Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.
According to a group of bishops (who shall be nameless) Advent is not, except chronologically, a preparation for Christmas. This comment, as Hercule Poirot might have said, gave me furiously to think. Unfortunately the bishops did not go on to unpack this paradox of truly Chestertonian proportions, and so I was left with my thoughts. Of course Advent is a preparation for Christmas; and yet I do see what their Lordships might have been getting at, and I am inclined to agree. If Christmas is the celebration of a past event, even one a momentous as the irruption of God into our world, it hardly makes sense to prepare for it. What are we preparing for? A celebration of an anniversary of a past event does not warrant four weeks of preparation, though you might be forgiven for believing that it needs it, from the material point of view at least, if you venture into any town larger than Bonchester Bridge.
Christmas is not the commemoration of a past event, any more than Easter is. In the case of Ester, that is perhaps a little more obvious. Christ, who rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, still lives his resurrection life; if we have been baptised, we have been baptised into his death; we have died with him and we will rise with him. Christ’s death and resurrection are taking place every day, which is why it is so appropriate to have baptisms at the Paschal Vigil.
What we should be doing during Lent is coming to our senses and trying – before Easter dawns – to cleanse our souls so that they are worthy to join our Lord in that event which is ceaselessly happening. It happens every Sunday, every day, and every instant in the timeless dynamic of God; but we cannot live at such a pitch all the time. So once a year we prepare properly for what we do not prepare for during the rest of our lives. Apparently Dr Johnson used to spend the entire year in preparation for his single yearly reception of the eucharist. I’m not suggesting that we should restrict ourselves to that extent (though it might do us no harm, occasionally, to wait until we are actually hungry for it and realise what it is and what it is to be deprived of it), but that is the right attitude. It is also the right attitude to Lent, and to Advent, which have more in common with each other, and with the now almost vanished tradition of fasting before receiving the eucharist, than we usually realise.
Christmas, Easter, and the eucharist: all three are occasions when our life of time slips into God’s life of eternity, where the earthly event of a moment is inserted into the perennial event of heaven; they are, as I remember once saying of the post-Resurrection appearances, heaven “where-ing” itself on earth. I argued that in the case of the post-Resurrection appearances, Jesus did not so much “come down” to earth. He is, always, everywhere, and in some mysterious way (mysterious only to us, not to God; we must never lose sight of the fact that what seems mysterious, crazy, impossible, contradictory to us, especially while we are still on our journey, is perfectly clear and straightforward to God). It was simply that by a special dispensation his apostles became able to see him where he was anyway. I think something of the sort is true of Christmas. Not – most certainly not – that something did not happen – and on earth – at Christmas. the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was genuinely born of the Virgin Mary according to the flesh. But at every subsequent Christmas something equally real happens, but to us, not to him. We have the possibility of becoming present to the Event which, according to our chronology, took place 2000-odd years ago. Genuinely present, as present as the shepherds. We are not commemorating something past at Christmas, we are present at something present.
And that is why I do, and do not, agree with their Lordships the Bishops. If you see Christmas as a commemoration of a past event, then Advent cannot and must not be seen as a preparation for it. Advent is a liturgical season of great importance, second perhaps only to Lent. It cannot end in an anti-climax; then it would be better to regard it as the preparation for the coming of Christ to each of us: at every moment, and at the hour of our death. That is certainly on of the functions of Advent, though I believe it to be a very secondary one; as a liturgical season at a specific time of the year, it must primarily lead to an event also at a specific time of the year, as does Lent: both are liturgical seasons leading to a liturgical event which springs from a moment when our string of events slips into the perennial event of heaven. But if we see Christmas as one of those two moments, that moment when we are inserted into the eternal moment of the Incarnation, then Advent is precisely a preparation for that.
I am told – don’t quote me on this – that the Orthodox, on the feast of the Annunciation, pray that the Blessed Virgin will say “yes” to the angel. Does that sound absurd? It seems to me to be eminently sensible. Each time we come to the Annunciation, the event is truly happening. Mary has said yes; but by praying that she should do so we join ourselves to those generations of the just who prayed for the coming of the Christ through the long centuries of the Old Dispensation. Not only does our prayer express more perfectly than anything else our complete conformity with, and our complete joy in the plan of salvation as it has turned out, but it has weight with God, who transcends time. I greatly regret the disappearance of the feast of the Expectancy of Our Lady towards the end of Advent. I believe that Mary herself in heaven is in a state of expectancy every year, not of the physical birth of Christ but of that moment when we are at one with her, present at the Incarnation, the coming of the Messiah, when the dews of heaven fall on the earth. It is up to us to show him how much we desire that moment, a moment not of commemoration but of heaven becoming – briefly – one with earth.
