Fr Philip Carter offers a ministry of spirituality, with a series of meditations on some questions that we may ponder as we consider our life in God.
You will find here his reflections and questions for meditation, images, music and poetry to enrich your life’s journey.
…to totter on planks we hope will become bridges
Kevin Hart
“I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go”.
Cecil Day Lewis
Cecil Day Lewis speaks of an event, ordinary and particular “eighteen years ago, almost to the day” – watching a son after a football match walking away “from me” towards the school- “like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem”. A simple, everyday event, universally played out in “nature’s give and take”. As is so often said: we don’t have to search for crucifixion, “scorching ordeals”. They find us. And they prove us.
The centre and focus for our faith is God in Jesus,
“totally expended in precarious endeavour”.
W. H. Vanstone
Image: Juan Manuel Cisneros, Stone Nativity
“Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges”.
Kevin Hart
Image: Juan Manuel Cisneros, Stone Nativity with artist
Dailiness. Givenness. And weakness. This little Haiku poem by the Australian poet Kevin Hart exposes an inner stubbornness, a resolute willingness to work with what is and at the same time to be captured by something more. Our future is beckoning, and it shapes us even more than our past. Jesus is our future that has already appeared. He is a bridge, offering us the way forwards: let us walk in it.
“Heaven is everything earth has withheld”.
Daniel Berrigan
According to Ivan Karamazov “there is no sin, or crime, only hunger”. In fact, Ernst Blok says, two different hungers. The first is the desire for things that already exist, which is ultimately so destructive because we always demand and want more. The second hunger longs for what does not yet exist, which is full of promise, releasing in us hope and energy for a future, better, world.
“There is another world, and it is in this one”
Paul Eluard
The images in this post are of an installation of stone art created by Juan Manuel Cisneros on the beach of Ventura, California. He says of his work,
My rock stack nativity scene is my Christmas present for Ventura, a community I’ve come to love. I carefully selected each stone I needed, sometimes walking 30 minutes down the beach to find one that was the exact size and shape. I don’t have any tools or a background in engineering or architecture but I do have a keen sense for balance and a gut feeling that tells me when to let go. I’m just a guy who found a hobby and turned it into something special.
For more information on the project visit his blog post My name is Juan Manuel and I’m the man behind the stone art on Ventura beaches
And here is a short video of the build.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
