind.

Our own world is young, and humanity far, far younger. The human race becomes more interdependent, as we develop a cyborg character, linked by a web of intimate communication at both the macro and the micro level that draws us ever closer one to the other. If this is a hive-like existence, ours is a hive without a queen. Ours will become a collective consciousness. The whole will progress (or regress as happens at time of war) as it grows, whilst individuals, like cogs in a machine, wear out over time and are replaced.

That everything dies is a given, whether it be a universe, a galaxy, a solar system, or an individual. One road to immortality is therefore the development of a collective consciousness whereby we meld one with the other to such a degree that individual identity becomes less critical. The ultimate purpose of this Gaea-like, quasi-Avatar existence is to transcend that which is material in order to manifest a spiritual reality that can never die.

On Saints and Sinners

A friend, let's call him George for want of a name, was heading for a monastery. My reaction, expressed privately and not to George, was: "It's a fucking crime!!!!! Such a fucking waste. So fucking selfish. Given this broken world."
But O.K. let him live quietly and be always with the Lord. I envy God and I envy him. Lucky buggers. God help the rest of us who have to endure ! ! !
So I prayed about it and God seemed to say: "If you ask me whether I am easier with my other children than with you. Is there a scale of fault in your eyes? So where would you place yourself and where George - on that scale?"
There are few absolutes. Absolute love is arguably the best of them. So in a spirit of absolute love I have to confess my own sins as being greater than George's.
So here's a question - not unrelated in my mind - though you may find it hard to trace the parallel: If you propose to act in a way which God and the world view as wrong - But are prevented, though your intention was to do something which went against the will of God (in my case to a great degree and in George's case to a particularly small degree) - Have you sinned?
Jesus would imply that you had - that the mere inclination was enough - at least when the object in mind was adultery. But I differ from Jesus here. So many of us are consumed with bad intentions. And those that are not can as easily be caught be circumstance as those that are. Purity of heart is fine for those who live in a monastery. What matters are our deeds.
And here's another quasi-related point: We don't always say what we want (or what we think). We behave thus in a spirit of diffidence tinged with an element of consideration for the other. Which can be a good thing.
However, I resolve to attempt to change that in myself. Perhaps because I grow older and life is too short for dissembling. A little more of the Absolute Honesty perhaps - just a smattering - to go alongside the Absolute Love. Just don't expect perfectly Absolute Purity or Absolute Unselfishness. Well OK expect it if you must. Just remember a little compassion for those that fail.

Armageddon or Purity through Non Violence

Seems to me that this world will never get better. We just go on and on killing one another, hating one another, fearing one another. Left to our own devices it will always be thus. What we need is for global warming to get so bloody bad - to spiral so severely out of control - that the whole species damn nearly dies out. Then, as we face a greater external enemy, perhaps at last we may just maybe learn to love one another.

Selflessness through Hope

To deal with life in the shadow of death, where oppression walks hand in hand with misery:
Seek precious gems along the way. And to gladden your heart, take those little moments, and polish them with small rags made of sunshine to pierce the gloom.

Lift your eyes to the heavens. Take the perspective of the angels, see the world from the vantage point of eternity.

Lay your burden down at the feet of your God.

Look to your brothers and sisters in this broken world, and forget your troubles.