See, O Lord, the affliction of thy people, and send him whom thou hast promised to send!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Christ the King
The feast of Christ the King is a funny one. A funny one in that it is a bit difficult to know how to take it. On the face of it it’s fairly clear what Pope Pius XI intended when he instituted it in 1925. Empires and kingdoms were crumbling all over the place, including the splendid and apparently invulnerable Empire of Russia – remember that 1925 is just eight years after 1917. To quote the psalmist, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.” Pius was pointing out that, dramatic as they were, these happenings were no surprise; nothing human, not the Athenian Empire, not the Roman, not the Ottoman, not the Russian, can last forever. But there is one kingship, empire, call it what you will, that does last forever, and that “forever” lasts beyond the existence of this little planet, beyond the existence of the universe, for all mind-dizzying eternity. This, perhaps, is a point that we could usefully remember now. The British Empire is a memory; the terrifying Third Reich even more so. The Soviet Empire has fallen, though the fall-out from the fall is still with us. America is becoming dwarfed by the looming bulk of China, and, yes, even Al-Qaida will fall. The Christians chased the Moslems out of Jerusalem, and the Moslems chased the Christians out of Al-Andaluz – Spain – only to be chased out in their turn. This has been the reality of our planet since history began.
Oddly, in his attempt to counter all this turmoil and fear by pointing to the one true king, Pius XI fell into very much the same trap, by regarding Communism as the one great threat, the one human institution that would overrun and destroy everything, as if this human movement alone had more than human powers and capacity for survival. This piece of blindness, incidentally, goes a long way towards explaining the Catholic church’s ambivalent response to Nazism: it was some time before they realised that the attitude “Anything but Communism” was a terrible mistake. I think Pius would have been surprised and incredulous to hear that this terrifying new force, apparently bent on destroying Christian civilisation and all he held dear, would itself fall after seventy years; barely a human lifetime, killed no less by that strange hybrid “Christian Socialism” (which in the main is neither Christian nor Socialism) than by active opposition.
I think one of the important lessons of this feast, of the idea of calling Jesus Christ a king (which he never did himself, except once in a parable and once, with his back against the wall, to Pontius Pilate) is that there is no one great threat, no human institution that will overrun and destroy “everything”. Because “everything” – as in Life, the Universe and Everything – is beyond human power to destroy.
It’s something we need to hang on to. To me that first reading was so topical. Everything (political) in this world is such an appalling mess. Our whole being is screaming out “This is not right!”, screaming for confirmation that it is not right. Whether it is the bankers throughout the world, whether it is the MPs wrongly claiming tens and even hundreds of thousands in expenses, whether it is two thousand people who cannot afford healthcare crammed into a stadium in America – not a third-world country, by the way, unless you are poor – where doctors, nurses and dentists work for nothing, whether it is simply the way the little people are going under with scarcely a ripple left on the surface…the whole world, everything, seems to be tilting, slipping into one huge injustice, and They (oh, but who are They?) are getting away with it.
There is one book that shouts out in chorus with our own voices: “This is not right!” and has been doing so for thousands of years. Our God, our God from the very beginning, our God who has lived among us, shouts in chorus with our voices: “This is not right!”
It sometimes seems as if our monarchs and heads of state live, by definition, in a different world from the rest of us. And that is one of the ways in which Christ the King is different. He made a point, an almost excessive point, of being like us in every possible way. And that is why there is something odd about this Feast: Christ the King made every effort to be as unkinglike as he could. The only time he looked remotely like a king was when his kingship was parodied, with the crown of thorns and the reed sceptre.
I am not talking politically at all here, but I wonder whether you share with me the instinctive admiration for rulers who, when their subjects are in danger, have joined them: have led armies, have stood on the ramparts, have died for their people. I am not saying that Henry V or Alexander the Great were necessarily nice people or good at governing. I am saying that somehow that sort of kingship chimes with something deep within us. Why else was there such an outcry when it was discovered that an American president had been a draft-dodger; why was that phrase “they will fight to the last drop of other people’s blood” so current; and why, even to a pacifist like me, did it seem so right when the son of the heir to our throne saw active service in Iraq?
