on feeling weary

Doing nothing can be so exhausting! There’s a real weariness that can arise from life in lockdown, a slow seeping away of the energy needed to find constructive things to do. Even those who have not been ill with Covid-19 are finding that it can be hard to sustain concentration on anything for long. And without being able to gather together with others, so many of the things in life that are stimulating or enriching are currently out of reach. 

The one thing we can do - indeed must do - is take care of ourselves. A nun, who has spent her life in the lockdown of a cloistered religious life, advises that having a daily routine is key. Creating a structure for the day, a timetable even, where getting up, eating, exercising, prayer, work and leisure all have their rhythm. I’ve been using the opportunity to phone up old friends and have a good long chat, something I realise I used to do a lot more before the days of email, texting and social media. It’s crucial not to become isolated. 

The Irish poet and priest, John O’Donohue (1956-2008) wrote a blessing for one who is exhausted, which includes these words: 

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest 

And patiently learn to receive the self 

You have forsaken for the race of days... 

Gradually, you will return to yourself, 

Having learned a new respect for your heart 

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

on taking stock of our lives

The start of a new year often prompts us to reflect on our lives and consider what changes we might want to make. New Year resolutions, as with Lenten fasts, often focus on what we might give up. It’s a boom time for the diet industry as people focus on losing some weight; it’s a less good month for the drinks industry as many observe ‘Dry January’ to give their livers a rest after indulging at Christmas. (I was doing fine until John handed me a glass of wine on New Year’s Day…)

Such opportunities for reflection are woven into Christian practice. We do this, for example, in the prayer of confession we say at the start of the Eucharist, offering up those moments in the week where we perhaps didn’t show our best selves to the world, asking God to help us do better. We can also say these prayers on behalf of the world — making our confession for the destruction of God’s creation, or the suffering that humanity inflicts.

Taking time to reflect at the end of each day is a long-established Christian practice. St Ignatius encouraged Christians to undertake a daily ‘Examen’, not only calling to minds the part of the day that went wrong for us (‘desolation’) but also offering thanksgiving to God for those moments in the day we are thankful for (‘consolation’). Take a moment to still yourself and open up to God’s presence, and ask: Where did I see God’s presence today? What am I thankful for? What feelings did I have today (positive and negative)? What should I pray for? How do I feel about tomorrow? You can read more about how to use these questions in your prayer time at: www.chrisgribble.com/the-daily-examen-five-key-questions/

on being ready for the unexpected

Happy New Year! I wish you every blessing for 2021. If last year taught us anything it is that the unexpected is always around the corner, so I will refrain from making any predictions about what lies in store for us. Whatever it brings, we must ensure we are in a state of spiritual readiness to respond to whatever life brings.

Jesus told his followers a parable to illustrate this point (Matthew 25.1-13). The bridesmaids at a wedding were due to greet the bridegroom at night. Each bridesmaid carried an oil-burning lamp so they could see in the dark. However, not all of them had brought spare oil with them, and their lamps went out. While they were away buying new oil, the bridegroom arrived and the prepared bridesmaids went into the banquet with him. When the others arrived, their lamps replenished, it was too late and the door was locked.

For us as Christians, keeping on top of our devotional life helps us to be alert to what God requires of us. The mission of the church has been described as ‘seeing what God is up to in the world and joining in.’ Only when we stayed tuned into God through daily prayer can we discern that. When we do, we also discover greater inner resilience and resources to deal with the unexpected. Whatever 2021 brings, I pray it will a year in which you can deepen your walk with God.

on keeping it real

One of the things I like about Mark’s gospel — which some of us have been reading during Advent — and what I like about it is that many of the people featured are either a bit bonkers or something of a letdown.

Well, there’s humanity right there in a nutshell. 

If you still believe that you are the normal one then I’m sorry to disabuse you of that notion. Really. We’re all a bit cranky, egotistical, judgemental, eccentric, grumpy, obsessed with the wrong things, inattentive to the right things, snobbish, arrogant or generally potty! And that’s okay.

I’m not suggesting all of us are all of these things, but all of us are a mix of some of them. What we aren’t is normal. The good news is that God loves us just as we are, utterly and completely. The bad news is that we can’t encounter that love fully while we’re still pretending we’re better than others. The devotional life we aspire to is one where we accept our individual peculiarities. And when we do that, it’s a wee bit easier to accept everybody else’s weirdness.

When St Paul wrote that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, as he does in Romans 3, he doesn’t mean we’ve all done some naughty things that we should feel embarrassed about (that goes without saying). No, it goes much deeper than that, and means coming to terms with our own self-righteousness that makes us believe we’re better than others. It’s pretending you’re the normal one when others aren’t that’s the real sin. 

The good news is that Jesus Christ is a great leveller. So when we stop getting all hoity-toity about other people, and start embracing and learning to understand our own peculiarities then we can more fully discover that scandalous love of God that takes us as we are. That’s what grace means.

