Online Contemplative Worship Blog

The Goodness that Each Thing has, it is He This is my paraphrase of the first part of  Chapter 8 of  Revelations of Divine Love  Mother Julian is still meditating on the first Showing which she describes in this way : "Of the which the First (showing) is of His precious crowning with thorns; and in this I understood it meant the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity between God and man's soul; with many fair showings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Showings that follow are grounded and oned ." ( oned is an important word in Julian's Revelations, it literally means "being made one". For as long as I saw the sight of the plenteous bleeding of the Head I might never cease from these words: Benedicite Domine ! ( Blessed be the Lord ) In this Showing I understood six things:– the tokens of the blessed Passion and the plenteous shedding of His precious blood.  the Maiden that is His precious Mother.  the blissful Godhead that ever was...

 Second Year of Online Contemplative Worship Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. This was the text we used for the first OCW a year ago. It seems wroth revisiting it today as we begin - after a week off - our second year. The demand of the text is still what it was - the pursuit of holiness. Imagine is instead of "the pursuit of happiness" the American Constitution had said that it was an inalienable right of every human being to pursue holiness! Well, it is part of the Constitution of the Kingdom of God, which Kingdom is our first loyalty before any earthly nation. It was a profound moment in the King's coronation when the abou...

 House Building So as we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount we are told simply to ask...although we might need to remember to be careful what we ask for! The Law and the Prophets is about doing to others as you would like to be done by... which is simple.... isn't it? Well which of knows what we really want? Even less do we always know what we need! This gateway is narrow... it's something we commit to or we don't, we can't be half hearted or do this just when we fancy. There are plenty of people out there who know what's best for us... there have always been infuencers, role models and celebrities. Always the politicians after power and the con man after your money. Just step back and see what they do.. it's not so much a judging of then - which we are not to do - but deciding that we don't want to live with them And the religious people, the charismatic leaders who gather adherents... they're the ones we need to avoid most, it seems. For we are...

 Pearls before Swine Pigse don't get much of a press from Jesus. Think of the Gadarene swine possessed by the Legion of devils and plunging to their deaths. Think of the disgust of eat pig food as in the Prodigal Son, and not this. But Jesus was a Jew and this was a natural way to look at this unclean animal. The poor old dogs don't fare much better either! But what's Jesus doing? If you have been following me over the past few weeks you'll remember that I have been trying to make the case that the Sermon on the Mount is not a moral lecture with suggestions about how to behave. On the contrary it's a master class in hyperbolic teaching in which Jesus uses extreme language to point out that we can't be moral by trying that being moral was never the point, and that what Jesus wants from us is to commit to being holy , which is not achievable by following moral or ethical codes. Being holy is giving ourselves me and more to God so that there is less and less of ...

 Where your treasure is... I've skipped the bit about fasting as it's a reprise of not doing things in public and moved on to Matthew 6.19 Where is your treasure. That's easy.. where is your heart?  What really matters to you? What do you find yourself thinking about when the every day stuff is taken care of? Your treasure is where your deep down heartfelt concerns are. It may be family, friends, or some passion, good cause, activity or sport. All perfectly understandable. Or it may be yourself, your self image, the degree to which you feel validated, successful or powerful. Do you like to be the centre of attention, do you like everyone to know how good you are at something?  It's easy to criticise this in others... but there will be a bit of that "look at me" in all of us, I'm afraid. We all like to be appreciated. We all want to be affirmed and to some extent, of course, it's very important that we feel that others love us and value us. But... you h...

 The Lord's Prayer We're half way through the Sermon on the Mount. We have discovered that it isn't a list of moral directions, tasks for us to fulfil or ideas for good living for us to aspire to. They are impossible demands, because they demand us to be perfect. And then Jesus tells so to go into the iner room and pray.. and the prayer he gives us is the Lord's Prayer.  The Lord's prayer is short of effusive praise, has no real requests for persoal stuff, doesn't mention people who are ill or have needs, doesn't pray for world peace or justice. God is Father whose name is holy. We pray his kingdom to come. We pray that on this earth his will may be done. We ask for just enough - bread for the morning ... that is just to get us tomorrow. Then we acknowledge that we need to be forgiven, but that we can only be forgiven if we are selves are willing to forgive. That's a significant couple of sentences which is amplified and reinforced by what Jesus says aft...