I think it is because we have an inborn (should I say God-given?) instinct to want a leader who leads from within, a leader who risks their own life when their subjects do, who endures all that they do. And again, it is our God who has done this, who has responded to our desires.
The feast of Christ the King is very cleverly placed at the turning point of the liturgical year. It looks back at the long and sometimes grey period of Ordinary Time, the Sundays after Trinity, and forward to Advent and Christmas. It finishes the year off on a high - you could say it crowns the year; and it prepares for the beginning of the astonishing kingship that is Christ’s.
The pictures of Christ as emperor, Christ in power, Christ enthroned, leave me completely cold. This is not the Jesus I know, not the Jesus I find in the Gospels. The Jesus I know was born in poverty, lived in poverty, lived as the common man, was at the service of the common man and died a horrible death by execution. In the tradition of the Old Testament God - who is the same as the New Testament God, the same as our God - Jesus made it quite clear that the behaviour of the occupying force, the religious fundamentalists, the uncaring rich, the violent, the prejudiced, was not right. And he did it without ever becoming political in the wrong sense. He did it by living it.
And when he likened the kingdom of heaven to the workings of leaven in dough, he was explaining his kingship to us. Since the son of God was born as one of us, everything is different. Different from without, because the God who has been on our side from the beginning is now one of us. But also from within. Christ did not become a king on the Cross, or at the resurrection. And I guess, strictly speaking, he did not become a king at Christmas, or at the Annunciation. He has always been king. But that was when the leaven was slipped into the dough of creation, and when everything changed. Our king leads from within, from within creation, from within humankind, from within each one of us. Since then, if the world is charged with the grandeur of God, so are you, so am I - from within. There is that of God in everyone. And nothing can ever be the same again; and evil, and death, terrifying as they are, can have no dominion.
Oddly, in his attempt to counter all this turmoil and fear by pointing to the one true king, Pius XI fell into very much the same trap, by regarding Communism as the one great threat, the one human institution that would overrun and destroy everything, as if this human movement alone had more than human powers and capacity for survival. This piece of blindness, incidentally, goes a long way towards explaining the Catholic church’s ambivalent response to Nazism: it was some time before they realised that the attitude “Anything but Communism” was a terrible mistake. I think Pius would have been surprised and incredulous to hear that this terrifying new force, apparently bent on destroying Christian civilisation and all he held dear, would itself fall after seventy years; barely a human lifetime, killed no less by that strange hybrid “Christian Socialism” (which in the main is neither Christian nor Socialism) than by active opposition.
I think one of the important lessons of this feast, of the idea of calling Jesus Christ a king (which he never did himself, except once in a parable and once, with his back against the wall, to Pontius Pilate) is that there is no one great threat, no human institution that will overrun and destroy “everything”. Because “everything” – as in Life, the Universe and Everything – is beyond human power to destroy.
It’s something we need to hang on to. To me that first reading was so topical. Everything (political) in this world is such an appalling mess. Our whole being is screaming out “This is not right!”, screaming for confirmation that it is not right. Whether it is the bankers throughout the world, whether it is the MPs wrongly claiming tens and even hundreds of thousands in expenses, whether it is two thousand people who cannot afford healthcare crammed into a stadium in America – not a third-world country, by the way, unless you are poor – where doctors, nurses and dentists work for nothing, whether it is simply the way the little people are going under with scarcely a ripple left on the surface…the whole world, everything, seems to be tilting, slipping into one huge injustice, and They (oh, but who are They?) are getting away with it.
There is one book that shouts out in chorus with our own voices: “This is not right!” and has been doing so for thousands of years. Our God, our God from the very beginning, our God who has lived among us, shouts in chorus with our voices: “This is not right!”
It sometimes seems as if our monarchs and heads of state live, by definition, in a different world from the rest of us. And that is one of the ways in which Christ the King is different. He made a point, an almost excessive point, of being like us in every possible way. And that is why there is something odd about this Feast: Christ the King made every effort to be as unkinglike as he could. The only time he looked remotely like a king was when his kingship was parodied, with the crown of thorns and the reed sceptre.
