Absence that creates Presence

It is good to visit people who are sick, dying, shut in, handicapped, or lonely. But it is also important not to feel guilty when our visits have to be short or can only happen occasionally. Often we are so apologetic about our limitations that our apologies prevent us from really being with the other when we are there. A short time fully present to a sick person is much better than a long time with many explanations of why we are too busy to come more often. If we are able to be fully present to our friends when we are with them, our absence too will bear many fruits. Our friends will say: "He visited me" or "She visited me," and discover in our absence the lasting grace of our presence. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

I frequently have to give people over to the care of God. This is to trust in his great mercy and grace because I recognize my own powerlessness in situations. Frequently it is merely to listen to attend to them. Nouwen's reflection is deep and I associate it much with Jacques Derrida's metaphysics of presence. It is in critical analysis the absence thing is more present because of its significant absence. Unlike Derrida's view which is partially a critical and non-affirming strategy, Nouwen turns this into loving absence however this can only ever be the case because of the spirit's work.

The Ways to Self-knowledge

"Know yourself" is good advice. But to know ourselves doesn't mean to analyse ourselves. Sometimes we want to know ourselves as if we were machines that could be taken apart and put back together at will. At certain critical times in our lives it might be helpful to explore in some detail the events that led us to our crises, but we make a mistake when we think that we can ever completely understand ourselves and explain the full meaning of our lives to others.

Solitude, silence, and prayer are often the best ways to self-knowledge. Not because they offer solutions for the complexity of our lives but because they bring us in touch with our sacred center, where God dwells. That sacred center may not be analysed. It is the place of adoration, thanksgiving, and praise. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

One of my favorite philosophers Gabriel Marcel places this a mystery, because we simply cannot analyze ourselves and the reason why is because we are standing on our own sense data. He calls this the ontological mystery. This is what perhaps the old Christian saying means when it says knowledge of self is knowledge of God.

You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Psalm 15:28

The confused season

This is normally a special time of year for me. Having just completed the Easter Triduum, Maunday Thursday to Easter Sunday but this year all the bits were jumbled up.

Coming from a liturgical tradition, my experience was Maunday Thursday focused on the Last Supper and the servant attitude of Jesus in washing the feet of his disciples.The church was then stripped of all adornment and people left in silence beginning the vigil there and then. My old church had people standing the vigil right through the night. Then on Good Friday, we faced the suffering time of Christ with a starkness and almost raw experiences with a silent procession and a three hour service of reflection and readings. Then the vigil until sunrise Easter Sunday with a fire lit at dawn, and then a eucharist/communion.

Everything was a bit jumbled up this year. I was in music rehearsal Maunday Thursday. Both Good Friday services I attended had communion which felt really odd. Then neither service really didn't have much reflection on the passion and suffering of Christ. Then Easter Sunday somehow something was really wrong. It was the first Easter for a long time where I finished two services with no strong feelings in my person. I felt no cause to celebrate that the most important festival of the Christian calendar had jus been celebrated. Somehow this year I missed the rollercoaster of emotions of a triumphal march into Jerusalem to betrayal, denial and just plain fickleness in the people of Jerusalem. I missed the deep despair of Gethsemane, a sense of injustice, the agony of mistreatment and abuse, the emptiness and apparent worthlessness of an empty cross and a stone cold tomb, then a group of bereaved women, an empty tomb and first light and glimpses of Resurrection. I missed the spiritual rush of emotions of this season of the year. What happened to me?

Someone asked me today whether I would teach on What is worship! The trouble is we don't really know, I'm not sure I do anymore. Except that it includes an encounter with the absolute, the Wholly other, with God himself. What does that mean? I believe firstly that we run the gamut of the whole range of human emotions and secondly that we are changed!