Suffering, betrayal and nastiness are not forgiven through our own willpower, argues Patrick Gormally. A retired university professor and Head of Department of Romance Languages at the National University of Ireland, he is now a volunteer Catholic Prison Chaplain in France.
‘Beholding’ – when ‘deep calls unto deep’ and joy leaps in the heart
Behold, I bring you good tidings! (Luke 2:10)
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.” So said St Irenaeus in the second century.
While the first part of the quotation, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” is often quoted, the second part, which makes clear that being alive is conditional upon beholding God, is often ignored. Perhaps because it is not understood.
Giving voice to the God who sings within
We need to forgive and be forgiven ‘every day, every hour – unceasingly’
Prayer – breathing in the power of love at the heart of life
Getting the ‘old white man’ out of our hearts
Our image of what or who ‘God’ is can so often be merely human projection, severely limiting our understanding of the Divine. This can prevent us from being open to experiencing Divine reality, and what it truly is, which in turn means we are unlikely to plumb the depths of our full humanity. For writer and author Clare Boyd-Macrae this question reached a crisis point when prayer began to feel ‘like a waste of time’.
‘Ecological conversion’ needed to avoid climate disaster
Sport - our most common form of spiritual practice
Biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake, a former Fellow of Clare College Cambridge, believes that being completely present in sport is to enter the joy, energy and flow of the Holy Spirit. Once an atheist, Dr Sheldrake returned to the Christian faith after living in a Christian ashram in India. The following is an edited extract from a talk* he gave on 20 May about his most recent books: ‘Science and Spiritual Practices’ and ‘Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work’.
Jane Goodall on finding ‘a great spiritual power’ in the forests of Gombe
The bird and the wire mesh
A little bird trapped behind a wire mesh is a poignant metaphor for those in prison, as well as those imprisoned by fear, illness or despair, reflects Patrick Gormally. A volunteer Catholic Prison Chaplain, he is a retired university professor and Head of Department of Romance Languages. He and his wife Marie-Cécile live in an Old Rectory in New Aquitaine, south western France.
Finding God by attending to the miracle of creation
American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, found God through being truly present, particularly to the natural world, and in the compassion, love, wonder and gratitude she experienced as a result. *Dr Cath Connelly celebrates one of the great poets of our time, who challenges us with the question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
For the world’s sake, we must hold fast to the ‘little piece of God’ in us
A revolution in wisdom vital for our time
An extraordinary and life-changing spiritual experience when he was a young man shaped the rest of Bruno Barnhart’s life. It led the Californian Camaldolese Benedictine Monk, who died in 2015, to devote his life’s work to recovering and re-conceiving Christian wisdom today, centred on and emanating from the one great revolutionary event of the Cross. Dr Chris Morris, who completed a PhD* on Barnhart in 2020, explains why he has found Barnhart’s ideas “compelling and endlessly engaging”.
Our future depends on the ‘loving eye’ replacing the ‘arrogant eye’
The ecological crisis – a ‘wicked problem’ requiring some ancient wisdom
Refuse the busyness of the world; rest on the bedrock of your humanity
‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’
The most important reason for a contemplative practice like meditation or mindfulness is that it taps into what author Maggie Ross has described as “deep mind”, a deep spring of love and compassion. Jesus called it “living water”. Thomas Aquinas said God is compassion, and that “Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth”.
Silence a ‘source of empowerment; without it we are lost’
“We have got to the point where a soundless world has practically ceased to exist, and we are the poorer for it,” writes Cistercian monk and author Michael Casey in Balaam’s Donkey. “Recently I have read several accounts written by brave adventurers who have put aside their electronic devices for an hour, a day, or even a week and been astonished to discover the richness of a life without incessant interruptions and noise.”
Learning to love, not just tolerate, those who are ‘difficult’
One of Christianity’s most radical demands is that we are not merely to tolerate those we find difficult, but actually love them. No wonder the Catholic writer and philosopher GK Chesterton observed: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
Meditation – a glimpse of the Resurrection
At Easter we celebrate Resurrection and liberation from the fear of death – something we can experience through meditation by transcending the constant cycle of the death and rebirth of our thoughts, and abiding in what is eternal, says Benedictine monk Fr Laurence Freeman. He is also Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) and author of many books on meditation including Jesus the Teacher Within (Continuum, 2001), Light Within (Canterbury Press Norwich 2008) and First Sight – the Experience of Faith (Continuum 2011). This interview with Roland Ashby, which first appeared in 2002*, is reproduced here to mark WCCM’s 30th anniversary, which occurs this year.