I am not talking politically at all here, but I wonder whether you share with me the instinctive admiration for rulers who, when their subjects are in danger, have joined them: have led armies, have stood on the ramparts, have died for their people. I am not saying that Henry V or Alexander the Great were necessarily nice people or good at governing. I am saying that somehow that sort of kingship chimes with something deep within us. Why else was there such an outcry when it was discovered that an American president had been a draft-dodger; why was that phrase “they will fight to the last drop of other people’s blood” so current; and why, even to a pacifist like me, did it seem so right when the son of the heir to our throne saw active service in Iraq?
I think it is because we have an inborn (should I say God-given?) instinct to want a leader who leads from within, a leader who risks their own life when their subjects do, who endures all that they do. And again, it is our God who has done this, who has responded to our desires.
The feast of Christ the King is very cleverly placed at the turning point of the liturgical year. It looks back at the long and sometimes grey period of Ordinary Time, the Sundays after Trinity, and forward to Advent and Christmas. It finishes the year off on a high - you could say it crowns the year; and it prepares for the beginning of the astonishing kingship that is Christ’s.
The pictures of Christ as emperor, Christ in power, Christ enthroned, leave me completely cold. This is not the Jesus I know, not the Jesus I find in the Gospels. The Jesus I know was born in poverty, lived in poverty, lived as the common man, was at the service of the common man and died a horrible death by execution. In the tradition of the Old Testament God - who is the same as the New Testament God, the same as our God - Jesus made it quite clear that the behaviour of the occupying force, the religious fundamentalists, the uncaring rich, the violent, the prejudiced, was not right. And he did it without ever becoming political in the wrong sense. He did it by living it.
And when he likened the kingdom of heaven to the workings of leaven in dough, he was explaining his kingship to us. Since the son of God was born as one of us, everything is different. Different from without, because the God who has been on our side from the beginning is now one of us. But also from within. Christ did not become a king on the Cross, or at the resurrection. And I guess, strictly speaking, he did not become a king at Christmas, or at the Annunciation. He has always been king. But that was when the leaven was slipped into the dough of creation, and when everything changed. Our king leads from within, from within creation, from within humankind, from within each one of us. Since then, if the world is charged with the grandeur of God, so are you, so am I - from within. There is that of God in everyone. And nothing can ever be the same again; and evil, and death, terrifying as they are, can have no dominion.
Monday, November 9, 2009
O Flower of Scotland...
Those days are passed now, and in the past they must remain;
but we can still rise now and be the nation again
that stood against him, proud Edward’s army, and sent him homewards to think again.
Don’t tell me there’s a Scot among you, pacifist or not, who doesn’t feel some sort of thrill when you hear these words sung. I don’t doubt that our heads tell us that no one country is as such more important or better or worthy of love than any other, that borders are only lines on a map, that no-one has any right to build up one country to the detriment of another, and so on…still, our hearts know that there is another truth which must somehow be accommodated, because it is so universally and instinctively known that in trying to deny or suppress it we risk denying something fundamental about our very human nature.
Today’s celebration – because it is a celebration as well as a remembering, a celebration of courage, of devotion and of love – is a difficult one for many of us, myself included. I am not a Quaker, but if I ever become one it will be the uncompromising opposition to war and violence as much as the silence that will draw me. But I think that what I’ve just described could be a way into an understanding of Remembrance Day that even pacifists can make our own. There must be a reason why the Old Testament, the first instalment of the history of God-with-us, is so heavily based on patriotism, on passionate love for one’s country; why God based that first call not only on a nation but on a country, on a specific piece of ground, and why he instructed his people Israel to fight for it to the death.
The conclusion that I have come to is, first, that this is yet another example of the care with which God trains us by teaching us the easy things first and only later raising us to the more difficult ones, and, second, how badly we need something to love. Something to live for – something, indeed, to be willing to risk dying for. It is so important to us that we justify the most horrendous, or the silliest, things because they answer that need. Something in us tells us that apathy, all the same, is the most dangerous thing. It has been well said that for evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing.