The process of faith, of deepening our spirituality, begins with the phrase ‘know thyself.’ Not as you’d like to think of yourself, but the you you really are. That’s what humility is. Being able to recognise and admit to yourself: I’m a bit fearful at times. Or I feel a bit inadequate compared to others, so I behave oddly or speak harshly about them to make myself feel better. I struggle to recognise that I’m not actually better than others, because… well, just look at them… but also because pointing the finger is so much easier than the work of self-examination. I feel insecure. I’m shy. I don’t have very much patience with other people. I need to be admired or have opportunities to show off, in order to feel better about myself. I’d rather avoid people who are different from me because I can’t be bothered learning to understand their culture, their values, their customs because I worry it’ll take something away from me. (It won’t). I can’t cope with the speed that society is changing. I so dislike change that I’ll do what I can to control other people or situations I find myself in.

The great thing about the salvation that Jesus offers is that, while we’re undertaking the business of discovering and accepting our own particular peculiarities, we have absolutely no need to feel rubbish about ourselves. We’re loved by God just as we are. Jesus simply wants to lead us into a deeper loving union with God. 

So while we’re letting go of our pretences about ourselves (which can feel scary, and sometimes be challenging) we can also let go of our hang-ups. Because God will hold onto us, and support us, when we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and form us into new people. 

That isn’t a process that happens overnight. It’s a lifetime’s work, rooted in a practice of daily prayer and devotions that invites Christ to lead us into wholeness.

I think Mary, the mother of Jesus, only a girl really, understood this. She seemed so tuned into God’s wavelength and had sufficient self-insight to attend to the work of God in her life, and the extraordinary announcement of the baby she was about to have.  

How can you be sure that God accepts the weird and peculiar you that you are? Because he took on the weirdness of humanity in this little Christ child we celebrate today. God loves us in all our diversity and peculiarity and wrong-headedness and self-delusion — loves us enough to think — yeah, I’ll have a bit of that. I’ll enter right into that whole experience so they’ll know I’m totally with them. That I’m alongside them in all they’re going through. That if they’ll listen to me they’ll understand they could become so much fulfilled than they are, experience a much richer interior life, and they’ll know that I take them as they are because I’ve been there, done that and I’ve got the scars to prove it.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:

and the government shall be upon his shoulder:

and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

— Isaiah 9:6

on predicting the future

This time last year we had just had a General Election. In the run-up to the vote, candidates made all sorts of promises based on their predictions for the future. What nobody was counting on was a global pandemic that swiftly changed priorities and left some election promises in tatters. We fool ourselves when we assume that life always stays on the same trajectory.

As Christians, we have a very particular expectation about what the future will bring, based on our hope in a loving and faithful God. The last book in the Bible, the Revelation of St John, paints a wonderful picture of God’s future kingdom: A place where people will hunger and thirst no more; where the shepherd will guide them to drink from the deep waters of life. Where the home of God is among mortals, and he will dwell with them and wipe every tear from their eyes. No more mourning or crying or pain. A place where the tree of life bears life-giving fruit, and its leaves are 

for the healing of the nations (Revelation 21.1-4 & 22.1-5).

What a powerful and exciting vision of the future. It is not a shallow promise made by people who cannot predict the future, but is God’s promise of a new kingdom where domination of the powerless by the powerful will end and God will reign amongst his people. This is the manifesto that Jesus announced when he said, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.’

on having the courage to show our true selves

The leaves have pretty much all dropped from the trees in the park. I have loved how the long, warm sunlight of autumn strikes them and brings such vividness to their gold, russet and bronze tones against the deep blue of the sky. Show me a painting in a gallery as uplifting and bedazzling as that.

You may have thought, like me, that the leaf colours of autumn signify their death. But this is not so. Our resident horticulturist tells me that when the green fades, each leaf reveals its true colour: one that was there all along. The chlorophyl that allows a tree to convert light to energy is what makes the leaf green. Once the tree has no need to do that, the green fades and the leaves reveals their hidden selves.

What does it take for us to show our true self to the world? — the one that is hidden under the pretences and masks we put on, so the world doesn’t see who we really are. The way we dress and act and talk which sometimes arises from a fear of being judged by others for who we really are. God wants to help us trust in him enough to not worry about the opinions of others but instead to drop our false selves to become the dazzling individual that is beloved by God and created in his image. And when we do so, we notice how much closer to God we feel. 

on giving others the benefit of the doubt

The British justice system takes account of the accused’s intention in committing a crime. For example, killing a person will be judged differently depending on whether the defendant’s action was accidental or deliberate. The ancient people of God had a similar system. If a person killed someone by accident they could go to a ‘city of refuge’ to avoid execution (Joshua 20:1-9).

St Ignatius created a rule of Presupposition for the Jesuit religious order he founded in the 1500s. He wrote, ‘We ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbour’s statement than to condemn it.’ In other words, always give people the benefit of the doubt. And if you’re not sure what a person means by something you should ask for clarity.

In The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Fr James Martin S.J. writes, ‘[The Presupposition] is a key insight for healthy relationships… And while most people would agree with it in principle, we often do just the opposite. We expect others to judge us according to our intentions, but we judge others by their actions. In other words, we say to ourselves, My intention was good. Why don’t they see it? But when it comes to other people… we say, “Look what they did!” The Presupposition helps us… approach every interaction with an open mind and heart by presuming — even when it is hard to do so — that the other person is doing his or her best and isn’t out to get you.’