An interlude
Strangers and pilgrims
Remain as a stranger and pilgrim on this earth. Do not be concerned with the things of this world. Keep your heart free and lift yourself up to God, for here you have no lasting city. Direct your prayer and longings to heaven every day, so that at your death your soul may be free to pass joyfully into the presence of God.
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
Hold fast
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching”
Hebrews 10:19-25
Silent giving
It is not seldom that our silence and our prayers do more to bring people to the knowledge of God than all our words about Him”
Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island
Be a lover of silence
Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence…Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within.
If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself.”
Isaac of Nineveh (quoted in Merton’s ‘Contemplative Prayer’)
Last orders
“Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
1 Corinthians 1:20
Yes indeed! And what an excellent job He has done. Here we are, masked like rabid dogs, falling for fear and division, and bending the collective knee to the most farcical of false narratives. The quicksands of worldly wisdom would have us descend into the darkest depths of untruth and wrongness. And yet in the timely spirit of polarisation, the tangle of deceit that has been woven through all sectors of society is becoming increasingly palpable.
It takes more than the burying of one’s head in the sand to ignore what is taking place. It requires the entombment of the entire body of logic, reason and common sense, as well as the abandonment of the organs of feeling and intuition. It seems to me that these choices extinguish the loving spark that is present within every individual, the one that invites each one of us to care about what is real and kindle the flame of what is good.
The wonderful unravelling is underway! Last chance to choose Truth. Last chance to get right with God. Last orders at the Fallen Earth Saloon.
Remember the everlasting covenant
"The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."
Genesis 9:16-17
Frontiers
“Before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkable, the spirit hovers on the frontiers of language, wondering whether or not to stay on its own side of the border, in order to have something to bring back to other men. This is the test of those who wish to cross the frontier. If they are not ready to leave their own ideas and their own words behind them, they cannot travel further.”
Thomas Merton, No man Is an island
Hymn to matter – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us. Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards of measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God. Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: you who, interposed between our minds and the world of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena.
Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists. Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless."
From Hymn to the Universe by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Prepping for end times
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”
Ephesians 14-18
Being a walking question mark 