Of course the devil can use anything. He can use enthusiasm, faith, and all these good things. But I am sure that the thing the devil likes best is what paralyses us, makes us give up, makes us not bother, lose confidence…that, of course, is why he so much loves guilt. And why Jesus said “I came that they might have life, and have it in abundance”; and why his chief commandment, the thing that we must absolutely do in order to be his disciples, even if we never follow a single one of his other commands, is to love. Love, and just-not-bothering, love and life not-in-abundance, are simply incompatible.
Earthly patriotism is not a Christian virtue. But the instinct towards patriotism is correct. When St Paul says that “our commonwealth is in heaven” and the author of the Hebrews that “here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” they confirm that the patriotic instinct is a good and useful one, and give us the clue as to where it is properly directed. “Our commonwealth is in heaven” is not a metaphor. This world is important. Not only did God create it and put us here, he lived here himself, and gave us the patriotic instinct. He had it himself. But it is not ultimately to this world that we owe allegiance, nor to its standards of love.
And there is a reason for this. Because another statement that is not mere metaphor is that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And although they are not God-bearers as we are, there is something of God in all creation, and especially in all sentient beings. The idea that creation is evil is about as unChristian as you can get.
Some Christians believe that when the priest is at the altar celebrating the eucharist, he or she is acting “in persona Christi”, in the person of Christ. In some sense it really is Christ up there and not John or Clephane or Donald. I am sure this is right; but I am equally sure that what we are all on earth for is to act at all times in persona Christi; to see Christ in others and to be Christ to others. To be carriers of his Spirit and act according to his ways, and to sanctify, not deny, the instincts he has placed within us.
I remember a lengthy discussion once as to whether we should mind being loved simply because someone was “seeing Christ in us”. What’s the problem? If someone genuinely sees Christ in me – well, what could be better? The problem, I suppose, is that “seeing Christ in someone” is so often regarded as a last resort: there’s nothing lovable about this person but – hang on – they are surely loved by God and made in his image and so, well, I guess we can look at that, and gratefully avert our eyes from the reality of the person. A sort of spiritual equivalent of saying “Well, I’m sure his mother loves him.” This would be laughable if it were not so sad. Because that kind of love is the most perfect and the most unconditional, and the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. It is spiritual recognition of the very nature of the person who stands before you – and of yourself.
The difference between "godly love" (I mean what Paul calls charity) and other sorts of love is that in human love (of whatever kind) the “glue” that holds the two people together is "preference”. I prefer Jane to Mary and therefore Jane is my friend; I prefer Fred to Bill and therefore I’m married to Fred. Well and good – that is where we must begin. But in godly love the "glue" is God. In other words God holds the two people - made in his image and likeness - together. Which among other things explains why you can perfectly well love someone you don't like, or who has done dreadful things. And that’s how Jesus can call “Love one another” a commandment.
That glue is far stronger than the glue that holds together two Scots, two Hungarians or two children of Israel – which all the same is perhaps the best human analogy, one we all recognise, and the one around which today’s commemoration is based.
Rabbi Lionel Blue comments that God has given us the book of the Torah, but he has also given each one of us the book of our life. If we don’t find God there, we will never find him anywhere. If you want to see God, look at your neighbour. Or yourself. If you want to know how to love heaven, you could do worse than looking at how you love Scotland, how these men and women who lost their lives in the wars from the dawn of time loved their countries.
This world is one in which we see through a glass darkly – but we do see. The world is charged with the grandeur of God – yes; but I would rather say that the world, and the people in it, are transparent, and in it we see God, and his world – if we will only look.
but we can still rise now and be the nation again
that stood against him, proud Edward’s army, and sent him homewards to think again.
Don’t tell me there’s a Scot among you, pacifist or not, who doesn’t feel some sort of thrill when you hear these words sung. I don’t doubt that our heads tell us that no one country is as such more important or better or worthy of love than any other, that borders are only lines on a map, that no-one has any right to build up one country to the detriment of another, and so on…still, our hearts know that there is another truth which must somehow be accommodated, because it is so universally and instinctively known that in trying to deny or suppress it we risk denying something fundamental about our very human nature.
Today’s celebration – because it is a celebration as well as a remembering, a celebration of courage, of devotion and of love – is a difficult one for many of us, myself included. I am not a Quaker, but if I ever become one it will be the uncompromising opposition to war and violence as much as the silence that will draw me. But I think that what I’ve just described could be a way into an understanding of Remembrance Day that even pacifists can make our own. There must be a reason why the Old Testament, the first instalment of the history of God-with-us, is so heavily based on patriotism, on passionate love for one’s country; why God based that first call not only on a nation but on a country, on a specific piece of ground, and why he instructed his people Israel to fight for it to the death.
The conclusion that I have come to is, first, that this is yet another example of the care with which God trains us by teaching us the easy things first and only later raising us to the more difficult ones, and, second, how badly we need something to love. Something to live for – something, indeed, to be willing to risk dying for. It is so important to us that we justify the most horrendous, or the silliest, things because they answer that need. Something in us tells us that apathy, all the same, is the most dangerous thing. It has been well said that for evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing.
Of course the devil can use anything. He can use enthusiasm, faith, and all these good things. But I am sure that the thing the devil likes best is what paralyses us, makes us give up, makes us not bother, lose confidence…that, of course, is why he so much loves guilt. And why Jesus said “I came that they might have life, and have it in abundance”; and why his chief commandment, the thing that we must absolutely do in order to be his disciples, even if we never follow a single one of his other commands, is to love. Love, and just-not-bothering, love and life not-in-abundance, are simply incompatible.
Earthly patriotism is not a Christian virtue. But the instinct towards patriotism is correct. When St Paul says that “our commonwealth is in heaven” and the author of the Hebrews that “here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” they confirm that the patriotic instinct is a good and useful one, and give us the clue as to where it is properly directed. “Our commonwealth is in heaven” is not a metaphor. This world is important. Not only did God create it and put us here, he lived here himself, and gave us the patriotic instinct. He had it himself. But it is not ultimately to this world that we owe allegiance, nor to its standards of love.
And there is a reason for this. Because another statement that is not mere metaphor is that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And although they are not God-bearers as we are, there is something of God in all creation, and especially in all sentient beings. The idea that creation is evil is about as unChristian as you can get.
Some Christians believe that when the priest is at the altar celebrating the eucharist, he or she is acting “in persona Christi”, in the person of Christ. In some sense it really is Christ up there and not John or Clephane or Donald. I am sure this is right; but I am equally sure that what we are all on earth for is to act at all times in persona Christi; to see Christ in others and to be Christ to others. To be carriers of his Spirit and act according to his ways, and to sanctify, not deny, the instincts he has placed within us.
I remember a lengthy discussion once as to whether we should mind being loved simply because someone was “seeing Christ in us”. What’s the problem? If someone genuinely sees Christ in me – well, what could be better? The problem, I suppose, is that “seeing Christ in someone” is so often regarded as a last resort: there’s nothing lovable about this person but – hang on – they are surely loved by God and made in his image and so, well, I guess we can look at that, and gratefully avert our eyes from the reality of the person. A sort of spiritual equivalent of saying “Well, I’m sure his mother loves him.” This would be laughable if it were not so sad. Because that kind of love is the most perfect and the most unconditional, and the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. It is spiritual recognition of the very nature of the person who stands before you – and of yourself.
The difference between "godly love" (I mean what Paul calls charity) and other sorts of love is that in human love (of whatever kind) the “glue” that holds the two people together is "preference”. I prefer Jane to Mary and therefore Jane is my friend; I prefer Fred to Bill and therefore I’m married to Fred. Well and good – that is where we must begin. But in godly love the "glue" is God. In other words God holds the two people - made in his image and likeness - together. Which among other things explains why you can perfectly well love someone you don't like, or who has done dreadful things. And that’s how Jesus can call “Love one another” a commandment.
That glue is far stronger than the glue that holds together two Scots, two Hungarians or two children of Israel – which all the same is perhaps the best human analogy, one we all recognise, and the one around which today’s commemoration is based.
Rabbi Lionel Blue comments that God has given us the book of the Torah, but he has also given each one of us the book of our life. If we don’t find God there, we will never find him anywhere. If you want to see God, look at your neighbour. Or yourself. If you want to know how to love heaven, you could do worse than looking at how you love Scotland, how these men and women who lost their lives in the wars from the dawn of time loved their countries.
This world is one in which we see through a glass darkly – but we do see. The world is charged with the grandeur of God – yes; but I would rather say that the world, and the people in it, are transparent, and in it we see God, and his world – if we will only look.
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